One thing I'm finding interesting with both APOGS and the Wolf Crawl is the way you pick the quotations - they seem to be the ones that stick in my brain as well. This week there was an additional one for me in the Mme Roland section: "In the evening, she read classical history, and sat with closed eyes over the books, her hands still on the pages, dreaming of Liberty." There's a nice bit of foreshadowing there.
We really do get a view of how badly women are treated in these two chapters - both the young Mme Roland and the new wife Lucile are treated as commodities by men. The section with the old noblewoman manages to be comic while also making you think that some people were asking for trouble. (I was reminded of Lady Bracknell - and we all know her views of the French Revolution...)
The Danton section is a real eye opener. I've said previously that I find it difficult to differentiate between the leading men - but I now have a very clear view of Danton (and it's not a pleasant one). He's a self-centred, manipulative piece of work - and I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw his hefty frame. It does make if difficult to understand why people followed him - he definitely doesn't have the same charm as Desmloulins. And you'd be thinking about him for a long time before the word 'incorruptible' popped into your mind.
I'm still finding it a bit of a challenge to work out whether some of the characters are walk-on parts or whether they will turn out to be significant (or even whether we've met them before) - but I suppose that's a bit like life.
And we're half way through. I'm impressed. Thanks, Simon, I don't think I would have managed it otherwise.
Oh and if you're wondering why anyone followed Danton, you really don't need to look very far in this world. Or at least, a quick glance across the pond. 👀
In my mind Danton is a Boris Johnson, I haven’t cast Camille or Robespierre. I’m struggling to get to grips with Robespierre, he doesn’t seem to have the charisma to be where he is.
I can definitely see a bit of that. I think I've known a lot of Camilles in various forms, but can't think of a famous one. So far, Max is like a politician whose attraction is his dullness, his simplicity, his apparent virtue. People project onto him - maybe there is something of Corbyn about him?
How about a young Michael Heseltine for Camille (the hair - and swinging the mace in Parliament), and I get a distinct whiff of Michael Gove about Robespierre - especially the way he puts the metaphorical knife into Danton/Boris?
Camille is so corruptible, which makes him such an odd friend for Max. As I've said before, it's the odd-couple dynamics between the three that I find so compelling. And of course, that's what makes it such a tragic story.
Yes, I find that interesting too, and for me it speaks to the strange and pervasive connection that shared history, particularly school (or other trauma!) history gives us. Had Robespierre met Desmoulins as an adult, surely he wouldn't have regarded him as his only friend?
Probably not. The same applies to Louis Suleau, another school friend who is an ardent royalist. There is something about Desmoulins that means he acquires a strange assortment of friends from across the political spectrum. There is something mesmerising about him. Or as Arthur Dillon says, he wants to protect him.
I feel like I would like a lot more Lucille—of course she has a fascinating position in the text amongst characters but the personality is electric and versatile and, not knowing at all what is ahead, I would very much like to request that she gets a few of her own chapters at some point going forward...
She is a great character - I think I find her so interesting because she does things which are unexpected, but seem totally believable. She also feels quite modern - so it's easier to see things from her point of view than than some other characters.
What a thing it was to encounter Mme Roland in her chapter—as you note here, it offered a welcomed contrast of both vantage point as well as tone, and in my eyes it is also a really well-developed portrait (tragically so) that offers a respite from the momentum that had been building. The line that really resonated with me here: "She dwelled—forced herself to dwell—on what was great in Man, on progress and nobility of spirit, on. brotherhood and self-sacrifice: on all the disembodied virtues." I feel like this captured her intentions but also the fallibility of all that is occurring in this Revolution, too, with the phrase "disembodied virtues" rendered ominous to me. (Is there a history behind that phrase?)
Also, I thought the depiction of Robespierre through the eyes of Danton was phenomenal—not only in its foreshadowing (not subtle!) but in how it takes the minimized voice and role of Max earlier in the book and uses this as a contrast that shows how he himself is evolving: "he spoke, if you follow me, as if it were beyond dispute." It seems to reveal the darkness of such devout conviction, no matter the benevolence of original intentions—and also how society sometimes sharpens the well-intended strong belief into one that is quite dangerous (and that's before digital algorithms made this sharpening all the more consequential in our current social media moment).
