#lm 1.7.8

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I.vii.8 Entrée De Faveur

Translations of Shame: Wraxall has somehow managed to shorten a very short title, transforming it into "Inside The Court".

Admission by Favor: Wilbour (w/ regional spelling difference), Walton

Inside The Court: Wraxall

An Entrance By Favor: Hapgood

Admission by Privilege: Denny, FMA

Preferential Admission: Rose

Privileged Access: Donougher

[cliozaur]

The one from which we discover that Valjean was involved in investments in regional industry. He “supported with his credit and his funds the linen factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Frévent, and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche.” So, It’s no surprise that the regions’ dignitaries know the name of M. Madeleine. However, he himself seems to be dissociating from his new name, and Hugo emphasizes this, saying, ”The unhappy man whose history we are relating” dropping any name for Valjean, and from this point until the end of the chapter, Hugo refers to Valjean only as “he.” All his actions, except for leaving the court, appear as if unconscious, Valjean seems to act against his will, driven by a soul-buying contract. A doorknob looking at him with an eye of a tiger adds an eerie touch – Javert, is it you there? ­

[dolphin1812]

The symbols of Valjean’s internal crisis are surprisingly consistent given his changing location. He ponders his options in a place with this:

“A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a table with a green cloth.”

These aren’t the bishop’s candlesticks, of course, but the illumination they provide is likely similar. It’s also interesting that there are always two candles. Although candles are linked to light/goodness (through the bishop and their function), the use of two each time hints at a binary or a duality. While we normally see this with light versus darkness or good versus evil, it also alludes to the binary options in Valjean’s choices: he can remain a criminal or become an honest man; he can preserve his honesty and condemn himself or he can watch someone else be condemned in his place and maintain his lifestyle. 

I also love the descriptions of his turmoil in this chapter. They’re so vivid. The attention to his sweat and feelings of coldness, as well as all that he’s not conscious of, really convey his fear, stress, and confusion, both from facing this horrible decision and from not sleeping or eating beforehand. His struggle to understand what’s going on also calls to mind previous instances of similar confusion, particularly the night he robs the bishop and the day that follows.

The animal comparison in this chapter is especially intriguing in light of that robbery as well. When he jumped over the wall of the bishop’s garden as he fled, he was described as “a tiger.” Here, though:

“He re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught sight of was the knob of the door. This knob, which was round and of polished brass, shone like a terrible star for him. He gazed at it as a lamb might gaze into the eye of a tiger.”

The comparison of Valjean to a lamb, in contrast to the “tiger” of the doorknob, positions him as the gentle prey faced by a vicious predator, indicating how the criminal justice system threatens his life. However, given previous connections between Valjean and tigers, it also serves to distance him from the person he once was. Of course, Valjean was sympathetic then as well, but he also would have chosen flight over turning himself in. The change to a lamb indicates in advance that he will eventually enter the courtroom. Additionally, the comparison to a lamb stresses his gentleness and kindness, reminding the reader of exactly who is being condemned. To the judges, his past marks him as a criminal forever, but we know that his “crime” was trivial and that he’s not inherently horrible or dangerous; in fact, he’s incredibly compassionate and generous.

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - An Entrance by Favor, LM 1.7.8 ( Les Miserables 1967)

A few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a table with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just quitted him still rang in his ears: “Monsieur, you are now in the council-chamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the President’s chair.” These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.

The usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly at the moment when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain. He was in the very place where the judges deliberated and condemned. With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment, where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring with his name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing. He stared at the wall, then he looked at himself, wondering that it should be that chamber and that it should be he.

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 1.7.8 ‘Admission by favor’

This chapter is so beautifully done. This description of dissociation and depersonalization--the astonishment that he can possibly be in this place, and that this person here can be him--feels incredibly well-observed. And Valjean thinks he feels nothing. It’s so real.

His claims that no one is compelling him and that he’s perfectly in control are running out. He can’t pretend anymore to himself that he’s taking no risks today.

Like the old Jean Valjean, he just turns and runs until he's exhausted. Unlike the old Jean Valjean, he catches himself and brings himself back. The doorknob looks like a star and like a tiger, and he grasps it anyway.

