#lm 3.8.20

[saints-and-poets-maybe]

[secretmellowblog]

Valjean burning himself with the hot poker always reminds me of the second half of this comic:

[ineffable-gallimaufry]

it's so funny that both jvj's coolest moment (sticking a red hot poker into his arm for the intimidation factor with a straight face) and javert's coolest moment ("would you like my hat?") are in the same chapter and then they cut the chapter from almost every adaptation that i've seen

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - The Trap, LM 3.8.20 (Les Miserables 1972)

“You are children,” said Thénardier, “we are losing time. The police are on our heels.” “Well,” said the ruffians, “let’s draw lots to see who shall go down first.” Thénardier exclaimed:— “Are you mad! Are you crazy! What a pack of boobies! You want to waste time, do you? Draw lots, do you? By a wet finger, by a short straw! With written names! Thrown into a hat!—” “Would you like my hat?” cried a voice on the threshold. All wheeled round. It was Javert. He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a smile.

[cliozaur]

Trap

by Petr Pinkisevich

[dolphin1812]

@cliozaur included a wonderful image of the giant key used as a weapon in their post! The proportions are hilarious. (There's great analysis there, too, so please check it out!)

Patron Minette is a troupe, but not a well-organized one (at least, when Jondrette/Thénardier is in charge). Their 'ambush' begins with this:

"“Where is Montparnasse?”

“The young principal actor stopped to chat with your girl.”"

The lead didn't bother to show up! He got distracted! And by the time they're having this conversation, M Leblanc/Jean Valjean can tell something's wrong, so they can't stall until Montparnasse appears. They have to put on a show without their principal actor, which isn't a great starting point.

I love how Jean Valjean is surprised but not scared, because he knows his strength can get him out of this. @secretmellowblog has a great (and funny) post about his cleverness here, too, with his politeness and dishonesty being both strategic and effective compared to Thénardier's. Still, the reason for his calm is devastating:

"“You are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending it.""

He's able to remain calm in part because he's so used to living with constant stress that these kinds of emergencies are almost easier (as they are familiar) to deal with, but he's also calm because he doesn't value his life and he knows that Cosette is safe. He does more harm to himself than the ambushers do to him, and while it is an effective way of scaring and shocking them, it illustrates his unfortunate acceptance of martyrdom, too. His life only has value to him through Cosette, and although it's wonderful to see how much happier he's been with their love as part of his life, his lack of self-worth remains concerning. Thénardier is far from his equal in strength and wit, and that's also a big part of why this ambush is a mess, but "Valjean can't be hurt because he doesn't care what's done to him" is a horrible reason for an ambush to fail (from the perspective of caring about the characters - unfortunately, it's good writing, because his lack of self-worth is a very consistent aspect of his character).

And of course there's the shocking turn of this chapter: the mysterious man and M Jondrette are actually Jean Valjean and M Thénardier! (The Jean Valjean twists are rarely surprising because he's always just a sad strong man and he's often described by others, but I will give Hugo credit for Thénardier being less obvious, if still quite recognizable). But now Marius is having a crisis! Trapped between honoring his father and saving the man he respects for being the father of his love, he doesn't have a clear path that would satisfy him personally, nor is he going to be decisive in the way Javert told him to be. In a way, his issue stems once again from his idolization of people. His father was a good person overall, but even a good person can misjudge someone! His intention (help the person who saved his life) was good when he made this demand of his son, but he didn't really know Thénardier; in fact, their entire interaction was a lie, with Thénardier saving him by accident and really having tried to rob him. Marius, however, can't see his father as someone with limitations, nor can he surrender his notions of honor. Consequently, he can't fully process that abandoning his obligation to Thénardier would be the best course of action. He's definitely distressed by his behavior (and understandably so), but in a way that leads to crisis and nearly 'madness,' not to a change of heart.

