#lm 2.3.3

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

off she goes….

[maybeitsapineapple]

LM 2.3.3

cosette unfortunately paralleling her mother here: old before her time, and being blamed for 'ugliness' that was done to her, by those same people (mme. thénardier on the one hand, society in general on the other)

cosette also paralleling jvj in being denied her name. 'Mademoiselle Nameless Dog' is just so bleak

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 2, Matchup 46: II.iii.3 vs V.i.14

Which chapter title do you prefer?

Men Must Have Wine and Horses Water

In Which We Learn the Name of Enjolras' Mistress

Voting ended onJun 14, 2025

[cliozaur]

One aspect of poverty that Hugo continuously emphasizes is the premature ageing of girls and women. This time, Cosette is described as having “the lugubrious air of an old woman.” It's truly heart-wrenching! Additionally, she bears a swollen black eye (from Mme Thénardier’s beating) when she meets Jean Valjean in the evening.

She is extremely anxious at the prospect of being sent into the darkness of the forest to fetch water: “she felt her heart leaping in her bosom like a big snowflake”—the metaphor is beautiful, but the situation is horrific. Cosette's ability to lie surfaces naturally because it's her only means of self-protection. In this, she is just like Jean Valjean. Les Misérables serves as a hymn to justified lying for those who lack other means to protect themselves, and sometimes, even survive.

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Men Must Have Wine, and Horses Must Have Water, LM 2.3.3 (Les Miserables 1925)

All at once one of the pedlers who lodged in the hostelry entered, and said in a harsh voice:—

“My horse has not been watered.”

“Yes, it has,” said Madame Thénardier.

“I tell you that it has not,” retorted the pedler.

Cosette had emerged from under the table.

“Oh, yes, sir!” said she, “the horse has had a drink; he drank out of a bucket, a whole bucketful, and it was I who took the water to him, and I spoke to him.”

It was not true; Cosette lied.

[dolphin1812]

Cosette chapters are always distressing, partly because Hugo writes them well (aside from the Thénardiers). He continues with the idea that Cosette is less than an animal, with drinkers saying things like, “One must needs be a cat to go about the streets without a lantern at this hour!” Instead of a cat, we see that Cosette, a human child, is the one sent out. Additionally, when arguing with a customer over his horse, Mme Thénardier refers to it as a “beast,” but Cosette is the “other beast,” also not given the status of a person. If anything, she’s below the horse, as she’s expected to take the risk of going out into the night and carrying a bucket bigger than she is just to make sure that the horse has water (which is important to the horse’s life, of course, and it’s nice to see a horse be cared for in a novel otherwise filled with horse death, but given that it’s so dark and that it’s a cold winter night, going outside is extremely dangerous to Cosette, a young child who’s probably malnourished and doesn’t have proper clothes). Cosette’s even addressed as “Mademoiselle Dog-lack-name,” further emphasizing her ties to animals over humans and how even within the group of animals, she’s seen as the lowest of them, not worthy of even a name. She’s then called “Mam’selle Toad,” an animal that’s typically looked down on. This dehumanization is horrific, made worse by the fact that she’s so young. However, it’s also very effective in establishing sympathy for Cosette, who we otherwise don’t really see. We haven’t spent that much time with her relative to the other characters (or relative to Napoleon), but we need to care about her, and getting this view of how cruel others are to her - as well as glimpses of her thoughts, which are not at all what a child should be worrying about - makes it very easy to feel pity for her.

Cosette’s thoughts also indicate how frequent these kinds of events are. Hugo says suffering has made her like an “old woman,” and while he’s referring to her appearance and demeanor, it’s evident from what she focuses on as well. Given that she’s eight, we’d expect that she’d think about playing. Instead, her mental energy is dedicated to calculating the amount of water present in the inn. It’s true that aspects of her approach are still child-like. Her anxiety, for instance, and her lies aren’t surprising coming from a child (although they wouldn’t necessarily be shocking from an adult, either). Still, the extent to which this abuse has stolen her childhood is clear. She’s stressed the full night (in addition to being busy, as she’s working even as she worries) over something that even the adults present are barely paying attention to, thinking only about the work she’s expected to do instead of things that might make her happy. 

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 2.3.3 ‘Men must have wine and horses water’

I didn’t realize Cosette had a huge, swollen black eye the day she met Valjean.

Madame Thenardier punched her in the face and has since been complaining about how ugly it made her. It sure is a metaphor for how society treats the miserables (harm them, neglect them, then complain that they look harmed and neglected), but it’s also just horrible.

And now we’re back in proper story mode, sitting beside a character who desperately wants something. It’s night, and the inn is out of water. Cosette knows it, and she’s terrified she’ll have to go out into the woods and fetch some.

There's building suspense, with a false alarm as Madame Thenardier notices the lack of water but decides to do nothing. The inn doesn’t use much water--no one there drinks it, which reminds me of Marius who only ever drank water in restaurants.

The stakes rise:

Now and again one of the drinkers would look out at the street and exclaim: “It’s as black as an oven!” Or, “You’d have to be a cat to be out on the street tonight without a lantern!” And Cosette would shudder.

