Individual Text Feature: A Series of Unfortunate Events

There are three children in the Baudelaire family. Violet, the eldest, is fourteen and loves to invent. Klaus, the middle and only son, is twelve and loves to read. Sunny, the youngest, is a baby who has very sharp teeth. All three children are incredibly bright and very close. They are able to communicate fluently with each other even though Sunny can’t speak. This ability to communicate does not seem to transfer to the many adults they encounter in their journey. This journey begins when a fire claims their home and parents, leaving the children heirs to an enormous and often cited fortune. The reader learns very little about the fortune except that it will not be accessible to the children until Violet turns eighteen and is legally able to be guardian of the other children.

Upon receiving news from Mr. Poe, the useless banker in charge of the fortune, of their parents’ passing the children are transferred to the care of Count Olaf. They arrive at the house and are dismayed to find it filthy and in disrepair. The children are forced to share a room, even though the house is quite large, and perform various grueling and ridiculous chores including making dinner for Olaf and his theater troupe. Because of their endless ingenuity, the children teach themselves to cook. They prepare puttanesca and are greeted by Olaf’s rage that they did not make roast beef. In his rage he picks Sunny up, threatens to drop her, and hits Klaus across the face. The children are distraught and start to plan their escape.

In the next few scenes, Olaf reveals a new play he has written in which the children feature. Violet will play the bride of Olaf in a thinly veiled attempt to transfer the fortune to Olaf through their nuptials. Klaus figures out Olaf’s plan through research in the library of their neighbor Justice Strauss. When he confronts Olaf with this knowledge, Olaf seizes Sunny and has one of his cronies suspend her in a birdcage, threatening to kill her if Violet and Klaus do not participate in his play. Violet invents a grappling hook to climb the tower and save Sunny. At the top, she is captured and thrown into a room with Klaus where they are kept until the play begins. Violet signs the document in the show and Olaf makes an announcement that their marriage is legally binding. Violet declares that she did not use her dominant hand to sign the document and therefore the marriage is null. After some discussion, Justice Strauss agrees with Violet and Mr. Poe steps in to find a suitable replacement for Olaf who escaped when the announcement of the invalidation of the marriage was made. Justice Strauss, who has been nothing but kind and gentle with the children throughout the story, tells Mr. Poe that she would be happy to adopt them. Mr. Poe claims this would go against their parents’ will and takes them home with him until he can locate their next living relative.

I would argue that the children in the novel are presented in such a way as to teach self-sufficiency and subvert the typical power structures encountered in YA literature. Often, readers see children and adolescents in literature buck the system of adult power over adolescents, but rarely do readers see children who succeed in overturning the system entirely. While the Baudelaires are forced to move between homes and guardians often, the novel clearly portrays the children in situations where their knowledge saves themselves and allows them to grow as characters. The narrator furthers this purpose by glossing certain terms that may be confusing to young readers. Adults are constantly trying to talk down to the children and gloss their own speech. While the orphans are often irritated by the tone the adults use, this is a clever device to help younger readers learn while they are entertained by the story and share in the orphan’s irritation. The novel serves to show readers that even in the direst situations they are able to learn, grow, and overcome their apparent lack of power. It is clear that the children know more about any of the workings of their society than their laughably inept adult counterparts.

Because of their age, countless adults ignore their comments on the quality of “care” they receive from their guardians. The children seemingly have very little power over their circumstances and are forced to use their cunning and wit to survive the many attempts on their lives and fortunes made by the nefarious Count Olaf. The tale of the Baudelaire orphans is grim. At first glance, adult readers may not think their story is suitable for the audience of adolescents for which it is intended. Indeed, even the narrator warns readers away from the text. Throughout the first novel, the reader grows very fond of the children. Presumably, an adolescent reader would identify with the ingenuity of the children and their ability to escape even the direst situations.

I would like to explore these power relations in the novel, mainly between the children and the adults who are constantly in their lives after the fire, Count Olaf, Mr. Poe, and the narrator. In order to do so I may use resources from novels in the series following The Bad Beginning. I think this novel is pivotal in its representations of adolescent knowledge and power, and I hope to prove so through my research.