#javert relevant

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Prefect Henri Gisquet, from his own memoirs, on the legal system's harassment of sex workers , via Jill Harsin's Policing Prostitution in 19th Century Paris

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the “But Javert Can’t Be Black” discussion starter pack

Because I’m already starting to see this coming up, answers to common arguments about why X character in Les Mis Can’t Be Black For Historical Reasons. These arguments are, generally, misinformed. Let’s start with Javert: 

- “There weren’t any black people in France” and/or “any black people in France were slaves or personal servants”:

Slavery within the borders of France proper was abolished during the Revolution. While Napoleon reinstated it for many of the French colonies and territories, and instituted a new “Code Noir” in his laws that made life in France much much harder for free black citizens, slavery was never again made the law of the land for already-free black people in France--  and there had been a good many such people before Napoleon’s new wave of legalized bigotry.  Many of them had been among the Republic’s most noted heroes, including the Chevalier de Saint-Georges , and General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas-- the father of novelist Alexandre Dumas, one of Victor Hugo’s closest lifelong friends. 

Life for black people in France under Napoleon was not easy, and racism was definitely an ongoing problem on both a legal and cultural level-- but black people lived and succeeded in France all the same. 

- “A black man would never have such a high status job as police inspector!”

A:  Police Inspectors in canon era France were actually a pretty low-status job! The pay was abysmal, and most were assumed to live off of bribes and other “arrangements” with the people they oversaw.  While Hugo’s treatment of Javert’s career and role in the force is often kind of ..inaccurate, with his duties being vague and often contradictory, none of the potential jobs he might hold could ever be considered “high status” or particularly aspirational in the timeline of the novel. *Javert* considers his job vital and important because of his faith in the social order and his desire to serve it, but the average French citizen of the time is highly unlikely to see it as a desirable or respectable post-- better than some more physically grueling forms of low-paying work, maybe, but not much else. In short, it’s exactly the kind of job a marginalized man with a good record and a supportive patron would most likely be able to access.  (And of course before that  Javert is just a prison guard--again, not high status at all.)

One more discussion and some sources under the cut!

- “Javert being black means a black person is supporting a racist system!” 

A:  Yeah, it does. Absolutely. But that’s pretty well built into the character.  A huge part of Javert’s character is and always has been that he’s powered by internalized bigotry directed against himself and other people in his social category. 

“He was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung.”-- Les Miserables

(That’s the Hapgood translation; note that the phrase for “race of bohemians” in the original– “race de bohèmes”–is often taken, along with the canon statement that his mother was a fortune teller arrested by the law, and that Javert is often referred to in terms of being racially criminalized in the eyes of society, as meaning he’s Roma; and that is a very legitimate reading that’s only under any doubt because of the rather free use of the term “bohème” at the time. So internalized racial prejudice is also very likely an intentional part of the character.)

Javert thinking the bigotries of society is just, and even applying the sense of inferiority he assigns to the “criminal classes” to himself, is really a driving force in his character– he supports The Social Order, not just the law, and that includes social prejudice, and that especially includes social prejudice that works against him because he thinks he needs to hold himself to the strictest standard he follows, or else be a hypocrite and a scoundrel. It’s horrible, for certain, but it’s meant to be horrible. It’s not meant to be healthy or admirable!  It’s tragic and dysfunctional and a character study in what internalizing the judgement of society can do to anyone marginalized. And it’s a central part of Javert’s character, absolutely and essentially linked to his devotion to “order”. 

If you don’t like the BBC casting for personal reasons, that’s up to you; but there’s nothing wrong with Javert being black from a historical or textual standpoint. 

Sources:  Gen Dumas  Interview with the author of “The Black Count” Napoleon and Dumas Chevalier de Saint Georges Five Facts You Should Know The “Code Noir”

Les Miserables online : Javert’s introduction Discussion of Javert and his role in the police force  Javert’s social position vs. Fantine’s  Just what IS Javert’s job, anyway? More on real police positions in canon era  The legal situation between Prostitutes and the Police More about police pay and the changing role of police in French society in the 19C Javert and his patrons in the force (also a goldmine for further sources!)

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when Valjean takes out a knife to cut Javert free, he comments that it suits him better than the gun. It's also in the musical: "how right you should kill with a knife." Is there a significance I'm not getting? The way it's written in the show attaches more "you should get this" value than the book. Is it because Javert thinks Valjean wants to make his death painful? Or to slice him like bread? Am I over analyzing?

No, you’re right!:D  It’s meant to be a Thing! 

At the time, guns were seen as martial, “ honorable”. and sort of above- board.

Guns and ammo were both fairly expensive, and pretty hard to use stealthily- if you shot someone with a gun, everyone was gonna hear about it. And then the people who commonly used guns were soldiers, in Honorable Combat. Guns were also associated with Gentleman’s Sports, like hunting.  And of course being killed with a gun, even the guns of the time, tended to be very fast and final, at least at close range. Guns were expensive,overt, and arguably “merciful”.

