Les Mis Scraper

Scrapbook for Les Miserables

[pealeii]

1. cosette (zöe doano)/marius (rob houchen) - lyrics from johanna 2. johanna (mario bilbao)/anthony (jordan fischer) - lyrics from a heart full of love 3. cosette (samantha hill)/marius (perry sherman) - lyrics from kiss me 4. johanna (erin mackey)/anthony (jay armstrong johnson) - lyrics from a heart full of love 5. johanna (betsy joslyn) - lyrics from in my life 6. cosette (talía del val) - lyrics from green finch and linnet bird

[barricadescon]

[ID: an image that reads " Register by July 9th! and get access to a selection of previous panels for 2 weeks!" /end ID]

Missed some panels at last Barricades Con? Want to rewatch some of your favorites? Want to get in the Barricades Con spirit before this year's convention ? Then register by JULY 9th to get access to a selection of recorded panels for 2 weeks! Register today at Barricadescon.com!

[cliozaur]

After a couple of grimmer chapters, Hugo returns to his humorous tone. The main theme revolves around the criteria of belonging or not belonging to the ‘cast’ of gamins. It appears that being slightly different (such as being left-handed or having a squint), experiencing a dangerous accident (being cut "to the very bone"), or witnessing an unforgettable misadventure were the most important factors.

Hugo presents the section about gamins watching executions on the Place de Grève and about guillotine, with its amusing names, as a joke. It portrays the street children laughing in the face of death, potentially even their own (as from the previous chapter we know that “All crimes of the man begin in the vagabondage of the child”). They are not terrified but curious beyond measure. Interestingly, Hugo, unlike many of his educated contemporaries, does not judge the act of watching executions by the crowds as vulgar, uncivilized and barbarous. He is once again rather sympathetic towards popular tastes.

And the last comment. “In the brotherhood of gamins Voltaire is not known”, claims Hugo here, but if I am not mistaken, Gavroche will be singing about Voltaire while collecting bullets, so the author is a bit inconsistent.

(Lovely late eighteenth-century earrings-guillontines)

[dolphin1812]

“This word gamin was printed for the first time, and reached popular speech through the literary tongue, in 1834. It is in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that this word made its appearance. The horror was lively. The word passed into circulation.”

Not Hugo patting himself on the back for being the first to print the word “gamin”

In all seriousness, I find this additional reference to Claude Gueux really funny because of how Hugo treats himself as part of his own narrative. Hugo’s the narrator at times (based on the references to his exile), but he’s also a primary source within his own text.

In terms of Hugo’s political ideas, it’s interesting that he sees a contrast between the “passivity” of the peasantry and the “free-thinking anarchy” of the gamins (of the city). While it’s an oversimplification (there was plenty of political unrest in the French countryside in history as well), combined with Hugo’s earlier remarks about Parisians being stirred up by injustice and remembering the spirit of the French Revolution, it does suggest that his political beliefs may come to the forefront as we move to Paris. He sees the city as a more obvious location for rebellion because the people there (specifically, the gamins) are more prone to it.

The gamins’ fascination with the guillotine is both grotesque and intriguing. On the one hand, the guillotine’s use is a horrific act of violence, one so bad that Hugo decided to make it clear from the beginning of the novel by capturing Bishop Myriel’s disgust and terror upon letting a man confess to him before his execution. Seeing the gamins address it with “pet names,” then, is shocking. However, given that their sense of humor is pretty provocative, it’s not entirely surprising coming from them. That children on the streets regard this as a form of entertainment underscores both the spectacle inherent to a public execution (it’s meant to draw attention, and that attention can be this fascination) and the violence and harshness that surrounds them. On the other hand, they occasionally show sympathy for the victims, demonstrating their admiration for specific individuals and the tension between the gamins and the state’s justice. The authorities, unsurprisingly, aren’t kind to the gamins. We heard stories of their arrests earlier, but even here, a gendarme insists that he “doesn’t care” if a gamin falls from a lamp, illustrating how they’re not valued by them. Hugo’s focus on them in a positive light is a corrective of sorts, albeit an idealized one.

[pilferingapples]

See Hapgood I told you Hugo would bring his own Orientalism to the party. You didn't have to do all that.

[barricadeday]

Three days left until Barricade Day (June 5th), and Two days left until the beginning of Barricade Week! (June 4th!)

If you want fanwork prompts to give you ideas for projects, check out our pinned post!

[secretmellowblog]

This word gamin was printed for the first time, and reached popular speech through the literary tongue, in 1834. It is in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that this word made its appearance.

I wonder what genius wrote Claude Gueux (Victor Hugo.)

Also, this is not even true! (Do you really think Victor Hugo would do that, just go into the Les Mis and tell lies?)

According to Christine Donougher’s footnotes on this:

Claude Gueux: In fact the word *gamin* appears in print in earlier texts than Hugo’s short story of 1834, not least in Hugo’s *Notre-Dame de Paris* (1831, bk II, ch. 5).

