#lm 1.2.3

[scuttleton]

LM 1.2.2

I got so distracted by the bishop eating dinner at 8pm that I forgot to return to the chapter after making the poll. Got very confused when it all sounded incredibly familiar. Had I forgotten to move bookmarks?

I had read the first page already.

To put it crudely, in terms that have the merit of conveying in a word an idea hardly to be expressed in less than a page,

[Hugo proceeds to describe the clothing and appearance of the two women we already know in great detail]

He did not respond to the pointed remark Madame Magloire had just made. She repeated it. Then, wanting to satisfy Madame Magloire without upsetting her brother, Mademoiselle Baptistine timidly ventured, ‘Did you hear what Madame Magloire was saying, brother?’ ‘I did vaguely hear something,’ replied the bishop.

Bishop Myriel you crack me up

‘We say this house isn’t at all safe, that with Monseigneur’s permission I’ll go and tell Paulin Musebois the locksmith to come and put the old bolts back on the door – we have them right here, it’ll only take a minute – and I say bolts are needed, Monseigneur, if only for tonight, for nothing’s more terrible, I say, than a door with a latch that can be opened from the outside by anyone that happens to pass by, what with it being Monseigneur’s habit always to say come in – not that anyone needs to ask permission, God help us, even in the middle of the night!’ At that moment someone rapped at the door quite violently. ‘Come in,’ said the bishop.

HAHA phenomenal comedic timing

It's too late to keep reading but I really want to see this guy get the help he deserves from our dear bishop.

So...

1.2.3

A man came in. We already know the man.

HAHAHA I don't even know if this part is intended to be funny but it sure is

No one would have me. I went to the prison, the turnkey wouldn’t let me in. I was in a dog kennel. The dog bit me and chased me away as if it were a man. It seemed to know who I was. I went out into the countryside to sleep under the stars. There were no stars.

Bro... Even the stars don't want him B(

Not him reiterating that he's a criminal when Myriel has another place at the table set for him to make sure they all understood from the start who he is. No more getting his hopes up and then dashed...

But once it's clear he's able to eat and stay, he's so excited.

‘Really? You mean you’re letting me stay? You’re not turning me away? An ex-convict! You call me monsieur! You treat me with respect! . . . I’m going to eat tonight! A bed! A bed with a mattress and sheets! Like everyone else! A bed! It’s nineteen years since I slept in a bed! You really don’t want me to go! What fine people you are!

The joy just flies off the page

Very interesting that the bishop tells him he's a priest. Minimizing his position, I suppose, putting them on slightly more level ground than if he'd said he was a bishop.

Each time he uttered that word ‘monsieur’, in his mildly serious and educated voice, the man’s face lit up. ‘Monsieur’ to a convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked survivors of the Medusa. Ignominy thirsts for respect.

This is doing something to my heart

This door does not ask whoever enters whether he has a name but whether he is in distress. You’re in distress, you’re hungry and thirsty: you’re welcome here. And don’t thank me, don’t say I’m inviting you into my home. No one is at home here except whoever needs a refuge. I tell you, a passing visitor, this is your home more than mine. Everything here is yours. Why should I need to know your name? Besides, even before you told me, I already knew your name.’ The man eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Really? You knew me by name?’ ‘Yes,’ replied the bishop, ‘by the name of “Brother”.’ ‘Listen, monsieur le curé,’ exclaimed the man, ‘I was very hungry when I first came in, but you’re so good I don’t know what state I’m in now. My hunger’s gone.’

A lot of somethings

Too many

Madame Magloire understood his remark, left the room without a word, and a moment later the three sets of silverware requested by the bishop were gleaming on the tablecloth, symmetrically arranged before each of the three at table.

Why does this feel like a test

I dunno it is too late and I am too tired and I'm stopping here for tonight. Valjean is healed of woes and Myriel is kind and all is good in the world

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

he has been given food!!

[secretmellowblog]

Jean Valjean’s horrible awful relationship with religion is really fascinating— the way religion becomes deeply meaningful to his life but is also still a tool of social control that is used to violently oppress him. I love this line where he describes how bishops would “preach” to him in the galleys:

“[the bishop] said mass in the middle of the galleys, on an altar. He had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it glittered in the bright light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on the three sides, with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could not see very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and we did not hear. That is what a bishop is like.”

Jean Valjean’s early relationship with religion is as this horrible violent obligation. He attends “mass” in the galleys, where cannons are pointed at him, so that if anyone in the crowd acts up they can all be massacred. The bishop is also so impossibly distant that they can’t even hear him. No one in prison is trying to actually speak to Jean Valjean or the other convicts; they’re just violently forcing them to act out the empty forms of Christianity while not allowing them to truly participate in it.

And while Myriel does change his life, and his faith…. Jean Valjean never fully internalizes the way Myriel treated him as an equal and insisted that they were brothers. And that’s in large part because of the hostility or terror which which the rest of the Church and society views him.

We’re told later that in the convent, Jean Valjean prays to the nuns doing penance, because “he did not dare to pray directly to God.”

