Lady Blakeney's Metamorphosis

Marguerite Blakeney, formerly known as Marguerite St. Just, she is Armand St. Just’s sister and wife of Sir Percy Blakeney. Throughout the book she reveals her true personality, due to the choices she makes and the people around her. She is torn between being Lady Blakeney who is completely English and French Marguerite. Lady Blakeney is kind, sweet, loves Percy. French Marguerite hides behind a mask of cold and brittleness. Orczy uses Marguerite’s dual identities as a symbol of England vs. France schism. From the very beginning of the book, French Marguerite is described as the most fashionable, beautiful, and the cleverest woman in the London. She’s a social butterfly, not caring who she hurts. However, inside she cares deeply for people. When she hears that she sent Marquis de St. Cyr and his whole family to the guillotine, guilt clouds over her. She acts fragile and unfeeling trying to cover her guilt. Since she is a former actress, she knew how to disguise her feelings very well. We see the English Marguerite once in chapter four. When Comtesse commanded Suzanne not to speak to Marguerite, Marguerite’s cold glare dissolved into “a wistful, almost pathetic and childlike look” (40). Lady Blakeney shows that she doesn’t want to ostracize by her friends or by anyone. She is only about …show more content…
During this scene she finds out that her own husband is the Scarlet Pimpernel. This causes her to remember everything that has happened in the past few days, with Chauvelin, Percy leaving to help Armand. Then she also remembered that Chauvelin was still going after the Scarlet Pimpernel, more importantly he was going after her husband. She felt another flood of guilt wash over her, when she found out that not only had she led Chauvelin to the Scarlet Pimpernel, but that she had sent her own husband to his own death. This time though marguerite decided to do something with this guilt, she took