This image haunted me (and also was a great injection from Mantel's narrative voice): "So he went downstairs, the reasonable person, with his dog padding after him and growing at the shadows."
This was my favorite stretch of the book, without question, and it is hard to wait another week...
I love this chapter too. And your comment clarifies something for me as well. Danton "lives without illusions." Imagine a chapter written by Camille or Max. Everything would be so distorted as they try to reconcile reality with their views. But Danton's in it for Danton, so we get to see the Revolution in this simple clarity.
But that only makes us unnervingly conscious of those shadows growing at the edges.
I hate to lower the tone of the discussion, but as an inveterate dog person I was struck by Robespierre’s brindle guard dog and am picturing a mastiff accompanying him in all his scenes now.
Mastiffs are lazy and slow to anger, but they are remarkably loyal and when provoked will defend their human against any threat. So perhaps there is a symbolic meaning there.
I'm not really a pet person - and rather than saying that I like dogs, it seems truer to say that dogs like me. Dogs who are 'not good with people' seem to take to me. Maybe they recognise a kindred spirit...
While reading, my mind frequently wanders to Mantel as though she is also a character. For me, she is a strong presence as I turn the pages.
My favorite of the main guys is Camille. Not for his sterling character, which he does not have, but for his feyness, his fearlessness, his quirky tainted charms. Max is still a bit mysterious. Where is his passion? George-Jacques is bent by stature and success, and not in admirable ways.
I confess that I love the many vignettes Mantel uses to richly embroider her tale of the French Revolution, and I love her splendid wry wit, but I get a bit drifty with the actual history…. the various alliances and discussions and shifting political winds.
But Simon straightens it all out and reels me in each week.
I'm with you on Team Camille. He's a fantastic character - wicked, funny, unpredictable. A true trickster in a sea of politicians. I find him terribly sympathetic, his many weaknesses notwithstanding!
Hear hear! (re; Simon straightening us all out each week!). ;)
While reading this week's chapters, I found myself thinking, this book is a mess. But it's an interesting mess, nevertheless. And that's why I keep reading...
There’s something sobering about watching the scaffolding of idealism buckle under human nature—especially when told through Mantel’s gaze and your sharp reconstruction. What lingers for me is not just the shifting alliances or the stakes of war, but how quickly “the incorruptible” become tools of moral leverage. Danton, Camille, Robespierre—they weren’t just political figures, they were performances. And yet, beneath each performance was a private wager.
Your commentary on Manon Roland hit particularly deep. A woman of clarity inside a theater of rhetoric, her presence both dignifies the revolution and dooms her. Those with unwavering inner vision often don’t survive the machinery they help ignite.
And the reminder that the Revolution was, in the end, a gamble—one that cost more than it paid. Thank you for threading history, literature, and psychology so deftly. This series is a dangerous joy.
I found Danton’s voice very difficult. The sentences are short, and the tone (it seems to me) bereft of Mantel’s usual fluency; his theme isn’t clear, and I lose track, or he does; and he appears to have no sense of an audience, even if it’s just himself. I slept badly last night, so perhaps I am simply too tired to read properly, but I managed the rest of this week’s section all right (for example, as before, I enjoyed hearing from Mme Roland very much!). I liked the line you quote about how only Robespierre would believe such a thing: Hilary certainly didn’t like our Max; but I don’t think she liked Danton much either. I definitely don’t, and she has been my guide.
Sorry to hear about your bad night's sleep, Susan. I think they both interested her. And Camille interests her. The story is propelled by the strange relationships between these three very different men. I enjoy hearing Danton's voice. He's so straightforwardly self-serving. One imagines he didn't present himself as quite such a hypocrite to his revolutionary audiences, so we are granted a privileged (?) window into his mind. His theme? Himself. His track? His future. He senses 1792 will be a big year for him. We will see.
