âEven today in Rue Boucherat, Rue de Normandie and Rue de Saintonge there are a few residents from days past who remember a gent called Monsieur Gillenormand, and speak kindly of him."
With this opening sentence, you almost think that weâre about to get another nice old man, to round out our collection of them, but alas, it is not to be. Instead, we get Gillenormand, a man who is not nice at all and whom the Bishop would spend his entire time making fun of if they ever ran into each other.
Because Gillenormand is everything thatâs wrong with the system. Heâs rich, heâs hurtful to those around him, heâs arrogant, and he is rewarded for all of these things. I would almost go so far as to call him a foil to the Bishop -- a man from another time, who lived through and was ruined by the Revolution, but who chose to cling to the past and the privileges it gave him rather than open his heart to the world. Where the Bishop chose to become kind, Gillenormand chose to just keep getting less so, until heâs reached a point of old age and delusions of self-importance that he tries to make the very fabric of reality conform to his ideas on how it should be. âHe flew into a rage over anything, mostly in defiance of the truth."
Heâs also got Opinions, which I am just too tired to deal with properly, but which are definitely there. Someone (and Iâve forgotten who, Iâm sorry!) mentioned that this is like a toothless version of Hugoâs âParis is the worldâ manifesto, and I think thatâs spot on. Iâd even take it one step further and say that the reason it lacks teeth is that Hugo is using Paris as the world to say something about Paris, the world, and how to improve both. Gillenormand is using it to make fun of the world and justify never changing Paris.
I like the little bit of trivia about the streets carrying the names of the capitals of Europe in the Hugoâs time, whereas they used to carry the names of the French cities. Moving towards brotherhood and Fraternity.
Gillenormand seems more a caricature at first glance because he seems to be a man stuck in the previous century. It also seems obvious that Hugo is using him as comic relief as well but the more the chapter goes on, the more he seems like someone who very possibly exists and is this level of annoying and sexist. Â
His fashions seem different simply because he is the only one who hasnât moved on. He wears his bourgeois status as a badge of pride, even though he is not of nobility- he aspires to be like them. He might probably be a traitor to his class because of the way he admires the nobility.
He boasts about women as if heâs quite a catch and gives the excuse of having only fifteen thousand francs a year. Fifteen thousand francs is a lot of money considering how Gillenormand also owns his own house and does not need to pay rent, which would be cheap in those times anyway. Bahorel had an annual allowance of three thousand francs from his parents and that was generous. And yet that hypocrite old man wants a hundred thousand francs to have mistresses instead of acknowledging the truth that he is just too old, idiotic and a horrible person to women and people under his care.
In his actions and his words, he is continuously a hypocrite- he says he is dying but is in complete health with all of his teeth intact. He also treats those under him extremely poorly, Mademoiselle Gillenormand who he frequently lashes out at, as well as his servants who he treats with such contempt and frequently belittles.Â
He wants people to think highly of him and focuses attention on himself and his qualities- which once again Hugo uses to make fun of him by saying that Gillenormand admired himself and thought himself shrewd when he really is not. I find it interesting that Hugo says he would not give nature the same significance- this seems to me to be a slight dig at how Gillenormand would most definitely disapprove of Romanticism. I also donât really like his ideas of civilisation- it feels that he thinks that Europe is the civilising influence on the rest of the world and I thoroughly detest Gillenormand.
3.2.2
(This is totally unrelated, but I have been reading some old map posts and I just realised that Marais the place where they live is one of the streets in Paris untouched by Hausmannisation, so they might still have a relatively old feel to them and also Rue des Filles du Calvaire is very near Hugoâs old house which is now a museum. This seems like a very popular district with Hotel de Ville close by as well. The street view of modern 6 Rue des Filles Calvaire).
Anyway, back to the topic, they lived in an old apartment with eccentric dÃĐcor with fleur de-lys and from the time of Louis XIV. Even his house gives very bourgeois and royalist vibes.Â
Coming back to more of his characterisation, he was horrible to his wives in favour of his mistresses and I donât find that surprising, though I feel sorry for anyone who has to live with him or stay under his roof, poor Mademoiselle Gillenormand and poor baby Marius. In the present day he boasts about having had several mistresses just so that people can have an impression that heâs still such a catch even in old age.Â
Everything he does is to show himself well- heâs so detestable. He also sums up and dismisses the entire French Revolution in one sentence. I really want him to be horrified by meeting all the amis somehow.
On a lighthearted note, this would be the costume of the incroyables which would have been fashionable between 1795-1799, which seems ridiculous with Gillenormand wearing it in 1820s-30s.Â
About a dozen pages into the volume entitled âMariusâ we now get to hear about Marius, as is Hugo standard.
...And so let us begin with a portrait of M. Gillenormand, Mariusâs crochety grandfather. I really enjoy how Hugo likens him to a dying breed of sorts. âFormerly they were like everyone else, and now they are no longer like anybody else.â Essentially, heâs an old racist who was charming in his own day, we know the type.
Heâs really just a person who has lost his connection to a social and political peer group, due to them literally dying out. Itâs reasonable that this would make him crochety; people who occupy a position of relative social power are reluctant to change their world views, and Gillenormand has seen quite a few political shifts come and go. The generation that incubated his views has been replaced several times over and he no longer commands any societal power outside his own house.
He managed to stay current until the years of the Directory, about 30+ years past in present day, and that age weirdly suits his sensibilities. Gillenormand is a waning emblem of old French aristocracy and it makes sense heâs frozen in a time in which young aristocrats were trying to make a cultural comeback. Heâs stuck between in the mindset of a monarchist but desperate to retain some social power as time marches on.
PokÃĐmon HOME maintenance will take place on May 8 from 00:00 UTC to 06:00 UTC, new mobile update will be made available afterward
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PokÃĐmon HOME maintenance will take place on December 26 from 00:00 UTC to 02:00 UTC
PokÃĐmon HOME is a special app that enables Trainers to continue their PokÃĐmon adventures beyond a single game system and manage their collection of PokÃĐmon across many of their games. PokÃĐmon HOME is available now on Nintendo Switch, iPhone and iPad (App Store), and Android (Google Play) devices. PokÃĐmon HOME maintenance will take place on December 26 from 00:00 UTC to 02:00 UTC.
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It's not possible to deposit Duraludon with the Gigantamax factor into PokÃĐmon Scarlet and Violet, it can only be deposited if you first remove the Gigantamax factor in The Isle of Armor
PokÃĐmon HOME is a special app that enables Trainers to continue their PokÃĐmon adventures beyond a single game system and manage their collection of PokÃĐmon across many of their games. PokÃĐmon HOME is available now on Nintendo Switch, iPhone and iPad (App Store), and Android (Google Play) devices. A new PokÃĐmon HOME update is available now:
Update 12/15/2023: Itâs not possible to deposit DuraludonâĶ
PokÃĐmon HOME maintenance is now complete and it's now compatible with PokÃĐmon Scarlet and Violet The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 2: The Indigo Disk
PokÃĐmon HOME is a special app that enables Trainers to continue their PokÃĐmon adventures beyond a single game system and manage their collection of PokÃĐmon across many of their games. PokÃĐmon HOME is available now on Nintendo Switch, iPhone and iPad (App Store), and Android (Google Play) devices. A new PokÃĐmon HOME update is available now:
New PokÃĐmon HOME Update Adds Compatibility with TheâĶ
