A Year of Unfortunate Events — Part the Third: The Transmigration of Beatrice Baudelaire

BOOM! It's May and that means this is the third month of my year-long re-read of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. Now we all know that May sourness leads to June dourness, but—

That's definitely not an expression.

Then is May the month that shrieks in like a marmot, but squeezes out like an octopus?

No, it's March and the animals are a lion and a lamb. What does any of this have to do with this feature?

Nothing. I just thought it might be nice to say something appropriate to the month.

Also, you're writing this part in April.

Oh, TS Eliot said that was the coolest month!

Close enough. Let's just jump into it.

Book the Third - The Wide Window

What did you remember about this book before re-reading it?

Okay, so this one's a little foggy. But this time the Baudelaire children get sent to live with their distant Aunt Josephine out near Lake Lachrymose. You may know Lake Lachrymose as the fictional lake that is home to the fictional Lachrymose Leeches, which Josephine has a deathly fear of. Actually, Josephine is something of a panophobe, if memory serves.  She's also afraid of the picture window overlooking the lake, and with good reason—foreshadowing! Also, Count Olaf is in the novel, this time posing as a fisherman who pitches woo at Josephine. I think.

Ooh, definitely less confident than your recollections of the first two books.

‾\_(ツ)_/‾

Now that it is May and you've read it again, what do you think?

Series is still going pretty strong at this point. Each book has been a little longer than the last. But, crucially, Snicket has maintained the through-line of dark humor, parody, and linguistic hi-jinks. There is also some unexpected tenderness at the end of this one. So should we get crackin' with the misery tour?

Yes, let's. How accurate were your remembrances?

I did pretty good. We begin with Mr. Poe once again depositing the children with a distant relative. This time it's Josephine Anwhistle, the sister-in-law of their second cousin. She lives in a house precariously perched on a cliff over-looking Lake Lachrymose, home of the deadly Lachrymose Leeches. Well, I say deadly, but they only attack humans who've eaten within the last hour, so the conditionally deadly Lachrymose Leeches. Josephine, as it turns out is afraid of everything, the stove (it might burn you), the telephone (it might electrocute you), the doorknobs (they might explode when you grab hold of them lodging bits of brass shrapnel in your face), but she's especially afraid of the lake and its leeches which killed her dear, departed Ike. But at the same time, she can't bear the thought of leaving behind the home where she and Ike spent so many happy years together studying grammar.

Fair enough.

After a miserable evening in her unheated (she's afraid of the radiator)  rickety house, Josephine takes the children grocery shopping for the ingredients for chilled cucumber soup. Who should they run into but—

Count Olaf?

No, Captain Sham. Why would they run into Count Olaf?

Describe this "Captain Sham."

Well, sure there is a certain resemblance. He has Olaf's trademark uni-brow. But unlike Count Olaf he wears an eye-patch and a sailor suit. Also, as we all know, Count Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his left ankle, and Captain Sham doesn't have a left ankle.

Beg pardon?

He's just got a suspiciously large peg-leg running from his left knee to the floor.

The fact that you call it suspicious makes me think that it's not a real peg-leg.

Whatever. Anyway, in spite of the egregious use of the wrong "it's" on his business card, Josephine is quite taken with Captain Sham, enough so that when he calls her house that evening, she finally gives into Violet, Klaus, and Sunny's protestations of the safety of the telephone. Later that evening, the children find the wide window of Josephine's grammar library has been smashed open, and that their new guardian has left a suicide note/will naming Captain Sham as their new guardian.

Something smells fishy.

Don't you mean it smells leech-y? You know, 'cause of the leeches.

Hmm.

So, Mr. Poe shows up and, as you've probably come to expect, ignores the children when they tell him that Captain Sham is just Count Olaf in an almost clever disguise. However, Violet cleverly devises a distraction so that she and her siblings can slip away while Sham and Poe discuss adoption arrangements at the Anxious Clown diner, where they figure out that the various spelling errors in Josephine's letter are actually a coded message telling them to look for her in a cave on the other side of the lake. Unfortunately, just after they figure this out, a storm knocks the house into the lake, fortunately, they're able to run back to town and steal a sailboat out from under the nose of one of Captain Sham's employees, who bears a striking resemblance to the enormous person of indeterminate gender from Olaf's acting troupe.

Are they described in a way that might be described as problematic in retrospect?

And how! Snicket frequently refers to this person as "it" and "the creature." Though, it might also be due to the fact that they're a willing accomplice of an attempted child murder.

Well, there is that.

In any case, after they find Josephine and coax her out of hiding, the orphans are "rescued" by none other than Captain Sham himself.

Rescued from what?

Oh, Josephine had eaten a banana just before they found her so the leeches launch a sophisticated and coordinated  assault on their sailboat. In any case, Captain Sham reveals that he is, in fact, Count Olaf.

Are you pausing for me to gasp?  You know I already figured it out. Also, other characters have pointed it out.

Well, still, he throws Josephine to the leeches, and brings the children back to Mr. Poe, but before the adoption is completed, Sunny uses her strong sharp teeth to bite his peg-leg in two, revealing a pale ankle with an eye tattooed on it.

So Mr. Poe finally believes them.

So Mr. Poe finally believes them. He tries to apprehend Olaf, but it's hard to apprehend a criminal and watch out for three children at once, so Olaf and the person of indeterminate gender escape.

What about Aunt Josephine?

What about her?

Is she dead?

Oh, indubitably. The narrator says so. And that's what we're going to talk about for this book.

Narration?

No, dramatic irony. This element has always been present in the books. With the narrator frequently pointing out that things are going to get worse for the Baudelaires before they get better, but it really plays a pivotal role in this book.

Go on.

So, we know what dramatic irony is, right.

It's when the audience knows something that the characters don't, recontextuallizing the action.

And when the Baudelaires and Mr. Poe and Captain Sham all believe that Aunt Josephine is dead. Snicket points that they were wrong. She wasn't dead. Yet.

That's like double dramatic irony.

Yeah, he lets you know that she will pop up again in the story and also that she's going to die.

Well, that's kind of a bummer.

Don't worry, Snicket stacks that deck against her by making her so craven that she promises Olaf that she'll flee the country, change her name and appearance, anything so long as he lets her go and only takes the children.

Yikes, but does she deserve to be eaten alive by leeches?

Probably not, which is something the children reflect on in the novel's conclusion. And ending which is surprisingly sweet, as the Baudelaires come to the realization that whatever they're going through, it's easier for them to go through it together.

For this series, that's positively saccharine.

I suppose so.

Out of curiosity, since the thirteenth falls on a Monday this month, are you going to be posting anything else today?

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered it, but then I thought, "What am I? Someone who isn't lazy?"So this is the only post today.

Not even like  Happy Mother's Day thing?

Couldn't this be the Mother's Day thing?

You mean the feature where you read a series of books in which the protagonist's mother dies in a fire in the first chapter?

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Links:

Here's the Gothic Archies' song for the third book: The World is a Very Scary Place.

So are we really going to stretch this whole "Pretending not to know that Lemony Snicket is really Daniel Handler" thing out for thirteen months?

I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. For one thing, Daniel Handler writes novels for adults, not children.

Indeed, it is impossible to do both.

Then we agree.

AAAUUGGHHHHHH!