#2.3.8

[daily-tess]

This Tess is from 2.3.8!

[thesebloodydays]

Whenever I read the part where Thénardier takes Valjean to the bridal chamber, my brain won’t stop repeating ”Oh, santa!”. HELP

[lesmisletters]

Chapter 100 - April 10th

100 chapters read, 265 chapters left

27.4% thru the brick!

[garbagecann24601]

The Unpleasantness of Receiving Into One’s House a Poor Man Who May Be a Rich Man

Congratulations, friends. We have survived 100 days of 2020.

Cosette brings the stranger to the inn. Madame can tell by his mannerisms and the way that he’s dressed that he is poor, so she tells him they have no more rooms and then overcharges him to allow him to sleep wherever he can find space.

Cosette hides under the table and resumes knitting. Everything about her body language communicates that she is afraid.

Madame asks her for the bread she was supposed to purchase. Cosette lies, saying that the bakery was closed. Madame asks for the money back, and Cosette realizes that her pocket is empty. Madame is about to beat her, but then the stranger takes a coin out of his own pocket and pretends that he had just seen it fall out of Cosette’s pocket.

Eponine and Azelma enter the room. They are doted on by their father and then go to play with their doll.

“Éponine and Azelma did not look at Cosette. She was the same as a dog to them. These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty years between them, but they already represented the whole society of man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other.”

Madame criticizes Cosette for slacking off in her knitting-- she is supposed to be making stockings for Eponine and Azelma. The stranger says that Cosette should be allowed to play and buys the stockings Cosette is working on for five francs. Cosette wraps her little toy sword up in cloth and pretends it’s a doll.

Meanwhile, the Thernardiers begin to question whether this poor stranger is actually a millionaire. 

Eponine and Azelma abandon their doll to torment the cat. Cosette sneaks out from under her table and takes the real doll. The girls notice about fifteen minutes later and tell their mother, who begins to yell at Cosette. The stranger leaves, but promptly returns with the doll from the market and offers it to Cosette.

Eventually, everyone goes to bed. Thernardier shows the stranger to the bridal suite, even though the stranger insists that he wouldn’t have minded the stable.

The stranger sneaks out of bed in the middle of the night and sees where Cosette is sleeping. He also sees that the children have put out their shoes by the fireplace because it’s Christmas. Eponine and Alzema’s shoes have coins in them. He places a louis d’or in Cosette’s shoe.

[kingedmundsroyalmurder]

Brickclub: 2.3.8

God, someone save all three of these girls from this house. And Gavroche, who wasn’t mentioned but is probably still screaming in his crib in the back room. These people are so deeply not fit to be parents. Sure, Eponine and Azelma are being treated well now, but they’re also being told very clearly that their mother’s love is conditional and limited. And sure enough, as anyone who knows the story will remember -- and as I believe Hugo himself predicted back in 1.4 -- once Cosette is gone then Mme’s love for her daughters starts to sour. This is not a healthy household for any of them, and I wish so very much that they could all be removed and get to grow up like the sisters Fantine so wanted them to be.

(AU where instead of Fantine leaving Cosette with the Thenardiers, she somehow takes the Thenardier girls with her and they all live happily ever after as one big family. I don’t know how they make money or avoid gossip, but I don’t care. These girls deserve the world, including Fantine.)

Anyway, so Valjean brings Cosette back to the inn and watches first hand how she’s treated there. And I can only imagine what he’s thinking, remembering how Fantine struggled and wept and eventually died so that this child could be happy. Fantine clothed Cosette with her hair and bought medicine with her teeth and Cosette starved anyway.

It is kind of entertaining, in a horrifying way, to watch M and Mme silently but frantically communicate with each other about the newcomer. They are a team, dysfunctional as they are, and they trust each other to play their respective roles. For all her slavish devotion to her husband, Mme is not being duped. She is in on this and he probably would be doing a lot worse without her.

But most of this chapter is just Cosette being abused over and over again and it’s just so, so awful. And I am so glad that Valjean actually means to take her away, because if he’d just been someone passing by who felt sorry for her, his extravagant charity would just have made her life all that much worse.

[umeed-e-sehr]

2.3.8

Cosette gives a final heart-breaking glance at the doll and the childhood that she did not have and was never allowed to have, and I would love to know what was going on in Valjean’s head all the while that he was talking to Cosette in the last chapter, what did he think of her living situation? What did he think of how tiny and fearful Cosette was?  

Under a cut because I ended up having a lot more to say about this chapter than I thought I would.

The title for this chapter refers to Valjean but he’s not the only one for whom appearances are deceptive, he dresses poorly but gives money generously and it highlights the fact that ‘what is said about people in gossip’ does matter as others have pointed out as well.

Madame Thenardier too is deceptive in her way, in this chapter adopts the pose of an innkeeper and smiles at Valjean and other customers, while being angry at Cosette for the smallest of things. She also judges people by appearance and increases the rent because Valjean seems poor - that also highlights how superficial and greedy the Thenardiers are, but also is a good commentary on how everything is more expensive when you’re poor.  

I do wish that Valjean was more discerning and did not readily agree to the demands of the Thenardiers or throw money at problems or be as polite to them as he is. I know he’s supposed to be a saint like Myriel but these people cannot be redeemed or changed. They are well off at this point and look how they treat Cosette and how they fleece everyone else.  

