Who do you think Esmé really is?

[Dante]

I confess, my interpretation of the Anna Karenina reference ("Many years ago, I was supposed to waste my entire summer reading Anna Karenina, but I knew that silly book would never help me, so I threw it into the fireplace" (TSS, p. 278)) was that it was something more in the line of a school assignment and thus more likely to be an ironic echo of Beatrice also reading it over a summer; after all, in the context of V.F.D., we can assume that any mandate to read it was so that the reader would know how to unlock the Vernacularly Fastened Door, but Esmé's statement shows her ignorance of any practical function to the book (much less moral). Of course, it being a school assignment doesn't preclude it having been set at a V.F.D. school, and in that respect we may wish to consider Esmé's claim (TGG, p. 295) to have been close friends with Fiona's mother at school - a claim I have always felt was too specific to be an off-the-cuff lie, though some people disagree. Conversely, there is Olaf recognising the coded stain on the Mortmain Mountains map, explaining that "I was taught to use this on maps when I was a little boy" (TCC, p. 267), and which Esmé is ignorant of and gives no indication that she could ever have known it. Likewise is Olaf explaining to the freaks at the beginning of TSS that "I used to be a member of the organization" [V.F.D.] (TSS, p. 54) in a context in which it would have been more natural to say "We" if the same was true of Esmé. Similarly, there are no references to Esmé during the earlier periods of Lemony's life; ATWQ and TBL both feature Olaf as a contemporary of his at school, but Esmé doesn't turn up until he's embedded at The Daily Punctilio. It's true that Esmé shows considerable knowledge of V.F.D., but this can be explained by her close and longstanding relationship with Olaf, somebody who would have felt no qualms whatsoever about sharing the organisation's secrets with his partner in crime.

So I think the jury is out on Esmé as a member of V.F.D., and I personally am of the opinion that either she outright wasn't, or that Handler never made up his mind, and instead was as usual keeping his and the readers' options open.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Well ... I always imagined Esmé as a bad VFD student, in contrast to Olaf who was a good VFD student who pretended to be a bad student. That would explain the fact that he knows the code, explain the fact that he knows how to do research in books (TRR), the fact that Kit fell in love with him, and the fact that he knew how to quote poetry. And as I said, Esmé apparently entered VFD after Olaf and Lemony. I add as evidence to this theory the construction committee meeting. Olaf and Esmé break into the meeting together. Both are considered to be unwelcome to that specific meeting, but it was apparently no surprise that they were both from VFD.

In addition,

Esmé is like someone important enough for the sinister couple that she was able to enter the tent while the others were unable to enter. Esmé knew not only what was inside the SB, but she knew the fact that many died because of the content.

Furthermore, although the Baudelaires' conclusion that all guardians were members of VFD was wrong, it is evident that at least there was always a member of VFD in the places where they were closely related to the places where they were. TBB: Olaf. TRR: Monty. TWW: Josephine. TMM: Dr. Orwell. TAA: Librarian (or the Quagmires). TEE: Esmé. TVV: Hector. THH: Hal. T.C.C .: Madame Lulu. TSS: Ducan Quagmire. TGG: Captain W. TPP: Kit and the brothers D. TE: Ish.

[Uncle Algernon]

Dec 21, 2020 4:12:29 GMT -5 Dante said:

I confess, my interpretation of the Anna Karenina reference ("Many years ago, I was supposed to waste my entire summer reading Anna Karenina, but I knew that silly book would never help me, so I threw it into the fireplace" (TSS, p. 278)) was that it was something more in the line of a school assignment and thus more likely to be an ironic echo of Beatrice also reading it over a summer; after all, in the context of V.F.D., we can assume that any mandate to read it was so that the reader would know how to unlock the Vernacularly Fastened Door, but Esmé's statement shows her ignorance of any practical function to the book (much less moral). 

My understanding was the same which the Netflix series seems to suggest — that a child Esmé was made to read the book as a case of her parents/guardians teaching her things she would need to know once she was told about V.F.D., which she had yet to be at the time. 

Of course, this may suggest a slightly alternative theory: that Esmé was in the same position as if the Baudelaires had joined Olaf's Troupe out of desperation: her parents were V.F.D., and they tried to raise her in a way which would be conductive to her eventually joining V.F.D., but she lost them prior to their being able to tell her the secrets, and thus a disillusioned teenage Esmé learned about it from the wrong place entirely, as a post mortem betrayal from her parents rather than a glorious revelation.