Knives, though? Geez, anyone could have a knife. Almost everyone did! Any man would be very likely to carry around a knife just for daily tasks--it was sort of a multi-tool.  Knives were cheap, common, often killed in a slow painful way,and they were silent-- a criminal’s tool of choice.  

This ties in with why Enjolras insists they shoot Javert in the first place, even though they have limited ammunition-- he’s establishing the revolutionaries as a being an honorable, military group, not a criminal gang.   And this is why Javert thinks Valjean is better suited by a knife-- it’s what a criminal would do. 

I think the social distinction is pretty much gone now, after a couple solid centuries of criminals using guns etc., plus the general shift in attitudes towards  “honorable” death as a concept.  But at the time,the social symbolism both Enjolras and Javert are referencing would have been clear.

...Sorry I can’t Source this , I’m afraid it’s just one of those “read a lot of period sources and you’ll get the idea”  things  >_<   I hope it helps! 

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The official registration of common prostitutes.. is now either on the voluntary demand of the female or by requisition of the Bureau des Moeurs (Bureau of Public Morals).

An account of how legalized prostitution was regulated in France. This applies to the 1850s specifically, but has a lot in common with the system in the earlier part of the century (and would of course have been part of the social context of Hugo’s initial French audience in 1862.) 

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Fantine and Javert, book and musical encounters

Like I said in this post about canon-era prostitution, the musical changes the encounters between Fantine and Javert quite a lot.   For one thing, it cuts them in half.  In the book and the musical, Fantine and Javert meet at her arrest, in the book only, they then meet again at her deathbed. Here's the most relevant bits  of text for those meetings, with links if you want to read the whole chapter (Hapgood translation).  As always with these reference posts, this is for information; use it or ignore it in fanwork as you please!

Meeting 1: The Arrest In the musical, Fantine and Javert really only encounter each other once, that they get any dialogue, in the scene of her arrest. That's their first on-page interaction in the book, too, though as I mentioned in an earlier post it's entirely possible that they've encountered each other in a professional setting before (and no, that's not an innuendo at all).     In general, I think the arrest follows the action in the book pretty closely; Fantine pleads her own case, Valjean intercedes on behalf of a disbelieving Fantine, Javert protests, and Valjean takes responsibility for Fantine and Cosette and their well-being-- all pretty close (though the musical, understandably, skips over Fantine's excellent protest against the use of prison labor for state profit, something that's still horribly relevant and that  matters to her and Valjean both, but is probably pretty hard to set to a meter). 

Here's how Fantine's arrest plays out in the book: 

Suddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd, seized the woman by her satin bodice, which was covered with mud, and said to her, "Follow me!"

The woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away. Her eyes were glassy; she turned pale instead of livid, and she trembled with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Javert.

The dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape.

 -Les Miserables, 1.5.12 with the interrogation scene continued in 1.5.13  I recommend it, because I think Fantine’s fantastic, but it’s too long for one post!

I’m using this excerpt because I think it gives the biggest changes about the scene (besides skipping the detail Fantine gives about her situation):   in the musical, her assailant Bamatabois is actually a would-be client (in the book, he's just a rich guy harassing her because he can); and  Bamatabois actually calls for Javert and presses charges against Fantine.  In the book, Bamatabois has zero interest in talking to Javert; he leaves the scene of the crime (and Madeleine/Valjean actually hangs around the scene and talks to witnesses, after the arrest). 

Meeting 2: The Hospital

That second and final encounter occurs, plot-wise, in between what on stage is "Come to Me" and "The Confrontation".  On stage, Fantine dies, peacefully,  with the promise that Valjean will save her daughter; Javert shows up after her death;  In the book he shows up before it, while Fantine thinks Cosette is already near (because people have been lying to her, because she’s dying).  Relevant excerpt the scene under the cut, for length and depiction of major character death and slurs. What’s different here is...well, that it happens, so pretty much everything. 

Jean Valjean turned towards him and said very rapidly and in a very low voice:--

"Grant me three days' grace! three days in which to go and fetch the child of this unhappy woman. I will pay whatever is necessary. You shall accompany me if you choose."

"You are making sport of me!" cried Javert. "Come now, I did not think you such a fool! You ask me to give you three days in which to run away! You say that it is for the purpose of fetching that creature's child! Ah! Ah! That's good! That's really capital!"

Fantine was seized with a fit of trembling.

"My child!" she cried, "to go and fetch my child! She is not here, then! Answer me, sister; where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire!"

Javert stamped his foot.

"And now there's the other one! Will you hold your tongue, you hussy? It's a pretty sort of a place where convicts are magistrates, and where women of the town are cared for like countesses! Ah! But we are going to change all that; it is high time!"

He stared intently at Fantine, and added, once more taking into his grasp Jean Valjean's cravat, shirt and collar:--

"I tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine and that there is no Monsieur le Maire. There is a thief, a brigand, a convict named Jean Valjean! And I have him in my grasp! That's what there is!"

Fantine raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on her stiffened arms and on both hands: she gazed at Jean Valjean, she gazed at Javert, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth as though to speak; a rattle proceeded from the depths of her throat, her teeth chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony, opening her hands convulsively, and fumbling about her like a drowning person; then suddenly fell back on her pillow.

