#Ponytail Javert is also laughably anachronistic

[secretmellowblog]

i've never heard anything about valjean's beard being anachronistic, can you elaborate please?? :0

I’ll elaborate! I’m not completely sure about this, and anyone who knows more about fashion history can feel free to correct me! : D

Basically: I’ve heard that in the 1820s-1830s it was generally fashionable for French men to either be clean shaven OR to have facial hair on anywhere but their chin. Clean shaven faces were good, sideburns and muttonchops were good, moustaches were good— but beards/unshaven chins were out of fashion.

So having an unshaven chin marked you as someone out of touch with fashion/too poor and busy to care…or as an eccentric artistic type, part of the Romanticism movement. Thenardier even references this later on when he refers to his beard as “a Romantic beard.” I believe one of Les Amis sees Thenardier at some point and comments that he looks like a poet, probably partially because of the “romantic beard.”

Valjean is bearded after he leaves prison. This is meant to stress how much of an outcast he is, how he’s shaggy and unkempt and someone who hasn’t seen any barbers except the ones in prison who did the bare minimum.

But “Madeleine” is Valjean pretending to be a perfect completely normal unsuspicious member of the bourgeoise. Something like a Romantic Beard would draw attention and be eccentric, but Valjean is trying not to make himself stand out so it might not make a lot of sense.

Most early iconic illustrations/adaptations of Les mis depict Valjean beardless.

IIRC the reason bearded Valjean is so common now is because of the musical and especially Colm Wilkinson. Colm didn’t want to shave his beard for the part, which iirc became a point of contention, with the directors insisting Valjean is not usually iconically depicted with a beard. Colm was only able to keep the beard after he managed to dig up a few old illustrations that depicted Valjean with one. And from there….Colm was so memorable in the role that it had a massive impact on the way the musical was cast going forward. Most later stagings of the musical also give Valjean a beard, in large part because giving a character a beard is a good short hand for “old wise dude.” I’ve heard the 2012 movie is technically more historically accurate because it depicts him clean-shaven.

But again, I’d have to dig around to find actual sources for all this, and I’d take everything in this post with a grain of salt.

EITHER WAY

my argument is that I think Valjean can have a beard solely for the Symbolism. Lots of heavy parallels are constantly drawn between Valjean and St Nicholas of Myra— and St Nicholas is almost universally always depicted with a beard. So I think it’s okay to let Valjean be a bit eccentric/unfashionable for the sake of Symbolism… like? you can’t draw a beardless Santa Claus, it just isn’t right.