#lm 2.3.2

[secretmellowart]

Cosette leaving the Sergeant of Waterloo inn :_; I'm planning to update my Cosette character designs soon.

[secretmellowblog]

There’s a fandom joke about the Waterloo digression not mattering to Les Mis, but I really love how all of Volume 2 takes place in its shadow. It’s strongly emphasized how everything is happening in the wake of these massive conflicts and wars.

The Ship Orion, where Jean Valjean is working as a convict, is a warship being used in the Spanish invasion. Now that Napoleon has been defeated, the French monarchy is sending their army to Spain to help violently assert the divine rights of the Spanish kings. The republic is dead, the empire is dead, and now it seems that monarchy will control France (and Europe) for a very long time.

The way that Madeleine “falls” and his town collapses without him feels like an echo of the fall of Napoleon.

Then, we reach “The Seargant of Waterloo” inn— where Thenardier has built his entire life on leeching off the legacy of Waterloo.

He made his initial fortune robbing the corpses at the battlefield, and now boasts/lies about having been a brave sergeant of Napoleon who rescued a general. He seems to worship violence and is desperate to enrich himself by exploiting anyone he can; he has all of Napoleon’s negative qualities, without any of his positive ones. Victor Hugo once insulted Napoleon III (the guy who exiled him) by calling him “Napoleon the Small”— and Thenardier feels like he could be a reference to that.

Outside of Thenardier we see other patrons of the inn talking about the Spanish wars, Napoleonic soldiers going to a fair to see a bird with coloration that reminds them of the tricolor flag, etc etc etc.

There’s this constant feeling of ordinary people existing under the shadows of this massive war, and its really fascinating to read!

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

they’re back and worse than ever before!

[maybeitsapineapple]

LM 2.3.2

my reaction to a lot of this chapter is just yikes. like, moving swiftly fucking onwards

"fourty, which is fifty in a woman" wowww

"colossal savages"??

so the only thing feminine about her is her interest in romance. right

HOW is your tailcoat UNDER your blouse

i will grant hugo "filousophe" that one works ('filou', according to wiktionary, means thief/rascal/trickster)

the detail about the champ d'asile is interesting because he does end up in america at the end of the book. was that a long-term ambition/back-up plan?

i completely glossed over the fact that he was flemish when i read the book the first time. hugo seems ... ahem, a little disdainful of this. when the bishop speaks different languages to diferent people it’s a good thing and a sign of his connection and dedication to the people under his care, but when thénardier does it he’s being slippery. right

"this giantess was jealous". right. because an ugly woman should be thankful that anyone has married her at all

i want so badly for the paragraph about mme. thénardier's submission to her husband to be satirical but i cannot convince myself. even the use of the words 'despot' and 'empire' only comes across as criticism of thénardier as a person rather than of how their marriage funtions

poor cosette. yikes

[bewareofitalics]

Thénardier had just turned fifty. Madame Thénardier was hitting her forties, which is the fifties for a woman, so husband and wife were evenly matched in age.

Victor Hugo is this you:

[empressofkashyr]

Madame Thenardier, is this your man??

[saints-and-poets-maybe]

Cosette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran, fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and weak as she was, did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress and venomous master. The Thénardier hostelry was like a spider’s web, in which Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal of oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was something like the fly serving the spiders.

two chapters ago, the rigging of the Orion was JVJ's spiderweb, and the man he rescued the fly. now, it's inverted: Cosette the fly, the Thénardiers the stalking spiders.

it was a kind of foreshadowing. just as Valjean freed his fly, so too is he coming to free Cosette. but at the same time, it's sort of a model of their respective prisons. Valjean escaped his by becoming the hunter, even in service of another man's liberty.

Cosette... has no such agency.

Valjean and Thénardier, meanwhile, are the same sort of creature: spiders. (Javert too is a spider, elsewhere.) but where Thénardier spins his webs to tighten the noose and extract everything of value and sustenance from his prey, Valjean spins his webs to set people free.

[cliozaur]

And good old misogynist Hugo returns with his description of Mme Thénardier. Yes, she is cruel to Cosette. But in Hugo’s eyes, her main offence is her lack of femininity. Nothing about her fits the tiny and fragile ideal of an "Angel in the House." However, she is hard-working and single-handedly manages all the tasks in the tavern: “She did everything about the house,—made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything else.” And since her shitty husband has squandered all their money, they cannot afford to hire any servants and instead exploit Cosette. In Hugo’s view, the only redeeming quality of Mme Thénardier is her submission to her husband. Such a judgment doesn't come as a surprise.

Moving on, Hugo delves into the character of Thénardier, devoting pages upon pages to his description. He relishes portraying despicable characters, and Thénardier is one of his personal favourites. None of Les Amis deserved such lengthy characterization. But just look at this vile man! And it’s not even the first time he is portrayed, and there’ll be more ahead. I don’t want to know all these things about him! Enough! Stop!

However, several curious points caught my attention this time around. Firstly, he is NOT EVEN A FRENCH: “some Fleming from Lille, in Flanders.” This revelation explains his perceived flaws in Hugo’s eyes, especially his involvement at Waterloo, from whence he emerged. Additionally, his peculiar fashion choices are noteworthy: “he wore a blouse, and under his blouse an old black coat”—HOW? Even his few good qualities are tainted when he employs them. He drinks but doesn’t get drunk. He possesses some education and pretends to knowledge of philosophy, yet he is barely literate, using his limited knowledge and literacy for scheming and fraud. What a truly despicable man.