Thénardier himself reveals a lot about his personality with how he reads Jean Valjean. Seeing his charity as part of a 'goody-goody air' and his earlier poor dress as an attempt at manipulating people through pity highlights his own scheming nature and cynicism, as he can't imagine anyone having a genuine commitment to charity. To him, the practice must be inherently paternalistic, a way to bolster one's own status or feel good about oneself without really giving that much (see his critique of bringing a too-large coat and two blankets alone). And he has a point about the limitations! Those items really can only do so much to help his family! And Valjean's charity does have its problems! As Fauchelevent pointed out, he maintains a distant sort of benevolence, and while he doesn't mean to be paternalistic (he's trying to live up to his image of a good person and is distant to stay safe, and he's also not great at social interactions), that he comes across that way is an unintended consequence of his avoidance of relationships with those he helps. The Thénardiers aren't a great example of this - as the Jondrettes, he'd just met them - but there's still some truth there. There just isn't malice or self-interest in the way that Thénardier assumes there is.

Here, rather than use class stereotypes to his advantage, Thénardier reveals a sense of class entitlement:

"Just see here, Mister millionnaire: I have been a solid man, I have held a license, I have been an elector, I am a bourgeois, that I am! And it’s quite possible that you are not!”"

Having been bourgeois once, it hurts him to lose that status, and not just for the painful poverty that he now lives in. Part of his status seems to have been political ("an elector"), but it was also about being "above" others. From his interaction with Valjean at the inn in Montfermeil, he suspects that he's not who he claims to be (which is true, but he feels angry about this in a class-based way). He saw Valjean as a possible criminal who had gotten rich through crime, and who was hiding his wealth because of its suspect origins. His hatred of Jean Valjean, then, comes from the belief that he was a poor man who came to live above his class (the opposite of what's happened to him) and likely from jealousy, as he's better at crime than he is (and Thénardier has been scheming since he was an innkeeper, so even if he wasn't an actual criminal then, he's always been close enough to recognize the skills involved. In fact, as a bourgeois, he simply used these skills in a more socially acceptable way, employing them to 'defend' his business from 'unsavory' customers like Valjean).

On a brighter(?) note, Javert's entrance at the end of this chapter is amazing. He's so dramatic! But Javert showing up is also never a good thing, and everyone here (except Marius) has very good reason to fear the police, and sympathetic reasons, too. Jean Valjean is the most obvious, but even the Thénardiers are just as likely to be arrested for circumstances beyond their control (poverty) as they are for violence, and the less-guilty Thénardiers (Mme Thénardier and, even more so, her daughters) would be especially vulnerable to imprisonment. She's ill, Azelma is injured, and Éponine seems to be the one supporting the family financially a lot of the time (or at least the one going out and searching for money). Since we're seeing things from Marius' perspective, Javert can seem almost 'cool' (and he's funny on his own anyways). But Javert only cares to enforce the status quo, which is cruel to everyone in this room of the Gorbeau House regardless of how they behave.

[lesbianmariuspontmercy]

víctor hugo is like yeah this character must choose between the past (his bonapartist father) and his future (this beautiful woman). this doesn’t mean anything else btw.

[coquelicoq]

Mais comme il allait enjamber, Bigrenaille le saisit rudement au collet. —Non pas, dis donc, vieux farceur! après nous! —Après nous! hurlèrent les bandits. —Vous êtes des enfants, dit Thénardier, nous perdons le temps. Les railles sont sur nos talons. —Eh bien, dit un des bandits, tirons au sort à qui passera le premier. Thénardier s'exclama: —Êtes-vous fous! êtes-vous toqués! en voilà-t-il un tas de jobards! perdre le temps, n'est-ce pas? tirer au sort, n'est-ce pas? au doigt mouillé! à la courte paille! écrire nos noms! les mettre dans un bonnet!… —Voulez-vous mon chapeau? cria une voix du seuil de la porte. Tous se retournèrent. C'était Javert. Il tenait son chapeau à la main, et le tendait en souriant. (III, 8, XX, p. 112)

NOT JAVERT WITH THE SNARKY QUIP ENTRANCE KLAJSDFHASD

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 3.8.20 ‘The Ambuscade’

Three of the four members of Patron-Minette arrive, and the action begins.

