How did Adam find this out!?
Most of this chapter is concerned with the De Lacey family. Particularly, it’s about how they came to live in this small town in Germany, and fell upon such hard times. I’ve got to say, I’m actually not terribly a fan of it. I know it’s sort of like disliking a book’s characters for what is essentially just a given for them, but… I mean, here are my thoughts on the matter:
-What does this add? It seems like the De Laceys were fine characters anyway as just working class townsfolk with some land to their name that weren’t particularly rich. Safie’s appearance doesn’t even need that much explanation, I think. She could’ve just been someone Felix had met at some point, maybe on military service or something. I don’t know.
Instead we get this… really strange narrative about how Safie’s father had been captured and Felix tried to help him get out of his punishment. However, Felix gets himself into trouble toward this end and his family, consisting of Agatha and their father, who’s just called De Lacey, are arrested. Felix turns himself in and despite this good gesture, the family is still kept imprisoned for five months, and eventually exiled from France, losing their money in the process. They take up residence in Germany and Safie’s father, who said that he would repay Felix’s kindness, reneges on the agreement before heading back to Turkey. As for Safie herself, she decides to go find and live with Felix, who she’d fallen in love with.
The whole plot just feels contrived to give them some melodrama to work through. It wouldn’t be so apparent if the De Lacey’s hadn’t already been presented as the only characters who weren’t well-off in the narrative so far. This kind of takes away that aspect of their character and makes them more of displaced wealthy people. Maybe I’m overlooking some part of the socioeconomic strata on why this was needed in this novel, but for now it mostly seems like a way to just eke out some sort of tension. AS though the tension of just living while poor isn’t enough.
There’s also remarkably little of Adam in this chapter. He briefly interjects to say that he copied down some of the letters surrounding Safie that he had found, but really this is more the De Lacey’s story than his, which is pretty disappointing. Also, there seems like there’d be a bit of a logistics problem to Adam figuring out this entire scenario.
The letters must’ve been very expository, because otherwise it doesn’t seem likely he’d’ve learned this. I know this is pre-naturalist writing, and so maybe that in some way justifies things like this, but it still feels a bit divergent from what the core of the story really is.
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