#lm 2.4.3

[les-mis-daily-doodles]

:)

[cliozaur]

Carlo Chiostri Valjean Teaches Cosette to Read

[franglemand]

In happier things, today's chapter of Les Mis was just ridiculously cute. Cartoon heart eyes that make everything look rose-tinted cute! Cosette and Jean Valjean just bonding to each other and being happy and sharing love after being lonely outcasts for so long. He's even teaching her to read! <3

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 3, Matchup 23: II.iii.8 vs II.iv.3

Which chapter title do you prefer?

The Unpleasantness of Receiving Into One’s House A Poor Man Who May Be A Rich Ma

Two Misfortunes Mingled Make Happiness

Voting ended onJul 24, 2025

[maybeitsapineapple]

LM 2.4.3

valjean having contractions

further explicit cosette-bishop parallels

even the fucking dog dies??

jean valjean’s instinct looked for a child because a woman without a child is impossible :) if a little girl without a puppet and a woman without a child are just as impossible, it stands to reason that when one is resolved so is the other. ergo valjean is a mother

rags = misery; mourning = life. grief is part of life because love is part of life

[saints-and-poets-maybe]

Cosette was no longer in rags; she was in mourning. She had emerged from misery, and she was entering into life. LM II.IV.III

i was never my father's daughter.

that's a consequence, you see, of my coming out after he died: he was otherwise occupied being ashes on a mountainside, and therefore was not exactly around to witness my entrance into a fuller life.

our relationship was difficult––for many reasons, few of which are relevant to this reflection or the chapter at hand––and so, necessarily, my mourning of him included mourning the things we were not up to the challenge of processing while he was alive. that he missed out on the privilege of knowing me as his daughter is irretrievably among them.

so there i found myself, restored to my place as a daughter, who seemed to have mysteriously misplaced a parent to be a daughter to. that strange conundrum of being a daughter without the parent is precisely, and to my great surprise, where cosette finds herself in the garret.

cosette, who has suffered and died in a manmade hell, is reborn, “becoming another being,” coming into herself as a daughter instead of a servant, taking off the rags of unlovedness and putting on the mantle of daughterhood. because she certainly is a daughter…

only, fantine is dead.

cosette is forced to negotiate becoming a daughter who has no mother to be a daughter to. in other words, to twist ts eliot: she has the meaning, but misses the experience––and is altogether too young to find her way through it alone.

enter valjean, who provides the experience.

as if driven by instinct, he who has never raised a child buys cosette mourning clothes. he tells her stories of her mother, has her pray. and through these rituals he devises, he makes a place for cosette in this new and full life. he anoints her as a daughter in much the same way fantine anointed him to be a mother, whose labors in the intervening months entailed his own symbolic death.

after all, who else can so fittingly be a parent to a reborn daughter, than one who has himself seen death?

an odd pair they make, the daughter with no mother and the loveless, childless man who must become both parents; "oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances of destiny!" together they mourn, and together they enter new life.

[secretmellowblog]

I’m thinking again about how Valjean didn’t just save Cosette— she also saved him, and the two of them saved each other.

He loved and grew strong again. Alas! he walked with no less indecision than Cosette. He protected her, and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life; thanks to her, he could continue in virtue. He was that child’s stay, and she was his prop.

I mentioned before how both of them are terrified of the Thenardier’s for similar reasons— Cosette because they can abuse her, Valjean because they keep coming close to suspecting he’s a criminal on the run; Cosette because Madame Thenardier might whip her, and Valjean because he knows they can send him back to prison where he’ll be under the lash again.

And I’ve also written about how they both enter a similar state of terror when they’re alone in the wilderness, like they both have a deep subconscious fear of their own isolation—- Valjean is terrified at the empty black landscape when he leaves Digne, Cosette is terrified of the empty black landscape the moment she leaves Montfermeil for the woods.

And then, as I wrote about here, they both have similar “panic attacks” from the lingering effects of trauma on them even after they’ve been “freed.”

Neither of them have ever had the opportunity to love anyone before, and so both of their lives are changed entirely when they come together to love each other, help each other and give each other reasons to live.

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Two Misfortunes Make One Piece of Good Fortune, LM 2.4.3 (Les Miserables 1967)

She called him father, and knew no other name for him.