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Post by MisterM on Jun 4, 2014 8:08:09 GMT -5
i used to think monty and Josephine (and olaf, i suppose) weren't really related to the Baudelaire's and it was simply a lie the parents put in the will so they would be raised by other vfd people, and they considered vfd 'family'
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Post by Hermes on Jun 4, 2014 8:23:55 GMT -5
That's fairly explicit in the movie, I think. In the books, of course, VFD hadn't really been invented when M and J were introduced, but you can read it back into the stories if you like. But there is actual evidence that Beatrice was related to Ike, as they could both whistle while eating crackers; and it's not surprising that VFD members would also be actual relations, since its natural that people would marry their associates. (Note also the family tree, which seems to show a relation between the Snickets, the Anwhistles and the 'Olafs'.)
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Post by bandit on Jun 4, 2014 10:59:09 GMT -5
There is indeed the Anna Karenina clue, but that's actually very odd indeed; if Esme read it in the same summer that Beatrice did, that's after V and K were born, which is much too late for any plausible date for the schism. You're right, that really doesn't add up chronologically. But when you consider Esmé's attempts to stop Kit and company at the poison dart incident, it implies that she would at least be a part of the second schism (aiding Olaf). |
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Post by Hermes on Jun 4, 2014 13:36:09 GMT -5
Hm - I think you are making assumptions about the order of events which aren't obvious (which isn't to say they are wrong). We aren't explicitly told in canon about more than one schism - though given the various conflicting things we are told about schisms, it's very plausible that there was more than one, and Kit's remark about the schism getting worse and worse may support this. But I'm not sure just how you see the poyzon darts incident fitting in with this.
In a way, since Olaf is a member of the villainous side of VFD, one can say that any associate of Olaf's is part of VFD: but the question here is whether Esme is a member of the good side who deserted, and I don't think that is settled.
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Post by bandit on Jun 4, 2014 14:53:59 GMT -5
I guess it's more of an extension of the actual schism rather than a second one altogether, but I'm talking about Olaf and his associates moving to VillainousFD. The implication is that the poison darts incident was the main basis for Olaf's hatred of the Baudelaires and the rest of VirtuousFD, so that's probably what prompted him to finally leave.
The people that joined Olaf's troop "after" the schism (even if it could be an ongoing thing), I would argue, are not technically members on either side. But my point was that Esmé is known to have been involved in the poison darts incident-- before Olaf broke away, therefore while she was still on the good side.
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Post by Hermes on Jun 4, 2014 15:20:44 GMT -5
That's a very reasonable thought, but I actually doubt whether it's true, given that Olaf was responsible for the framing of Lemony and the breakup between him and Beatrice, all of which must have happened some time before V and K were born, and so before the poyzon darts incident.
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Post by Dante on Jun 8, 2014 15:55:40 GMT -5
Well, Mr. Poe doesn't know about V.F.D., let alone the schism, but the Baudelaires made him the executor of their estate, so the will must have literally referred to family members.
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Post by gliquey on Aug 11, 2014 15:20:52 GMT -5
I'm probably a bit late to this discussion, but as for the ''Anna Karennina'' thing, take the following scenario:
Sometime before the schism, Esme and Beatrice are both members of V.F.D. They are expected to read Anna Karennina - presumably, for the basis of some coding system. Perhaps it had even been established back then that it would be necessary for a password on a Vernacularly Fastened Door someday - or alternatively, the password system looped back around every X years (10 or so), so that they only needed 30 or so sets of passwords and would return to set #1 after the time for set #30 was up.
Esme doesn't read the book, choosing instead to throw it into a fireplace. This could even have been a turning point for her: she might have decided that she'd rather join the other side of V.F.D. than have to read all those "silly book"s. Beatrice, of course, reads the book. Years later, one of the following two events occurred:
(1) Beatrice liked the book enough to read it again with Klaus one summer. Nowhere in TSS is it stated that she is reading Anna Karennina for the first time with Klaus - certainly from the perspective of a parent, it might be well worth choosing a book you have read and know well is suitable for your child.