I want there to be some symbolism with these four quadrants of crime, only one of whom isn’t here today--the three that are here are the ones much more clearly connected with politics.

Is this about which kinds of crime supported Napoleon III? Political assassination, the secret police, and propaganda showed up today, but greedy idleness had better things to do?

We also keep missing the number four: Valjean is fighting nine figures; there are three members of Patron Minette. The doom of four hasn’t fallen.

Thenardier takes off the mask and says what he really feels, and it’s hateful and vicious and nonsensical, and I find it fascinating.

I’m particularly struck by the way he believes Cosette was the goose that laid the golden egg, and Valjean took that away from him. He’s SO sharp, generally, about figuring out where money is coming from--but it’s never occurred to him that there was no infinite sum of money to be gained from having her? How was a starving child going to make his fortune?

But maybe that makes sense. After all, Valjean wanted her enough to pay for her, and Valjean is clever. Thenardier can’t comprehend sentiment, so the only explanation for spending fifteen hundred francs on a child must be that the child is worth more than that.

And, of course--symbolically, he’s not really wrong. He wouldn’t be the first character who was smart enough to grasp how the magic system of this book functions without being able to use it properly.

Marius shuddered at that reproach of ingratitude flung at his father, and which he was on the point of justifying so fatally.

Fuck Gillenormand. He instilled that terror of ingratitude so deeply in Marius that it outweighs all other logic. His horror that Thenardier thinks Colonel Pontmercy forgot him outweighs all other considerations.

Marius, seeing the painting:

it was not now the sign of the Montfermeil inn, it was a resurrection; in it a tomb half opened, from it a phantom arose. Marius heard his heart ring in his temples, he had the cannon of Waterloo sounding in his ears; his bleeding father dimly painted upon this dusky panel startled him, and it seemed to him that that shapeless shadow was gazing steadily upon him.”

That passage in the convent really is the entire key to Marius’s character, isn’t it. This might be the fifth post I’ve quoted it in, but here it is again:

“Ingrates!” says the garment, “I protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me?” “I have just come from the deep sea,” says the fish. “I have been a rose,” says the perfume. “I have loved you,” says the corpse. “I have civilized you,” says the convent.

To this there is but one reply: “In former days.”

This is literally ‘“I have loved you,” says the corpse,’ but Marius never learned the answer that puts it to rest.

For, I think, the first time in this book, we see Valjean in combat. He’s very good at it, there are just too many of them.

But also:

Thus, master of the latter and mastered by the former, crushing those below him and suffocating under those above him, vainly endeavouring to shake off all the violence and blows which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc disappeared under the horrible group of the bandits,

This is a hint that Marius lacks the information to grasp--this crush of men is the actual situation Georges was in when Thenardier found him. Valjean is the real father figure for him here, but he won’t recognize that until more than a year from now, when Valjean is dying.

“It is all the same," muttered, with the voice of a ventriloquist, the masked man who had the big key, "he is an old rough.”

God, Claquesous is so extremely police. He sounds like Javert here.

Valjean is incredibly impressive outsmarting and then intimidating them, and also--WHY? He could have fended them off with the poker without hurting them and gotten away. Sure, they might have followed, but he could have spent all night losing them??

He didn’t fear death, but what about COSETTE?? What would she do if he died? I don’t really understand why he gave up fighting when he did. Sure it’s a symbolic victory. But it could easily have been an actual one? Without hurting anyone?

And Marius.

Honestly, I find it kind of hard to have much sympathy for the dilemma he thinks he has in this scene. Like, I get his internal logic and issues, but the thing he thinks he’s serving is a bad thing that shouldn’t be served, and actual living people are at stake. I have sympathy for his screwed-up values and the hole in his heart, but I find him wrong-headed here from first to last.

And I find it particularly unsettling how relieved he is when he thinks Cosette is on her way. Like he’ll get to be the hero when she comes, like his getting to save her is more important to him than her being safe.