The writing of this chapter is amazing.

I wonder what the meaning of the date is? In a literal sense, it’s really pretty funny--everybody accidentally writes the old year when they date things every January, and it’s got to have been much, much harder to internalize a whole new system of months. Of course people were writing “year II” but also “June.” (It’s SUCH a good worldbuilding thing.)

But what is it doing in this chapter? My best guess is that it's something about the dislocation people were feeling about time itself, and trying to keep up with the new paradigms. The big dislocations of history show up in little people’s insignificant moments of confusion.

I don’t know, I want to think more about whether there’s some particular reason that tiny mistake resulting from a gigantic upheaval comes up here in particular.

[fremedon]

Brickclub Retrobricking 1.7.7, “The Traveller on Arrival Makes Sure of Being Able to Leave” and 1.7.8, “Privileged Access”

The courthouse is being renovated and the courts have been temporarily moved to the prefecture—which, to make sure all the social authorities are represented, was the Bishop’s palace before the Revolution. The mention of a bishop—if one whose palace is being put to a worse use than Myriel’s—obviously reminds us of Valjean’s moral crossroad, but I am also reminded that Bishop Myriel’s father was a superior court judge in the ancien regime, who hoped to have his son inherit his position. From the very first page of the book, bishops and the legal system have been positioned in a kind of opposition—as, in fact, we’ll see again in the introduction of Bossuet, who is aligned with the bishop through his story function as well as his nickname, and whose first action in the story is to renounce his legal career.

The infanticide trial, just concluded as Valjean enters, is a dark mirror for Fantine--a reminder she could also have abandoned Cosette; and a reminder that, unlike Tholomyès, she probably would have faced consequences for it. (And, yeah, this aside really does read differently after reading *Champavert*.)

The lawyer Valjean asks for directions—because it is dark enough in the antechamber that he feels safe to approach—says of Champmathieu, “Now there’s someone who looks like a villain! Just for having a face like that, I’d clap him in chains!” And *that*, boys and girls, is why eyewitness identification is wildly inaccurate and super racist!

After the usher turns Valjean away from the courtroom because there are no seats left—the last of the long series of external obstacles—we are told “He walked with his head bowed, crossed the antechamber, and slowly descending the staircase as though hesitating at every step. He was probably debating with himself.” I love how the “as though” and, even more, the “probably” pull us back into the conceit that this is an account assembled from sources—the hedging, paradoxically, presents it as truer.

After this, the only barriers to Valjean’s entering the courtroom are internal, but they still fill another whole chapter—his hesitation, and then the last and most dramatic of the moments where that deliberate hesitation and automatic movement come into conflict, as he walks right back out of the judge’s chamber, down the hall, fleeing “as if he were being chased,” and finally retraces his steps “as if someone had caught up with him as he fled and was bringing him back.” Or as if, as he says to Marius at the end of the book, he has himself by the collar.

(I kind of want to see an adaptation now with a Valjean who’s a good enough physical comedian to play Valjean literally and physically struggling with himself without the comedy. . .aaand now I’m imagining Peter Sellers as Valjean and it’s not actually terrible but it sure is weird.

Though. If we’re talking about living actors who could still play the part, man I still want to see Ron Perlman play Valjean. He could play this scene exactly as it’s written and make it *riveting.*)

Other details:

—Madeleine has also funded or extended credit to industries in other towns in the area. I wonder what happens to those after he’s gone? —The judge’s chamber is described in one sentence as “the very place where the judges deliberate and reach a verdict” and in the next as “this quiet and forbidding room where so many lives had been destroyed.” —What’s the significance of the Pache letter on the courtroom wall, do we think? It’s an example of magistrates being dragged from a position of official power and into the grinder of the legal system. The mistaken date—mixing the Republican and Gregorian calendars—is a nice bit of historical color, but also strikes me as significant: it’s a relic of someone living at once in the past and the present (or even the past and the future, given republic = future = hope). It’s a reminder of the ways time slips in this book, and the power contained in that slippage. Valjean is about to kill one self and accept death for the other, and after that death is deferred he will be untouchable until the task he’s about to take on is complete.