(2) Beatrice thought the book might be useful for Klaus one day, so reads it with him. Since the third phrase for the door is so incredibly precisely phrased, this might make more sense - she could have discussed the book with him and when talking about its central theme, used the exact wording that she knew would unlock the door.
---
But getting back to the original guardian concern, the secret passage between the Quagmire's house and Monty's seems to indicate at least Monty was a V.F.D. member. Josephine knew Widdershins, and there's the code-through-messages thing that Quigley/Violet discuss in TSS (pg 208/9). As for Paltryville, I'm not sure: several plausible theories have been offered here. Prufock was just temporary and of course Esme is related to V.F.D. in some way - if indirectly through Olaf - to V.F.D. I've only read the thirteen novels so can't offer much insight into Jerome.
I also have another question: does any canon material explicitly state Mr. Poe is not a member of V.F.D. (a muggle, if you will)? Or, since Snicket isn't one for explicits, does anything strongly imply it? It does seem plausible to me that Mr. Poe was a member of V.F.D. and executed the will with the intention of sending the orphans to members - this could also explain why he doesn't believe the Baudelaires are criminals and immmediately call the police or something at their second Briny Beach meeting (although I haven't read that bit for a while so my memory could be misleading me there).
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Post by Teleram on Aug 11, 2014 15:21:47 GMT -5
Hi Gliquey.
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Post by Dante on Aug 11, 2014 16:07:41 GMT -5
I also have another question: does any canon material explicitly state Mr. Poe is not a member of V.F.D. (a muggle, if you will)? Or, since Snicket isn't one for explicits, does anything strongly imply it? It does seem plausible to me that Mr. Poe was a member of V.F.D. and executed the will with the intention of sending the orphans to members - this could also explain why he doesn't believe the Baudelaires are criminals and immmediately call the police or something at their second Briny Beach meeting (although I haven't read that bit for a while so my memory could be misleading me there). Mr. Poe did, in fact, declare on the beach in TGG that he was taking the Baudelaires straight to the police. His words and actions throughout that scene also give the impression that he has no idea what's going on, and in addition, in TPP, he refers to their "criminal behaviour" - as of TGG, he's by no means on the Baudelaires' side. I'm trying to think, and bear in mind it has been several years now, whether there's anything that outright states that he isn't a volunteer, and I don't think there is, but the circumstantial evidence is all against. |
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Post by Liam R. Findlay on Aug 11, 2014 16:14:31 GMT -5
I haven't read it in a while so I might be wrong, but didn't Esme and Jerome take on the Baudelaires after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper? If this is right and I'm not making it up, I would presume that Poe had been having a bad time at finding relatives and taken other measures.
Justice Strauss also apologises for not taking the Baudelaires on in the 12th book (if I remember correctly). This implies that she could have if she wanted to, but presumably neglected the idea at the time and left it to Mr Poe. As this was potentially possible and Poe later leaves the children with non-relatives (while the first were quite distant), I would presume that the lack of direct relatives left the 'leave the children with relatives' part of the will quite flexible.
