The Snicket Sleuth (Theories & Analyses)

[Agathological]

Here are a couple of legitimate questions; but I don't think the literature answers them:

1.) How did the Baudelaires gain their fortune? The Quagmires consisted of rare sapphires; how did the family earn their wealth?

2.) Which of the Denouement brothers was which? Did Frank meet the Baudelaires first or Ernest?

3.) Who climbed up the Gordian Grotto and told Widdershins and Phil to leave the Queequeg? Also, by which means did they leave?!

4.) Who is Uncle Edwin, who raised hogs, is the brother of? Beatrice or Bertrand?

[thedoctororwell]

Oh, yeah. It's happening, guys.

Did the Baudelaire orphans survive "Chapter Fourteen"?

And why ye sayin' you ain't know what ye clearly be knowin', Daniel?

Apr 1, 2016 16:19:58 GMT -5 Agathological said:

Here are a couple of legitimate questions; but I don't think the literature answers them:

1.) How did the Baudelaires gain their fortune? The Quagmires consisted of rare sapphires; how did the family earn their wealth?

2.) Which of the Denouement brothers was which? Did Frank meet the Baudelaires first or Ernest?

3.) Who climbed up the Gordian Grotto and told Widdershins and Phil to leave the Queequeg? Also, by which means did they leave?!

4.) Who is Uncle Edwin, who raised hogs, is the brother of? Beatrice or Bertrand?

I'll try to answer that on my blog in the future. Could you submit them as questions on the blog? I wouldn't want this thread to get off-center.

[gliquey]

Your blog post touches on the issue that's always lurking in the background: was A Series of Unfortunate Events (the series of 13 books, not the diary in TE) written by Snicket as the events were happening, or much later?

I've seen an idea suggested on 667 that it's both - a first edition of the books was hurriedly rushed out at the time (explaining e.g. Lemony's message to Kit in TSS), but they've later been revised and changed (explaining the "years later, Klaus would..." in TRR) quite crudely and inconsistently. This would explain this error and just about every other made by Lemony: when he wrote the part in TE about not knowing whether the Baudelaires were alive, it was true; when he went back to TRR and rewrote bits of it, he knew the Baudelaires were alive and added the bit about Klaus' regrets in.

I won't disagree that the spirit of Violet's "third time" at Briny Beach seems to imply that she visited the beach once again, after the start of TBB and end of TGG, but by the letter of the wording there is no contradiction: Violet visited the beach plenty of times with her siblings prior to TBB for fun. Maybe the "third time" was talking about her third ever time at Briny Beach, probably quite a while before the series began.

I seem to recall a passage in the series where Lemony says explicitly that he doesn't know where the Baudelaires are today, but I can't remember exactly where it is. Even at the end of Chapter Fourteen, while he leaves things ambiguously ("There are some who say..." - p.10), he doesn't say that he doesn't know what happened. He says "my investigation is over" (p.10), but doesn't explain why - maybe he had no need to carry on making reports of the Baudelaires for V.F.D.; maybe he didn't find any concrete explanation of exactly what happened to the Baudelaires after Chapter Fourteen (just some hints at their survival); maybe he had just had enough. Lemony also says not that it would be impossible to say what happened to the children, but that it "is difficult to say" (p.10) - this might not be just a manner of speaking, but that Lemony would find it difficult to say because although he knows, he doesn't want to divulge the information.

[lorelai]

I agree wholeheartedly with your analysis on the Baudelaires survival after chapter 14.
Lemony stepping back feels logical/right on a number of levels, the least of which being that he's told the parts of their story that the public didn't know, the things that could lead to their names being cleared simply by enough public interest/action.

[thedoctororwell]

Well, well, well. This blog just published its 100th message.

[thedoctororwell]

I wasn't receiving any hate mail, so I made this. It's about high time this blog gets the unapologetic trolls it rightfully deserves.

Which of Lemony Snicket’s characters are LGBTQ+?

[Hermes]

Very interesting. I agree totally about R. my suspicion is that she was unrequitedly in love with Beatrice, and gave the ring to Lemony because she wanted Beatrice to have it; Kit later gave it to Bertrand because she knew what R's intention had been.