[shipshak-birdhead]

Ye

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

oh. thanks paris police force and king…

[the-wraxall-illustrations]

[madamekudo]

oh my lord I saw the Les Miserables musical and that was life-changing. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I was either sobbing my eyes out or grinning from ear to ear—no in between. I adored Marius. Cosette was wonderful. Gavroche and Inspector Javret were wonderful. Monsieur and Madame Thenadier were hilarious. Valjean was AMAZING. The little girl who sang as young Cosette was a darling, truly such a wonderful voice. So did the boy playing Gavroche.

The whole cast was amazing. Thank you for coming to Dublin, wooooo!

I did get like super soaked in the rain and spent the entire musical with wet and cold feet BUT it was worth it. I’d get soaked several more times just to experience that ecstasy again.

[lesmisscraper]

A Bit of History. Volume 3, Book 1, Chapter 6.

Clips from <Il cuore di Cosette>.

[cliozaur]

I find it symbolic that we're reading the chapter about abandoned, abducted, and vanishing children on International Children's Day. And as for today, I am already quite depressed with the news about children being killed and abducted in the real world to fully appreciate the chapter.

It's interesting how Hugo contrasts the presence of "a policeman at the corner of every street" as a perceived benefit at the beginning of the chapter with the villainous guards (who are essentially policemen) of the ancien régime who snatch children and turn against their fathers in the end.

Finally, Hugo is getting realistic about the gamins, “the most disastrous of social symptoms”, and he recognizes that “All crimes of the man begin in the vagabondage of the child.” However, he still views the situation in Paris as exceptional and relatively positive. For some reason (I don’t get this point) Paris makes the street children intact inside (remember the “pearl” of innocence in their heart from one of the previous chapters?) In a peculiar way he connects this incorruptibility with propensity to popular revolutions and some idea “which exists in the air of Paris, as salt exists in the water of the ocean.” But at least, he acknowledges that this incorruptibility does not make the life of these children less miserable.

There is the whole section on how much worse the life of these children was under the ancien régime! I absolutely get it why it is important for Hugo to show the rotten and inhuman nature of the monarchy, but retrospectively, I know that the plight of the street children in the nineteenth century was not much better than in the eighteenth.

I know the story about the vanishing children of Paris (1750) very well: all the conspiracy theories behind them, the grim role played by the police (they were paid per arrested kid), and the ensuing series of riots (involving four to five thousand people, including many women) with furious people lynching the guards – this event is often interpreted as a precursor of 1789. However, the main theme of this story contradicts Hugo's main idea in this chapter, as there the children are a matter of their parents' care and concern.

[dolphin1812]

This chapter is full of fascinating historical details:

“At the epoch, nearly contemporary by the way, when the action of this book takes place, there was not, as there is to-day, a policeman at the corner of every street”

The book was published in the 1860s and largely took place in the 1820s-1830s, so the police force grew quite dramatically in 30-40 years. This point helps demonstrate that the statistics about children on the street were probably undercounts, but it also illustrates the extent to which the image of authority (in that police officers on every corner are very visible) changed just within Hugo’s lifetime.

The growth and transformation of Paris is similarly visible. Gamins hide in houses “in the process of construction,” and “unenclosed lands” imply the existence of enclosed ones that bring land under private ownership.

Hugo still insists that Parisian gamins are different and better than gamins elsewhere, although he concedes that it's awful that there are so many children on the streets.

The comparison to the ancien régime is fascinating. While it's possible that 18th-century and 19th-century France were similarly bad for children, I wonder if Hugo's intent was to stress the evils of the old monarchy more than to portray the 19th century as an improvement (given the criticism of monarchical systems throughout the novel and his distaste for the idea of a return to the monarchy under the Restoration). Since he idealizes the gamins so much, there's a good chance it's the latter, but it still was an effective way of illustrating the horrors of the ancien régime. The last example genuinely seems like a horror story:

"Under Louis XV. children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them off, for what mysterious purpose no one knew. People whispered with terror monstrous conjectures as to the king’s baths of purple. Barbier speaks ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the exempts of the guard, when they ran short of children, took those who had fathers. The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts. In that case, the parliament intervened and had some one hung. Who? The exempts? No, the fathers."

If anything, though, these examples seem like a continuity. Louis XIV's use of trivial charges (being Protestant was seen as a political threat by the monarchy, but focusing on hats specifically makes it seem trivial) to gain convicts to work in the galleys is similar to Jean Valjean's imprisonment in the same structure for stealing bread. Although they focus on different matters, both instances suggest a continuing injustice around convicts and the criminal justice system that needed to be addressed.

[barricadescon]

What's the deal with Valjean's yellow passport? David Montgomery, host of The Siecle, shares some history in a clip from a previous Barricades panel!

Get your tickets to join us for 2026!

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

the edge of the universe right there

[the-wraxall-illustrations]