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Post by gliquey on Aug 11, 2014 16:53:41 GMT -5
"By no means on the Baudelaires' side" does not necessarily indicate he's not in V.F.D., but it does seem from your description that he is a muggle. I'll read the scene again when I can. How much control did Mr. Poe have over the childrens' guardians? I'll be re-reading TPP again soon - and really, really thoroughly this time - but it seems to me that if Olaf and the two aura-of-menace villains and the High Court are getting involved, it wouldn't be out of the question for a member (or member s) of V.F.D. to be controlling where the children end up. I'll look at this properly in the morning - there's no chance of getting a proper answer to anything when it comes to Snicket, but I definitely think it's open enough to come up with theories that don't introduce plotholes. |
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Post by Dante on Aug 12, 2014 2:37:55 GMT -5
I haven't read it in a while so I might be wrong, but didn't Esme and Jerome take on the Baudelaires after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper? If this is right and I'm not making it up, I would presume that Poe had been having a bad time at finding relatives and taken other measures. I'm confident that the book says nothing of the kind; I'd be very surprised if such a detail had been overlooked by everyone, as I've never heard anything at all like that before. Jerome does say that he wanted to adopt the children as soon as he heard about the fire, but I recall that Esmé nixed the plan. Again, I don't think Justice Strauss ever implied in TPP that she would ever have been allowed to adopt the Baudelaires, either. What she said, as I recall, was that she regretted ever letting them be taken away from her, as in at the end of TBB, but that's kind of a meaningless regret as she legally had no choice in the matter. It is worth remembering that, where the Baudelaires are adopted by an individual, that individual always has some connection to their familiy - Monty and Josephine are relatives, and Jerome's an old friend of their mother's. I do think it would've tied up a plot hole if there had only been in TEE a single line identifying him as a distant cousin of Beatrice's, and it wouldn't require you to change the plot at all anywhere, but there it is. The Baudelaires' other adoptions have all been not conducted under the usual adoption framework. TMM, as I've said, was a business arrangement, a matter of employment rather than adoption. TAA was explicitly a stopgap. TVV was a completely original welfare program, and at that point Mr. Poe had literally run out of relatives in the first few pages of the book. "By no means on the Baudelaires' side" does not necessarily indicate he's not in V.F.D., but it does seem from your description that he is a muggle. I'll read the scene again when I can. How much control did Mr. Poe have over the childrens' guardians? I'll be re-reading TPP again soon - and really, really thoroughly this time - but it seems to me that if Olaf and the two aura-of-menace villains and the High Court are getting involved, it wouldn't be out of the question for a member (or member s) of V.F.D. to be controlling where the children end up. I'll look at this properly in the morning - there's no chance of getting a proper answer to anything when it comes to Snicket, but I definitely think it's open enough to come up with theories that don't introduce plotholes. If a member of V.F.D. is controlling where the Baudelaires end up, they're doing a pretty inconsistent job. Olaf and Esmé were on the opposite side of the schism to Monty and Josephine. Lucky Smells was a third party occasionally hired by V.F.D. to provide lumber, of all things, and had no close ties to the organisation. Prufrock Prep., similarly, had no visible ties to V.F.D. at the time of TAA. Jerome wasn't a volunteer at all, and the choice of V.F.D. village as a place to stay can only have been highly indirectly and tenuously controlled by an outsider (Mr. Poe was reminded about the program by the city government over the phone, and the Baudelaires were permitted to pick an appropriate home out of a brochure), and the village's only connection to V.F.D. was a single unimportant individual. There's never any indication that Mr. Poe's choice of guardians was dictated by anything other than himself and circumstance. What an outside manipulator is attempting to achieve by this scattershot choice of guardians, I can't imagine; they'd have to be as incompetent as Mr. Poe himself. With that said, if you're interested in pursuing this angle, a reread of the U.A. might be more fruitful, recalling a certain line Mr. Poe wrote to his sister. "Have you heard from you-know-who lately?" |
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Post by MisterM on Aug 12, 2014 6:45:02 GMT -5
i think that mr poe didnt recognise 'i didn't relaise this was a sad occasion' in TUA proves he isn't a volunteer?
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Post by Hermes on Aug 12, 2014 9:45:27 GMT -5
Well, not every volunteer knows every code, as witnessed by Monty not knowing Sebald Code, but it does make it unlikely.
I'd endorse most of what Dante says, but I'm not sure about the idea of TMM being atypical; Sir treats it as an employment arrangement rather than a simple guardianship, but I don't think there's any evidence Mr Poe sees it that way, so he must have thought of Sir as a possible guardian. But that can be justified on the same basis as Jerome, that he is an old family friend/possible distant relation (and bear in mind that TBL does show Beatrice knew him in her youth).
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