ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the mechanisms by which Baroness Orczy's myth has retained a place in international popular culture today, despite its firm roots in early twentieth-century nationalist ideology. In its celebration of the aristocracy; it's overwhelmingly masculine and upper class construction of Englishness; its anti-Semitism and its occasional misogyny, the Pimpernel legend poses a challenge to an egalitarian age. After Baroness Orczy's death in 1947, The Times obituarist wrote that the Scarlet Pimpernel induced the pleasantest of innocent thrills. The tone of regret for an earlier age of guileless naivety is unmistakable. The Scarlet Pimpernel may have served Orczy's psychological need to be accepted into the English establishment; to her readers it could simply be, in Radway's terms, a cultural release valve. The Elusive Pimpernel, dir. Gerald Blake. It shifted to a slightly earlier time of 10 past five just once, to make way for a broadcast of preparations for the Apollo 10 moon landing.
