Sigma

I finished Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche not too long ago, via audiobook, and because I didn't have my hardcopy of Captain Blood handy, I downloaded the librivox version of it. Surprisingly, because Scaramouche was read by a single reader, Captain Blood was not, and sometimes almost chapter to chapter the reader would change. There were at least half a dozen different readers going back and forth, but I think it might have been significantly more. I wasn't really counting. 

As much as the free audiobook is kinda nice, it wasn't actually the best. You sometimes get what you pay for. Often the biggest problem is that the volume was low; in my car, I had the volume turned up almost all the way and still couldn't always hear super well—although to be fair, that was often because my stupid maps app was trying to talk, which lowered the audio volume. Sometimes pronunciation is bad. Actual read quality is not always great. Some of them are quite good at what they do; some of them have annoying nasally voices. Now that I'm back home, I picked up my hard copy. It's in considerably better shape than my copy of Scaramouche, so I kind of wish that I'd just read it rather than listen to it, but y'know. Now I'm almost done and will surely finish it today. I think I only have three and a half chapters left.

I had earlier said that I thought Sabatini was himself probably a sigma, and his main characters tended to be sigmas. I said that without necessarily tons of remembrance of the details of Blood's story in particular, but now that I'm about done, I think it's still true. Blood does pine with a great deal of oneitis for Arabella Bishop. While that does seem like a bit of a non-sigma thing, you never know. Sigmas can fall in love too, after all, and Sabatini (as well as Burroughs, who I'll try some of his audio books next) specifically wrote female love interests that were superlative. These aren't just disposable female conquests. Plus, both wrote what can be considered to be the male version of a romance. Very different from the female version of a romance, which has coopted the name, but these were truly considered romances in a swashbuckling masculine way at the time (just over a hundred years ago that they were published); the subtitle of Scaramouche is literally "A Romance of the French Revolution." Plus, keep in mind that there was considerable moral inertia against lauding heroic characters who were womanizing philanderers. They weren't even considered with indulgent yet disapproving fondness; they were merely considered bad people. The French pirate Levasseur is a great example of this; when he "rescues" the smitten daughter of Tortuga's French governor, whatsername d'Ogeron, and then threatens to rape her, it's meant to be considered one of the most terrifying aspects of piracy in the book. In reality, in today's environment, he wouldn't have had to threaten to rape her, because she was basically throwing herself at him anyway. 

In that bygone (sadly) age, this kind of thing was not seen the same way, of course, and personal morality was expected to be held to a higher standard. That said, Blood's naming of his ship the Arabella and his pining for Arabella Bishop is a bit sappy, at best. But we forgive him, because as depicted, she actually does kind of deserve it. The same is true for Aline de Kercadieau in Scaramouche, or Dejah Thoris in A Princess of Mars, who also are thwarted in their desire to be with their girl. That tension is what drives the narrative a great deal rather than them simply shrugging and looking for another girl, which would be a much more realistic reaction. But what's the fun in that? Even I consider myself sufficiently moved by the romanticism of falling in love with a woman who deserves it that the striving to be together makes for a wonderful story. 

Ignore Peter Blood's handful of chapters where he broods over his apparent failure to capture the heart of Arabella Bishop (even as we, as readers, come to realize that he has in fact captured her heart, but due to circumstances, neither can act on it yet, and he doesn't realize it for a time.) That circumstances conspiring to keep a couple apart until the peak of the story is a fiction of the romance genre; whether the modern girl-focused rom-com or the older boy-focused swashbuckling romance either one. Instead, I think the behavior of Sabatini's characters are a great study in what a sigma is actually like. The guy from The Black Swan is similarly endowed, although I forget his name at the moment. And it's been way too long since I've read The Sea Hawk for me to remember. My brothers also tell me that St. Martin's Summer is really good, and Bellarion the Fortunate is another of his bestsellers. Based on quick summaries I've read, they look like they also feature very sigma-like protagonists. 

I wouldn't have considered that when I was younger, of course, but since reading about the SSH directly from the source for many years now, it's curious to see that it's so dominant in the works of one author. Probably because being a likely sigma himself, that's how he saw the world.

It's worth noting that the Captain Blood movie made over a decade later with Errol Flynn is an excellent movie. It was Flynn's first starring role, and his first big collaboration with Olivia de Havilland, who plays Arabella Bishop. She was only nineteen when the movie was released, which is also kind of insane. Given that she lived to be one hundred and four, she obviously outlived all of her co-stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Three years later when mostly the same cast made the famous Robin Hood movie, she was even more beautiful in glorious technicolor. She was quite well cast as both Arabella Bishop and Maid Marian. I'm less enamored of her role the next year in Gone With the Wind, which is a terrible movie romanticizing terrible people. Although she was lauded at the time for her roles in the 40s, its her roles in the 30s when she was especially young and beautiful that are remembered today. Like I said, I highly recommend the movie. Its plot is abbreviated relative to the book, but it's otherwise quite faithful in general thrust, and even has some direct dialogue from the book. If you've never seen that movie, you absolutely should. 

As great as Flynn was in this, his first starring role, I'm not sure how much he actually looks like Peter Blood as described by Sabatini. But I can forgive that, I suppose. I like them both for what they are.