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[kochi933]

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Brick Club 1.7.8 “Admission By Privilege”

I love Hugo’s use of titles in this section, as Valjean bounces between identities and liminal space. Valjean still doesn’t get a proper name in this chapter via narration: Hugo only calls him “he,” never “Valjean” or “Madeleine.” But he’s Madeleine to the judge and to the community. It’s the privilege of this name never actually written in the narration of this chapter that allows him to stay in this weird place of indecision, that allows him to stop and think alone.

For someone who pays so much attention to details and things, Valjean never seems to be “aware” of his celebrity. He’s not aware of it here, or later in Paris as Fauchelevent. It’s like a weird spectrum. You have Fantine, who’s so trusting and off in her own world that she’s not really aware of a lot of things. Then you have Valjean, who’s so preoccupied with being a certain level of good, and with keeping his head down, that he doesn’t notice things like his celebrity status in the community. Then you have Enjolras, who is highly aware of everything and everyone, can keep lists and tallies of all sorts of things in his head, and is very aware of all the goings-on around him.

Anyway, it is revealed here that Madeleine has created this unconscious web of industry support and mutual aid across the counties. I love that Hugo throws this in here because it goes on to establish three things: why everyone reacts so intensely when he reveals his identity in the courtroom, why everyone everywhere seems to venerate him more than other normal political figures, and the insinuation later that with the crumbling of M-sur-M after his departure, maybe other industries weakened a little as well.

“He was at the very place where the judges deliberate and decide.” Fuck subtext, says Victor Hugo. But actually, I love this. Madeleine has spent the last 8 years being a problem-solver for his community. Saving people from fires, creating jobs, changing systems, funding hospitals and shelters and schools, being a peacemaker and a sort of local judge for minor conflicts. He has risen from a stranger to a beloved and respected community figure. But now he has risen--or perhaps fallen--to the level of the judge. The last chapter had that line about sentences pronounced in advance. This feels like a weird twist on that. Valjean knows what the outcome will be of whatever choice he makes. If he watches the court case and then goes home, he knows what the sentence will be. If he reveals his identity to the court, he knows what the sentence will be. Both sentences, in this case, are pronounced in advance. Again a liminal space. Now it’s up to him to “deliberate and decide” which path he will take.

“He had eaten nothing for more than twenty-four hours...” Okay I know we pointed this out way back, but I swear to god no one eats or sleeps in this book. I’m genuinely thinking about noting in my post when there’s anything about eating or sleeping or specifically not doing either of those things, because both of those things are so important to being a Functioning Person and seem like pretty obvious contributors to a lot of the problems. But also I think it’s important to note because the people who will be able to/allowed to eat and sleep well are going to be of a markedly different class to those who can’t.

The “mistake” in the autographed letter is due to the French Republican calendar. As far as I can tell, it should have been labeled “Prairial” instead of June. Jean-Nicolas Pache was mayor of Paris from 1793-1794. He was a Girondist, but in 1793 he submitted a petition to the Convention for 22 Girondists to be removed from office; the Commune later submitted those same names to the Convention with 12,000 signatures. Pache and Chaumette led the Insurrection of 31 May-2 June 1793, during which they and about 20,000 others marched on the Convention. The insurrection failed, but it’s considered a major event of the French Revolution.

This whole next section is a mirror to Valjean’s night in Myriel’s house. Valjean’s paralytic fear as he stares at the doorknob is reminiscent of his paralysis and small panic attack at the screeching of the hinge when he pushed Myriel’s door. He then turns and runs “as if pursued,” an echo of his fleeing through the window with the silver. Then when he stops in the corridor, thinks, and then decides to return, Hugo narrates that “He walked slowly and as if overwhelmed. It was as though he had been caught in flight and brought back.” Again, a parallel to the gendarmes bringing him back to the bishop’s house. Valjean doesn’t literally invoke the bishop in this section like he did back in 1.7.3, but this seems to be like an unconscious invocation of him. He’s quietly, unconsciously reenacting the moments where his criminal instincts took over and then the moment he was brought back, just before his soul was “bought for god.”

