#Rue Plumet

[lesmisscraper]

Valjean trying to give more soft bread for Cosette. Vol. 4, Book 3, Chapter 4.

Clips from <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[ruedesfillesducalvaire]

oh so the Rue Plumet I've been referencing on Google Maps this whole time is an IMPOSTOR!!! Paris, tu me déranges...

(translations of the screenshots are in the image alt descriptions)

can y'all stop changing the name of this damn road smh

they're not that far apart so I guess it doesn't matter for my purpose (this being Eposette fic, which, btw, now has a second chapter 💕) but honestly...

(btw I discovered this when I was trying to figure out approximately how long the secret path to Rue Babylone would be and Google Maps said TWO KILOMETRES and I said WELL THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT)

[cliozaur]

I was about to ask some of you, fellow citizens, about the map of Les Misérables locations in Paris, and then I realized I can google it. Someone from our fandom has actually created one! It's wonderful to compare your mental map with an actual map.

It turns out that it's a very long way from Rue Plumet to the barricade near the Corinthe!

If anyone is interested, here it is: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1jtr0eeR6t7ycYOG1aSEeksyAyro&hl=en_US&ll=48.862480999999995%2C2.347807000000013&z=14

And another one, with more sites: https://lesmiserables.mla.hcommons.org/

[dolphin1812]

I love the Romanticism in this chapter, starting with "what a pretty garden" and ending with "the Infinite is in that garden because it's everywhere." That being said, the specifics mentioned about this garden are worth discussing. The Romanticism is a point on its own, really. It's attractive to "dreamers," likely because it's a triumph of Nature/God/the Infinite over "Man." There are still man-made structures in the garden, but they're overgrown and overshadowed, either formless, hidden, or rotting. In spite of the rot, though, the overall description in the first paragraph is a beautiful one because of the majesty of nature:

"Nothing in this garden impeded the sacred efforts of things toward life, and growth was at home there and held high holiday."

The human influence implied by "garden" may be gone, but that's the appeal. The garden is "holy," designed by God and not people. It's also unified, with words like "wedded" and "fraternity" describing it. Overall, then, it seems like a lovely place . . .

Until night falls or winter comes, bringing "melancholy" or "poison." There's a sinister undercurrent to the garden then, although it's still a natural one. Just as nature can be wild and threatening, so can this garden.

Nature, though, is not the most ominous aspect of this garden; the railing is:

"and the old rusty railings had an air of saying, "This garden is mine.""

The railings may be weak, rusty, and barely visible, but they're still there. The garden's isolation from the outside world (Paris) is a blessing in some ways, with its natural beauty not being the most common in a cityscape, but it's also caged in by those rails. And in a novel concerned with the evil of prisons, anything trapping "God's creations" isn't a good sign. The Rue Plumet house is beautiful, and its garden even more so. But its loveliness isn't uncomplicated, either, with the promise of life and freedom that its naturalness brings still bound by the railings around it.

[lesmisscraper]

Same Here!

Cosette, my love 💕

[lesmisscraper]

The Two Lovers' Letters at Each Other's Own Ends. Volume 4, Book 14, Chapter 7.

Clips from <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[tobbogan-13]

I KNOW THIS HOUSE I TELL YOU

THERES NOTHING HERE FOR YOU

JUST THE OLD MAN AND THEY GIRL

THEY LIVE ORDINARY LIIIIVEEESSSS

[lesmisscraper]

the 2012 les mis is........ not as bad as I remember?

and Marius gets the handkerchief in it???

[cliozaur]

We are back to Marius. He is “mad with grief,” suicidal, and determined to seek death at the barricade. His journey seems quite long, and that is why I was looking for a map of Les Mis locations in Paris (and found it!) Indeed, it is a substantial walk from Rue Plumet to the fictional Corinthe near Les Halles. Thanks to Marius’ journey, we get to experience what is going on in Paris. Although Hugo mentioned that this time Paris was responding differently—with people getting anxious and doors being locked etc.—his description here seems to contradict that.

As Marius walks closer to Les Halles, Rue de Rivoli appears to be bustling with life: women shopping, people enjoying desserts, and gas lamps illuminating the arcades. It's as if this part of Paris is oblivious to the turmoil. Further along the way, shops are closed, but everything else appears normal, with lit streets and people going about their business. Continuing on, Marius encounters a group of working-class men, easily identifiable by their attire. Here, the windows are dark, and the street lanterns resemble “large red stars.”

