#Valjean is REAL father of Cosette

[lesmisscraper]

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

Clips from <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[euphraisette]

Cosette: You’ve had so many names in all the time I’ve known you. What’s your real one?

Valjean: I suppose it is finally time to tell you. My name… is Jean Valjean

Cosette: …No, seriously, what’s your REAL name

cosette finds her fathers old documents searching for more information on her life and sees his family's names and is like "papa how dumb do you think i AM"

[princesssarisa]

Musical fandoms and ingenue hate

Is this really such a problem?

There's a YouTuber named Katherine Steele who mostly makes videos about musical theatre, and who has a small video series in defense of ingenue characters, titled "Why Everybody Hates..."

There are four videos in the series: "Why Everybody Hates Cosette" (Les Misérables), "Why Everybody Hates Christine" (The Phantom of the Opera), "Why Everybody Hates Johanna" (Sweeney Todd), and "Why Everybody Hates Maria" (West Side Story).

Some other sources – like TV Tropes, for example – have cited those videos to talk about why these characters are "widely" disliked.

But is it really true? Of all four of those musicals' fandoms, I've only been deep in the Les Misérables fandom, but from what I've seen people say about the others, I had no idea that those ingenue characters got big amounts of hate!

Being indifferent to the character doesn't count as hate, nor does considering her unoffensive but boring.

Do Johanna and Maria get the same kind of real loathing in the diehard Sweeney Todd and West Side Story fandoms that we see in the Les Mis fandom with talk about "that horrid Cosette," "I hate her with a passion," etc?

There is a lot of visceral, venomous Cosette-hate in the Les Mis fandom, or at least there used to be in the '90s and early 2000s. But it has a cause: Éponine. Immature people hate Cosette because she's loved by Marius, when they want him to love Éponine instead. (And to a lesser extent because she "abandons" her father Jean Valjean, but that's more the novel's Cosette than the musical's.)

I know that there's also some Christine hate among Phantom Phans, which is also love-triangle related: they hate her for choosing Raoul instead of the Phantom.

But I had no idea that Sweeney and WSS fans were venomous about Johanna or Maria – are they?

From what little I've seen of Sweeney fans, I've occasionally seen them call Johanna boring or a Mary Sue (and even then, the context has been "I always thought she was, but then [insert actress here] made me appreciate her"). But for the most part, I see people talk approvingly about how she's more complex than an average ingenue, how she can be played as mentally unstable, etc.

And Maria? Yes, there are the people who can't stand how quickly she forgives Tony for killing Bernardo. (Although that complaint only seems to have become widespread with the 2021 film's release – I remember occasionally reading it in the past, but not nearly as much as now.) But apart from that, and from sometimes seeing people call both Maria and Tony boring, I had no idea that anyone hated her! And if you think she had no characterization but "pretty and nice" until the 2021 film, then you've been giving both the stage version and the 1961 film a shallow surface read! She's always had intelligence, playfulness, passion and strength!

I'd like people who have been deep in the fandoms of these musicals to tell me. Is there really a widespread problem of loud, venomous hate for all these ingenue characters, the way there has been for Cosette in the Les Mis fandom? Or is it really just a few people calling them "boring" now and then, with only the love triangles in Les Mis and Phantom making people nastier about Cosette and Christine?

[pilferingapples]

LM 4.8.5 : Things of the Night

 A black figure barring the way stops the wild beast short. That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear the sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.

RIGHT so with that summary of yesterday's chapter--

I've written before on how I think Les Miserables is not a realistic novel , and adaptations that treat it as such are making a mistake ; it's a Romantic novel, and that means that a certain level of magic is allowed and in, the case of Les Mis , explicit.

This book is full of ghosts-- there's Fantine's spirit, always close to Cosette, showing up first in the woods of Monterfermeil:

... she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad thing at the moment. And her mother, no doubt, alas! For there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their graves. - The Little One All Alone

and lingers partly -seen at times at times in the text:

The more sacred this shade was to him, the more did it seem that it was to be feared. He thought of Fantine, and felt himself overwhelmed with silence. Through the darkness, he vaguely perceived something which appeared to have its finger on its lips... Was Jean Valjean unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We who believe in death, are not among the number who will reject this mysterious explanation. - Change of Gate

even , it seems, sometimes actually touching Cosette:

Cosette was meditating; an objectless sadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invincible sadness evoked by the evening, and which arises, perhaps, who knows, from the mystery of the tomb which is ajar at that hour. Perhaps Fantine was within that shadow. - Enriched with Commentaries By Toussaint

There's also Myriel's ghost looking on at Valjean at his death, Valjean's brother (if you believe he really had a brother) visiting in his dream ...

Les Miserables is a haunted novel. The convent is a ghost, even in its introduction; Paris of the past is a ghost. The narrative acknowledges it. And for people in the book, there are more ways than dying of entering the uncanny. The Amis may not exactly be ghosts (except , perhaps, Prouvaire and Bahorel) but they're walking under a prophecy from their introduction. Gavroche has some sort of spiritual avatar connection with Paris. Cosette and Eponine are both fairy creatures in their turn, when they're slipping through the cracks of the human world-- but then Cosette is pulled back to humanity by Valjean's intervention and love, and Eponine...

Eponine becomes this.

There's a line about magic I've seen a few places that goes something like: you can't make magic with someone else's heart. You have to give it yours, and you have to mean it.

I think that's what Eponine did when she faced down her father and the Patron Minette. She offered up her life for the power to change how things were going; and something accepted. She may not have died on the spot, but her life is not life anymore; now it's This. She certainly will have the power to change how the story goes from now on, but she's changed states of being now. (Could she still become human again, without her physical death? I think so; but it's no longer as easy as it would have been in Mabeuf's garden.)