I enjoyed both the time we spent with Mme Roland and the rather terrifying Danton - one a prodigious writer, the other a booming orator, each quite full of themselves. The little vignette of where young Manon is taken to see the rancid aristocrat is a good reminder of what people at the time were trying to get rid of: a crusty system of unaccountable privilege in which the unprivileged masses just had to put up with what the privileged threw their way. In APoGS, there‘s little of the idealism of the French Revolution to be seen, of the heady times of when everything about society could be called into question, so I‘ve had a few weeks of wondering why anyone would keep celebrating Juillet 14 - but Manon‘s encounter with the old aristocrat showed the times in another light.
Of course, the one social order which was never properly challenged except by a handful of foolhardy women (and good old Condorcet) was the patriarchal order that put women firmly in their place as keepers of the hearth and raisers of children. I watched a rather good ARTE documentary yesterday on women‘s role in the French Revolution, which is available on YouTube, though most of you will have to depend on the mercy of an automated YouTube translation, if that‘s even available. https://youtu.be/VsXSTJjbf08?si=Y23AILD_mdBCEEBa
Mme Roland is not in it, but there are soldiers, the woman who led the march to Versailles, Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Corday, and a very radical chocolatière, and lots of archive hunting for the remnants of what these women wrote and though and what was long pushed aside. Mantel appears to have been ahead of French historiography, if the documentary is to be trusted, in pushing the women in her narrative up front.
The Paris trip has been booked, by the way - the diligence booking agency suggested I go first class because there was expected to be a crush of people, but I did not think it quite in the revolutionary spirit, so shall rattle off to Paris squashed between other travelers‘ suitcases and portmanteaux.
Thanks for this link again, Sabine - I've actually stuck it in next week's post, as Danton makes a sneery comment about "Fishwives for Democracy". I think what Mantel is really good at is capturing the breadth and contradictions of revolutionary Paris: they all more or less agreed on what they wanted to get rid of, but little else, and there are amazing stories of women in the Revolution alongside the usual misogynistic mire.
Not at all. Any suggestions beyond the Anglosphere are always welcome whenever. Next week has a brilliant moving exchange between Lucile and Anne Théroigne as well.
Because my entire knowledge of the French Revolution is from Les Mis, I’ve been perplexed about the lack of warfare. I assumed in a revolution it would be nonstop killing. I think I will be all the more sad when the killing begins since we managed so long without it. Or, am I missing something?
I may be mistaken, but I believe Les Mis isn't set during the French Revolution, but culminates in the July Revolution of 1830. So an entirely different bit of history! But yes, *this* French Revolution also gets more bloody from 1792 onwards as we head into the "Reign of Terror."
I found the Danton chapter completely thrilling! It reminded me of the moment in The Neverending Story (the film, that is, I don't think I ever made it through the book), when Bastian realises that the book he is reading is narrating his movements. It's such a confident, theatrical move on Mantel's part to turn the gaze outward and say, "You! That's right, I'm talking to you!" Such muscular handling of the reader! The contents of the chapter were very illuminating, too. Like last week's (?) exchange between Camille and Max about why Max won't marry, Max's visit to Danton feels like yet more dread-building scene setting for the horrors to come.
On that note, I am annoyed with myself because I googled to see if I could see any more images of Brount with his master, and I stumbled across quite a grisly spoiler on the first page of google that I wish I hadn't seen! Silly me. I'll have to set a reminder to come back and revisit the articles shared above about Manon Roland, as I'd like to preserve just a little mystery about the specifics of what's to come.
One thing I'm finding interesting with both APOGS and the Wolf Crawl is the way you pick the quotations - they seem to be the ones that stick in my brain as well. This week there was an additional one for me in the Mme Roland section: "In the evening, she read classical history, and sat with closed eyes over the books, her hands still on the pages, dreaming of Liberty." There's a nice bit of foreshadowing there.
We really do get a view of how badly women are treated in these two chapters - both the young Mme Roland and the new wife Lucile are treated as commodities by men. The section with the old noblewoman manages to be comic while also making you think that some people were asking for trouble. (I was reminded of Lady Bracknell - and we all know her views of the French Revolution...)
