The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [264]
In this chapter and those which follow, we draw on a wide range of novels, films, plays and operas to see how each of these aberrations from the fundamental archetypes works.
Rags to Riches: The dark versions
A particularly obvious candidate for dark or sentimental interpretations is the plot of the Rags to Riches story, because this so easily lends itself to ego-based fantasies, which can give both storyteller and audience the pleasure of identifying with a hero or heroine who emerges from the crowd to win success and acclaim.
The most extreme way in which this plot can turn dark, as we saw in The Scarlet and the Black, is where the storyteller presents a dark hero who lacks those essential inner qualities; who attempts to climb from Rags to Riches in defiance of the archetypal rules, and is therefore finally destroyed. The heartless Julien Sorel is as two-dimensional as a character in a strip cartoon. In no way does he go through any internal transformation. We only see him egotistically seeking to compete with, impress or dominate every other character in the story. He is precisely the same pasteboard figure at the end as he was at the beginning. The story's only real psychological interest is the extent to which its hero was a fantasy projection of the emotionally immature author himself.
An example of the `lesser dark version' of the plot is Guy de Maupassant's novel Bel Ami (1885). A penniless but good-looking young French ex-army officer, Georges Duroy, is strolling through Paris with `the authentic air of the bold bad hero of romance', wondering how he can afford his next meal. He runs into a former fellow-officer Forestier, who has a well-paid job with a newspaper, La Vie Francaise, and says he will help Duroy to become a journalist. They visit the Folies Bergere, where Duroy goes off to spend the night with an attractive prostitute, Rachel. She is so taken by his looks that she is not concerned by his lack of money. He is taken on by the newspaper to write a series of articles, but finds himself incapable of putting anything together until Forestier's clever wife writes the first article for him. At dinner with the couple he meets Mme de Marelle, an attractive married woman with whom he begins an affair, while still continuing to see Rachel. Although we are given little idea of how learns to write, he becomes established as a journalist, specialising in gossip and politics, while Mme de Marelle rents an apartment where they can carry on their affair. Her young daughter Laurine is taken by Duroy and nicknames him Bel Ami'.
The whole story is presented as a kind of wish-fulfilment fantasy, seen through Duroy's eyes, in which he enjoys effortless success, both with women (invariably more than one at the same time) and in his new profession, without ever really providing any plausible evidence of why he achieves either. Eventually he is summoned to the south of France to attend Forestier's premature death-bed. No sooner has his friend expired than Duroy proposes to Mme Forestier. They are married and work together as a journalistic team, Duroy changing his name to the grander Du Roy, while he resumes his affair with Mme de Marelle. He then sets his sights on the middle-aged wife of his editor, Walter. No sooner has he finally overcome her resistance, rendering her besotted with love for him, than he tires of her infantile devotion and begins to fancy her teenage daughter Suzanne, while at the same time continuing his affair with Mme de Marelle. A new French government comes to power, closely linked to La Vie Francaise, which gives Walter and his newspaper enormous new political influence and importance. In a desperate bid to regain Du Roy's affection, Mme Walter reveals to him a secret Government plan to take over