There’s a fascinating tension between the fact that religion is extremely important to Jean Valjean’s life, but also, that same religion is often used against him as a tool of violent social control. He belongs to a religion that rejects him violently. He prays to a God that he does not dare to pray to directly, out of self-loathing. It’s a really strange complex relationship.

[lawisnotmocked]

Took me a while but! Canine imagery in volume 1 book 2 of Les Mis!

Similarly to book one, wolf imagery in book two is used to represent a character’s dangerous and violent intentions and/or their relationship to society. When contrasted with dogs in Les Mis, wolf imagery is used to show the ways certain people are prohibited from being part of normal society, usually because they’re in extreme poverty or are a criminal. A dog is a domestic canine who is allowed to participate in human society and a wolf is a wild animal who isn’t.

In Valjean’s case, Hugo describes in 1.2.7 the process by which he is transformed from a man into a wolf through the abuse inflicted on him by the prison system.

The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that which is pitiless—that is to say, that which is brutalizing—predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a ferocious beast.

He escaped impetuously, like the wolf who finds his cage open. Instinct said to him, “Flee!” Reason would have said, “Remain!” But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason vanished; nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone acted.

I think both of the uses of Hugo’s wolf metaphor I mentioned above are relevant to Valjean’s time in prison - his personhood and his place in society have been stripped from him and his trauma and mistreatment have turned him from a rational man into an angry, scared, impulsive and dangerous wolf. Hugo already explains his metaphor pretty thoroughly in this chapter so I don’t think I really need to say much more here but these few paragraphs always really stick with me. Les Mis is just begging for werewolf aus I stg

Dog imagery also makes its first appearance in book 2💖‼️ Throughout Les Mis dogs are Javert’s Main Symbolic Animal, and they’re also associated with the police and law enforcement on a wider scale as the ‘guard dogs’ of society and social order. Even though Javert doesn’t show up as a character until book five I personally read a lot of the canine imagery in book two as foreshadowing for his relationship with Madeleine in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

The first appearance of dog imagery is in chapter 1.2.1 and involves Valjean meeting a real non-metaphorical dog when he arrives in Digne. After all the local inns have rejected him because of his yellow passport, Valjean tries to sleep in a dog’s kennel but is chased off by the dog who lives there.

Chased even from that bed of straw and from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself on a stone, and it appears that a passer-by heard him exclaim, “I am not even a dog!”

If dogs in Les Mis represent people like Javert who are allowed to participate in human society without being fully part of it, Valjean not even attaining the social status of ‘dog’ shows how completely he has been rejected by the people of Digne and how his status as an ex-convict prevents him from being able to participate in society in a normal way.

The first time I believe the dog symbolism is actually foreshadowing Javert’s arrival is two chapters later in 1.2.3 when Valjean recounts his experience with the dog to Myriel:

I went into a dog’s kennel; the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a man. One would have said that he knew who I was.

When we meet him in book five, Javert is the dog who knows who Valjean really is.

Dogs show up again one more time in chapter 1.2.11 when Valjean tries to sneak into the bishop’s room at night. A hinge squeaks loudly as he tries to open the door and Valjean imagines that the sound is a barking dog who has come to warn everyone of his presence.

In the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed a terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one, and warn and to wake those who were asleep.

I think this can be read as foreshadowing for his future interactions with Javert too, but it also shows how jumpy and on edge he is after his time in prison, and how much he’s expecting to be caught again (even though he hasn’t actually done anything wrong yet!) just like he was caught and punished every time he attempted to escape from Toulon. Either way, I’m pretty sure this is the last of the canine imagery in book two.

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 2, Matchup 10: I.ii.3 vs V.i.23

Which chapter title do you prefer?

The Heroism of Passive Obedience

Orestes Fasting and Pylades Drunk

Voting ended onJun 6, 2025

[pontmercii]

So I started rereading les mis, in french this time, and I'm sort of catching up to les mis letters (only sort of, for now, since I'm still at chapter 1.2.5 I think) and I do wanna talk about the title of the book because that title has fascinated me ever since I opened that book 14 years ago in its greek translation. So the greek translation of the title "les Misérables" mystified me. I think a big part of western languages have a variation of the word "misérable" in their vocabulary so the translation of the title is pretty much consistent (obviously not every western language, idk what happens with scandinavian translations or hungarian or russian for example). In greek we do not have the word "miserable" or "misery", we kind of use the word "mizeria" but only as a "western" variation of the greek word we have for misery, so we don't have the equivalent adjective. So the original greek translator needed to find a brand new adjective, in greek, to convey the meaning of the title, and honestly, what a task that is, finding the greek equivalent of probably the most iconic title in literature ever, just one word to encapsulate 1500 pages of text.