Speaking of appearances, Cosette is described as ugly, though the text itself says that she could have been pretty if she was happy, so her appearance is more due to malnutrition, abuse, abandonment from society and from a lack of love. All the crying and hard work has taken an effect on the poor dear little child, as well as surviving harsh winters in rags. Fear too makes her appearance unflattering and she is so conditioned to be afraid of Madame Thenardier that she instantly goes back to her task, without drying herself, poor Cosette. And the underlying causes of her appearance are important, she is ugly because of living in poverty and fear all the time.  

She has been deprived of so much of childhood and has lived with constant sadness that she turns into a demon child or an idiot, that coupled with the ugly appearance talk it seems an argument against the society which leaves the child in darkness, misery and ignorance for so long.  Hugo was concerned about education for children, I believe, so it is telling that he would write about the effects of depriving them of it. I don’t really think it’s too much of a stretch to imagine that a child living in constant trauma and being malnourished might be dull, it is possible for the child to experience severe problems due to the effects of trauma, lack of play and lack of attachment. I don’t think Hugo is too far off in his descriptions.

She’s also perhaps a demon child because she has been kept away from God by virtue of never having attended church. She is denied spiritual and material comforts, which are both important for Hugo. It’s not just that she’s been denied comforts, she has been abused so much that her entire thing is to shrink and take up as little space as possible in everything she does, I am crying.

Madame Thenardier meanwhile notices the missing fifteen sous, and her concern only extends to the money, while being ready to beat Cosette for a little thing. The other travellers except Valjean don’t pay attention to it, it seems to be a common place thing or something they have chosen to ignore for so long and, it’s so heart breaking. Valjean is a stranger, but he is the only one that helps and the only one that Cosette warms up to and he earns her trust. We’re still continuing on with the appearances being deceptive theme. He’s the only one generous enough to help her by giving the Thenardier woman twenty sous, while still having the appearance of a beggar.  

It’s so important that Hugo highlights the distinction and appearance of Cosette because in the next instant he describes Eponine and Azelma, who are two of the prettiest girls, they are the exact opposite to Cosette at this time, having both the maternal care and love and warm dresses and the freedom to do what they want which is reflected even in their body language. Hugo is good at writing children. 

The attitude of the young girls towards each other, also sort of represents the attitude of the rich and the poor. Cosette is envious of their playthings and a mother’s attention while they do not consider her worth giving time. To be fair, the fault is not on the side of Eponine and Azelma, but the way they have been raised and the way the adults around them have behaved around Cosette for they are still children themselves and have learned what their parents have taught them, even if Cosette is not their equal and therefore deserving of compassion.

The Thenardier children’s doll isn’t good but Cosette is distracted from her work to glance at it while Madame Thenardier threatens her again. Valjean’s shabby clothes put him at a disadvantage when making his request, but he counters that with paying a lot more money than thirty sous, I’m not sure why he could not pay thirty sous and had to pay five francs drawing suspicion on himself.

I did like that Cosette moved to take her lead sword and old rags to play with, but I do find it cringeworthy that Hugo makes everything about playing, a chance to perfect and work on motherhood. It’s as if for him little girls are mothers in training and I do get the whole thing about this not being just a Hugo thing but still it is very much ugh, Hugo no. It’s also telling that instead of playing with the sword, Cosette swaddles it like a doll. 

I also don’t care for Hugo’s entire spiel about the ‘first child following on from the last doll’ it’s very patronising and he seems to emphasise how much a young girl is incomplete without having a doll, just as a woman is without a child, instead of talking about playthings generally. Hugo you were doing so well in this chapter, why are you saying this? Please stop.

Madame Thenardier quickly changes the way she addresses Valjean, calling him Monsieur and treating him as a rich man. While Cosette’s refrain of her mother being dead is so painful, I wonder how many time Madame Thenardier must have repeated this in front of the child without knowing for sure that her mother was alive or dead, for the child to be singing it.

I find it interesting that Madame Thenardier is confused at different points in this chapter about Valjean’s identity and I don’t think that we as readers quite know what to make of him here. He was Valjean, then he became a convict who became Monsieur Madeleine and then he became a convict again and now we don’t know who he is, perhaps that is why Hugo does not mention his name as well. We don’t know what his identity is right now, is he Valjean? Is he going to take on some other identity? and it is also telling that Cosette is someone who will give him his identity and his purpose later on.  

Cosette takes on playing with the doll but is then treated as if she has committed a grave crime - the way Madame Thenardier treats her is so demeaning, she doesn’t treat or see Cosette as a person and I can’t help that it seems like commentary on the ones in power, the people who are rich, not seeing the ones who are oppressed, as people.

Cosette gets Catherine the doll and the Thenardiers in return treat Valjean as someone who is rich so they can get more money out of him. I don’t know what the meaning behind the bridal suite is and I also don’t get why Valjean particularly thinks of being ugly with being a virgin, which, I can only assume, Hugo is being annoying in his descriptions of women again. 

However, it is sweet that although earlier Valjean had forgotten completely about Christmas, he puts a little present in Cosette’s boot and it is equally touching that after everything that the little kid has gone through, Cosette still hasn’t lost hope.

[daily-tess]

This Tess is from 2.3.8!

[daily-tess]

This Tess is from 2.3.8!