#petit-gervais

[fillsta]

LES MIS CHARACTERS THAT DESERVE MORE ATTENTION

Monsieur Mabeuf

I CANNOT stress this enough, I LOVE him. He's just this nice old man that likes plants and books, what MORE do you want??

Azelma

I don't care if Victor Hugo didn't care enough to give her a storyline like her sister, I CARE and so should YOU

Madame Houcheloup

I think she deserves it, with all that shit she went through plus auntie figure for les amis

Dahlia, Favourite and Zéphine

I just feel like we completely forgot about them as a whole after Tholomyes happened but they have SO much potential + Fantine deserves to have girlfriends

Georges Pontmercy

Yeah, yeah, he's supposed to be dead but so are Les Amis and we all sure don't seem to mind that. I know we love the whole 'Marius doesn't have a dad now' thing because you know, angst, but come on!

Patron-Minette

Montparnasse gets attention, why shouldn't the other silly criminals get some too?

Petit-Gervais

He is Feuilly, I'm sorry, if you don't believe me, you're wrong, take a look at my research

Bonus: That one feminine guy Eponine swapped clothes with before she went down to the barricades

I know, far fetched, but we can do SO MUCH with this

[pureanonofficial]

Okay now that we’ve gotten to LM 1.2.13 in Les Mis Letters, I have to post my absolute favorite take on the Petit-Gervais scene — it’s so good that I’ve been thinking about it ever since I first saw it. It’s from the first episode of Les Miserables 1967, a BBC miniseries.

I love how brusque and rude Valjean is — how little he is listening to Petit-Gervais, and how clearly he is wrapped up in his own thoughts. I love the horrified shock of realization he has when he sees he stepped on the coin. I love how desperate his cries of “Petit-Gervais!” are. I love how he stumbles and falls over himself. 

But the best part of this scene is the way he cries.

Depictions of emotional male grief are rarer than they should be in visual media, and that makes this scene even more powerful. Valjean in this scene cries — no, gutturally sobs for a full 45 seconds, to the end of the episode in fact. We are not spared from his grief —we are not allowed to look away. He sobs, horribly, brokenly, in the way we have all cried, when we’ve done something wrong, and know there is no way of fixing it. It is an incredibly powerful scene, especially when taken in context with the rest of the episode. Frank Finlay’s Valjean is very internal and rough until this scene — this is the first real part we see him break.

Although I have seen many takes on this scene, 1967′s unflinching depiction of Valjean’s grief makes this the most memorable for me.

[wanderinghedgehog]

Petit Gervais is actually the most relatable chapter of Les Mis because sometimes you really are having the most insane time, like the most confused you’ve ever been, and then there’s just some kid there.

[ruedesfillesducalvaire]

i puzzled over this for a long time.......and then i realised:

i have to ask: does. does this person somehow think...that javert and petit gervais are. the same person?

[schweizercomics]

"Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"

[alicedrawslesmis]

Barricade Day Advent Calendar

Day 9: Petit-Gervais

[fremedon]

OKAY SO.

Savoyard migrants (of both sexes) trained marmots to 'dance' and performed with them in cities.

This was so iconic that Savoyard peasants themselves came to be called marmottes.

The iconic fashion of Savoyard peasant women, a kerchief tied under the chin, also came to be called a marmotte.

I think marmotte may also have meant prostitute for a while? The linked article mentions the change in the association of marmotte-the-headscarf from pastoral purity to risque worldliness but doesn't say anything about the word itself, but I'm pretty sure I've read that somewhere (and honestly most French animal words seem to be able to mean 'sex worker' anyway).

And Savoyard marmot-trainers carried their animals in a rectangular wooden case, which also came to be called a marmotte!

So Petit-Gervais is first described as un petit savoyard d'une dizaine d'années qui chantait, sa vielle au flanc et sa boîte à marmotte sur le dos--so that could be a traveling case or an animal carrier with an actual marmot.

When he accosts the curé, Jean Valjean calls him un petit d'environ dix ans qui a une marmotte, je crois, et une vielle. Il allait. Un de ces savoyards, vous savez?

So again, possibly the box and possibly the animal. They are in the Alps, and there was an actual marmot turning on the spit at the Croix-de-Colbas, so maybe the assumption is that a marmot box in these parts is likely to contain an actual marmot? But I don't think we know.

This is driving me crazy. In the brick I swear Gavroche has a weird little unidentifiable creature he carries around. Something like a rat or a frog. It’s got a name along the lines of the thing or the creature. I can’t find the passage that mentions it, though, do you have any idea?

Gavroche doesn't have a creature, alas (though it would be awesome if he did)! He mentions having had a cat once (but the rats ate it D:) ,

I can think of two other things that you might be thinking of instead?

1- Petit Gervais carries around a marmot in a box--   sa boîte à marmotte sur le dos

2- during the Gamin chapters that being Tome III, Hugo mentions their specific fauna-- that they love the death's head aphid, and:

Il a son monstre fabuleux qui a des écailles sous le ventre et qui n'est pas un lézard, qui a des pustules sur le dos et qui n'est pas un crapaud, qui habite les trous des vieux fours à chaux et des puisards desséchés, noir, velu, visqueux, rampant, tantôt lent, tantôt rapide, qui ne crie pas, mais qui regarde, et qui est si terrible que personne ne l'a jamais vu; il nomme ce monstre «le sourd». Chercher des sourds dans les pierres, c'est un plaisir du genre redoutable. He has his fabulous monster which has scales under its belly and which is not a lizard, which has pustules on its back and which is not a toad, which inhabits the holes of old lime kilns and desiccated sumps. , black, hairy, slimy, crawling, sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, which does not shout, but looks, and which is so terrible that no one has ever seen it; he calls this monster "The Deaf Thing". Looking for the Deaf Thing in the stones is a formidable pleasure.

Obviously they only "have" this creature in the sense of having the legend, but I definitely see where it could be remembered as being a pet ! It's a delightful idea, though-- Let Gavroche Have a Tiny Monster! :D

If it's neither of those things you're remembering, I'm stumped!

[jazzyjuno]

dw guys I HAVE actually been drawing....just dunno how or when to post them so . Take this!!

[hadleysmis]

The case of Petit Gervais, manga.

A)

B)

C)

Fun fact about B is that Jean Valjean didn't know he actually stole a coin until P.M. leaves. He literally says, "I've ended up becoming a criminal again!" And that's funny to me.

A) Arai Takahiro

B) Team Banmikasu

C) Minamoto Tarou

[henry-the-queer-artist]

was doing the hunger game simulator with les mis characters and

[ueinra]

The illustrations in "Petit Gervais" chapter from Le Rayon D'Or Collection (1977)

[deathanddogs]

Another 70s WIN for Les Mis adaptations

[eleancrvances]

god i love reading good books. like, how am i supposed to go on with my day when jean valjean is out there weeping for the first time in nineteen years?

[lesmisscraper]

What Valjean did to Petit Gervais. Volume 1, Book 2, Chapter 13.

Clips from <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[lesmiscollageproject]

On his arrival at Montreuil-sur-mer he had the clothes, the manners, and the language of a laborer.

It seems that the very day on which he obscurely entered the little city, just at dusk on a December evening, with a bundle on his back, and a thorn stick in his hand, a great fire had broken out in the town hall. This man rushed into the fire and, risking his life, saved two children, who proved to be those of the captain of the gendarmerie, and in the hurry and gratitude of the moment no one thought to ask him for his passport. He was known from that time by the name Father Madeleine.