There's one name you don't mention: Bruce. In one scene of TPP we hear a voice calling 'Come back to bed, Bruce', and then later 'a man called for Bruce'. Suggestive, at least.

[B.]

I always though Geraldine Julienne totally had a big, lesbian crush on Esmé Squalor.

[gliquey]

I think Handler treats gender and sexuality just about as well as possible in a children's book. Violet and Klaus don't really seem to conform to any particular gender roles, yet don't invert them all just to make a point. Other than the transphobia in androgyny being used to portray the obese henchperson as scary, Esme's fascination with fashion, or the fact that all of Olaf's aggressive and threatening henchpeople are male, I can't think of anything in the series that's sexist or stereotypical.

I think the idea between Isadora and Duncan being almost indistinguishable is just that they're very similar people with very similar personalities. The fact that they have no biological reason to look more similar to each other than Klaus and Violet actually justifies the repeated descriptions of them as "absolutely identical". They may choose to dress the same and they act similarly, which may accentuate the genuine physical similarities between them. To me, the fact that Isadora and Duncan are different genders just makes the point that sex is not particularly important - a male and female sibling can be just as close as two siblings of the same gender.

[Hermes]

What's said about Duncan and Isadora can't be literally true; they looked absolutely identical, and yet it was clear to all that one was a girl and the other a boy. I think they are just very similar; as the Doctor says, it's very common in fiction for fraternal twins to be presented as similar, and indeed we get an example in FU 13 of very similar fraternal twins, who actually point out you can't have identical twins of different sexes. (Here LS seems to be following David Lodge, who has identical twins of opposite sexes in Changing Places, and then in the sequel, Small World, has a passage about how absurd this is.)

I also think Duncan and Quigley are not identical; Quigley is introduced just as looking very like Duncan, and no one ever actually confuses them.

Yes, totally agree about Geraldine and Esme.

[Esmé's meme is meh]

Your blog is incredible! I just finished reading your LGBT+ entry and we've been discussing some of that stuff on this thread

Something I said there (paraphrasing) is that I found interesting in TCC is how the freaks think of themselves as weirdos and can't lead a normal life because people's gonna reject them for who they are, when they're actually common people (especially Kevin). I think that can be associated with the LGBT+ community. The way Esmé treats them, and also the encouraging dialogues of Violet kinda reinforce this. The fact that they can't accept themselves so they decide to pretend they're something else to fit instead of embracing who they really are and living the normal life they can actually live because their conditions are not relevant.

Another interesting thing is how crossdressing is developed in the series, not only when Olaf pretends to be Shirley but also when Klaus pretends to be a nurse, and they actually fool everyone.

[thedoctororwell]

Apr 15, 2016 17:15:59 GMT -5 Hermes said:

There's one name you don't mention: Bruce. In one scene of TPP we hear a voice calling 'Come back to bed, Bruce', and then later 'a man called for Bruce'. Suggestive, at least.

Wow, I never noticed that! Thank you, Hermes; I updated the article with this information and credited you for it.

[Hermes]

Wow, thanks!

[lorelai]

I'd never considered the ATWQ ones aside from Jackie, so thank you for giving me more things to happily ponder!!

[Dante]

I wasn't aware that Bruce had a surname. Or am I missing an allusion that you've made elsewhere?

Regarding Duncan and Isadora's visual similarities and differences, I wanted to bring something up I've seen elsewhere which at the same time I think you shouldn't place any faith in: The endpiece illustration in TAA. This depicts one of the white-faced women pushing a short-haired Quagmire into the back of their car, with a longer-haired Quagmire already pushed to the other end of the seat. TAA's text, specifically page 214, states that the Quagmire nearest to the car's open door is Duncan, with Isadora being behind him farther in. Reading this passage in relation to the endpiece would imply that Duncan is the longer-haired and Isadora the shorter-haired Quagmire. However... Brett Helquist's illustrations are full of inconsistencies with the text, so I don't really think you can take this as evidence of their canonical appearances.