#feuilly talk

[pilferingapples]

I was just reading the "Enjolras and his lieutenants" chapter and I noticed that Enjolras used the informal you for both Courfeyrac and Jehan, but not for Feuilly. Would you happen to know the historical/language reasons as to why that is? I thought it may be because both are students and where I'm from, students use the informal you, even if they don't know each other. But Bossuet addressed Marius with the formal you when they first met, so I'm not sure if that really is the reason for that. Does it mean that canonically, they aren't as close as Enjolras is with the others or could there be another reason for it? Also, do you know why he still only adresses them by their last names, even though he's using the informal you?

Nonny you are asking me about one of the Great Questions of the Novel: what the heck is going on with Feuilly and the t/v distinctions?

I am not going to dive into the weeds of standard t/v use,but --along with all the usual applications, in canon era and especially the kind of social circles that Hugo knew best and is setting up for the Amis, " tu" seems to have been common for young men to use together (a) with friends from childhood (b) among certain groups of Romantics , Because Romantic Friendship (c) particularly relevant here , among certain republican groups, because of the implied equality of everyone using it. Cosette will reference this use later:

And obviously all of this only makes Enjolras vous-ing Feuilly weirder!

And complicating the theorizing, Enjolras does use Tu for Feuilly later on, during his big barricade speech:

 Écoute-moi, toi Feuilly, vaillant ouvrier, homme du peuple, hommes des peuples. Je te vénère.

I have no solid answer, only theories! Theory 1: Feuilly is, somehow, fairly new to the group in Lieutenants. Counterargument: then why is he already one of the Lieutenants? And in what seems to be a particularly Secret secret meeting with ONLY the Lieutenants in attendance?

Theory 2: Maybe Feuilly's much older than we generally estimate , enough to make the Tu seem less automatic? The later use of tu at the barricades seems to argue against that, but maybe that's a special " we're all fighting and about to die" level of intimacy, since Tu does seem to be in general use there? Counterargument: hugo refers to them all being Young so very, very often, and ok that seems to include Up To Maybe 35, but still. Feuilly's part of their age cohort by all other signs.

Theory 3, Not Very Satisfying but Realistic: Hugo's bein' weird. Hugo personally used Vous for almost everyone, unless they were either direct family or , to be blunt, someone he was having an affair with. He definitely used Vous in friendships most anyone else would have considered a definite Tu situation. Maybe Hugo had an idea about it that he didn't flesh out; maybe he just wrote that and didn't catch it in edits; maybe his handwriting there was just really especially awful and whoever did the Clean Copy that day * didn't transcribe it right and no one later down the line saw it as a typo. Mundane, unrelated to the narrative reasons.

Counterargument: none ,really, except it's kinda boring.:P

Theory X (silly fandom only theory) : Enjolras and Feuilly are trying to act like they are on more formal terms , for shenanigans reasons. Maybe they're working on their Cover for a Secret Mission. Maybe they're trying to hide the fact they've started dating.

As for the Last Name thing, it's just how some people , especially men, are? I don't know that it really needs more explanation, but by all means tell me if you've got a theory! Personally I've always liked " Everyone is named Jean (so they default to last names) XD

usually, but not always, Juliette Drouet

[pilferingapples]

For the character ask meme: 22 & Feuilly? ^_^

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

I like it when he Does Things XD to be less generic: I like it when he's actually a force in how the group plans and what they do! we see at the barricade that he's genuinely pretty instrumental in how the planning goes on a very practical level, and it's cool when that's in fic too! Sometimes it won't be, obviously--some stories aren't about That and it's fine-- but I like it when he's being a Competent Revolutionary and everyone trusts him to get shit done :D

Correspondingly, I don't like it when he's not there, or there only in the background or some immaterial mention. Come onnn , wouldn't most fics benefit from More Feuilly? wouldn't most characters in Les Mis, in fact, benefit from More Feuilly? He's got a sword, you know! and many well informed opinions on international politics !!

[pilferingapples]

7, 22, 24 Feuilly for the character ask!!

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

I like that we're about 9000 percent more likely to give him dialogue than Hugo..... >< He's not even one of the Top Three Most Popular Amis in Fanwork or anything but WE REMEMBER HIM<3 And generally try to put him in group scenes and all as much as we can, if we're making those! --also also one perk of modern shift work vs canon era is that it's very VERY easy to justify Feuilly having more Off time overlapping with the other Amis and I have ZERO issues with people using that to include him in the hijinks. Put that political nerd in some Situations!!

22. If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

...I like it when he gets nice things he wants I am a simple creature who likes fluff and fix its but I also like it a lot when he's centrally involved in activism and planning and gets to go on long rants about politics (thought I suppose for Feuilly that is also Nice Things He Wants )! I love his canon tendency to talk about his One Niche Interest, which happens to be EVERYONE IN THE WORLD <3<3<3 and I like when that gets fanwork time (although I VERY MUCH get that it's hard to do! how do you draw "intense interest in global politics and solidarity across national lines" ? it's a lot harder to compose than a handholding scene! XD) For the other part of this...ok I don't exactly dislike it but I do think it's very funny when people decide that since he's a Worker he must be a big muscledy jock laborer. He's a fan painter. Graphic Design is His Passion. His only workplace injuries are carpal tunnel and headaches from paint vapors and eyestrain from going over the same dozen damn seasonal motifs for twelve hours at a time XD Sorry to all the art idealizing men of the Working Classes as Big Buff Hulks, Feuilly is a little glass cannon with puny wizard arms and a migraine (I love him) .

