Sometimes you think you know all there is to know about something, and you don’t. I thought I’d read Robinson Crusoe as a child, when it turned out I’d read a sanitized kids version. As an adult, reading the original by Daniel Defoe (first published in 1719), I discovered that Mr. Crusoe was a slave-dealing chancer, who kind of deserved to get stranded on a desert island.
Similarly, I recently finished reading another novel I thought I’d read as a child: The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas (who was bi-racial BTW). If like me, you associate The Three Musketeers with old-world gallantry and swashbuckling adventure (“all for one and one for all!”), it’s a bit of a surprise to discover that the musketeers are little more than spendthrift, womanizing gamblers, who are constantly in debt and mooch off other men’s wives to keep their financial heads above water. The most eye-opening chapter for me was the one titled, “At Night All Cats Are Grey” in which D’Artagnan, knowing that a particular young woman was expecting her lover to visit her after dark, takes the lover’s place, fools her into thinking he’s the man she was expecting, and has his way with her. Dumas, writing in 1844, did allow that D’Artagnan’s behaviour was a bit shady. Here, in the 21st Century, it would be rape. Or, if you are a follower of English criminal law, burglary. The Three Musketeers remains one of the great early adventure novels, but it’s “heroes” are not heroic at all.