I think modern readers (including the ones who make adaptations) struggle with acknowledging the fantastic as the fantastic in stories that aren't expressly fantasy (or maybe Magical Realism). But Hugo isn't dealing with those expectations; he's a writer who fully believed in the invisible and supernatural world , inextricable from the real one. There's no contradiction, only a thin separation.

And Eponine is standing in both of them now.

[syrupsyche]

I JUST HAD A THOUGHT

Enjolsette siblings au, when they're running from Javert and end up in the convent.

How does Valjean manage to get two kids over the wall? He struggles enough in the brick with just Cosette, and barely makes it, but now he's got Enjolras too. :O

I doubt there's enough time for him to pull one up and lower the rope to do the same with the second, so does he tie them together? Or have one cling to his back while he climbs? (Probably dangerous af, but if you're in a pinch it could probably work)

Idk this could be really fun to explore the possibilities :0

I LOVE YOUR ENJOLSETTE SIBLINGS THOUGHTS!!!! Thank u for sharing them 😭

Okay so this was one of the parts of canon that, when I first started jotting down my AU, I decided to pointedly ignore because the logistics of figuring it out was CRAZY. Your ask got me thinking about it again though, and after rereading the chapter I decided to write a drabble on what I would think might happen. Is it realistic? Probably not, but this is my sandbox and I shall play with it however I want :3

Drabble under the cut below! Parts in italics are from the original text.

P.S. for those confused as to who Eugène is; that is Enjolras' real name in my enjolsette siblings AU, from the OFEAverse! 😎

—

“Eugène,” said Jean Valjean in barely a murmur. He was untying his cravat. “Reply softly. Have you learned to tie a knot?”

“Yes sir.” The young boy said quietly. He had not yet begun calling the man father. “I tie the horses to their stables.”

“Take your cravat off. Tie the end of it to mine.”

As the boy set about his task, Jean Valjean’s despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of the blind alley Genrot.

Jean Valjean, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crossed the street at one bound, entered the blind alley, broke the latch of the little box with the point of his knife, and an instant later he was beside the children once more. He had a rope.

When he returned to the dark corner, Eugène had the long strip of fabric in his hands, staring up at Jean Valjean.

“Father,” Cosette said, her small hands clutching the back of her brother’s coat. “I am afraid. Who is coming?”

“Hush!” replied the unhappy man; “it is Madame Thénardier.”

Cosette shuddered. He added:—

“Say nothing. Don’t interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the Thénardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back.”

Thoroughly frightened, the little girl threw her arms around her brother, her face buried in his shoulder. Eugène looked just as alarmed but kept still, an arm around his sister while his other still held the cravats out.

“Lift your arms,” Jean Valjean instructed quietly, taking the tied cravats away from the boy.

The children complied. Jean Valjean wrapped the cravats around their bodies under the armpits, and fastened it to one end of the rope. He took the other end in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings, which he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and began to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under his feet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was resting on his knees on the wall.

Cosette and Eugène gazed at him in stupid amazement. Cosette’s arms had returned to hugging her brother closely, the name Thénardier having chilled her blood.

“Eugène,” called Jean Valjean in a very low tone. “Put your back against the wall.”

The little boy did so at once.

“Are you holding onto your sister?”

“Yes sir.”

“Hold onto her for your life. You must never let her go or you shall lose her forever, do you understand?”

Fear clutched the poor boy’s heart. Still, he nodded bravely and tightly embraced his sister.

“Yes sir.”

And the children felt themselves being lifted from the ground.

Before either could scream or cry, they were on the top of the wall.

At once, Jean Valjean grabbed the children and pulled them next to him. With his knife he slashed the cravats around their bodies, pulling Cosette onto his back and holding her two tiny hands in his large left hand.

“Lie low,” he said quietly, pressing his right hand down on Eugène’s back til he was flat on his stomach. “Crawl to the slope and stop. Move carefully. Do not speak.”

Eugène nodded dumbly and began crawling with the swift agility all young boys possess. Behind him, Jean Valjean crawled towards the cant as well, Cosette clinging to his back.

As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on the street side. Jean Valjean could only see the ground at a great depth below him.

He had just reached the slope of the roof, and had not yet left the crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the patrol. The thundering voice of Javert was audible:—

“Search the blind alley! The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded! so is the Rue Petit-Picpus. I’ll answer for it that he is in the blind alley.”

The soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley.

Jean Valjean pressed a finger to his lips, staring at the wide-eyed boy next to him. Moving in front of Eugène, Jean Valjean allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast to Cosette, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground.

He placed the young girl down the moment they landed, who curled up at his feet clutching his trousers. Whether it was from terror or courage, Cosette had not breathed a word.

Jean Valjean then looked up at the boy still atop the wall. Erasing all traces of fear from his face, he smiled gently up at him and held out his hands, his palms facing up.

Eugène, understanding what he meant, immediately turned onto his back and slid down the roof, stopping himself at the linden tree with his feet. Wrapping his arms around the tree, he quickly scampered down, where Jean Valjean scooped him into his arms at once. Bravado finally leaving that tiny body, the boy pressed his face into Jean Valjean’s shoulder and released his shuddering breaths that came close to tears.

“Hush now, child,” Jean Valjean murmured into his ear, shifting his weight so that he sat on his right arm. Bending down, he slipped his shoes back on and picked Cosette up with his left.

With both children now back in his arms, Jean Valjean turned around to find himself at the beginning of an enigma.