Finally, Marius enters the realm of darkness, silence, and emptiness. It’s so ominous and eerie. At some point, it’s so dark that Marius has to find his way by touch. Unexpectedly, fucking white horses appear in front of him, the same horses that Bossuet had freed in the morning. Poor beasts have returned close to the barricade.

Throughout this chapter, there are so many descriptions of different types of light, and the whole journey feels remarkably cinematic. Towards the end, it even takes on a resemblance to Buñuel’s films!

Marius' journey:

[fructidors]

barricade day has been over for 2 minutes where i live but i'm still taking the occasion to FINALLY change my icon to something more les mis related

[flowers-and-literature]

No mum, I can't go outside, I'm too busy making dioramas of my favourite scenes from Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables

[lesmisscraper]

Note: The black bread does not mean burnt bread, but the bread made from rye or whole grain wheat.

On contray, the white bread is made from the normal refined wheat flour.

Black bread usually rough than white bread. But this does not change the meaning that Valjean gives better food for his child while he doesn't.

Source from here and here.

Les Mis Letters 4.3.4

Cosette gets Valjean to take care of himself with the sweetest “Damn, bitch, you live like this?” ever.

If you wouldn’t let your daughter live in a freezing hut and eat burned bread, why are you treating yourself that way?

[secretmellowblog]

The moment where Eponine prevents her father/his gang from breaking into Valjean and Cosette's house is so fascinating? Especially because the musical's portrayal of it is so different from the novel's. Within the musical, Eponine threatening to scream is this very straightforwardly heroic moment. In the novel, it's portrayed as more morally complicated? She plans to scream in order to draw the attention of the police; she does this while boasting about how she's suicidal and doesn't care if everyone here, including herself, ends up dead. It's framed in this very morally ambiguous way-- there are all these parallels drawn between Eponine and Javert, which is never a good sign; she's compared to a monster, a barking dog, and a ghoul. The fact that she plans to call the police, specifically, is also a big point in the book? Eponine isn't aware that Valjean is also a criminal, and that drawing the attention of the police might also put Valjean in danger. This makes the plot point far more like the "Patron Minette ambush" subplot earlier, the one where Marius was debating over whether or not to give the signal for the police to come in. Just like in that subplot, Eponine ends up being the one who gives the characters a "middle road." Just as Eponine's letter gives advanced warning to Patron-Minette (giving Valjean time to escape in the confusion), Eponine's threat of calling the police here outside Rue Plumet manages to prevent the robbery without the police coming in.

Within the novel she's being brave and heroic, but it's also framed as being deeply morally complex and self-destructive. And I'm never quite sure how to feel about it!

[pilferingapples]

this is an invitation to infodump. i would LOVE to hear the thoughts you have on beggars at the feast, should you want to talk about them

AUGH ok ok let's see how well I can articulate...anything

OK so first: In the Letters server lately we've been talking a bit about how , in the book, Thenardier is WAY more the Human Nemesis than Javert is. He shows up earlier than Javert does; he's able to be a threat in ways Javert can't be, and to people Javert can't and wouldn't even try to touch ; he shares a TON of paralleling symbolism and class-blurring roles with JVJ; he's the last Personal Threat remaining in the novel, and the last thing we hear about him is that he's not only thriving , he's committing worse atrocities on a grander scale than anything we saw in the book, and getting nothing but social approval for it.

Thenardier is a nightmare, and he's triumphant, and as such he's a condemnation of society in an equal and opposing way to Jean Valjean. Valjean's story (and Fantine's , and the Thenardier siblings' ,. and the Amis , etc) says "look what we're destroying, look at the actions we punish". Thenardier's ultimate triumph as a literal slave trader flips it around and says "look what we support, look at what we endorse, look at what we elevate and approve." (now within the book I could take this farther , I could point out that the only thing within the novel that breaks any of the miserables free of their oppression to any degree is crime of some kind, be it revolution or theft or Being an Accomplice or exploitation, and the only thing that costs the (relatively) privileged their security and power is to truly ally with the miserables, but !! I'm talking about the musical)

In the musical Thenardier is softened a lot. Like... a LOT. The Thenardiers' exploitation of Fantine is barely mentioned ; their violent abuse of Cosette is turned into a joke; their abuse of Eponine is minimized (and their other kids are either Not Appearing in this Play or not obviously connected to them) ; and that final doomstrike epilogue, Thenardier becoming a slave trader, is gone. He's no longer the primary and most dangerous human antagonist; as in many other adaptations, that's now Javert.

