#sewers digression

[cliozaur]

It's amusing how Hugo portrays the sewers as a terra incognita, implying that the sewer system somehow emerged naturally and remained unknown until 1805 (but he will write about the history of sewers in the next chapters).

He provides such a detailed description of the filth inundation of 1802 that I immediately wanted to see how it correlates with the map of Paris (there are many good maps available of the Paris sewer system). Then there's the intricate description of sewer openings from which various pestilences were believed to spread. And when I read this "The popular imagination seasoned the sombre Parisian sink with some indescribably hideous intermixture of the infinite," it reminded me of the Infinite from the convent digression, and I couldn't help but start giggling.

And now, a man ironically named Bruneseau is about to venture into the sewers. I'm intrigued.

[fuckyeahchinesefashion]

OP: Check out. The fully-sexual charged cinematic movement design.

Cnetizens: How did the director come up with the idea to have him kneel on a playing card, adding so much aesthetic energy, is that some kind of genius?

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

Live footage of me suspending my disbelief and trying to figure out what symbolism Vicky is aiming for while he talks about using human feces to fertilize fields:

[fluentisonus]

SEWERS DIGRESSION !!!!!!!

[dolphin1812]

“a man disappeared suddenly”

The sewers are terrifying! 

Disease is not a new metaphor for social problems in general or within the context of this novel, nor are elements of horror. But I do feel like the sewers are particularly well-suited to this, partly because they are literally so closely tied to disease (especially cholera) and because they’re suspenseful in a different way? Hugo’s playing on the unknown aspect, of course, but I do think the un-thought-of dangers of the sewers - like fungi, falling in, and other problems - are especially scary.

Social commentary is also present: it’s no surprise that the sewer is tied to prison, given all that we’ve learned about the horrors of French prison. The animal also gives a sense that the sewer is for the “lost,” literally in this case, but also metaphorically for those cast out from society.

I don’t know a lot about Marat, but I would love any additions!

I think it’s important to note that these explorations were firmly Napoleonic. They were centralized, reflecting the expansion of the state’s power, but they also touched on something that affected ordinary people, highlighting the aftereffects of the French Revolution. The Napoleonic structure couldn’t have reformed this system, but it was a start, just as Hugo doesn’t want to completely abandon what he respects about the Napoleonic era even if he doesn’t want a Napoleon.

Spoilers below:

I’d be remiss not to point out that explaining Bruneseau’s tactics to explore the sewers will help us understand Jean Valjean’s later on. As funny as digressions are, this one not only serves a thematic purpose, but a plot one. Knowing the structures of the sewers and the challenges in moving through them just a few decades earlier gives us a good sense of what Valjean is facing.

[poorlittleyaoyao]

I’m almost to the cultivation conference in the novel, which means Jiang Cheng will come back and Jin Guangyao will finally show up for real!

but first there are 20+ pages of Wangxian doing romance tropes and I don’t wannaaaa

[nortism]

please god take all the hate the sewer digression gets and give it to the bit about louis-phillipe

[jewishdainix]

THE SEWERS!!!

[dragonomatopoeia]

my rough drafts always have that moby dick vibe of just some absolute unrelated batshit nonsense being said and stella swoops in to go nope no not a chance we're hemingway-ing this. take those words out of there this instant or so help me

[ragedagainst]

finally saw the barbie movie !! no spoilers here but if you haven't seen it, you definitely need to, it's so good ✨

[milfbro]

Edward Said: orientalism was used in fiction to highlight and contrast the differences of the supposed east and west

me: oh yeah like with victor hugo

Said: [...] such as Victor Hugo

me: aYY

[cliozaur]

The best part of today's chapter: "This network of cellars has its immemorial population of prowlers, rodents, swarming in greater numbers than ever; from time to time, an aged and veteran rat risks his head at the window of the sewer and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin grow tame, so satisfied are they with their subterranean palace."

[after-perfect]

Ok yes, permets-tu and fangirl flailing, but can we talk about how the National Guard briefly thought Enjolras was just too pretty to be shot?

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

I just think that if I ended my twenty-page essay with

We might say that, for ten centuries, the cloaca has been the disease of Paris. The sewer is the taint the city has in her blood. The popular instinct is never mistaken. The trade of sewerman was formerly almost as perilous, and almost as repulsive to the people, as the trade of slaughterer, so long held in horror and left to the executioner. It took high wages to persuade a mason to disappear in that fetid ooze; the well-digger's ladder hesitated to plunge into it; it was said proverbially, "to descend into the sewer is to enter the grave"; and all manner of hideous legends, as we have said, covered this colossal drain with terror; awful sink, bearing the traces of the revolutions of men, and in which we find vestiges of all the cataclysms from the shellfish of the deluge down to Marat's rag.

I might have a "SEE ME" underlined somewhere underneath.

[coquelicoq]

guess who now knows how to say sewer in french 🥰

[dolphin1812]

The sewer! It’s here!! 

(I fully admit to being a fan of the sewer digression).

Hugo’s framing of the fact about the Chinese peasant has some racist elements (“to our shame”), but it also serves as an important framing device for the sewers as a whole: they represent waste in not only a literal sense, but the waste of the poor and the marginalized by a society that does not value them. China benefits from the peasant’s knowledge, recognizing that “manure” is “gold;” France wastes this. 

This paragraph is also just beautiful:

“Those heaps of filth at the gate-posts, those tumbrils of mud which jolt through the street by night, those terrible casks of the street department, those fetid drippings of subterranean mire, which the pavements hide from you,—do you know what they are? They are the meadow in flower, the green grass, wild thyme, thyme and sage, they are game, they are cattle, they are the satisfied bellows of great oxen in the evening, they are perfumed hay, they are golden wheat, they are the bread on your table, they are the warm blood in your veins, they are health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious creation which is transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven.”

I don’t know how accurate Hugo’s statistics are, but his general point about waste and disease certainly rings true. I’ve mentioned this before, but 1832 was the year of a cholera pandemic, and while it wasn’t known that cholera is spread through contaminated water at that time, it’s possible that Hugo was aware of such theories. And even if he was not, miasma theory – which posited that things like bad smells caused disease – was a really common theory in the 19th century and still would have led to concerns over waste disposal. 

As for the Thames, as London (a sad city to Hugo because it’s sewer-less) grew dramatically in the nineteenth century, its challenges with waste disposal increased. Many of these issues paralleled problems in Paris, like the spread of cholera and pollution, but some were more specific to a city without a sewer (as there was nowhere for waste to go). Parliament eventually acted when the stench of the Thames got so bad that it was noticeable during its sessions.

I also love how Hugo is both really enthusiastic about sewers (he is choosing to write about them, after all) and really judgmental about them. He seems to say: “really? We’re spending this much on sewers?” While he is arguing that the waste that goes through sewers is valuable, he also seems to realize that his topic of choice here is a bit unorthodox, thus pointing out that this wealth could be spent on vague “splendors” instead. What these “splendors” are, of course, seem concrete – feeding the people by using manure to fertilize fields – but this aspect of the digression might have helped him appeal to middle- or upper-class audiences.

And of course, the link to Rome serves as a warning of the urgency of this issue. Rome was linked to greatness, but also to collapse; the Roman Empire fell, and Hugo’s implying that France could face the same fate without sewer reform.