The Danton section is a real eye opener. I've said previously that I find it difficult to differentiate between the leading men - but I now have a very clear view of Danton (and it's not a pleasant one). He's a self-centred, manipulative piece of work - and I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw his hefty frame. It does make if difficult to understand why people followed him - he definitely doesn't have the same charm as Desmloulins. And you'd be thinking about him for a long time before the word 'incorruptible' popped into your mind.
I'm still finding it a bit of a challenge to work out whether some of the characters are walk-on parts or whether they will turn out to be significant (or even whether we've met them before) - but I suppose that's a bit like life.
And we're half way through. I'm impressed. Thanks, Simon, I don't think I would have managed it otherwise.
Oh and if you're wondering why anyone followed Danton, you really don't need to look very far in this world. Or at least, a quick glance across the pond. 👀
That's so true. I seem to be immune to a certain sort of charm - and I can't say I'm sorry about it.
This explains why you've never really fallen under Cromwell's spell too I think.
I’ve got a lot of time for Cromwell - when he’s in administrator/organiser mode. He loses me when he becomes duplicitous.
In my mind Danton is a Boris Johnson, I haven’t cast Camille or Robespierre. I’m struggling to get to grips with Robespierre, he doesn’t seem to have the charisma to be where he is.
I can definitely see a bit of that. I think I've known a lot of Camilles in various forms, but can't think of a famous one. So far, Max is like a politician whose attraction is his dullness, his simplicity, his apparent virtue. People project onto him - maybe there is something of Corbyn about him?
How about a young Michael Heseltine for Camille (the hair - and swinging the mace in Parliament), and I get a distinct whiff of Michael Gove about Robespierre - especially the way he puts the metaphorical knife into Danton/Boris?
Camille is so corruptible, which makes him such an odd friend for Max. As I've said before, it's the odd-couple dynamics between the three that I find so compelling. And of course, that's what makes it such a tragic story.
Yes, I find that interesting too, and for me it speaks to the strange and pervasive connection that shared history, particularly school (or other trauma!) history gives us. Had Robespierre met Desmoulins as an adult, surely he wouldn't have regarded him as his only friend?
Probably not. The same applies to Louis Suleau, another school friend who is an ardent royalist. There is something about Desmoulins that means he acquires a strange assortment of friends from across the political spectrum. There is something mesmerising about him. Or as Arthur Dillon says, he wants to protect him.
I feel like I would like a lot more Lucille—of course she has a fascinating position in the text amongst characters but the personality is electric and versatile and, not knowing at all what is ahead, I would very much like to request that she gets a few of her own chapters at some point going forward...
She is a great character - I think I find her so interesting because she does things which are unexpected, but seem totally believable. She also feels quite modern - so it's easier to see things from her point of view than than some other characters.
What a thing it was to encounter Mme Roland in her chapter—as you note here, it offered a welcomed contrast of both vantage point as well as tone, and in my eyes it is also a really well-developed portrait (tragically so) that offers a respite from the momentum that had been building. The line that really resonated with me here: "She dwelled—forced herself to dwell—on what was great in Man, on progress and nobility of spirit, on. brotherhood and self-sacrifice: on all the disembodied virtues." I feel like this captured her intentions but also the fallibility of all that is occurring in this Revolution, too, with the phrase "disembodied virtues" rendered ominous to me. (Is there a history behind that phrase?)
Also, I thought the depiction of Robespierre through the eyes of Danton was phenomenal—not only in its foreshadowing (not subtle!) but in how it takes the minimized voice and role of Max earlier in the book and uses this as a contrast that shows how he himself is evolving: "he spoke, if you follow me, as if it were beyond dispute." It seems to reveal the darkness of such devout conviction, no matter the benevolence of original intentions—and also how society sometimes sharpens the well-intended strong belief into one that is quite dangerous (and that's before digital algorithms made this sharpening all the more consequential in our current social media moment).
This image haunted me (and also was a great injection from Mantel's narrative voice): "So he went downstairs, the reasonable person, with his dog padding after him and growing at the shadows."
This was my favorite stretch of the book, without question, and it is hard to wait another week...