[cliozaur]

Wow! There is life outside the garden! What do other people know (nothing or not much), and how do they react to Marius and Cosette’s happiness? Jean Valjean doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t suspect anything, and he has already forgotten about Marius’ existence. He sees that Cosette is content, and it’s enough. Cosette, on the other hand, does what she can do best — she hides her true feelings and tries to be an obedient daughter. There is an air of deception in it. But on the other hand, they were hiding something from each other their entire life, and they have never been absolutely sincere. Sad.

Courfeyrac, on the contrary, understands everything that is going on with Marius, and he is so curious to learn more! He is so funny: “My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital, soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what’s her name?” And as a more practical person, he tries to bring Marius back to real world. I wonder: if Marius spends his evening with Cosette, is he working during the day? Because he was bragging about writing articles. Is it possible that happiness made him more functional in terms of work capacity? I am not sure.

Haha: Marius is telling Cosette about politics! I would very much like to listen to it. At least it is not his (in)famous Napoleon speech. What is his political stance in May 1832? Did Cosette know anything about politics? Is Marius her only “teacher”? That would be tragic!

Éponine, my dear girl. This was a very awkward encounter. The only purpose of this scene is to show how ungrateful Marius is and how quickly he has forgotten who made his current happiness possible. And what about this weird logic that you can only say “tu” to one girl at a time! Poor Éponine is too smart to immediately understand all this. Hugo wants to emphasize how forgetful Marius has become by saying that he doesn’t even think about his father anymore. That’s a big deal. If he forgot about his father, what to say about Éponine.

[secretmellowblog]

For the character ask game: Cosette, 2 + 25 👀

Thanks for the ask, even though I'm answering it late! (For this ask meme) #2. Favorite canon thing about this character? My favorite canon thing about Cosette is the way she parallels Jean Valjean-- not just in their traumatic backstories, but also in the way they both often "perform" politeness and kindness. Cosette needs to perform happiness for Jean Valjean in order to convince him to take care of himself, and it's...deeply sad! She has to 'trick' him into not doing self-destructive things by framing it in cheerful lighthearted ways, papering over difficult problems with polite nothings, pretending not to be that frightened or upset, and it's...very sad. And it feels like something that he taught her. The moments when she attempts to stop all the cheerfulness and talk to her father directly always tend to end with Jean Valjean breaking down-- like the moment when she asks "are you angry with me because I am happy?" or her attempts to ask directly about her mother, which both end with Jean Valjean shedding tears and avoiding her questions. There's something very realistic about that failure to communicate. I don't know whether Hugo fully considered this a negative thing-- but I do think he understands the way that children often put on a great performance of happiness in order to help their parents. Cosette is in many ways just Victor Hugo projecting his trauma over the death of his own young daughter onto Jean Valjean and Cosette's relationship, and like. As much as Cosette's writing is often deeply imperfect/ sexist, and as much as I think she should've been given more interiority and agency in the end of the story--- I think you can tell that Hugo did sincerely love his daughter? Cosette doesn't feel like a one-note cloying ingenue to me, but a fictionalized version of a real daughter Victor Hugo sincerely loved. I also think that Child-Cosette in particular is written very well! Lots of authors struggle to write children, but Hugo really captures a lot of the way children think and speak-- young Cosette isn't a cloying innocent ingenue, she's a starving frightened angry child, and it makes her teenage self far more interesting as a contrast. As a random addition: Hugo doesn't go into this, but it's fascinating how Cosette is extremely good at lying. She and Jean Valjean kind of share that talent. Very few people manage to trick Jean Valjean-- Marius fails utterly at pretending he's not in love with Cosette, and falls into all of his traps-- but Cosette manages to hide a secret love affair from him for a very long time. It's interesting how the two of them are very good at lying and concealing things from each other, and I don't fully know what to make of it.

Also my hot take is that anyone who thinks Cosette is a bland one-note ingenue should read Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and contrast her with Lucie Manette. XD I used to be obsessed with A Tale of Two Cities, but it's basically just "what if Les Mis was bad and all the criticisms about it were actually true?" That novel also features a young ingenue who takes care of her traumatized ex-prisoner father-- but unlike Cosette, Lucie has no interiority or depth, and doesn't feel like anything resembling a real human young girl. All of the interesting things about Cosette- like her naivete/coming of age story, or the way her excessive bubbliness is often an act she puts on for her father's happiness, or her silly funny dialogue, or her own hard past that parallels her father's-- just aren't there. Again, there are lots of places where I think Hugo's writing of Cosette fails; but there's also a lot of interesting details that are easy for people to explore and dig deeper into in fanworks.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

My first impression of this character was that she was Fine, but not very interesting? But the more I got invested in the novel and the fandom, the more I appreciated her as a character! Hugo's writing of her is deeply flawed, and she isn't given enough attention in the ending of the book specifically, but there's enough really compelling stuff there to be a great jumping off point for fanworks. I think I already answered how I see her now in the previous question, but I want to add that I also like that she's nicknamed Madame LaNoir, or the Lady in Black. Goth Cosette is canon! That's very fun to me.

[dolphin1812]

Although the police aren't a great sign in this book, to be fair to Marius, he did consider alternatives and realized he couldn't come up with any because of his lack of information. It was kind of funny to watch him puzzle out how to warn M Leblanc when he knows absolutely nothing about him, and on some level, it's fair that he did what he could think of to help him (even if that meant going to the police).

While Marius clearly trusts the police (at least to some extent) if he's going to them for help, it's interesting how he goes to them:

"He put on his decent coat, knotted a silk handkerchief round his neck, took his hat, and went out, without making any more noise than if he had been treading on moss with bare feet."