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

In this case, would you say that Esmé would be like Fiona? Involved in VFD by parents without ever having done official training, but still very informed by parents who did not know how to keep secrets well ... This is possible. But as in the case of the Ducan and Fiona, they are considered members of VFD even though they have had no formal training. It is something like the children and teenagers of ATWQ who were introduced to VFD by Lemony. A distorted version of VFD, however.

[Hermes]

I think that, as so often, we must distinguish between two questions; what was the author's intention, and what is the most coherent story we can tell, out of the various disparate clues that the author's changing intentions have given us?

The author's intention, at the time he wrote TSS, was probably to suggest that Esme was a member of VFD. But I think the clue does that by suggesting that she was told to read Anna Karenina at the same time that Beatrice read it. I find it hard to see why E should have been made to read it as a child, either at VFD school or to prepare her for VFD, when Beatrice did not read it till adulthood; E cannot be that much younger than B, if she was acting at the time B was engaged to Lemony.

But after that two things happened. One is thematic; Handler moved away from the idea, emphasised in TCC and TUA and still present in TSS, that VFD is everywhere, towards the idea of the large and mysterious world, which begins to come to the fore in TPP. The other is structural; the redating of the schism. It's true that even before TPP, what was probably the most coherent story about the schism put it about the time of Lemony's sacking, the broken engagement etc., so between fifteen and twenty years ago, or thereabouts. But there were conflicting clues that made it seem very recent; Jacques, if I remember rightly, calls it recent in his letter to Jerome, on the face of it written during the time-frame of ASOUE. That might allow Esme to have been a VFD member in good standing just a couple of years ago. But with the changed perspective of TPP, where the schism happened when then main adult characters weere infants, and E was quite possibly not born, this becomes less likely.

PS. Regarding Duncan and Isadora, my reading has always been that they are seen as volunteers because they volunteered, and that is likewise why Quigley and the Baudelaires are volunteers; the point is later made a bit more explicitly about Hal, Jerome and Strauss, and, in ATWQ, about everyone. It does not require formal training, but neither does it require coming from a VFD family; anyone can join VFD - including us.

[Uncle Algernon]

Dec 22, 2020 11:33:01 GMT -5 Hermes said:

I think that, as so often, we must distinguish between two questions; what was the author's intention, and what is the most coherent story we can tell, out of the various disparate clues that the author's changing intentions have given us?

The question I ask myself is yet a third, or, if you will, a kind of hybrid: what is the most engaging story we can fashion out of all the clues?

[Optimism is my Phil-osophy]

Thinking about the author's intentions in TE, I believe it was evident that Daniel Handler imagined several moments in the history of VFD that could be called schisms, and he even exemplified this with what happened on the island. Olaf himself said he could tell about several schisms. Furthermore, even in LSTUA it was already evident that Daniel Handler was thinking about multiple schisms. As Hermes said, there was the recent schism (at the time of the events described in TAA) and there was the old schism (at the time that R refers to what happened shortly after she and Lemony met in the middle section of the VFD training school). Kit evidently referred to the old schism, when she talked about the schism of when she was 4 years old. This is not to passing the limits:  the chronology fits perfectly with the age of the photo of the child that Lemony used to indicate the age he was when he was captured. Kit must be just a little older than Lemony. I think it is safe to say that Daniel Handler has not changed his point of view in this aspect. He has only intensively multiplied schisms, and there is evidence of these intentions since LSTUA. In other words, my text "Daniel Handler duplicates things to confuse you" defends a real idea (although the examples I gave are not necessarily correct, nor what I wanted to prove with this argument).

[Amber Rivers]

Dec 12, 2020 13:27:15 GMT -5 R. said:

I always thought Esmé wasn’t all that she seemed, and here are some of the theories I have come up with/heard regarding her true identity. What do you think? I personally think she is Ellington and Bertrand’s cousin.

OOOOHHH I'm liking the possibility of Esme being related to Bertrand and that's primarily because I know little about the Baudelaire dad.

[carmelita0cheryl]

I think this official scheme speaks for all. She is (propably) related to Baudelaires nor Quagmires in any way. She wanted to adopt them because Olaf wanted her to and if she was Ellington Lemony would recognize her and behave to her the way he did in ATWQ.