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.
Victor Hugo is not immune to Victorian stereotyping about the deserving versus undeserving poor.
"Marius was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid..."
Spoiler: these people are bad. At least, the man who is calling the shots is. Everyone else might just be stuck with him.
But what else goes with being poor and dirty? Being lazy and un-industrious, of course!
"Moreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool."
There's certainly more conversation to be had about how and where Hugo's pulling in the stereotypes, but I somehow always end up back at the conclusion that for "Jondrette" to be both this miserably poor and also a conniving schemer, he must not be very good at crime.
One of the most interesting things about Hugo's philosophy to me, is the way that he categorizes poverty. Something that we can really see - and that is pretty much said explicitly - in today's chapter.
Marius' poverty is a much more conventional one, at least according to Victorian literary standards. It's ennobling, it makes him a better person, it opens up his soul.
"Misery, we must insist, had been good to him. Poverty in youth , when it succeeds, is magnificent in that it turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul toward aspiration [...] All hatred leaves his heart as all light enters his mind. An dis he unhappy? No. The poverty of a young man is never miserable."
(3.5.3)
But the poverty of the Jondrettes is explicitly not this. It exists in the abyss, in that great yawning shadow that exists below all philosophers. When Hugo mentions the shadows and the mud that souls sink to, crushed under humanity, this is what he is talking about.
"It was all like the gloomy idle interlude between despair and death."
(3.8.6)
This is fascinating to me, because it seems to imply that Hugo believes both that poverty is miserable and soul-crushing, and a force for good. And I can't decide whether to scoff at that or not.
I suppose it's the whole "money cannot buy happiness". To rich people it can't, but to poor people, money absolutely improves life and makes one happier. To live simply is not evil, but to be forced to have almost no life due to hunger and illness and pain is not living and is not ennobling. It is evil.
It speaks - to me - of a tension between the well-accepted cultural idea of "noble poverty" which surrounded Hugo in literary circles and contemporary novels, and the reality of poverty which he was well aware of. It really is fascinating, and I don't think there's an easy way to parse it.
Even though Marius lives in poverty, he still manages to keep his apartment neat. His neighbors’ apartment is a mess.
Looking through the peephole, Marius sees a man who is about 60 years old writing at a broken table, a woman crouching by the fire, and a young girl of about 14 who is sitting on the bed. The man and woman appear to no longer be in love.
In which Marius spies on his neighbors, the Thénardiers Jondrettes, and Hugo makes sure you know that they are the bad kind of poor people (in addition to the tone set by comparison to an animal’s den...and Hugo’s beloved light symbolism).
It’s a little jarring, after the compassionate or pitiable portrayal of poverty with Fantine, Marguerite, the Gribiers; the honorable ‘independence’ of Marius; the charitable self-denial of the Myriel household. We’re backing away from the radical ‘even social outcasts have value’ plots of Fantine and JVJ (no, Javert isn’t supposed to be right, Jesus Christ) for a moment to jump back into standard 19th century bourgeoisie takes on the poor. Notably that there are two types of poor people:
1) Deserving poor. You can tell them from their lowly-but-clean-and-neatly-mended clothing, lowly-but-clean dwellings, hard work (allowable: trying to find any honest work, evident ill-health), plain food, modest demeanor, abstention from anything resembling pleasure, and willingness to listen to your moral “improvement” advice. These are the ones who deserve your “help” (food, second-hand clothing, a low-wage job).
2) Undeserving poor: Recognizable for being ill-kempt, living in dirty homes, wearing dirty and torn/badly mended clothing (double points for cast-off finery unsuited to their station), idleness, pride (including not listening to your advice), and spending any time/money on fun (especially vices like alcohol, gambling).
None of that, of course, has any relation to 20th and 21st century opinions.
Hugo explicitly calls out the cleanliness through contrast with Marius: though renting in the same house, his room is clean where the Jondrettes’ is filthy; he has purchased his own furniture, where they mostly go without [not as much a thing in English-speaking areas, but owning furniture versus not has huge ramifications in Paris for class and even legal status]. Hugo previously mentioned Marius’s lack of a fireplace as an economic sacrifice; looking at the how the floors are brought up here alongside the fireplace, I’m wondering if this is meant to be another symbol of Doing Poor Right versus Doing It Wrong: the Jondrettes have the comfort (luxury) of a fireplace, but are sacrificing the comfort and cleanliness of a floor, where Marius’ self-deprivation of a warm fireplace is paired with a true (neater, more respectable, less gross) floor.
Where Marius uses a modest expenditure to keep his clothing clean and carefully rotates it to maintain decent appearances, the Jondrettes are basically wearing the minimal and worst quality garments that technically keep them from nudity. Looking even lower on the class scale, contrast the Jondrettes’ clothing with Marguerite and Fantine, who recycle their household and garment fabric, and (until Fantine truly “falls”) continue to mend their stockings and make what little they have look and wear as well as it can.
Just getting back to the room’s description, Hugo’s basically checking off the list of why his 19th century readers should expect bad things from the Jondrettes:
*The place is really dirty, both from lack of cleaning and from clutter
*The people are badly dressed
*No work (loom, spinning wheel, tools)
*Verbally attacking social superiors, not being humble
*Indulgence in pleasure: novels, tobacco (especially with the ‘no work’ and ‘no food’ angles: they’re undeserving and prioritizing wrong)
*A little more tenuous, but the pathetic fire is setting off some half-remembered alarm bells about housekeeping & thrift. It’s one of those topics that seems to get the ‘it’s just as cheap or barely more to do it Right, so doing it Wrong is wasteful and frivolous as well as uncomfortable’ treatment).
Marius spies on his neighbors. In true 19th century form, we get reminded that good poor people stay as tidy as possible ("de même que sa pauvreté était noble, son grenier était propre"). The neighbors' clothing is muddy, damaged and ill-assorted; their room is dark, damp, cobwebbed, and littered with garbage. Additionally, they have no tools for work (but do have a novel).
All that's missing is a neon sign reading 'Villains'.
Hugo probably neglected that detail, as the element neon won't be discovered until 1898.
[Some spoilery musing ahead.]
The man (*cough* Thenardier) is writing another begging letter. I sort of wonder how effective these actually are. The family apparently haven't paid rent in at least half a year (Marius did that for them), have minimal clothing, and go days at time without eating. Everything about their material condition suggests that these letters don't work---except that, within a single day, we see two of them answered. This may be coincidental and irregular (Marius and JVJ being extra-generous as protagonists), but it also is all we see in real time of Thenardier's letter scam. So, I'm left assuming that the family mostly gets no responses, and then eats on the rare occassion that one is answered. Presumably these sporadic windfalls are where the tabacco and paper and firewood and books come from.
But this raises the other question: what of Thenardier's association with Patron Minette? Is his failed letter-scam really impressive enough to warrant leadership in the criminal underworld? With the group, we'll later see him attempt armed robbery, kidnapping, and burglary (not to mention a successful jailbreak)--surely he's worked other jobs with the gang. If the proceeds aren't going to feed his family, what is Thernardier doing with his money? Surely he's not buying that much tobacco? He's some combination of bad at crimes and bad with money, and certainly not above worsening his material condition to further his cons, but I'm still seeing a disconnect between how good are being evil Thernardier supposedly is, and how little he seems to be profiting from it. At least some of his associates (Magnon, Montparnasse) manage to stay well-housed, well-fed and/or well-dressed, so the issue would appear to be just him. For that matter, Gavroche seems to stay better dressed and less hungry than the rest of his family, and he's engaged only in minor theft and squatting (and a little recreational property damage).