The word finally used is "Άθλιοι" (Athlioi) the plural form of "Athlios". It's an ancient greek word that is also commonly used in modern greek as is the case for a huge part of our vocabulary. So the ancient greek definition of "Athlioi" is "struggling, unhappy, wretched, miserable". In modern greek, the definition is more or less the same: "seedy, miserable, poor, terrible", except for the last word "terrible" that has an interesting connotation. The definition of "Athlioi" as terrible is an addition of modern greek. "Terrible" by itself maybe doesn't say much and it seems as a mere variation of the classic definition of Athlioi as "miserable, poor, wretched" etc. But from miserable and wretched to terrible there is an interesting leap. While "seedy, miserable, poor, terrible" are the english translations of the greek word "Athlioi" that I find on wordreference.com, I get very interesting results when I inverse the search, this time searching for the greek translation of the following english words (on wordreference or glosbe): despicable, nasty, vile, shady, appaling, loathsome, wicked, infamous, monstrous, horrible, lame, shabby, mangy, mean, vicious. You may have guessed it, all of the above are translated into "Athlios" in greek (among other words). The reason for that is that "Athlios" in modern greek has an extremely negative connotation. An "athlios" is not just a miserable wretched poor outcast. An "athlios" is a despicable human being, one that inspires disgust, one you should avoid in any case. A horrendous, vile, monstrous, hateful, creature. I am not sure if the word "Athlios" already had that definition at the time of the first greek translation (end of 19th century) but my bet is that it did, because that is what the word is primarily used for in Greece ever since I remember myself. When we use the word "Athlios" in greek now we rarely if ever talk about someone "miserable", "poor" or "wretched". We normally talk about someone or something despicable. If it's a person, 99% of the time this has a purely moral connotation aka, someone who is morally despicable. They could be a poor person, (a Thenardier type of vile individual) or they could be rich, doesn't matter really.

I am not sure if the word "misérable" or the english word "miserable" have this connotation. It is one thing to be wretched and totally another thing to be despicable and loathsome. Is this very close to the french word "misérable"? "Misérable" in french primarily means "pitiful, wretched", with one mention of "despicable", it is true. In Larousse however (the classic french dictionary) I cannot find one definition of "misérable" with the "vile, despicable" connotation that the word "Athlios" has. I am sure "misérable" can be used that way, and it can be translated that way in english, but vile and despicable are not the leading definition one thinks about when they encounter the word. When we use the word "misérable"/miserable, we normally do not immediately think of a despicable, vile, loathsome individual. So this choice of title by the greek translator takes some liberties. He could have used our greek word for "pitiful", "outcast" or one particular greek word we have for "scorned" that has a particular depth because it means scorned, neglected and forgotten by society all at the same time. Or he could have went for our word for "miserable" in the sense of "unhappy". All of these could have worked well enough. But he went for "Athlioi". Why? Athlioi is the only word that has a truly negative connotation for the morality of a person, of their moral value, and the way society percieves that moral value.

I got to the chapter "The Evening of a Day of Walking" where Valjean makes his first appearence. The english translation is this:

"It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance".

Then Hugo proceeds with a description of his appearance that is particularly unsettling, to say the least. He was literally dressed in rags with iron-shod shoes and he had holes in his clothes. At the end of the description he says:

"The sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know not what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole".

So that guy is 1) certainly unhappy, 2) clearly wretched, 3) has a sordid quality and 4) a dilapidated look.

It is interesting that in french, the phrase "wretched appearance" is actually "aspect misérable". It is important to note this because this is the first time that the author gives us a description of a character that encapsulates what a "Misérable" according to the title actually is. Moving along, Valjean is not accepted in any inn or house and the people force him to leave because they are horrified by 1) his appearance and mainly 2) his profile as an ex convict that makes him a "Dangerous Man". "Dangerous Man" is literally written on his passport. A pitiful creature is maybe not that loathsome by itself, but a "Dangerous Man" is definitely something that you want to stay away from.

At the chapter "The Heroism of Passive Obedience" (1.2.3) Valjean enters the bishop's house and the bishop's sister sees him and describes him like this:

"He was hideous. It was a sinister apparition."

"Mademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering, and half started up in terror".

"Wretched" and "pitiful" cannot cover the impact this individual had on people, on society. That man was not just deeply unhappy, in a deplorable state, wretched and pitiful. That man was appaling. That man was loathsome. That man inspired horror, disgust, and intense, bone deep hatred. It is important to note this aspect of "misérable". The fear society has for the injustice it creates is so strong that it is far easier to dehumanize these individuals by slapping the label of "despicable", "vile", "loathsome" on them. It makes their total marginalisation easier because it justifies it. People are truly disgusted by and terrorised by Valjean. For society, there is a reason why that man is in a pathetic, deplorable, "miserable" state. It's because he is truly, irrevocably, morally hideous, loathsome and nasty. He is "dangerous". He truly is a monster inside out. And that particular manifestation of social misery is nicely conveyed by the word "Athlios" in my opinion.

[unsolicitedf001ishness]

Les Mis Favorite Quote 1.2.2 Prudence Counselled to Wisdom

"Then Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it a little without being aware of the fact."

Les Mis Favorite Quotes 1.2.3 The Heroism of Passive Obedience

"Pardon me, monsieur the inn-keeper, but what is your name?"

[loverboybrightsideghost]

hey, les mis tumblr, can you help me out? i'm a little behind on les mis letters so im reading 1.2.3 right now, and i was wondering how much one hundred and nine francs and fifteen sous would be in USD, and approximately like. how much it is in general terms of, what it would've gotten you at the time and the equivalent today?

i imagine it's not very much at all, but i am interested to know the specific details of it.