“Suddenly, without himself knowing how, he found himself near the door...” More unconscious actions here, similar to his sitting up in bed in Myriel’s house or taking the tilbury a few chapters ago. So many of Valjean’s important “first steps” forward seem to be done unconsciously, when he still thinks he’s trying to make a decision.

[pilferingapples]

Les Mis 365 retro blogging 1.7.8, 1.7.9

ALL RIGHT Time to get through this trial!

1.7.8

Honestly, not a lot to say about this chapter, which is distressingly often the case in chapters where Things Happen.

I was struck by the mention of the lamps in the hall and all. And-- okay, I get that Hugo is mentioning lighting so much because Light Symbolism is a major engine component in this story, but it's also really bringing in the physical atmosphere of the place for me-- the reminder that it is night here, and pre- electric lighting, and how much that changes the actual FEELING of a gathering, and suddenly it's all just really visceral for me.  Which, you know, is not so awesome given that we're in a pretty nasty place, but I can see that brass doorknob EXACTLY. Thanks, Hugo. Thanks BUNCHES.

1.7.9

The whole "God was absent" at Valjean's trial thing is so darn blatant , it shouldn't hit me so hard, but it totally does. If the difference between Valjean's trial and Champmathieu's is that God is present here, can it be taken that God is present in the acting agent of Valjean himself, and that he's thereby in fact being given the chance to correct the wrong that was done against him by being here-- with, of course, the considerable caveat that said wrong is actually being threatened against someone who's not technically Valjean himself? But then part of the point here seems to be that such details of form mostly obscure the true nature of social ills. Hmm.  

On a COMPLETELY different note: THE PROSECUTOR JUST BLAMED ROMANTIC LITERATURE FOR THIS WHOLE  CASE. Hugo, you meta- slinging so-and-so. And then Hugo turns right around and accuses NON-Romantic lit (Theramene's speech is from Racine)  as being effectively nothing more than part of the legal argot he also mocks in these chapters.

...Which, geez, now that I type it out, is actually a really excellent point? We've established that this whole court scene is mostly theater; by associating it with classical tragedy (Beloved of the Bourgeoisie!) , Hugo's saying that (a) it's not even GOOD theater, (b) it's mostly serving to reward and uphold the prejudice of the powerful classes  (c) it's a relic of prior eras that needs to be thrown over to allow for something less stylized and more human. You know, I WAS gonna roll my eyes at Hugo and go all DUDE HERNANI WAS 30 YEARS AGO YOU WON IT'S COOL but, you know, I TAKE IT BACK. That is actually a pretty epic burn!

[eirenical]

Les Mis 1.7.7 (The Traveller on His Arrival Takes Precautions For Departure) & 1.7.8 (An Entrance by Favor)

I'm doing these in one shot because I honestly don't have anything new to say about them that I didn't already say two chapters ago.

I continue to feel really, really awful for Valjean.  He's in a terrible situation where no choice that he makes will bring him any peace.  He either turns himself in and in so doing brings his worst nightmare down upon himself with his own two hands (condemning an entire region along with him), or he does nothing and lets an innocent man go to prison and has to live with the guilt of that his entire life.  And his struggle is monumental -- you can see it in the description of his physical state.  He's practically made himself ill from stress.  And by the time he finally convinces himself to walk through that door, he's completely dissociated himself from what's going on -- it's almost as though he's already put his soul in prison.

It's tragic and awful and is it bad that I just want to cuddle him through this?  I especially hate that Hugo keeps dangling that hope in front of him -- the case is over, the case has already resumed, there are no more seats, and so on and so on.  It's as if he's just raising Valjean's hopes over and over and over again... just to dash them one more time.  And it's awful.  :(

(On a side note, I always love the descriptions of how Valjean's charity and goodness have raised up not only his own town, but other towns around him.  I love the contrast between how good he is by those accolades... and how human he is in his struggle with this moral dilemma.  It's a beautiful contrast.  And makes me feel about like he's the goose that laid the golden egg -- so long as he's there, the town and region will prosper.  The minute he's gone, everything falls to ruin.  There's some poetic justice in that, I think.  ^_^)