To appear reputable, Marius puts on all his best clothes (which before, he's only used for special occasions and at one point for the garden). Like the Jondrette daughter at church, then, Marius is aware that class affects how he's perceived and, consequently, presents himself as being of a higher class when asking for help. Of course, there's still a difference between their performances. Mlle Jondrette was poor regardless, just "respectably" so, and Marius might even look middle class with these clothes (and if not, there's still a large gap between him and Mlle Jondrette appearance-wise in these cases). Either Marius has become more aware of this phenomenon because of his poverty, or it's so engrained in society that even someone who's largely been insulated from that (due to his comfortable upbringing) is conscious of it (or it's a combination! Either or both are possible).

Plot-wise, this is a fun and atmospheric chapter. The snow serves a narrative purpose (it's why no one hears Marius passing), but it also adds a desolate and foreboding element; after all, if it's too cold to go out easily during the day, what could that mean at night (or in the evening), the time of the planned ambush? Moreover, the reference to Patron Minette, which we've already been introduced to, gives us a sense of the scale of the threat, and - from their introduction and Courfeyrac's recent comment on Panchaud - the real possibility of violence has been mentioned recently enough for us to remember it.

Spoilers below:

I'm a bit uncomfortable with how righteous Marius is portrayed as here (stamping out "vipers" in fetching the police) given that he's bringing the police to Valjean. Logically, I know that Marius doesn't know the possible consequences to Valjean and Cosette; he doesn't even know who they are! And of all the times that the police are summoned in this book, this really might be the least questionable one: to Marius' knowledge, he's trying to protect an innocent (bourgeois) man from his nefarious (poor) neighbors, who are plotting to harm him in some way. It's both the idealized version of the police (protecting innocents from harm) and Javert's version (protecting certain classes to maintain the status quo) at once, going solely off of what Marius knows. And that idealized part is rarely seen in a book that's so critical of the police, so it's easy to understand Marius here! But unfortunately, the police are just as much of a threat to Valjean as they are to Thénardier. Valjean is less likely to be recognized and arrested, but the consequences would be graver because he actually cares about his child. Éponine and Azelma would theoretically be worse off financially without their father (because he's more likely to find decent, profitable work), but he also exploits them and doesn't attend to their needs to the point that it's possible they would be better off away from him. Cosette loves her father and relies on him, and she would struggle (emotionally and materially) without him.

On the other hand, Marius is "righteous" in that he's confident he's doing the right thing; he just doesn't know otherwise. There's something to be said for the reality it depicts in that calling the police can seem like a helpful thing to do when someone's in danger, but that person's identity can mean that the police are a danger to them, too (in this case, because of Valjean's criminal history). Marius is well-meaning here, but unfortunately, Javert (and what he represents) is not.

[black-rabbit-razumikhin]

Raz Reads Les Mis (XII)

Cosette - The Old Gorbeau House

I can picture exactly the sort of area Valjean and Cosette end up in

Eerie for all its outward appearances of familiarity

This tiny chapter is all I'm getting for a hint of family bliss isn't it?

Valjean realizing that he loves Cosette and Cosette realizing that she loves Valjean is so beautiful

He is 55 years old and this is the first time he has been overwhelmed with love

She is 8, has always had love within her, but nowhere to express it because of all the horror and suffering she has had to face

And fate pulls their souls together

Here you are, here I am, finally we found each other

It's the most wholesome father-daughter moment

Made even better by Cosette trusting Valjean from the outset - at the end of the last chapter she falls asleep on his shoulder!

But we don't live in a beautiful world in this book

And it seems that Javert is catching up

Javert, please get a real hobby. I can recommend embroidery

Valjean thinks he sees Javert's face in the begger he usually gives money to

He thinks he can hear Javert's footsteps in his house at night

His landlady tells him they have a new lodger called Daumont

And Valjean thinks he sees Javert outside the window

So he takes money, takes Cosette and leaves

They're not leaving forever are they? Valjean is being overly protective dad now that he has Cosette right? Surely Javert isn't here. I just want to see dad Valjean and daughter Cosette; it's the second best option since the loss of Fantine.

[breadvidence]

At the end of the first part, I'm not sure I know what '72 is trying to accomplish. Politics, sure. For every actor to have their chance to shout a line, for sure. It feels as if I've watched four different shows, of four different qualities, two of them quite good, one mediocre, and one bad. Many thoughts, moving in reverse:

The Gorbeau ambush occupies the last third (I would mark the start just after 1:15:00 [when the Thénardier girls drop their father's beggar's letters in the street, which are then retrieved by Marius], and the run time is almost two hours). Thénardier occupies center screen for a high percentage of this forty-five minutes—I'd argue he's the main character for this time, though the show tries to split its attention between him and Marius. He's erratic, raving, furious, violent. He's very broken in this iteration of the character, and while it is difficult to call him pitiful—he's too much of a threat—he's distinctly and peculiarly sympathetic in a manner that I don't read in the book and haven't seen in other adaptations. He's too fucked-up to be playing a game when he speaks of suicide and the unfairness of the world; his imprecations against society are not ploys to garner attention but a real expression of pain. "Sympathetic" not here at all synonymous with "likable", to be clear; again: he's a threat. A villain. Abusive. Only, the watcher is forced to ask: why?

Alain Mottet's delivery of the line "Oh! je mangerais le monde!" is as close to understated as he's capable of acting, flat and bitter, and quite effective. It is contrasted against the letter he is writing, from which he reads aloud a line pulled from III.VIII.III, "La vertu de la clémence et pitié est celle qui unit plus étroitement la société"—the intent and tone are different (and more comedic) in the novel, but here you get the sense of a man who is debasing himself before others to be allowed a place in a society he'd rather chew to pieces. Solid.