[secretmellowblog]

The moments where other criminals try (and fail) to threaten Jean Valjean are fascinating, because we get a glimpse of how deeply Valjean was altered by prison— how much nineteen years of prolonged torture really has made him into a “formidable” “dangerous” criminal.

If he weren’t a shy gentle compassionate person who just wants to be left alone in peace with his daughter, he could easily be the most deadly man in Paris. He’s strong, he’s cunning, he has decades of knowledge about how to evade police and a wealth of hidden tools at his disposal, he’s highly skilled at deception, he can fend off gangs of men at once even while unarmed and has perfect aim with a gun; he could do so much harm if he decided to, but he doesn’t.

I love how Jean Valjean seems to view Patron-minette’s affiliates as… amateurs? They’re bad criminals in that they’re bad at being criminals. When Montparnasse attempts to rob him, and when Patron Minette/Thenardier ambush him, Jean Valjean speaks to them with lofty pity and kinda implies he thinks they do not really understand how to commit crimes. He explains the galleys to Montparnasse like he’s lecturing a silly misbehaving child.

When he burns himself with the hot chisel, the implication is: “I spent nineteen years in a prison where I was beaten and tortured every day, and you’re naive and inexperienced enough to think you can hurt me with a single scrap of metal you’ve heated up in a fireplace. You poor things. Don’t be afraid of me because I’m certainly not afraid of you <3”.

Compared to Jean Valjean, Patron-minette and their affiliates really are kinda just …play-acting. I think that’s part of why they get all those comparisons to theater and Vaudeville. Thenardier is a failed innkeeper puffing himself up as the most dangerous and clever criminal mastermind in Paris. But Jean Valjean actually has decades of experience living in “the criminal underworld” of the galleys, and as a result he has more deeply traumatizing knowledge and experience than Thenardier can even begin to imagine. Thenardier fails at torturing Valjean because Thenardier does not have the experience to even start to imagine the torture Valjean has already survived. As I mentioned before, Valjean has all the skills and knowledge that Thenardier wants to have, but doesn’t. So it’s like….Jean Valjean is in many ways the kind of “successful expert criminal” that Thenardier is only pretending to be.

[cliozaur]

Javert knows how to enter in style: "“Would you like my hat?” cried a voice on the threshold.

All wheeled round. It was Javert.

He had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a smile."

Image taken from here

[cliozaur]

This one is really long, so I’ll start with the best part — the most stylish and iconic entrance: “'Would you like my hat?'…/All wheeled round. It was Javert.” This cop does indeed possess a sense of humour! And Javert’s entrance is intertwined with a series of coincidences. In fact, the entire book is teeming with coincidences, it sometimes feels as though Hugo is abusing them, yet this is an integral element of his writing style. Through sheer happenstance, Éponine scribbled "The bobbies are here" to showcase her writing prowess, by a mere stroke of luck, Marius in his stunned state recollected this piece of paper, and through yet another twist of fate, the police happened to arrive just minutes later without even being summoned! I adore the way the genre of the Gorbeau house scene transitions from horror to melodrama (with Marius' moral struggles), then to farce (with the bandits' chaotic antics and poor planning), and finally to comedy with Javert's entrance.

The bandits don't exactly shine in this chapter! While they initially appeared menacing upon their arrival (and there are three more in this chapter) this aura quickly dissipates as they start to act. Their actions are too chaotic, too disorganized, too unprepared for the challenges posed by Valjean’s courage and strength. A trio from the Patron-Minette quartet joins the fray, all brandishing (symbolic?) weapons. I am somewhat taken aback with Claquesous’ “enormous key stolen from the door of some prison.” Wow! Just wow! (on one of the illustrations - at the end of this post - it's grotesquely enormous) They lost Montparnasse along the way (he preferred the company of Éponine over joining the group of idiots assembled at the Gorbeau hovel). Their willingness to accept Thénardier as their leader and trust him with all the planning suggests that indeed, it’s a low season for crime and they are desperate.