The “black as an oven” reminds me of fairy tales and witches being pushed into ovens. The cat reference brings up all the text’s cats. Cosette at this juncture is more of a mouse.

A man says his horse hasn’t been watered, and Cosette lies immediately. I appreciate that Hugo lets her have that small level of moral ambiguity: she doesn’t hesitate, she isn’t pushed to it by extraordinary circumstances or by any feeling except fear. It’s very straightforward--of course a kid in her situation would learn to lie a lot.

(Or be Javert. But he’s kind of his own thing.)

She’s found out immediately. The thing she fears befalls her, and there’s no way out.

There’s an interesting moment where she pauses at the open inn door:

Then she stood rooted to the spot, bucket in hand, the open door in front of her. She seemed to be waiting for someone to come to her rescue.

I can’t imagine her expecting an actual rescuer--it’s not as if anyone ever has come to her aid, though the whole town must see her situation.

In the broader scope of the novel, Hugo may be raising that idea to the adult reader: anyone there could have stepped in. Even if they couldn’t or wouldn’t do anything for her in the long run, they could have thought to themselves, “That bucket is gigantic, and the woods are freezing and dark. It’s a fifteen minute walk, and I’m an actual adult with a coat and shoes. I’ll do it tonight.” All it would really take is paying attention. But of course, nobody does.

I suspect Cosette herself is imagining a more prosaic notion of rescue: She lives under the arbitrary whims of far more powerful people, and she must be used to those whims changing. Someone new comes into the inn, and suddenly Cosette’s orders aren’t unpleasant task A, they’re unpleasant task B instead. Dragging her feet before an unusually unpleasant task is a sensible tactic that probably pays off sometimes.

But not this time.

[fremedon]

Brickclub 2.3.2, “Two Finished Portraits,” 2.3.3, “Men Must Have Wine and Horses Must Have Water,” and 2.3.4, “A Doll Makes Its Appearance”

2.3.2

The passage about Thenardier’s aggrieved grudge against the world is such a good description of such a specific and familiar type of spite.

Other than that, two things really jumped out at me about the descriptions of the Thenardiers and Cosette in this chapter:

1.) Thenardier owes 1500 francs to creditors.

In spring of 1818 when Fantine leaves Cosette--and when the inn has been there for less than three year--her money settles a debt of 110 francs that was about to come due.

HOWMST. Has he run up more than ten times that debt in five years?! What is he spending money on? They don’t even keep a servant except Cosette. (Because Thenardier sexually harasses adult--or, I imagine, teenaged--servants, so Mme. Thenardier just doesn’t hire them.)

Hugo straight up calls Cosette’s situation in the household “a paradigm of oppression,” compares the house to a spider’s web and says Cosette is like a fly being the servant of spiders.

So, a.) Spiders = fatalité, and b.) what does that make Cosette, preying on flies herself with her little lead sword?

2.) We get a lot of small images or lines that call out parallels to other characters. Thenardier is a crack shot and a poacher, like Valjean. Cosette is being crushed in a mill, also like Valjean.

For Mme. Thenardier, the first description of her unthinking acceptance of her husband’s authority, and her obedience to it, brought to mind Javert.

And then we get this:

“This bustling mountain of flesh moved under the little finger of the frail despot. It was, viewed from its dwarfed and grotesque side, the great universal fact: the homage of matter to spirit; for some deformities have their origin in the very depths of eternal beauty.”

Which feels like the dark mirror of the toad loving to watch the eagle soar. And like a weird prefigurement of the parallels we’re about to start getting between young Cosette and Grantaire.

(I know. Bear with me.)

2.3.3

Cosette’s first words in the book are a bold and obvious lie. When this doesn’t work, her next action is to pause in the doorway of the inn: “She seemed to be waiting for someone to come to her rescue.” Cosette has learned the habits that work for her—and I’m sure dawdling and hoping that a more pressing task often does work for her. This time, nothing intervenes immediately—but someone is, even now, coming to her rescue.

Fursona watch: Mme. Thenardier calls Cosette a dog and a toad, both very resonant images in this moment. The toad, of course, is the only (I think?) animal comparison Grantaire gets. And dogs are always significant.

2.3.4

The juxtaposition between the lit candles glowing magically around the doll and the starless sky recalls Grantaire’s “Who’s been unhooking the stars…” in “Preliminary Gaieties.” And, as @everyonewasabird points out here, Cosette’s veneration of Catherine, and her painful awareness of the gulf between them, really does call to mind Grantaire’s veneration of Enjolras.

It also calls to mind, even more strongly, Valjean’s watching the townspeople of Digne through the windows of the inn and the peasant’s hut--and watching Cosette’s wedding through the windows, after he slips out.

Cosette gets Catherine. She gets to come inside. Valjean brings her there, but can’t or won’t follow.

And I really am thinking now about the Thenardiers as upside-down mirrors of other relationships in the book. @secretmellowblog made a good case on discord for their being pre-Seine Valvert. I feel like there’s also an inversion of E/R there--opposites attracting, but making something worse than the sum of their parts; not the grotesque joining the ideal to make a sublime, but joining a more abstract grotesque to make--well. A paradigm of oppression. Fatalité incarnate.