"Voulez-vous mon chapeau?" and Javert's good mood hits a different note—the show has been so goddamn grim for forty minutes that the abrupt tone shift grates, and seems cruel. Which I'm fine with, as an effect. It's unfortunate that Bernard Fresson is a little dead behind the eyes and plays a bland Javert, or in any case seems bland in comparison to a very emotive cast, and doesn't carry the scene well.

Speaking of emotive, holy shit, Hermine Karagheuz, what're you doing? Move aside, Suzanne Nivette, here's a feral Éponine. It's too pitchy of a performance for me to find it effective per se, though I'm not sure how much of this is acting conventions in '70s France.

Before we shift gears into the Gorbeau ambush, Marius sulks out of the Musain; he meets Enjolras on the stairs, and while we only see Jean-Luc Boutté in profile he's got an open, pleasant expression on, he's looking at a real bro, his "You are leaving?" is disappointed, his "When will we see you again?" hopeful. Cracked my shit up. Enjolras, why do you like this guy so much?

With apologies to fans of this adaptation, the entire flashback sequence is godawful. Occupying about thirty minutes starting at the ~50 minute mark, we do a speed run through Jean Valjean's bread theft, sentencing, escapes, encounter with Myriel, success as Madeleine, interference in Fantine's arrest—we're only at the ten minute mark, hang on to your hat—a combined punish me m. le maire/"Une tempête sous un crâne"/courtroom self-denunciation that all occurs as a continuous sequence in a cobbled street with a black backdrop—finally meeting Cosette, and fleeing into the convent. A narrator connects the narrative dots for us. Choices have been made.

Georges Géret plays an interesting Jean Valjean: expressive, desperate, sweaty from arrest to his encounter with Myriel and during the turmoil of the Champmathieu sequence (inasmuch as that exists here), self-possessed when confronting Javert over Fantine and saving Cosette from the wood, then utterly dead as Ultime Fauchelevent. I know he's capable of turning a facial expression, so this is deliberate. The tenderness I expect from his relationship with Cosette is utterly lacking, there are no smiles between them, no gentle touch. The impression becomes that of a sexless Bluebeard—I believe that this is, as the narrator tells us, a virginal relationship, but I don't buy it as love. Interestingly we get a quote here all the way from IV.XV.I, "il aimait Cosette comme sa fille, et il l'aimait comme sa mère, et il l'aimait comme sa sœur; et, comme il n'avait jamais eu ni amante ni épouse, comme la nature est un créancier qui n'accepte aucun protêt, ce sentiment-là aussi" etc.; I personally think this is a key to their relationship and tip my hat to the adaptation for pulling it, but the repetition of aimait, aimait, aimait—well, you're telling me about it, but I don't see it.

I enjoyed all the Amis sequences—they're charming, they're fun, the contrast with Marius' grim boy sulk is comedic. Also, Jean-Luc Boutté is no Thetis, but those eyes and lips make him a more suitable Enjolras than some, eh?

Combeferre's "être libre" is delivered with zero mercy, but in his defense, Marius shouted in his face.

Shoutout to Lucien Nat as a solid Gillenormand, or "Gillenarmand" per the credits. His behavior is per the Brick, and where the novel softens his abusiveness by describing unexpressed love for Marius, the narrator of '72 does not chime in, and we are left with what we see. BBC 2018 and '25 chose to alter Gillenormand's behavior to reflect his interior state, which I think is a fair choice, but I prefer '72 on this. Marius' temperament, his explosiveness and depression, are a logical result of being raised by this man. In a way the grimness of this Gillen(o/a)rmand echoes the utter grimness of the '72 Thénardier.

The first ten minutes or so gave me an entirely skewed idea of where this show was going. We begin in IV.I.V—revolution! And we move right into the Amis at their most political, sending out feelers for support, Enjolras fanning the flame of unrest. I was confused, but on board. What happened, '72?

Obviously I'm invested and engaged—I wouldn't have taken the time to write so much if I weren't—but this is a wildly uneven adaptation. I'm quite anxious to continue on to part II and see what weird fuckin' choices are upcoming.

[arcadianambivalence]

Les Mis Letters 4.5.4 - The Heart Beneath the Stone

I really like this set of chapters leading up to Marius and Cosette getting to have a proper introduction to each other. Knowing what we know about the same year/years from Marius's perspective, the reader is expected to draw a line between each partner's emotional highs and lows.

Marius possessed one of those temperaments which bury themselves in sorrow and there abide; Cosette was one of those persons who plunge into sorrow and emerge from it again.

-4.5.1

When she's at the dawning of a new time in her life, he feels like he has the world shut on him. Where she's courage and action, he's contemplation and hesitation. One shrinks back, the other steps forward (like a dance). When he is like one with one foot in the tomb, she is emotionally bringing Valjean back to life again, and thought of her gives Marius renewed life, too.

It sets up that as a couple, they could draw on each other's strengths. Like the saying goes: You complete me. Or, as Marius puts it:

When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unit [...] they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit.

-4.5.4

And to balance Cosette (according to Hugo) making the first move (i.e., meeting his eye, looking after him, crossing the park to intentionally pass him when he gets too nervous to draw attention to himself), Marius makes the first declaration.

Yeah, his words can be awkward and corny, his contemplations on love and the universe perhaps grandiose, but it's from the heart beneath the stone. It's real feeling and real effort, not Tholmyes singing someone else's song with little sincerity to Fantine and the other ladies. That's how we know he means what he wrote, that Cosette isn't in danger of repeating her mother's life. (His mother's, on the other hand...)

When paper and ink should have been carefully preserved for his translation work, he took the time (over months) to write out his feelings and later carefully select which papers to enclose in the envelope for Cosette. Instead of just climbing into the garden as soon as he got the address or trying to force some introduction by pressuring Toussaint, he leaves the ball (er, the envelope) in her court to read and respond or reject at her leisure.

