#jean valjean

[little-linda]

@lesbian-thesbian your last chapter? ❤️❤️

Valjean tying Javert’s hair for @sneez !

[dis-astre]

the fact that they changed the lyrics de sous les étoiles (stars) and got rid of:

"je ne faiblirait pas/tant qu'il ne sera pas/à genoux devant moi" (I won't weaken until he's on his knees before me)

for

"je le poursuivrais/tant qu'il ne sera pas/repris et condamné" (i will chase him until he's taken and condemn)

is CRIMINAL.

[jazzyjuno]

an ultime for my monthly post

[bam-bo0zle]

teehee

[little-linda]

The Seine one 😭😭😭😭😭❤️

old men having a brat summer!!

[creamyakult]

🍞🥖🐻🐱

[demon4dilfs]

[ratmanrulerofrodents]

HAPPY COMING OUT DAY (today jean valjean came out to marius as an ex-convict)

[24601orwhatever]

The way he looks at her with all the love in the world and the sparkle in his eyes that gradually disappear oh my god

[peachcat14]

hey did you know that at the end of the new french production of les mis, during the last number in heaven, javert is there with all the others, next to jean valjean, with gavroche in between the two and both of them holding his tiny hands? anyways i'm cool and fine and normal about all of this

[winters-rose-daughterofcain]

Oh you think I'm autistic now? You haven't seen me talk about my little french musical and the brick it came from I can get so, so much worse.

[i-dreamed-i-had-a-son]

A thousand times yes! This gave me so much to think about. Specifically, your point about how his name represents his old self/identity is very interesting to me, given what we see from him with Cosette towards the end of the novel.

I find it striking that Valjean tells Cosette to refer to him as "Monsieur Jean," out of all things. It makes sense that, because of his conversation with Marius and their belief that he must be cut out of Cosette's life, he wouldn't allow her to call him "Father." And, even though he literally has a full, sobbing breakdown in front of Marius when it seems like Cosette will find out about his past (the only time we see him cry in front of someone else, I'm pretty sure?), he doesn't go by Fauchelevent to her. Cosette likely would've found that less unusual, since we see her refer to him as "my father Fauchelevent" quite naturally, and it would make sense that Valjean would want to minimize her suspicions. But his great denied desire, as he expresses to Marius, is to be a part of a family; that's exactly what he felt he couldn't do as Fauchelevent. Keeping that name would mean he would always be worried that "the mask would suddenly be torn away," and he would be driven out as a monster. He wants to be accepted and loved for who he truly is, and while this isn't by any means complete honesty, in confessing to Marius and dropping the alias with Cosette, maybe he feels a little closer to what he's longed for.

There's also the social and metatextual significance of having Cosette call him "Monsieur Jean." First, in dropping his alias (which supplied Cosette's maiden name), he further severs any perceptible social tie between the two of them. "Jean," as you mentioned above, is a homonym of gens, which is fitting, since JVJ views himself as having become "just another person" to Cosette. And yet, calling him by his first name indicates some level of familiarity; social norms at the time meant that formal address used the last name. "Monsieur Jean" is oddly straddling the line between distant and personal (as Valjean himself is attempting to do).

Maybe most interesting of all is that, as many have noticed, Hugo almost exclusively refers to JVJ by his full name, Jean Valjean. This is one of the only instances in which the last name is dropped, which is part of why it stood out so much on my readthrough. It feels noticably more intimate, but also incomplete. And I think it ties into what (as you mentioned above) his last name means: "voilà Jean/gens": "behold the man." He's not ready for Cosette to know the full truth about who he is, so narratively, it's fitting that the withheld last name (which would allow her to learn about his past) is one which itself references a full and raw perception. It was first used of the suffering Christ, naked and humiliated and condemned and innocent; Valjean, in his fear and self-loathing, does not allow that revelation of himself.

Les Mis Hidden Name Meanings: Jean Valjean

Every Les Mis character’s name is either a pun or has some deep symbolic meaning– or both at once! Jean Valjean’s name has a ton of layers so let’s dive in.

When we’re first introduced to him, Hugo tells us that his name is quote “a contraction of voilà Jean, or “here is Jean.”” We’re told that he was named after his father, and that his family name probably began as a nickname.

The word “Jean” in french sounds like the word “gens,” which means “people.” So his last name is a pun meant to make you think “viola les gens”/ “here are people.”

The most obvious layer to his name is that Jean Valjean is basically John Doe. He is the anonymous Everyman. His sister’s name is Jeanne, so she’s basically Jane Doe. They aren’t special or exceptional or unusual; they’re just behold! The regular people.