I love this chapter too. And your comment clarifies something for me as well. Danton "lives without illusions." Imagine a chapter written by Camille or Max. Everything would be so distorted as they try to reconcile reality with their views. But Danton's in it for Danton, so we get to see the Revolution in this simple clarity.
But that only makes us unnervingly conscious of those shadows growing at the edges.
I hate to lower the tone of the discussion, but as an inveterate dog person I was struck by Robespierre’s brindle guard dog and am picturing a mastiff accompanying him in all his scenes now.
Here is a link to the Wikipedia entry for mastiffs. Brindles are especially cute! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Mastiff
Mastiffs are lazy and slow to anger, but they are remarkably loyal and when provoked will defend their human against any threat. So perhaps there is a symbolic meaning there.
This is the second time we've met Brount. I talked about him in week 3: https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com/p/apogs-3 such a great visual image!
Brount is such a great name for a dog. It sounds like a bark!
Talking about dogs is not lowering the tone, it's elevating it. Now if you'd mentioned cats...
I'm that rare person who doesn't care for either breed of quadruped. You could say, I don't have a dog in that race. 🐈🐕
Another “not a dog or cat person” here also. But I’m still kind to them if I have to be. And, weirdly, dogs like me too Bren.
I'm not really a pet person - and rather than saying that I like dogs, it seems truer to say that dogs like me. Dogs who are 'not good with people' seem to take to me. Maybe they recognise a kindred spirit...
I'll try not to say anything catty about the standards of dog love here.
While reading, my mind frequently wanders to Mantel as though she is also a character. For me, she is a strong presence as I turn the pages.
My favorite of the main guys is Camille. Not for his sterling character, which he does not have, but for his feyness, his fearlessness, his quirky tainted charms. Max is still a bit mysterious. Where is his passion? George-Jacques is bent by stature and success, and not in admirable ways.
I confess that I love the many vignettes Mantel uses to richly embroider her tale of the French Revolution, and I love her splendid wry wit, but I get a bit drifty with the actual history…. the various alliances and discussions and shifting political winds.
But Simon straightens it all out and reels me in each week.
I'm with you on Team Camille. He's a fantastic character - wicked, funny, unpredictable. A true trickster in a sea of politicians. I find him terribly sympathetic, his many weaknesses notwithstanding!
Hear hear! (re; Simon straightening us all out each week!). ;)
While reading this week's chapters, I found myself thinking, this book is a mess. But it's an interesting mess, nevertheless. And that's why I keep reading...
There’s something sobering about watching the scaffolding of idealism buckle under human nature—especially when told through Mantel’s gaze and your sharp reconstruction. What lingers for me is not just the shifting alliances or the stakes of war, but how quickly “the incorruptible” become tools of moral leverage. Danton, Camille, Robespierre—they weren’t just political figures, they were performances. And yet, beneath each performance was a private wager.
Your commentary on Manon Roland hit particularly deep. A woman of clarity inside a theater of rhetoric, her presence both dignifies the revolution and dooms her. Those with unwavering inner vision often don’t survive the machinery they help ignite.
And the reminder that the Revolution was, in the end, a gamble—one that cost more than it paid. Thank you for threading history, literature, and psychology so deftly. This series is a dangerous joy.
"There’s something sobering about watching the scaffolding of idealism buckle under human nature" —what an observation 🙏
The idea of the Revolution as a gamble, too? Spot-on, and hauntingly so.
Thank you 🙏
I found Danton’s voice very difficult. The sentences are short, and the tone (it seems to me) bereft of Mantel’s usual fluency; his theme isn’t clear, and I lose track, or he does; and he appears to have no sense of an audience, even if it’s just himself. I slept badly last night, so perhaps I am simply too tired to read properly, but I managed the rest of this week’s section all right (for example, as before, I enjoyed hearing from Mme Roland very much!). I liked the line you quote about how only Robespierre would believe such a thing: Hilary certainly didn’t like our Max; but I don’t think she liked Danton much either. I definitely don’t, and she has been my guide.