The focus on how attraction to the other initiates character development and introspection instead of having them introduced the socially proper way through a mutual friend or with her father's express permission doesn't bother me.

[The sneaking to the garden at night (if it was him on all occasions and not Eponine scouting the place initially) to determine if this is indeed where She lives, I have no excuse for.

Like, I get that it's following the footsteps of classical forbidden lovers, with explicit and implicit references to Romeo & Juliet, what with her symbolically representing light and life to his melancholy, the instinct for the young lovers to keep everything a secret from her father, etc., etc...but Toussaint's worries over "the men" does make the modern reader worry about foreshadowing instead of subversion.]

...But the rest of the furtive glances to pining to secret love has some logic from an in-universe standpoint that gels with the nineteenth century novels I've read, so...

Plus, I'm a sucker for love stories that make everything seem to go wrong with one person as they fall for someone and think they've lost them only for the narrative to flip to the other character's PoV and reveal they've felt the same way all along.

[lesmiserablesabridged]

An Interlude

Narrator: *walks in, clearly drunk, followed by Les Amis, all of whom are also drunk, including Enjolras*

Marius: I am flabbergasted by this, Enjolras. I'd have expected this from others, but not you!

Enjolras: I couldn't *hic* handle *hic* Javert's stupidity. *hic*

Narrator: Neither could *hic* the rest of us.

Marius: That's it, you're all getting drinking therapy. It involves getting into your beds and sleeping for at least eight hours. After having a glass of water.

Combeferre: *hic* Excuse me *hic*, but me and Joly are the doctors around here. *hic*

Joly: *hic* It's true. *hic* We doctors know best. *hic*

Marius: *glaring* To beds. Now. All of you.

Narrator: We'd like to *hic* continue our *hic* little project.

Marius: You can't do it while you're drunk!

Enjolras: I am the leader. *hic* Therefore, what I say *hic* goes. And I say we *hic* continue.

Eponine: Marius!!! *hic* Love me! *hic*

Marius: Eponine. *sighs* I am married, and so are you.

Eponine: Heaven has *hic* unique marriage laws. For example, spouses don't have to be faithful. My husband *hic* understands that perfectly. *hic*

Enjolras: Indeed. Feuilly, Grantaire, Marie, let's go. *hic* It's time for our special hour. *hic*

*Grantaire, Feuilly and the Narrator follow Enjolras into the bedroom and close the door.*

Marius: Really?

Eponine: Yes. *hic* Now come along. *drags Marius to another room by the wrist*

Valjean: Right, so Marie had given me permission to act as temporary narrator for this episode, and all the duties that entails. *to the rest of Les Amis* And I am kicking you out of this gathering until you sober up.

Les Amis: Fine. *they leave*

Marius: *returns shortly after, having escaped from Eponine* Right, so we can continue?

Cosette: Yeah, we have this under control. May I suggest we bring in Javert so we can make fun of him?

Valjean: Good idea. *uses his temporary narrator powers to bring in Javert*

Javert: *is tied to a chair* Release me this instant!

Valjean: *ignoring him* So where did we leave off? *a note flutters by and Valjean takes it* Oh, yes, the dilemma.

Javert: *suddenly interested* That dilemma?

Cosette: Yup.

Valjean: So...the runaway cart...

Fauchelevent: *appears* I like this part!

Valjean: You like the fact you and your horse were crushed by a cart?

Fauchelevent: No, I like what happened next! It was a great example of family bonding!

Valjean: Right, so you appear onscreen and are promptly crushed by your own cart, along with your own horse.

Fauchelevent: The God punished me for being an asshole. I am grateful for him.

Marius: God? God doesn't exist. And if he does, he only like assholes. He is not punishing them. He is allowing them to win.

Cosette: *concerned* Marius, you're wrong, and...

Marius: *grabs her arm* Am I? Could we take a little break, father? I want to show everyone something.

Valjean: Sure. *presses the pause button and the screen freezes*

Marius: Thank you. *presses another button and a smaller screen descends from the ceiling.* "Now you're about to see what happened after you died."

Screen: *Shows Azelma and Thenardier on a ship heading to America. It takes them about ten days to get there, and once they disembark, Thenardier is shown carrying a large chest on his back, while Azelma is carrying a pouch of money strapped to her waist.*

Thenardier: See that man over there, daughter? Let's grab him!

Native American: *says 'hello' in Aztec language*

Thenardier: *grabs him with assistance from Azelma* "Now let's sell him for profit! I am sure that there are people who will buy him!

Azelma: Okay, father.

Thenardier: *later* And I've married the wife of a man I sold to slavery, and adopted their kids. Azelma needs playmates her age, after all.

Azelma: *has said kids strapped to a wheel* Now, play nice...or else.

Marius: *stops the video* If God were real, would he allow things like this to happen? Would he allow that villain to do this using my money?!

Valjean: All right. You've made your point. Now can we please continue?

Marius: I don't think my wife is feeling up for it.

Cosette: *is crying*

[ariel-seagull-wings]

what are some things you dont like about Les Mis 2000

Definitly the insertion of Freudian subtext in the Valjean x Cosette originally platonic father and daughter relationship.

Also Asia Argento (without entering in her real life controversies) may be precursor of making "Eponine hot goth looking girl" trend.

