A ~handsome~ Marius. A peeping tom Marius. Another questionable chapter title translation.
Eponine teaches Marius the true meaning of poverty. “He who has seen the misery of man only has seen nothing, he must see the misery of woman; he who has seen the misery of woman only has seen nothing, he must see the misery of childhood” (In America today, the majority of people in poverty are single mothers and children).
Marius has the epiphany that other people that are not him exist and he lives in a society. I’m not sure I’m happy with Eponine being used as a vehicle for his development in this way, but it gives her more agency and dimension than just “unrequited love then death.” And it’s good for Marius to be having these realizations, although, I would strongly disagree with “pity has and should have its curiosity.” Marius really doesn’t need to, and shouldn’t, become a Judas to give providence. But we do need to move the plot somehow, I guess.
This tenement really ought to be condemned. But that would just lead to gentrified housing being built in its place and any worker class renters being priced out so, for now, the Thenardiers live here.
The only hints of personality are a piece of tacky Napoleonic propaganda and a novel by Ducray-Duminil which, if written today, would be titled ‘Leashed by a Lancer’ (H/h clean romance HEA!).
It’s really a brutal scene, something about it feels even more shocking than the descriptions of Fantine’s state that we had awhile back. Hugo describes it as “that gloomy idleness which follows despair, and which precedes the death-agony” and likens it to a tomb. For all that we watched Fantine spiral into inescapable poverty, I never sensed this level of stagnant misery from her decline, probably because, with Cosette in mind, she was forced to keep moving forward.
Marius is quickly thrust into a realisation that he has never noticed how his neighbours have been living for several years. The narrative also seems to agree that Marius’ poverty was in no way comparable to that young girl’s misery.
Cut for length
Hugo also further talks about the destitution which a man reduced to extreme poverty can thrust a woman or a child in. Survival in poverty becomes an almost instinctive reaction where anyone can resort to any vice or crime.
This is not entirely related, but in Discovery of France, Graham Robb talks about the poor peasants and farmers huddling together for warmth and eating as little as possible just so they can survive the miserable winters and the cold. This is what reminded me when reading the line ‘they squat back to back in the wretchedness of their fate’. Though it might really mean that they share the terrible wretchedness of their existence together and therefore children might be put to work from a very early age to support their families.
Hugo had some words to say about child labour, so it is very likely that he is making a case for all children here who live in miserable wretchedness, after talking about the symbolic young girl through Eponine.
Where do all these children go of which none of them laugh?
Those pensive soft beings, that fever makes thin?
Those eight-year-old girls we see going all by themselves?
They go to work fifteen hours under laps;
They go, from dawn-to-dusk, and do endlessly
In the same prison the same moves.
Squat down under the teeth of a dark machine
Hideous monster chewing, who knows what in the shadow,
Innocents in a penal colony, angels in a hell,
They work. All is bronze, all is iron.
Never do we stop and never do we play....
Victor Hugo –Melancholia 1856
He then goes on to say that Eponine opened Marius’ eyes to the plight of people living in darkness and now Marius blames himself way too much for not paying attention to his neighbours' poverty whereas someone less dreamy might have noticed the neighbours' plight much sooner. I thought giving up five francs and keeping sixteen sous for himself was pretty charitable of him and very much like Myriel and his model of charity.
Hugo also emphasises the idea that he raised in the mines chapter, that poverty is often linked with wickedness to turn people into the miserables.
Providential spyhole seems to imply some connotations with God? So, Marius spying on his neighbours was a bad thing, but overall since his intentions were to find out how they were living that it became a good act? There’s a lot more support of Marius’ peeping actions than I’m comfortable with.
3.8.6
Hugo brings his cities and forests comparisons and the poetic descriptions in the first paragraph. He’s done the nature vs. civilisation comparisons before as well in the chapters with Cosette in the forest, where nature was wild and uncivilised but still preferable to the unkindness at the inn. To Hugo, it feels that cities are either towers of civilisation or the holes where wretchedness breeds, Eponine after all is converted into an osprey in a city. Somewhere in the middle are forests. Nature is better than the wretched slums in the cities according to Hugo because there is grotesque and sublime in caves and forests. The slums in the cities are grotesque and ugly without containing anything sublime.
The whole idea of slums necessarily containing wickedness though is something I feel uncomfortable with, it dismisses all poor people living in the slums as being closer to wickedness and darkness whereas that might not always be the case.
Although maybe Hugo is implying that humans can be worse than the savage beasts in their lairs, that living in slums means that as well as the squalid circumstances you are living in, you are much closer to wickedness i.e. darkness.
The thing about Marius’ poverty being noble is repeated, which I understand why Hugo is using that again here, to make the comparison to his neighbours’ who are also poor, but Marius seems to not have gone down the dark road which Thenardier led his family onto.
This Hugo reminds us, what Marius sees through the peep hole, this is abject poverty which so often leads to darkness and crime. I still don’t agree with Hugo’s idea of noble poverty especially as he ascribes it to Marius because it feels unearned for Marius, maybe Myriel would have been a better comparison or the nuns. I also am uncomfortable with poverty being described as noble, I don’t think it is something to be romanticised when it concerns Marius and called wretched otherwise.
The furniture is much bare compared to Marius’ room and, even the walls are seeping with moisture which is so much more likely to have an ill effect on health. We have more allusions to darkness and to spiders lurking in the corners and woodlice, a reference to Thenardier and Patron Minette being criminals and catching innocent people in their traps, perhaps.
Thenardier gets compared to a vulture (more bird imagery) as well as to lawyers (and Hugo does not mince words in saying outright that Thenardier is somebody who leeches and exploits people, while also dressing in an eccentric attire and looking grotesque with his cunning cruel look. Hugo is also maybe pointing out that lawyers and Thenardier have much in common by the way they deal and dispense the letter of the law.