Thénardier never shuts up in this chapter, he rants and rants. I was utterly outraged when he spoke of Cosette as a lost source of income. Well, he mentioned believing that she “belonged to rich people” and that he “might have extracted enough to live on all my life!” However, given that Cosette did not, in fact, belong to rich people, and considering how he used his own daughters for soliciting out, we can only imagine HOW he might have used Cosette to extract income from her. What a terrible alternative! Yet, he is once again telling some reasonable things about the plight of the poor, such as: “We, it is we who are thermometers. We don’t need to go out and look on the quay at the corner of the Tour de l’Horologe, to find out the number of degrees of cold; we feel our blood congealing in our veins, and the ice forming round our hearts, and we say: ‘There is no God!’”

I'm not inclined to delve into Marius' hesitations and quasi-moral dilemma at this moment. Despite my sympathies toward him, he did come across as rather insufferable here. But I like the fact that he was proud of Jean Valjean. Nonetheless, his contribution was rather minimal, with the sole positive action being the toss of Éponine's note into the neighbour’s room.

Valjean is truly amazing here. He is calm, unperturbed, inventive, and displays remarkable sangfroid. A real icon of stoicism. And I have a feeling that his shocking act of burning his right hand with the red-hot chisel is a clear allusion to the legend of Scaevola, a tale of significance to certain stoics. The emphasis Hugo places on Valjean gripping the chisel in his left hand assures me that my assumption is not unfounded. And I so much wish Hugo had afforded us even a fleeting glimpse into Valjean’s mind during this juncture! While we are privy to every trifling notion crossing Marius' thoughts, at this pivotal juncture in the narrative, we remain largely ignorant of Valjean's inner musings. It’s such a pity. But, at the same time, it makes him so mysterious.

Claquesous' enormous key:

[lesbianmariuspontmercy]

les mis 3.8.20

Okay this is my favorite chapter so far

Marius is my favorite character, if you can't tell by now. So naturally I enjoyed what he was going through.

He's caught between his past and his future; his father's last will was to help Thenardier, since he saved Georges life, and as VH puts it, Marius venerates his father, worships him. ("Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection", he said in 3.3.7 about Théodule), yet he wants to save M. LeBlanc because he's his beloved Ursule's father, and he sees Ursule as his future, wants to protect her and her family.

Marius is between these two choices, and it seems impossible since he learns LeBlanc doesn't do well with police (much less Javert, but he doesn't know that). He awaits, building up the suspense, and the choice is all but made when Thenardier insults his father.

I think this all sums up Marius character so far; someone who only really has his convictions; he knows honoring his father doesn't mean just following his instructions, but rather defending his name even in Death. Marius doesn't know who he is, he only knows what he believes in. He's in arrested development due to his grief.

[coquelicoq]

Cependant le prisonnier éleva la voix: —Vous êtes des malheureux, mais ma vie ne vaut pas la peine d'être tant défendue. Quant à vous imaginer que vous me feriez parler, que vous me feriez écrire ce que je ne veux pas écrire, que vous me feriez dire ce que je ne veux pas dire…. Il releva la manche de son bras gauche et ajouta: —Tenez. En même temps il tendit son bras et posa sur la chair nue le ciseau ardent qu'il tenait dans sa main droite par le manche de bois. On entendit le frémissement de la chair brûlée, l'odeur propre aux chambres de torture se répandit dans le taudis. Marius chancela éperdu d'horreur, les brigands eux-mêmes eurent un frisson, le visage de l'étrange vieillard se contracta à peine, et, tandis que le fer rouge s'enfonçait dans la plaie fumante, impassible et presque auguste, il attachait sur Thénardier son beau regard sans haine où la souffrance s'évanouissait dans une majesté sereine. (III, 8, XX, pp. 108-109)

what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fu

[secretmellowblog]

#truly the power of a Hat and a good Quip#like you absolutely do not have to hand it to javert#but golly gee what a way to seize the moment#go Off queen#imagine what sort of dramatics the rest of us could get up to if we just Thought slightly less (Op's tags)