Inspirations for The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet: The Scarlet Pimpernel

Being a teenager can be hard. That’s something Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice can attest to, and my experiences as a teenager definitely influenced the character of Mary in my novel The Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennet. Mary is a bit of an awkward teenage, and others are not always kind to her for it. In my novel, she is leaving her teenage years and entering adulthood, but she is still impacted by her teenage struggles.

For me, one of the hardest points in my teenage years was when, a few weeks before I turned thirteen, our family moved across the country, from Washington state to Connecticut. I was very much in denial, so much that I didn’t tell my friends at school that I was moving until a few days before winter break, when the move would take place. If I didn’t talk about it, it wouldn’t happen, right? But happen it did.

I really struggled with the adjustment…I had moved, as the crow flies, 3986 miles, and left everything I’d known. I found it really strange to suddenly be at a school where the popular girl in your home room would make fun of you if your socks went above your ankle because apparently that was a major fashion faux paus.

But there was a shining light for my first few months in Connecticut: I went with my mom to see a stage production of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Before we’d moved, I’d been taking an online math class because the math class I needed didn’t fit into my schedule. This was 1999, and at that point, we didn’t even have internet at home, so I was doing all of it at school in the computer lab during my math period. And I was going at a fast pace—in a single semester, I was nearing the end of a two-semester math class. My mom saw how close I was and gave me a challenge: if I could finish the class before we moved, then we would do something really amazing in Connecticut.

I finished the math class, and in early 2000, my mom took me to see the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel in New Haven, Connecticut. The Scarlet Pimpernel had just left Broadway, and some of the original cast were members of the touring cast.

It was life-changing.

I loved the story, the music, and the characters, especially the Scarlet Pimpernel and Marguerite. I loved the mask that the Scarlet Pimpernel wears for the world—no one would ever suspect that the frivolous, clothing-obsessed Sir Percy Blakeney was the enemy wanted by the guillotine. In one of the songs, the British upper class is speculating on the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Sir Percy keeps joking, “The fellow’s me!” and the irony is that it really is him and no one believes him.

My well-loved copy of the vocal music from the musical.

We bought the CD and the vocal music, and for years, my favorite song was “The Riddle”:

You turn and someone betrays you.
Betray him first, and the game’s reversed.
For we all are caught in the middle
Of one long treacherous riddle.
Can I trust you? Should you trust me, too?

I loved this sense of the risk of having a secret identity, the inherent risk of being discovered, and the constant inability to know who you could trust. I also couldn’t stop thinking about the sense that you are changed by participating in this sort of game, which makes it harder to find and recognize the truth.

Fast-forward to a few years ago. When I was developing the character of Miss Mary Bennet for my book, I kept The Scarlet Pimpernel in mind. (Not just the musical, but also the brilliant 1982 movie. Confession: I’ve never actually read the book The Scarlet Pimpernel.) I wanted Mary to be like the Scarlet Pimpernel, for no one would ever suspect that she could do great things. No one would ever suspect that she was sneaking around, gathering clues and solving mysteries.

A number of other works inspired me as I wrote my novel (most notably, Jane Austen), but one of my favorite inspirations for Miss Mary Bennet is The Scarlet Pimpernel.