@the-blue-fairie @princesssarisa

[pilferingapples]

(only answer this if you're in the mood for it of course) If you had to choose one colour and one single object for each of the five books in Les Miserables, which ones would you choose and (optionally) why?

oooh what a fun complicated question, I love this question! SHOCKINGLY I got long-winded about symbolism in the Long Winded Symbolism Book:

Tome 1: Fantine Color: Gold/ yellow gold for Fantine's hair, and also as a color strongly tied to wealth; no other volume is going to focus quite as much on finances as this chapter, from the Bishop and the wealth he rejects, to Valjean and his rising economic status, to Fantine and the commodification of her life to gain a few gold coins here and there. Object: a cart-wheel. I thought about the candle-sticks, and jet beads, and ships, and even teeth,but it's gotta be a cart-wheel. The wheels that carry the passengers and drivers of society but have no energy of their own; the wheels that crush anyone who falls underneath them, that take enormous force and energy and even demand the risking of life to move, break and splinter when needed to right injustice, and block all progress when stilled. The cart-wheels that stop when the horse dies, block off all hope of success at the Waterloo Inn, crush Fauchevelent and almost stop Valjean from saving his own soul. Frigging cart wheels.

Tome 2: Cosette Color: Black the color of a night in the dark forest, the inside of a grave or sunken road, Paris in the silence of a dark chase, a nun's habit. The color of despair, sure, the color of imprisonment, yes, but also the color of concealment, meditation, the unknown, peace. Object: I also considered: a water-bucket, a broken chain (for Cosette and Valjean both in this Book!), and Catherine the doll-- but it has to be a coffin. I'd say a tomb, but a coffin is more visually iconic and , of course, more immediately relevant to JVJ . LM is full of tomb and coffin imagery, but this is THE Tome of Tombs and coffins -- the impromptu tombs of the sunken road of Ohain, the chosen symbolic tomb of the convent itself (the nuns have to symbolically die and be reborn to fully enter!), the literal and ironically lifesaving coffin that Valjean is buried in. Tome 3: Marius MAN THIS ONE WAS SO HARD

Color: Green I REALLY AGONIZED ON THIS , it was Green or Blue though ; but the only real strong Blue imagery here is it being part of Marius' vision of Cosette

Green though! the color of growing things and spring and little seedlings just starting to grow, and flowers and Flora, and of Marius' secondhand coat , which looks black at night. New beginnings hidden in mourning , despite the losses of the past; flowers and growing things as signs of loss and loss as a beginning! It's what this Tome is all about, growth from grief and loss, and the grief and loss that comes from growth. Object: a piece of paper, folded into a letter. We won't get Marius' Epic Love Note until next Tome, but letters have enough of a starring role here as is! The letters Gillenormand burns to keep Marius apart from his father; the letter that doesn't burn that sends Marius to his father's deathbed; the note from his father that becomes his talisman (until lost); the letters that Thenardier sends to beg (and extort?) money, that connect Marius to Eponine and then Cosette again; letters as proof of status, proof that " we weren't meant to be like this--" ; letters as proof of identity, as love, as warnings, as traps. Letters as connection across time and generations and class and death. Tome IV: The Idyll and the Epic Color: Red Object: The Barricade look maybe both these options are stereotypical here but they are also correct. There's a whole song and years of Tumblr jokes about everything Red symbolizes and it's all in play here. It's desire and dawn and wine and warmth and death and revolution and warning and blood and fire and flowers and love. Especially love.

And the barricade is not just the single biggest Symbolic Object in the novel, it's especially the symbol of everything together, every loaded Symbolic Object in the whole book, wagon wheels and windows and doors and letters and stones and carts and yeah, probably coffins, the way this part of the novel is everyone's storylines coming together. A heap of joy and a heap of sorrows, all coming together to fight desperately for something better. Sometimes things are iconic for a reason.

Tome V: Jean Valjean Color: White White for dawn that's not the hour of waking; for Cosette's wedding gown; for a bottle of ink; for untouched marble and stone after the writing is washed away. Object : THE CANDLESTICKS I almost went with these for Tome I but no!! they belong here! in Valjean's Book! HIS symbols, that he finally gets to pass on , and oh geez if I get going on that I will NEVER post this, but you get it anyway right? you get it. It's gotta be the candlesticks, here at the end.

Thank you ! this was very fun to think about!!

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 5.5.6 “Each in his own way, the two old men do everything so that Cosette may be happy”

Do they. DO THEY???

I mean, “in their own way” I guess, if you say that Valjean’s way is literally erasing himself out of Cosette’s family and Gillenormand’s way is trapping her in his awful world by overwhelming her with unbelievably expensive gifts.

Does Hugo know? I really, really, really can’t tell. Everything in this chapter is so BAD, does he know it’s bad?? The bad keeps piling up!!

Valjean is being very clever with his mayor’s toolkit, building up a respectable background for Cosette so that Gillenormand and/or Marius won’t refuse the wedding--because he knows they might if they found out who Cosette really is. I like that little nod to the status of misérables, especially since we don’t see any others except maybe through the extreme contrast, since these chapters are very, very far away from the milieu of the rest of the book.

But Valjean isn’t thinking about Cosette’s feelings and what it must be like for her to have this ambiguous, highly questionable story suddenly appear around her, and for her father to suddenly not be her father anymore. He thinks he doesn’t matter, and his actions on the basis of that assumption are incredibly cruel. “I’m not your real father, but I’ve always loved you as if I was” is NOT an impossible thing to say! Might’ve helped!!

But all this would be great characterization and a fascinating arc if Hugo acknowledged it was happening! Horribly, I’m never sure he’s that much more aware of Cosette as a person than Valjean is.

Cosette learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father. He was only a relative; another Fauchelevent was her real father. At any other time, this would have broken her heart. But at this ineffable hour, it was only a little shadow, a darken­ing, and she was so joyful that this cloud was quick to disappear. She had Marius. The young man came, the good old man faded away; such is life.

wtf wtf that’s not how anything works.

