4.3.1-4.3.3
The introduction reminds me of how Hugo talked about Gorbeau House, with a description of its name and background, I really like the way he describes it. The wild look about the house ties in to Hugo’s concerns and metaphors about gardens. The garden at Rue Plumet is running wild. It exists between nature and civilisation and both are needed for living as Hugo has pointed out elsewhere.
This house had been let after all these years and we are told that the residents are Valjean, Cosette and Toussaint. We are immediately told Valjean’s name and what he was up to during all these years.
Jean Valjean had left the convent because he was too happy there and his happiness might stifle Cosette having a chance at a different future. It is interesting that Valjean self sabotages his chances of happiness here, maybe, but this is for Cosette. He’s thinking of Cosette’s future and he decides the better option is to leave the convent, which was a place outside society as we are reminded again and to enter society which the child also needs. It is interesting then that Valjean chose another house that is overgrown, wild and somewhat outside society.
Valjean provides Cosette with all the furnishings and trappings while he himself dines on a loaf of black bread, goes to fetch water. He is following the bishop in that regard by being self-sacrificing and denying himself normal comforts. I do get that he is traumatised and struggling to accept any good deeds/charity towards himself while giving charity to everyone, but it still feels as if this model is not likely to be successful in the long run, although Valjean is not subjecting Cosette and Toussaint to the same privations. He wants to give the best to Cosette out of love, but this is something that will come to become a big problem much later on, you cannot love someone else thoroughly, if you don’t also love yourself in some ways. Cosette would not like Valjean denying himself basic comforts, he does not take Cosette’s reciprocal feelings towards him and that she would want him to be happy, that she loves him. He does not think that he deserves love which is still sad.
He also wants to efface as much of himself, he wants to blend in and with this purpose he does the National Guard duty, which as the property owner, tax payer, he was required to do.
The motif of the garden recurs, the wild garden abandoned for several years grows to be beautiful. There must be an interesting point to be made here, not just about cultivating gardens but about nature working its influence in man’s absence and growing beautiful flowers. For this garden left to nature’s devices where things work in plan and according to a complex eco-system of insects and plants and where there is minimum interference has advantages according to Hugo. Nature and gardens interact in Les Miserables in many different ways and which is also pointed out in an essay that I have been reading in Les Miserables and its Afterlives.
I also love the idea of scrutinising the minutiae and the microcosm, using the microscope to be similar to observing the stars with the telescope and equally important. Looking up at heavens also keeps recurring as a metaphor and Hugo seems to place as much influence into observing and studying nature as he does in contemplating the stars.
He also placed emphasis on this in the Myriel chapters where Myriel does a little gardening without disturbing things too much, but that garden was also linked to beauty and contemplation. This interest in nature is also very Romantic of course. Nature is in harmony in this garden, ‘You could see the sacred intimacy between the birds and the trees.’
And also this, ‘Weeds ran riot, a wonderful treat for any corner of land. The display of gillyflowers was glorious. Nothing in the garden obstructed the sacred struggle for life of all things.’
It’s this relationship between man and nature that Hugo is reminding us of in this chapter, where God is also very much present and claims the garden as His own, maybe also highlighting the fact that this garden would turn into another refuge/Paradise for Cosette and for Valjean because of her.
It’s also interesting that it was in the garden of the convent that Valjean found a way to escape the temptation of pride, so that gardens continuing to be associated with Valjean who is trying to be a good man and a saint, is something very interesting. It also goes back to Valjean’s love of cultivating nettles which outwardly seems like a harsh plant with many different uses but requires very little of care and grows in nature very easily.
The garden that they have come to, is both a place of safety and protection. It is also interesting that we get a long description of the garden as that will be a place where Marius and Cosette will find that their love will grow, in a place which is cut off from society in many ways.
This garden and its ‘nothing is insignificant to the very tiny creatures’ also reminds me of the care Bishop Myriel took in not stepping over the spiders. Everything little thing according to Hugo has meaning and is worth studying and contemplating, just as everyone no matter how insignificant, has their own story, which is worth telling, this is something that I really love about this chapter, this linking of people with nature and the sublime. This relationship between the heavens and the earth, and how each benefits the other and is in communication with the other, so that looking at the stars and at the earth is equally important for the characters in the novel and both are imbued with similar symbolisms and both also lead to God. I also love how Cosette is associated with both.
It also ties up with a lot of Hugo’s own feelings about gardens and cultivations in his own life and his other works. “Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three struggles of man.- Toilers of the Sea” They constitute at the same time his three needs. It also ties up a Republic and a just society with nature being in harmony, which is a great image.
