A Pen Is Heavy to the Man Who Lifted the Fauchelevent’s Cart
Eventually, Valjean becomes so weak that dressing himself is exhausting. One day, he pulls out the valise and lays out Cosette’s old clothes and lights the bishop’s candlesticks.
He sits down in front of the mirror, and it looks like he’s aged thirty years since the wedding.
He pulls out a pen and paper and slowly begins to write. In a letter, he begins to explain to Cosette where the money came from. He is quickly overcome with emotion, believing that he will never see Cosette again.
In which Hugo expounds on how one can die of sorrow, and JVJ writes his farewell note to Cosette--with a bonus history of the manufacture of imitation jet. In a way, it’s a continuation of their last conversation, in which JVJ is focused on Cosette’s material comfort, apparently because he can’t bear to speak of their emotional situations.
In his letter, JVJ uses ‘tu’ toward Cosette (once more!) and ‘vous’ towards Marius (who also gets the title+surname treatment, rather than his given name). I feel like eating sewer-bread out of a guy’s pocket should put you on a first name & tutoyer standing, but that’s just me.
Brick!club 4/3/14 Les Miserables 5.9.3 (retrobricking)
All right I totally copped out on that last chapter but HOW MANY TIMES CAN I SCREAM ABOUT VALJEAN DEPRESSING HIMSELF TO DEATH
I am running out, is how many. And anyway Swutol-Sang-Scopes talked already about how Valjean's been using both his money and his strength all this time to give to others without connecting to others, and now the one's in danger of being rejected and the other's gone, and he's being asked to give something he still can't quite accept is worth the offering, and AUGH, Valjean.
So instead I am going to try and scream about how very much this whole "LOOK MONEYS" is SUCH a Valjean thing, and such a reaction (in the character and the book as whole) to a basic flaw in the increasingly industrialized and capitalist society Valjean's been trying to live around. He HASN'T been trying to live IN it, not really-- he's done his national guard time, but he hasn't been exactly out and engaging with people on a regular basis any time he could help it. He's hidden away; for unusually good reason, but still. Even at the convent, or when he was being nice faux-bourgeoisie M.LeBlanc, he didn't let anyone really get close to him.
But there WAS a time when he was part of society, ALMOST; when society dragged him into its midst. And that was at M-sur-M, when HE WAS MAKING MONEY. As long as he had money, he was Respectable. Even when he confessed his crimes in Arras, everyone's first reaction was noooo, it's impossible, M. Madeleine has MONEY! and position!,to the point where even with all the evidence he gave if it hadn't been for Javert his confession might still have been dismissed.
Because money is a passport, money is power, money is safety and food and security and bread for the little ones and a skirt for Cosette...
But MONEY ISN'T ENOUGH. If it were, then M-sur-M wouldn't have fallen apart after Madeleine left, or been so quick to turn on him.he gave them money! But he made almost no human connections (and the few he did were the people who stuck up for him after the unmasking-AHEM, VALJEAN, AHEM). Money's a tool, like his strength (and it's left off his nameslist a lot, but oh, he was Jean-the-Jack, too-- a tool, a useful object), a way for a person to do things with and for other people. It's not PEOPLE. And Valjean forgets that what meant so much to Fantine wasn't money or even the promise of money, or even his own strength, but having another person look at her and say yes, it's okay, you're still human and you're one of us and you're cared for; he remembers Cosette's holding on to her coin and her doll but he misses the importance of her having a person to love, even while giving that up is the very thing killing him.
So what he's making his last offering isn't a fit one at all, and we all know it. but he DOESN'T, because he's had 20 years in prison and a lifetime of solving the obvious problems. Because every loud voice every official rule, says: a soul for a bit of bread, a life for a coin. And against that he's had his own personal emotions, which he's learned to think of as inconsequential, and the voice of the Bishop, which he can still hardly begin to understand; and Cosette's own voice, which he doesn't believe he can really be hearing right.
...Yeah, he really needs to see her again. He needs to see her, and to LOOK at her, because he hasn't really gotten either one entirely.
Brick!Club 5.9.3: A Pen is Heavy to Him Who Lifted Fauchelevent's Cart
Oh, wow, and once again, this is horrible. Hugo does a tremendous job conveying the tremendous amount of effort it takes just to get out of bed and put a shirt on. And the way it's described here: it's not tiring himself today as as to be stronger tomorrow; it's the last drops of life being excruciatingly squeezed out of him. So normally, he sees no point in even trying to get up; there's so little energy and no reason to expend it, no reason to keep living at all. But on this occasion, he has something to propel him, and of course that something is Cosette. Nothing and nobody else would do it.
Oh, gosh, though, but what does he want Cosette to know? Not his past or her past, not who he was and who she helped him become. He wants her to know why it's okay for her to keep his money. If you ask me, he won't tell her the truth because he's equally afraid of being rejected and accepted. Because if Cosette knows everything he was and forgives and accepts him anyway, it will feel so, so very wrong. He's not comfortable being a part of her life in any way.
Well, he's comfortable in one way. He's reverted to his old solution of throwing money at all of his problems. If Cosette accepts Valjean's money, then he can still have a place in her life. He can still consider himself responsible for her happiness without giving of himself in any way. That's why he's so desperate that she keep it, and need it, and enjoy it, because it's the only thing he has left to give her.