In fact his name is so common-sounding that it's a plot point. Champmathieu, the man who is mistaken for Jean Valjean, has a name that the police connect with his. Javert theorizes that "Champ" is a version of "Jean" in a specific accent, while Mathieu was actually Jean Valjean's sister's maiden name. ("Champ" is also the French word for "field.") The fact that Jean Valjean is a peasant everyman makes it easy for others in his position to be conflated with him.

But the other layer is that this is all an elaborate pun biblical reference!

When Pontius Pilate presents a bound Jesus Christ to the crowd before his crucifixion, he says the words “ecce homo” or “Here is the man!”/”behold the man!”

“Voila Jean” or “here is Jean!”/”behold Jean!” is meant to be a reference to that.

During his death scene Jean Voila-Jean even references the “Ecce homo” line explicitly, gesturing at a crucifix and saying:

“Voilà le grand martyr.”

Which Isabel Hapgood translates as “behold the great martyr.”

At another point in the same scene Marius says to Cosette:

“He has sacrificed himself. Viola l’Homme. Behold the man.”

But more references to that biblical moment appear throughout the novel; Jean Valjean is associated with it constantly, all the time. It’s one of his defining biblical allusions. He’ll be trying to live anonymously, or under an alias– and then suddenly his true name and criminal past will be revealed, he’ll be revealed to be ‘the man,’ and some great horrible act of martyrdom will follow.

Sometimes Jean Valjean is the one revealing his own identity, but sometimes Inspector Javert is put into the role of Pontius Pilate. Javert himself explicitly makes that comparison– Jean Valjean as Jesus, Javert as Pontius Pilate– when he’s contemplating suicide.

And this ties into one of the largest differences between the book and the stage musical.

In the musical, “prisoner 24601” is the name that represents Jean Valjean’s dehumanization–while “Jean Valjean” is the name he uses while standing up for his own humanity. He will be called 24601, and proudly declare that “my name is Jean Valjean” to assert he’s still a person.

And while this is a great storytelling choice, it’s almost the opposite of how the name “Jean Valjean” is handled in the book.

Because in the book…. Jean Valjean IS the name that dehumanizes him. Jean Valjean is the name that he’s running from. The name that Javert uses when he’s insulting him, the name that bigots use when they’re threatening him, the name that ignorant people use when they’re mocking him – it’s not 24601, it’s Jean Valjean.

And there’s a special kind of agony to that.

The name that is being used to torture, humiliate, and dehumanize him isn’t 24601– it’s his name.

He thinks of it as a “fatal name,” as a punishment. Living under that name is living in hell. When Jean Valjean is living under one of his aliases, concealing his identity, he thinks:

That which he had always feared most of all in his hours of self-communion, during his sleepless nights, was to ever hear that name {jean Valjean] pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would be the end of all things for him; that on the day when that name made its reappearance it would cause his new life to vanish from about him, and—who knows?—perhaps even his new soul from within him.

It’s no wonder that he ends up internalizing the way society views him, and developing so much fear and hatred of himself. He’s grown to see his name as just….well, ecce homo, behold the man. His name is just the two words people say before they violently punish him.

Names and namelessness are a major theme in Les Mis, and he’s the character who has the most complex relationship with his own names. He has a legal name, but it’s used to torture him, and he has a series of false names he uses to escape torture.

If I were to describe Jean Valjean– one of the most complex characters in all of literature, in one word, that word would be “grief.”

The criminal justice system takes everything from him, including things he wasn’t aware he was able to lose. His name, the last connection he had to his family and his old identity, gets warped into this thing needs to view with fear and horror. The thing society despises isn’t 24601, isn’t a number they’ve placed on him – the thing they despise is Jean Valjean, some intrinsic inherent part of himself. He isn’t hated for what he did, he’s hated for what he is, and that is something he can never escape.

{But speaking of complexity we’ve actually barely scratched the surface of how Jean Valjean reacts to names, because he spends most of the novel living under a series of nicknames aliases. And guess what! Each of these names also has some elaborate symbolic meaning! If you’re interested in more posts covering his different aliases, feel free to leave a comment in the replies!}

[thanks for reading! For more in-depth analysis, check out the @lesmisletters readalong or join our discord server!]

[genderfeel]

sublime

[mellosghosts]

in my heart this joke is in the movie, but unfortunately im afraid only we, hughjackmaniacs, would get it 🥀

[fluentisonus]

He added, after a pause: “Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.”

Les Misérables, Volume I / Book V / Chapter III, trans. Hapgood

[littledozerdraws]

1978 Valvert 💐