“Oh look,” I thought, stupidly, noticing the spine of this book on the library shelf as I passed by with an armload of contemporary women’s fiction and crime thrillers. “Alexandre Dumas! Author of The Three Musketeers, and that other one. Camille? I didn’t know he also wrote a smaller, less-imposing book. And plus, it’s named after a woman, and, oh look,” I thought, sliding it off the shelf, “it’s got a pretty lady on the front, instead of like a bunch of dudes with swords or whatever, so it’s probably more of a feminine and romantic story, and probably more readable for a dumb girl like me. Hey, I’ll grab it! Probably good to edify myself with a Classic, in between all this contemporary fluff I’ve got here, anyway.”

— Ha!! How wrong I was, how horribly mistaken, on so many levels. I’m even dumber than I thought.

First of all, it’s not even the same Alexandre Dumas who wrote Musketeers. I didn’t realize until after finishing the book and Googling it that it was written by Alexandre Dumas fils, the son of the more famous Dumas. Not that that really matters, because I also realized along the way that Dumas senior was no great moralist either, and was actually on the Forbidden Books list, back in the day — and, good grief, like father like son.

Here is the long and short of it. This book is so bad! Here I was, expecting to be edified, ha! This story absolutely celebrates immorality and depravity. “Romantic tragedy”? The real tragedy is the the glorification of gross people and their gross behavior. It’s just a tale of some immature guy giving in to lust, prettily packaged as a “romance.” The whole book can basically be summed up by T-Pain in under four minutes:

…so yeah. There you have it, guys, that’s Camille by Alexandre Dumas fils.

“But Mith,” you may be saying, “why are you so mad at Camille? You actively listen to and enjoy stuff like T-Pain, for goodness’ sake! You read all kinds of contemporary women’s lit, which is certainly not much better. And you watch all kinds of shows and movies that similarly make light of sin.”

Touché! You’re right. So why am I so mad at this book, which btw is alternatively titled The Lady of the Camellias (actually a better title for it, because the girl’s name is not even Camille, it’s Marguerite, she just really likes camellias and wears them in different colors as a little sign for her customers (white = available tonight, red = booked up))?

— I guess because with contemporary media you just expect to see sin normalized. It’s everywhere, so you’re mentally prepared for it, and you steel yourself in advance, knowing that most of the world is under satan’s thumb, and so you go into the entertainment with the right mindset and your guard up. But — and maybe this is just my ignorance, but — when I pick up a literary nineteenth-century “Romantic Tragedy,” I kind of expect there to be, I don’t know, a certain moral standard that’s lacking from today’s media?

— And the thing is, moral standards do exist in this book, informing its general atmosphere — but the main characters spurn them, and then are portrayed as such heroic, noble martyrs for doing so! I think that’s the real problem. It’s one thing to have normal, ignorant characters doing their best in a fallen, secular world where you just can’t expect much better of most people. But to portray a society that still had honor and decency, and then to glorify the characters that defy those, as if such standards are a mere hindrance to the pursuit of what’s actually good, i.e. pleasure and satisfaction… that’s the real problem, you see? That’s why this book is so bad.

And it’s not that the book is badly-written. It’s certainly beautifully-written and plenty of fun to read. It’s captivating. Which is part of what makes it such a bad book: the allure of it, the evil disguised as beauty. I fear if I had read this when I was in my teens or twenties, I would have fallen for it — I would have thought it was such a beautiful love story, so romantic, the best and most sublime kind of love any human could ever hope to experience! It’s what Katy Perry would call a “teenage dream.”

Pathetic. In a word, that sums up the lead male character Armand: pathetic. He’s the least masculine male lead in any romance I’ve ever seen or read. He’s described as 24 and blond, and in my head he’s a slight and hairless little weasely watery-eyed fellow. He’s always crying. He’s always getting his feelings hurt and reacting in catty, bitchy, passive-aggressive little ways. He’s absolutely helpless in the face of temptation. He’s petty and vain. Marguerite is more of a man than he is, in some ways.

But speaking of Marguerite: why does everyone talk about her like she’s some kind of saint?! Like she’s so holy and virtuous? It’s not like she ever tried very hard to live a better life. She just admitted “oh well, I’m just a helpless shopping addict who spends over a hundred K a year on luxuries despite being hopelessly deep in debt, I just need to be a prostitute, it’s just how I need to live!” — the only thing that ever briefly inspired her to live a relatively-cleaner (but still dishonest) life was stupid simpy little Armand, and that only because he agreed to be her lapdog and do whatever she told him. Marguerite, when we see her in action, is actually kind of a rude and shameless and unpleasant and manipulative person.

Literally the only positive trait that she has is her looks. That’s the only reason Armand “loves” her so much. (When during their time in the countryside she offers to give up her luxuries for him, he refuses, saying he likes her better dolled-up in diamonds and fancy things than just her simple self — just WOW. Walking red flag.)

They’re both scum. Armand happily justifies developing a gambling habit to pay for all the fancy luxuries that Marguerite “needs,” he’s so caught up in indulgence that ignores his father and sister (the only decent characters btw), oh and despite fantasizing about a future with Marguerite and cohabitating with her, does the concept of marriage ever arise in his mind, even for a second? Not once!

I guess the only “upright” thing that Marguerite does in the whole story is her great act of martyrdom: lying (that’s right, her great, courageous act of heroic virtue was: lying) to Armand and telling him she was dumping him for a new sugar daddy, when in fact we find out later, she was actually leaving him because his dad convinced her to do the right thing by him (and his sister, whose fiancé refused to marry her as long as her brother was openly cohabitating with a courtesan), for his future. And then Marguerite had the nerve to act all wounded and wronged that Armand wanted to get revenge on her? For what was basically the equivalent of a text-message breakup? What did she expect? Ffs, she has only herself to blame for her worsening illness and death. She’s no martyr!

And don’t you love how they only make God and confession a part of the story when it’s almost too late? Waiting right up until the eleventh hour to even think about religion — and then, she gets to “die a Christian” and everyone’s so sure she’s waltzing straight into Heaven because, oh!, poor beautiful girl, so tortured, such a sad, sad, tragic life, she just couldn’t help it!

I’m not buying it.

Guys, don’t read this book. Don’t make the same mistakes I did! It just goes to show that just because a book is old and “good” and “a classic work of literature,” does not mean it’s automatically a good or worthwhile book to read.