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

..man that is HARD. There are not a lot of characters like Feuilly! Even heroic characters! Especially when so many heroic characters spend huge chunks of their story going " oooohhhh nooooo pleeeaaase don't tell me I have to use my cool powers to do awesome things, I'm just a little birthday boy" and Feuilly's whole thing is I WILL SAVE THE WORLD ARMED WITH BASIC LITERACY AND SOME DAMN COMPASSION

I...y' know what? Captain Kirk. Original flavor, poetry-quoting Stack of Books With Legs James T. " Let Me Help" Kirk. And I wish I could think of more characters like this because I love them, but well, here we are.

[pilferingapples]

Feuilly, 18 & 24 for the character ask meme? ^_^

18. How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire? ...Pick an Ami, any Ami (...except possibly Grantaire) XD Feuilly doesn't get a lot of chances to show off his relationships to other people , but his interactions with the rest of the Funeral Quartet are all so good. There's JUST enough context given to see how the four of them, specifically, work together.

24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

... I barely even know why but Chilchuck from Dungeon Meshi STILL gives me Feuilly vibes. I mean , the easy answer is the Union Organizer thing , and the way that dealing from, apparently, a position of social inequality has made him want to stand up for others too and --- actually you know what, strike the first part, it's really obvious why Chil gives me Feuilly vibes, huh?

[pilferingapples]

I generally think of Feuilly as spending a lot of his friendships Listening Enthusiastically to things he doesn’t really understand  it’s kind of his thing 

he may not be coming from where you’re coming from, physically or philosophically, but he wants to Understand and help people feel like they’re not strange and alone in the world 

[pilferingapples]

Les Mis 365 Retroblogging 3.4.1, Feuilly

Feuilly!  I wish there was a whole lot more Feuilly in this book.  What little we get is so interesting, darn Hugo's odd class issues! But at least we do get this much.

From the first line of his introduction, Feuilly is very much defined by his family-- by his chosen family, the family of all humanity.   That ties in very well with a major theme of this whole volume, and with the importance of the Amis'  stated situation as a self-made family.  What they've made for each other--a  family out of differences, a willing union of different voices with each amplifying the others rather than silencing them, is what Feuilly would see done for the world. 

He's one of the most explicitly education-linked of the Amis; it's telling that he sees his learning as the way to liberate himself. This is clearly not the modern way that education is seen as self-improvement-- given the class system of his day, Feuilly CAN'T  get a better job by going to  community college, he's never gonna level up in his social or economic sphere by knowing the history of Greece.  What he needs to know, from a purely "practical”, capitalistic viewpoint, is how to make fans! Maybe, MAYBE, how to run a very small business; that's really the only possible " practical"  improvement he could attain in his life, to maybe someday work for himself and be the one selling his own, and possibly others'  wares.

But his education isn't about freeing himself economically, at all; it's about something much bigger--giving himself access to the world, being more than his economic/social status, whatever that might be.  I think this is really important to keep in mind when the Amis, and Hugo, talk about education; it's not there to make people more Efficient or better workers or anything so direct, it's to give people a chance to understand and participate in their society, to have power in their own lives, to be more of who they want to be and have the chance to understand who that is. Ignorance is always oppression all by itself with Hugo. 

But--and I talked about this a little in my reply to Aporenticelenchus  here-- that self-liberation has a heck of a cost for Feuilly. He's educated himself so he can speak truthfully about the injustice in the world, so he can teach others about justice. And justice rewards him by making him great--  by giving him that power, and with it, all the responsibility and duty and danger that comes from speaking up and challenging the injustice of the world. Aware of the scope of the injustice, he can't NOT fight it; he's educated himself, and the prize and the cost is acting on that.  It makes him great, it makes him so much more powerful than a man like Gillenormand, with his purposely cultivated ignorance, ever could be-- and being Great is dangerous, is even becoming impossible. Less symbolically: fighting the powers that be tends to be a risky proposition, but Feuilly, BECAUSE he's liberated, BECAUSE he knows the world is unfair, has to accept that risk. It's an important point about education, and another rather sharp point against the idea that a distancing,  self-serving philosophy is the mark of an educated or wise person (as, say, the Senator held forth back in the Bishop chapters). 

Other notes, doot do doo-- there's a certain contrast in Feuilly's description that fascinates me. He's described in as being, in crucial ways, as absolute and laser-focused as Enjolras-- they both get the One Thought description, and Feuilly explicitly talks about his passion for the right CONSTANTLY, “ to the point and beside the point”, which, okay, makes them both sound like an atrociously nerdy little justice fandom, which they actually are.

But Feuilly is also described in much warmer terms than Enjolras, here at the beginning. Enjolras loves  the Ideal because it's true and right; his love is genuine, and absolutely it's a passion-- he's got the whole volcano thing going, even now-- but it's also a severe, rather abstract love. Feuilly's singular focus, though, is described in the warmest terms possible—it's framed as a familial, embracing, very personal sort of love.  Given Enjolras' eventual, much more personal,  attitude about his own ideals,   I think there's a lot more of Feuilly's influence in Enjolras' philosophical and personal evolution than generally gets recognized.  

Which is to say, given all the other symbolism and metaphors going on: I think “ the tutor of Justice” is also A FRIGGING PUN.