It’s so strange the ways the ending of the book seems to both take Valjean’s view and also doesn’t: the book surely knows that Valjean doesn’t deserve to waste away in isolation, and it surely knows Cosette loves him. But it does also keep trying to confirm Valjean’s frankly fucking abysmal view of her, that she doesn’t have enough attention span to remember the existence of more than one male family member.

What the absolute fuck.

And, like. Hugo sucks, but Cosette’s characterization doesn’t. It makes perfect sense here that Valjean’s shifting status is less momentous to her: everything is happening so fast, and is so entirely directed by the old men, that she barely knows which way is up, and she’s barreling towards a wedding that’s two months away. It makes sense that being inundated with wealth and fashion is a weakness of hers, and that she’s learned not to ask questions when things feel weird.

And yeah, relationships to parents do change when you build your own life, move out, maybe partner with somebody, and also, that doesn’t have to be LITERAL DEATH. But there may be a problem here where Valjean’s issues are way too close to Hugo’s own, and so the narrator is shifting confusedly between “Valjean’s view is wrong” and “No he is literally right about daughters marrying” without being able to find a stable place to stand.

I hate it so much.

I do appreciate the follow-up paragraph:

And then, for many long years Cosette had been used to seeing enigmas around her; everybody who has had a mysterious childhood is always ready for certain renun­ciations.

She continued, however, to say "father" to Jean Val­jean.

Yes, please, let’s have more of Cosette living with the ramifications of her past, drawing conclusions based on it, and sticking to her guns. Still wish Valjean had taken her aside and bothered to have ANY kind of conversation with her before he dropped the bomb of her new legal ID on her.

Valjean is being self-effacing and practical, and meanwhile Gillenormand is aggressively winning Cosette over with absurdly expensive cloth and the promise of fashion at a level she’s never been able to achieve before. Again, if this is meant to be part of an arc where we eventually reckon with the falseness of what’s currently seducing her, it's fantastic. Is that supposed to be what’s happening???? Unclear! We definitely definitely never get that reckoning, because Cosette’s internality somehow isn’t something this book cares about!

Marius, eerily like his grandfather, has changed who he has his opinions about but not the nature of those opinions. He says:

"The men of the Revolution are so great that they already have the prestige of centuries, like Cato and like Phocion, and each of them seems a memoire antique [antique memory].”

The men of the revolution (and, I imagine by proxy, his friends) have entered his mental category of the Dead Who Need Worshiping. He’s never altered his assumption that the dead need worshiping, or that the past is better and more worth looking at than the future. He’s still stuck in the death-like paradigm of the convent.

Again, if this is a gothic horror about how Cosette is trapped in this world, we’re doing absolutely fantastically.

Speaking of which, in the middle of a long, long speech about how much more fun everything is when you have excessive wealth and an ancien régime noble title (Hugo must know! He MUST. Mustn’t he??), Gillenormand says:

Who loves well lashes well.

Girl, RUN. Just fucking run from this fucking household, we’ve seen several times over that Marius is way, way, way too much like his grandfather already. Don’t tie a knot you can’t untie, RUN NOW.

And it really is disturbing how much of this show Gillenormand is running. His idea of a wedding is exactly what they’re going to have for their wedding--and his idea of being a husband afterwards is very, very terrible. Is that going to follow, once Cosette is drawn into the trap? Maybe it’s just his flaws on display and not Marius’s.. but these kids are not managing to do much to escape the world he’s setting up for them, and Marius has behaved like his grandfather under pressure in he past, and Valjean’s efforts to efface himself and vanish into thin air are Not Helping.

Meanwhile Mlle Gillenormand is floating around the house as a barely-living shadow, disregarded and petty, like a sign of what living in this house under a man like Gillenormand will turn you into.

WHY isn’t all this the prelude to Cosette finding herself in some kind of Lotus Eaters story, or some kind of Bluebeard story? Everything is setting her up to wake up a little ways into marriage and realize “Oh God what did I get trapped in??” and yet the story never ever gives her that moment, and as far as I can remember seems to actively discard the possibility of it.

WHY.

[cliozaur]

What the Thénardiers really needed was contraception! There are so many various themes raised in this chapter, but I will be focusing on the topic of young children because it evokes strong emotions in me. Losing children due to epidemics, selling and buying them, children losing their home and caregivers… it’s all so heartbreaking! And it’s also disheartening that this chapter primarily highlights the cynicism of the adults involved in these transactions, rather than the cruel fate of young children.

Paradoxically, being sold to Magnon turned out to be the best thing that has happened to the two little Thénardiers: they were taken care of, and “they were treated almost like “little gentlemen,”—better by their false mother than by their real one.” It seems that buying children from the Thénardiers is a good thing, after all, especially considering that Cosette, in a sense, was also “purchased” by Jean Valjean. It’s such a dubious moral situation, as it is often the case with situations involving M Thénardier! And the Thénardiers have the audacity to compare themselves to Rousseau. Well, of course, he might have been the worst father ever, but at least he did some good things in his life, unlike the Thénardiers.

After Magnon, her roommate Mamselle Miss, and other residents are arrested by the police, no one seems to care about what will happen to children left behind. At least, Magnon, anticipating such a situation, left an address where the boys could seek help (who is M. Barge? Why not M. Gillenormand?), but the cobbler who handed the boys the paper with the address did not seem to care enough to take them there. And, of course, they lost the piece of paper: “his benumbed little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a very good hold on the paper.” I just can’t… I am not even sure that the boys were able to read what was written on it. It brings us back to the theme from the gamin digression—how poor children are often seen as dispensable.