Thenardier also lives in wretched conditions, but without making any effort to improve them whereas with Marius at least we learned that he had quickly used his abilities to learn two languages and get a job which paid enough. Thenardier is maybe too lazy or too unwilling to do the work.
He is also pointing out the injustices in society without actually realising that he is not an innocent bystander since he is fleecing people of their hard-earned money and thinks that is justified because he is poor.
We have descriptions of Mme Thenardier and how she is a giant compared to her husband, it’s slightly annoying how her age is dismissed as she could be between forty and a hundred- I don’t like the implication that beyond a certain age, a woman could be however many years in age and would still look really old and ugly. Mme Thenardier still reads romance novels, but also there is very little love left between Thenardier and his wife, and it is only in words that have lost their meanings that we find that they used to care about each other but due to poverty and hardships they have grown apart, which is sad and also very likely. It is interesting that we haven’t yet seen a happy, healthy loving relationship till now.
We also find out that Azelma is actually fifteen but looks eleven or twelve because of poverty, and the way that her life trajectory is described is heartbreaking. It’s the children who suffer because Thenardier is using them and they have to live in poverty through no fault of their own and are denied their childhood. ‘They seem to take life in big strides so as to get through it faster’ is such a heartbreaking sentence.
3.8.7
Thenardier is controlling the operations. He has sent Eponine with the letters and she comes to inform him that the gentleman from the church is coming. He is pleased with that fact and calls her a smart girl. Eponine is smart and her father trusts her with all these jobs, and it is evident why. Although this is so depressing that she is so used to going barefoot on the streets that a pair of bad boots feels worse to her. Thenardier makes an observation on how if you’re barefoot you’re denied admission into the House of God, more of Hugo taking a swipe at Christianity being involved in materialism as he did in the Myriel chapters but through someone who is motivated by only hatred.
Thenardier’s face is suddenly illuminated by light although this seems more sinister than good and he orders his family about and when they complain he talks about censoring the press. He is talking very much like a monarch. Although he could be anyone from Napoleon I to Charles X and NIII because they all did censor the press to some extent. He is however supposed to be a caricature of a dictator/monarch, that seems pretty obvious.
This also feels like he is directing a theatre play making sure the scene is set for his deception and trickery so that he can take advantage of the philanthropist as much as he can.
3.8.8
Thenardier is not content with complaining about things but even in misery he has to be better as his wife points out. It is also interesting that he feels very little concern for Azelma’s bleeding hand and more impatience at the philanthropist not arriving. He has never cared for his children. They have never been a family but scattered individuals living in close proximity. Thenardier’s talk also feels a lot like him being a hypocrite. He hates the rich but also wants to be one of them. His talk would have been noble in sentiment and almost revolutionary had it not been driven by so much hate compared to the revolutionaries whose work of changing the system is driven by love and compassion.
He also hates the fact that charity is humiliating to the receiver whereas the philanthropist might be pretending to be pious by making a show of giving money- which is a valid critique of charity, and one of the problems why charity is indeed not enough to solve the problems, something that has been a theme from the Myriel chapters.
The plot also involves Marius running across Cosette again and his passion is reignited once more and Cosette gets all the light symbolisms once again which inside this grotesque place of wretchedness and poverty makes Marius temporarily forget everything. He has found the object of his desires that he had been searching for. Meanwhile Eponine resents Cosette’s rich attire because she is aware of her own poverty in contrast to it and my heart breaks for her.
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Most of this chapter takes place in Marius’ head: he meditates on the difference between his poverty and that of his neighbors, then blames himself for not helping them sooner. Again, we see Marius’s tendency to wholly commit to things: memorializing his father, honoring Napoleon, spiting his grandfather by being poor, crushing on Cosette, and now to berating himself for insufficient charity (recall he already spent almost a year’s rent on these specific strangers).
Reading this, it felt like Hugo was using Marius as an audience insert, as well as a self-insert--that the reader is being prompted to question how they interact with or ignore poverty, and whether they are being charitable to their neighbors. I think it’s the ‘anyone would do as much’ remark [about paying half a year’s rent for stranger] that really does this. Hugo’s exaggerating a bit (or, making Marius inappropriately blame himself), but he’s still introducing the idea that charity and sharing resources are widespread/low-key peer-pressuring the reader to do likewise.
And then, we end with Marius spying on his neighbors through a hole in the wall. As with the “opening lost mail” from two chapters ago, Marius ends up being nosy so that the audience can be fed information (and to advance the plot).
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Besides the “they said the title!” moment, I’ve been thinking mostly about Marius’s attitude in this chapter. First of all: how on earth has he lived 5 years on his own in the Gorbeau slum and yet needs to encounter Éponine to realise “what misery is”? Doesn’t he pay attention to his environment at all? The answer to this is apparently, no, he doesn’t, and while it does seem realistic to me that a 17-year old runaway would be preoccupied by his own struggles, for grown-up Marius, it still seems like a stretch to me. What's bugging me as well is how he reacts to this realisation: yes, his intentions are honourable, but at the same time, even when he’s debating charity, Marius is self-centered in a certain way. He doesn’t actually think about his neighbours for very long, but instead spends more time being reproachful about what he should have done (immediately jumping to the past) and scolding himself for being happy/lighthearted. “You are allowed to spy on misfortune as a traitor if you are going to relieve it” - really, are you? Are we not going to talk about how that strips away their privacy and makes you seem like you don’t perceive them as equal humans, Marius/Hugo?
About Marius being the “last link in the chain of the human race that [the Thénardiers] touched”: I was wondering whether that’s part of what’s going on within Éponine who’s living in sort of a “parallel world” next to Marius?
