#1.7.1

[daily-erin]

This Erin is from 1.7.1!

[jelepermets]

I do love how intense Hugo is about hammering home how Sister Simplice does not lie. How Sister Simplice has never lied. How Sister Simplice sees lying as satanic, literally:

"Satan has two names: He is called Satan, and he is called the Liar."

Like I'm sure this will never come up in the future. At all. Nope

[garbagecann24601]

Sister Simplice

“No one could have told Sister Simplice’s age. She was a person—we dare not say a woman—who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never lied. She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more solid than granite.”

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Brickclub: 1.7.1

I’m glad that, if this book must be full of dreadful men (and it must, I know), it’s also full of women that I love. I’ve always loved Simplice, but this read through made me really look at Perpetue, who honestly actually seems kind of delightful: “patois-speaking, prayer-reciting, grumbling, sugaring the invalids’ tea according to their sanctimoniousness or their hypocrisy, chivvying the sick, gruff with the dying, almost throwing God in their faces, pelting their mortal agony with angry prayers, bluff, well-meaning and ruddy-faced." She’s not refined or cultivated or anything, but she has a work ethic and a sense of humor and sounds like she’d be fun to hang out with. I get the sense that she doesn’t have much patience for dramatics, hence the pelting their mortal agony with angry prayers thing.

She’s also an excuse for Hugo to go on about Peasants, which is definitely reminiscent of the Baptistine-Magloire pair from earlier. Perpetue wasn’t Called to a life of service, she chose it as a career. And it’s interesting to me how okay Hugo is with that. I’d expect him to be more censorious of that kind of pragmatic religion, since he’s so very harsh on the ‘this is just my job’ Bishops. But I guess the difference is that Perpetue’s job involves helping others, whereas wealthy Bishops help only themselves at the expense of others (if we go by the logic that being rich is inherently destructive, which is certainly the line he was pulling about religious leaders).

And I like the idea of being a nun, especially a Sister of Charity type nun, as other people are cook. It takes the unattainability out of serving the needy. If you can be a nun as a career choice, then there’s no excuse for someone (read: Hugo’s readers) to not do their part to help the poor out of the excuse that they haven’t been ~called~ to that life.

Anyway, moving on, Simplice is our counterpoint, someone who very much was Called to this life. We don’t know her background, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that her family are not peasants. She is gentle, calm, ageless, but also cold and austere. Which, clearly, is a Type for Hugo. (And it’s one of the cool things he does with character description and subversion -- normally Coldness is seen as a bad thing, a thing that at minimum needs to be overcome. But Hugo has several characters for whom coldness and austereness are key traits, and they don’t ever need to melt, as it were. Javert’s Javerness is Problems, not because he’s cold and austere and harsh but because it makes him cruel. Simplice and Enjolras temper that coldness with kindness, and these are not seen as contradictory. But I’m getting sidetracked).

And so we learn that Simplice has never, in her entire life, even as a tiny child who doesn’t know better, told a lie. This is, like the Bishop and his candlesticks, both a character moment and an instance of blatant foreshadowing. (We also learn that liking to receive letters is a “fault that must be corrected.” I’m not sure how I feel about that, because most of us like receiving letters because we like hearing from the people who sent them. I realize that monastic life implies a certain level of severing your ties to your family/outside world/previous life, but I also can’t quite see how having friends/families and wanting to hear from them is that terrible a flaw. Unless she didn’t care about the contents and just had a weird envelope fetish, and her flaw was spending all her money on postage. But that seems unlikely.)

Meanwhile, in contrast to Simplice and her coldness, Madeleine is “a ray of warmth and happiness” in Fantine’s life. This is similar to how the Bishop was described, as someone who brought warmth and happiness with him wherever he went.

[umeed-e-sehr]

1.7.1

I like the descriptions of Sister Perpetue being a nun as others are cooks. This is a way of Hugo talking about the peasants, which well, it is not very flattering, but she is interesting, in her own way, with her patois accent and her ruddy complexion, scaring the invalids into believing in God and being very matter of fact. Sister SImplice on the other hand is the exact opposite and very reminiscent of the way Baptistine was described, with the ‘less of a woman more of an ideal’ kind of language. She also cannot lie, much like Javert, though she s all kindness and goodness in herself.

I don’t really think her flaws are flaws though, having a sweet tooth or wanting to write letters doesn’t seem like a terrible thing unless the nuns are supposed to abstain completely from anything that makes them happy. I don’t know whether this is Hugo being, nuns are supposed to be perfect in every way, kind of thing or if it was frowned upon to actually do anything so simple like reading and writing letters to outside family members, even supposing that you have to cut off contact to a large extent and be more devoted in prayers, it still seems too much to me, occassional prayers and having sweet items does not seem a big deal.

I like that she has grown fond of Fantine though I can definitely understand that Fantine herself would prefer Madeleine who was a ray of sunshine and warmth for her, compared to Sister Simplice, which is good for Fantine, who is sinking rapidly. Madeleine himself has taken on the mantle of the bishop in his visits to Fantine which is wonderful.

1.7.2

Madeleine is still occupied by his worries of Champmathieu’s trial, but he hardly lets it show on his face, however here his agitation is reflected in the fact that he almost goes to visit the parish priest but decides otherwise against taking advice.

This chapter is concerned with logistics, so a lot of time is spent in deciding over the horse and the type of carriage, but Madeleine does not really care about his own comfort or safety, only about the horse and of making sure Monsieur Scaufflaire is not getting a bad deal.

Monsieur Scaufflaire on the other hand, cares about gossip and where monsieur le maire is going so suddenly and with such haste and despite Madeleine’s refusal to answer, figures it out. Madeleine gives him a lot more money than his horse and tilbury is worth, he is dedicated to charity and to giving money away, he rarely spends it on himself, much like the bishop but it is still too much money he is giving away.

He does show the beginnings of the tempest in his head in this chapter, pacing up and down all night even if his face betrays very little of it to other people. It is interesting that he has learned to conceal secrets due to living his life always in fear of the law, but the fact that he has a dilemma to solve, means that the right thing to do for him is never easy, he has to work hard and fight his impulses. It also is a difficult decision that he has found himself in, or rather two decisions, how to retrieve Cosette and whether to let an innocent man like Champmathieu take the fall and be imprisoned under the name of Valjean, an identity which he had shed and for himself to be confined to darkness again. It is surprising that he remains so much calmer throughout this chapter then.   

[dominicanmermaid]

[jelepermets]

Literally I can't tell if this:

"No one could have guessed [Sister SImplice's] age; she had never been young and seemed as if she would never have to be old."

is supposed to be evocative of Madamoiselle Baptistine, or if Hugo's just like that about writing virtuous women. I'm not being facetious I'm genuinely unsure.

[jelepermets]

Catching up on Les Mis again (I know look I've been down because of separate Les Mis related things lmao - and school) and like wow Sister Simplice's introduction really is more Hugo writing women. Leave Sister Perpetue alone!