So there's a different arc but it's there : From Master of the House and the Robbery , when he largely comes across as a gross but funny Comic Villain ; to the Attack on the Rue Plumet, where we finally see a bit of danger to him; to Dog Eats Dog, where he is really just acting on the same philosophy we saw in MotH but now doing something most people have a more immediate revulsion to, and the mask is really off; to , finally, Beggars at the Feast. If Beggars at the Feast is done RIGHT, This is Where The Villains Win.

They've gotten knocked around, sure, but they've also just gotten a ton of money, and, if done right, they are either blending in with the society party or, in the best staging * , they end up leading the dance. It's Master of the House all over again, only this time we're not being invited to laugh along with Thenardier's "band of soaks" ; this isn't the dregs of society, an easily stigmatized lower-class punchline.

This is Society, capital S Society, and they're just as ready to go along with him-- MORE ready to go along with him, even, because at least some of his inn customers usually get to be affronted and argue a little, but arguing with him risks some Unpleasantness, and isn't everything in Society so pleasant? Isn't it nice here, at the party? Let's not argue with the openly hateful people singing about how they want to destroy us all; look, they're dancing and singing! Let's just follow their lead. Won't that be nice.

And without getting into modern politics just because it's ALWAYS so current and I could never update the references frantically enough, I'll say that this is where Stage!Thenardier most echoes those Book!Thenardier Napoleon III vibes. Hugo knew what this dance looked like. He fell for it at one point.

(and hey, maybe it even raises some unease in audience members who laughed at MoTH and the child abuse and the Robbery without thinking about it-- maybe some people realize Oh Shit, We Fell For It Too. Not necessarily, but maybe?? ) And so it's fitting that it's this scene that has IMO a very clear sense of the book's incredibly specific political message ("Parisians, France, Please Overthrow Napoleon III, Probably With Barricades" ) , albeit in reverse. The Thenardiers gloat "Clear away the barricades and we're still here!" -- to them, a brag on how they endure all the changes around them.

But also implying: don't clear away the damn barricades. If you don't want the Thenardiers to run the show , help shore up that furniture wall and fight (for a modern international audience, this is probably going to be Not AS Specifically Involving Barricades).

So yeah. I'm not gonna say it's the most important song in the whole show , but it's important in ways I rarely see critics or commenters notice.

...Or it's just a funny musical reprise and you can have the Thenardiers be immediately thrown out of the wedding as frauds bc hahaha the poors thought they could play with their betters, good thing we're all so much smarter and cooler than that in the upper crust. That's fine too.

yes I have opinions; also I'm Correct

[lesmisscraper]

Grantaire's mentions about Marius and his Lover. Volume 4, Book 12, Chapter 2.

Clips from <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[lesmisscraper]

It seems like Cosette started wear blue dress since 2010s...

so my mum got me this korean adaptation of les mis made for children. it was published in 2021 and is actually really complete in terms of giving historical and political context, and even includes some facts about victor hugo. but it’s really cute and a good way to get children into classics i think (and on a personal note, its nice to know i have enough of a level in korean to understand a children’s book lol..)

the story is centered about cosette and valjean’s lives (from the chain gang to valjean rescuing cosette to the convent), cosette and marius (none of les amis are mentioned except for when “the commander” allows valjean to kill javert) and éponine’s death is described and illustrated as it’s a plot point in marius and cosette’s relationship. it also focuses a bit on javert and valjean’s relationship and ends with valjean dying, cosette and marius by his side.

also it made me think of how cosette in the perfect manhwa heroine, with her tragic past that turns into a “beautiful” and successful future in which she ends up happily married, never thought of that.

it’s ≈130 pages and clearly a children book but the illustrations are really good (manhwa-style) so here are marius and cosette because. theyre adorable in this art style.