Her head struck the head-board of the bed and fell forwards on her breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes.

She was dead.

 --Les Miserables, 1.8.12

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Fantine, Javert, and Workplace Connections

Tossing this out in hopes it will be of use/interest to other people, and because I want to have these links in one place.:P 

The relationship between Fantine and Javert is, I  think, one of the more contextually dramatic and interesting ones in the story (it’s also one of the relationships I think the musical changes the most, in many ways, but that’s a different post).  Because the thing is, prostitution in Fantine’s time was legal;  so their jobs might have brought them into contact before, not as an arresting officer and criminal, but as, well, an Inspector and the inspected. 

Under the cut for discussion of prostitution and institutionalized violence-

While prostitution in France at the time of Fantine’s arrest was legal -- it was allowed, regulated, licensed, and generally looked on as a sort of nasty but necessary public utitlity (Gross, I know. But everything about the way prostitutes were treated/discussed was horrible.)--it certainly wasn’t popular or respected. 

And just because prostitution was legal, it doesn’t follow that every prostitute was legal and registered; below the registered groups were the unregistered (Eponine would definitely have been one of these). 

The best single online source for all this is probably the Mount Holyoke page.

Specifically, the page on Lower Class Prostitutes 

and on official regulations of the trade. 

Here’s a book about Prostitution and Social Control ! (18th C but it covers early 19th too!)

all info from Robert Schwartz’s France in the Age of Les Miserables.

48 commissaires were put into place, one for each quartier of Paris, who were required to live in the area or neighborhood over which they presided. These officers were forced to work extremely long hours. Their offices, were open from 8 in the morning until 10 at night every day, and in addition to that, each commissaire was on call at all hours of the day, in the event of a disturbance or crime. They were the ultimate authority on the local level: the commissaire was responsible for enforcing the regulations set forth by the July Monarchy, and also responding to health concerns among prostitutes in the area. Many commissaires complained of having to live in these areas, many of which were slums, where low class brothels may or may not have operated their businesses.

Officiers de paix (literally keepers of the peace) were above the commissaires in terms of the amount of power they wielded. Not only did they supervise the “municipal police”, but they were the ones who were ultimately in charge of monitoring prostitutes’ activity. The officiers de paix questioned prostitutes, and ultimately decided their sentences if they were unlucky enough to be convicted of a crime. It is probably safe to say that of all the police in Paris, these were the ones which instilled the most fear in unregistered prositutes–those who worked the streets and out of the backs of bars, living from customer to customer in order to squeak by, all the time fearing they would be caught.Perhaps Inspector Javert would have been considered an officier de paix.

The Gendarmerie Royale (The royal police force) was an officially decreed force of policemen who obviously policed and patrolled the city to monitor illegal activity, and prevent the spread of unregistered prostitution. This unit was comprised of several thousand men, who “regularly patrolled” the arrondissement they were assigned to, and responded to complaints within that district. The difference between the Gendarmerie and the commissaires was the the Gendarmerie was not required to live in their district, but rather served as a form of Public Safety offcier. Daily logs were sent to the Prefecture of Police by each gendarme of complaints received, arrests made, etc. These reports became invaluable—and provided the only clue as to how many prostitutes there may have been selling their bodies on the streets.

So, was Fantine a registered/legal prostitute, or an illegal one? I think there’s reasons to read her character as either. She seems to be a streetwalker, definitely a very low class prostitute; that might mean unregistered. But look at how she recognizes Javert, and her reference to how “we have only one silk dress for the evenings”-- that “we”, to me, suggests she’s part of a group, which would most likely be a registered group. 

Also, there’s the fact that Javert only even considers charging her with *assault*, not illegal sex trafficking. Surely Javert, rigorous, detailed, and in no way inclined to cut a poor streetwalker any slack at all, would at least consider prosecution for that. 

If Fantine  WAS registered, that adds something to her recognizing Javert, since part of the job of Inspectors was specifically to inspect and enforce the proper business practices with legal prostitutes; it’s entirely possible she already knows him, in her job. (He doesn’t recognize her, but that’s not telling either way, on its own; there would always be many many more prostitutes than Inspectors, and why would he remember any in particular if they hadn’t broken any of the rules?)  Definitely she’d know him by reputation, either way; an unbribable, incorruptible Inspector (and one who pretty definitely would NEVER try to get sexual favors from the prostitutes, which of course was not uncommon practice) would be very well known in the profession.

Either way, Javert’s someone she’d have to keep dealing with, in the abstract or in person, even if he’d chosen to release her and she’d been able to go back to work--not as a criminal, but as a member of a highly regulated, badly-treated workforce. 

More books!

Mission and Method: The Early Nineteenth-Century French Public Health Movement

Robert Tombs’ France 1814-1914 has so much info; just do a search for “prostitutes” or “prostitution”.

French Feminism in the 19th Century (again, a search for relevant terms will turn up several useful mentions)

more sources as I find them/ people point me to them!