Sorry to hear about your bad night's sleep, Susan. I think they both interested her. And Camille interests her. The story is propelled by the strange relationships between these three very different men. I enjoy hearing Danton's voice. He's so straightforwardly self-serving. One imagines he didn't present himself as quite such a hypocrite to his revolutionary audiences, so we are granted a privileged (?) window into his mind. His theme? Himself. His track? His future. He senses 1792 will be a big year for him. We will see.
Oh yes, they’re fascinating, all three of them.
I enjoyed both the time we spent with Mme Roland and the rather terrifying Danton - one a prodigious writer, the other a booming orator, each quite full of themselves. The little vignette of where young Manon is taken to see the rancid aristocrat is a good reminder of what people at the time were trying to get rid of: a crusty system of unaccountable privilege in which the unprivileged masses just had to put up with what the privileged threw their way. In APoGS, there‘s little of the idealism of the French Revolution to be seen, of the heady times of when everything about society could be called into question, so I‘ve had a few weeks of wondering why anyone would keep celebrating Juillet 14 - but Manon‘s encounter with the old aristocrat showed the times in another light.
Of course, the one social order which was never properly challenged except by a handful of foolhardy women (and good old Condorcet) was the patriarchal order that put women firmly in their place as keepers of the hearth and raisers of children. I watched a rather good ARTE documentary yesterday on women‘s role in the French Revolution, which is available on YouTube, though most of you will have to depend on the mercy of an automated YouTube translation, if that‘s even available. https://youtu.be/VsXSTJjbf08?si=Y23AILD_mdBCEEBa
Mme Roland is not in it, but there are soldiers, the woman who led the march to Versailles, Olympe de Gouges, Charlotte Corday, and a very radical chocolatière, and lots of archive hunting for the remnants of what these women wrote and though and what was long pushed aside. Mantel appears to have been ahead of French historiography, if the documentary is to be trusted, in pushing the women in her narrative up front.
The Paris trip has been booked, by the way - the diligence booking agency suggested I go first class because there was expected to be a crush of people, but I did not think it quite in the revolutionary spirit, so shall rattle off to Paris squashed between other travelers‘ suitcases and portmanteaux.
Thanks for this link again, Sabine - I've actually stuck it in next week's post, as Danton makes a sneery comment about "Fishwives for Democracy". I think what Mantel is really good at is capturing the breadth and contradictions of revolutionary Paris: they all more or less agreed on what they wanted to get rid of, but little else, and there are amazing stories of women in the Revolution alongside the usual misogynistic mire.
Oh, sorry for getting ahead of your next post, I did not mean to do that!
Not at all. Any suggestions beyond the Anglosphere are always welcome whenever. Next week has a brilliant moving exchange between Lucile and Anne Théroigne as well.
Because my entire knowledge of the French Revolution is from Les Mis, I’ve been perplexed about the lack of warfare. I assumed in a revolution it would be nonstop killing. I think I will be all the more sad when the killing begins since we managed so long without it. Or, am I missing something?
I may be mistaken, but I believe Les Mis isn't set during the French Revolution, but culminates in the July Revolution of 1830. So an entirely different bit of history! But yes, *this* French Revolution also gets more bloody from 1792 onwards as we head into the "Reign of Terror."
In other words, I know even less than I thought! Thanks for the clarification. Learning a ton.
A very interesting week and having Danton talk directly to the reader was a nice touch that enabled me to really get to know him better.
I found the Danton chapter completely thrilling! It reminded me of the moment in The Neverending Story (the film, that is, I don't think I ever made it through the book), when Bastian realises that the book he is reading is narrating his movements. It's such a confident, theatrical move on Mantel's part to turn the gaze outward and say, "You! That's right, I'm talking to you!" Such muscular handling of the reader! The contents of the chapter were very illuminating, too. Like last week's (?) exchange between Camille and Max about why Max won't marry, Max's visit to Danton feels like yet more dread-building scene setting for the horrors to come.
On that note, I am annoyed with myself because I googled to see if I could see any more images of Brount with his master, and I stumbled across quite a grisly spoiler on the first page of google that I wish I hadn't seen! Silly me. I'll have to set a reminder to come back and revisit the articles shared above about Manon Roland, as I'd like to preserve just a little mystery about the specifics of what's to come.