Les Miserables: the beginning

[osprey_archer]

I have a cold, which makes it difficult to do anything that is not consonant with sitting around and coughing weakly, and have therefore been plowing through Les Miserables. The pacing is just about appropriate for my befogged brain: by the time he got through, say, fifty pages about how the Bishop of Digne was a really, really good person, it had totally sunk in.

Seriously, though, despite being repetitive it is pretty entertaining. Also, the Bishop's whole "Oh, Valjean the ex-convict didn't steal my silverware! I gave it to him. Except I forgot the silver candlesticks" thing makes a lot more sense when you have this build-up - although I suppose the movie version has the advantage that it's just as surprising for us as for Valjean when the Bishop is actually nice to him?

More stuff happens! Valjean figures out a way to make jet beads more cheaply, makes a fortune, gives most of it away, and becomes the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer.

Fantine's ex-lover turns out to be an even bigger jerk than I surmised from the movie. (Hugo helpfully informs us that the ex-lover went on to live a long and happy life. Thanks, Hugo.)

Javert attempts to arrest Fantine. Valjean stops him! Javert denounces Valjean in a fit of rage, only to discover that another guy who they think is Valjean has been captured! He tells Valjean.

Valjean undergoes a long, dark night of the soul, followed by a longer, darker day of the soul, followed - because two long dark time spans weren't enough - with a pitch-black evening of the soul. And then he turns himself into the court! "I am Jean Valjean!"

(Valjean is lucky Javert had left by then. I'm pretty sure before Valjean had even finished saying "I'm the real Valjean!" Javert would have sprung onto the courtroom floor and clapped him in irons, possibly with an involuntary click of his heels and definitely while thinking "I knew it, I knew it, I told you so!" as loudly as was consonant with the dignity of the court.)

Javert, however, is not there, and everyone else in the courtroom is so stunned that they completely forget to arrest Valjean. (I kind of admire how Hugo just brazens this out. "There will be no story if I send Valjean back to Toulon," I imagine him thinking. "I know, I'll just have him walk right out of the courtroom while everyone gapes at him.")

Valjean takes the post carriage back to Montreuil-sur-mer! Javert catches up with him by Fantine's deathbed! Valjean escapes again! But Javert has caught the scent now - he's on Valjean's heels - can Valjean remain free? Can he reach Cosette???

Hugo: This is clearly the time for a digression about Waterloo!
Everyone Else in the World: No! No it really isn't!
Hugo: Wheeeee forty pages of Waterloo.
Hugo's Editor: *weeps quietly*

(Did Hugo even have an editor? Were there perhaps even more digressions that the editors did manage to convince Hugo to cut out? "I know you want to give us a complete history of the French Revolution, Vicky, but no. Just no. Two hundred pages is too long of a digression even for you.")

So yes, Hugo and I are still traipsing around the battlefields of Waterloo. There are bullets embedded in dying apple trees, and a well stuffed to the gills with skeletons, because after the battle they didn't have time to dig enough mass graves. I have to stop and grade finals soon, but perhaps this evening I shall finally meet Cosette?

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

But you need the Waterloo scene because of the evil Thernar.... I don't have the book with me, but you know who I mean? He is there, as is Marius's ... father? So that whole plot point gets shown there.

But yeah, long digression. But kind of amazing for what it does.

You're reading fast!

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

There are cut scenes! Including one where Fantine's ex almost gets his life ruined by Cosette, which I will find for you later because it is great, and a tl;dr digression about prostitution which is kind of bizarre and sort of hypocritical. I'm not sure whether he cut these scenes voluntarily or at editorial weeping.

I'd actually argue that Hugo is fairly critical of the Bishop's brand of goodness (and by extension Valjean's), but Hugo is critical of every single character in one way or another. The book is like 1500 pages of Hugo arguing with himself. (I am certainly critical of the Bishop, but I'm a 21st century feminist atheist socialist, so that is probably to be expected.)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Thenardier, who steals Marius's relative's ring and wallet and so forth. (I'm assuming it is Marius's father, but I haven't gotten to Marius yet.)

But still, I think a ten page digression would have been sufficient to cover Waterloo and Thenardier's battle-scavenging ways. Twenty, tops!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm kind of sorry Eponine doesn't succeed at ruining Fantine's ex's life, because vengeance, vengeance is sweet. Even if Eponine didn't realize that she was revenging anyone, I would have enjoyed the poetic justice.

I don't think Hugo is setting up the Bishop as the ultimate arbiter of all goodness, but rather as a type of goodness - that a lot of Hugo's characters show different kinds of goodness, most of which have good points and blind spots.

So the Bishop is trying to alleviate suffering within his society (he gives away, what, more than 90% of his income?), but ultimately he's treating the symptoms rather than the causes of the suffering.

(I thought the scene where he gets the extra money for a carriage and then gives it all to charity really shows this. Way to game the system, man! ...but what a rotten system.)

At any rate, the Bishop is definitely set up as the kind of guy who would let a convict run off with his silverware, which gives the scene more emotional resonance - for me, anyway - than it had in the movie. The difference in medium means that the movie can't take a time out to tell us the Bishop's whole life story, and therefore he seems generic, in a way.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Cosette, not Eponine, which is even more poetic. It's a great cut scene.

And yeah, I think that's pretty much what Hugo was going for. However, I have my issues with how the Bishop treats his household, uncomplaining though they may be (see my generally conflicted feelings about how Hugo writes women), and also with Hugo's Thoughts on Atheism as expressed via the Bishop.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

How did I get from Cosette to Eponine? *headdesk*

Trying to wait till I at least reach Eponine before I form an opinion about Hugo's Thoughts on Women, but I do keep having these eyebrow-raising "Really? Really?" moments. Like when he's talking about how a little girl without a doll is as tragic and unnatural as a woman without a child? Oh Hugo.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Here's the outtake: http://chanvrerie.net/outtakes/brouable_en.html

(More here: http://chanvrerie.net/outtakes/)

My general feeling about Hugo on women is that he wrote fascinating female characters who are complex and fully-realized, and he's pretty anti-slut-shaming...but the narrative voice's Thoughts on Women make me want to scream. It's a common feeling in the fandom.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Ha, that IS a vengeance! Even if it isn't permanent, Tholomyes was clearly quite discommoded for a time.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Although thinking about it more, it must have been dreadful for poor Cosette, to see her father again - who must have been connected with better times in her mind, even if she didn't remember them very clearly - and then be dragged right back to the Thenardiers.