As devastating as the ending of Les Misérables is on its own, it gets even worse when you think about how Valjean’s death is really Victor Hugo imagining a world where his daughter got to outlive him
Upon arriving on Jersey, Hugo succumbed to a new fashionable craze from America—spiritist séances. He quickly learned how to communicate with long-dead spirits through the "turning table" and began asking questions to his “old friends”: Moses, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. On one occasion, he summoned the Spirit of Civilization and asked what he should accomplish in the remaining years of his life. Blessed be the Spirit of Civilization! It commanded him to finish Les Misérables, which had been mostly abandoned for almost five years.
It’s surprising that, despite Hugo’s fascination with spirits, only one spirit of the dead is mentioned in Les Misérables: the bishop of Digne attending Valjean at his deathbed (5.9.5).
@secretmellowblog keeps prompting folks to post their thoughts from the Discord on Tumblr, which I am not doing right now, but I am mimicking what I normally do on Discord, which is comment on particular lines as I read through the chapter—I'll see if I can maintain something like this through the 2025 cycle by copying over what I jabber about on the server. Quotes from the Hapgood, per the usual.
"'It is thou! thou art here! Thou dost pardon me then!'" — important insight for the conversation around whether Valjean's behavior in retreating from Cosette is all conciliation and resignation to Marius' authority or not. I want to believe what Valjean believes to be pardoned is his abandonment of his daughter, but combing back and forth over the scene—perhaps there's a hint in his acknowledgment that he's wounded her, Oh my Cosette, it is not my fault, indeed, that I have not seen thee all this time, it cut me to the heart—but he denies wrongdoing in the same breath, so—no, I think not. A pardon at last for what he has been expiating all these years with his mimicry of the nuns, I think, and I'd have to mull it over to come up with a succinct way to say what that is. Which is to say: as with his submission to the court at Arras, he agrees he committed the crime he has been charged with, there by the justice system and here by Marius standing in for the same.
"Cosette tore off her shawl and tossed her hat on the bed. 'It embarrasses me,' she said." -- Re-exerting her right to intimacy, to family. Crying.
My love of the One reckons without the good God speech comes with howling that it is addressed to Marius—as someone who loves Les Mis for the misery I am on fucking board for what this says about the dynamic between the men, and as someone invested in Cosette as a character I want the good God to bitchslap her papa and husband both for treating her as an child-icon-nonhuman in this moment.
But how much am I invested in the fact that Valjean was given one last moment to accuse God? Even if he pivots when he is granted grace in the form of Cosette, I think of "he had returned to prison, this time for having done right; he had quaffed fresh bitterness; disgust and lassitude were overpowering him" (2.4.3), of "[In Toulon] he condemned society, and felt that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence, and was conscious that he was becoming impious." (1.2.7), that we never forget that this man defined by his gentleness can nonetheless by torment be rendered dangerous—in this case, to himself, I believe—and, bitterly but with love of the novel, I think there's a way in which he never completely escapes the "unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed intelligence" (1.2.7), for all his intelligence and growth.
"I gave myself reasons: ‘They do not want you, keep in your own course, one has not the right to cling eternally." -- these aren't the reasons he gave for his confession or for his choice not to live at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; I really don't think he planned to abandon Cosette entirely. Just, y'know, mostly.
"Dost thou know, Cosette, thy husband is very handsome?" -- aaand he's still doing that fucked-up thing where he believes Marius is the only acceptable topic of conversation with her. Goddamn.
"And Cosette began again: 'How wicked of you to have left us like that!" -- ;-; she tries again and again to assert her right to love, and here she is, shut out by Valjean again for not speaking what he expects.
"It is your own fault, too. You save people’s lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is frightful." -- Marius has insight into the true harm done by Valjean: and it has nothing to do with (failures of) justice and social shame, but with failures of love, of trust, of connection. A pitiful wrong. I'm reminded of Cosette's if I did not know how good you are, I should be afraid of you.
"You form a part of ourselves. You are her father, and mine." -- Broken clocks are right twice a day and so forth. Marius refutes the fault in thought that Valjean and Javert share: that such a thing exists as being outside of society and the human family.
"'To-morrow,' said Jean Valjean, 'I shall not be here, but I shall not be with you.'" -- OK do love when he's a sassy bitch tho.
"If you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast which had made her nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat ate her." -- Cosette has changed tactics to the sort of speech that has won her attention in the past: pleasant, prattling, clever. This story of the robin, though. Do you know how the robin got its red breast? From plucking the thorns from Christ's brow; a little comfort in dying; this little bird who looks in at Cosette's window—I'm chewing on it, how it might symbolize those visits Valjean was making, some ill-defined in-between glass-separated contact for them. And what are cats a stand-in for? The bourgeoise, among others, in their latent state. But now nobody cries anymore—in any case, you only cry over the dead bird for so long, and Cosette represents the future.
"Oh! yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I shall obey. I was on the verge of dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born again." -- someone give this man some soup, he loves to symbolically die but I think this time he's going a little too far, and it looks like he's game to try keeping on, eh?
"Even if you were to take possession of me, Monsieur Pontmercy, would that make me other than I am?" -- gay
"No, God has thought like you and myself, and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me to go. Death is a good arrangement. God knows better than we what we need. " -- Sir may I point out that you are presuming divine will in the same sentence as saying one shouldn't presume divine will. Goddamn. One of those examples, I think, of a character speaking against the spirit of the book, as a symbol of what's still broken in the world.
"Thou wilt weep for me a little, wilt thou not? Not too much. I do not wish thee to have any real griefs." -- And that's all he ever takes for himself without seeing it as meant for her, as well: a little weeping. I knew well that thou still felt friendly towards thy poor old man. In this speech he's finally speaking to her at length, acknowledging her feelings, their history together, and he touches briefly on a little shadow of his own worth, I think, in reflection of that.
"I had still other things to say, but never mind" -- Wow if only this death were somehow avoidable and you had more time to impart wisdom and love on your children.
"His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius to cover his hands with kisses." -- dead, with God, he allows them finally to demonstrate their connection to him, and can't resist it.
"The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul." -- F
Propaganda from @zasnena-snovacka for V.ix.5 A Night Behind Which There Is Day: "there are two ways how to interpret this title (or at least two I noticed). Either the night symbolizes death and the day symbolizes the afterlife or, and perhaps more interestingly, the night symbolizes life, full of suffering and misery, and the day symbolizes the peaceful death, in which person leaves the flawed world of humans and enters the perfect world of God, which would also be on par with the rest of the book's themes. On top of that, it excellently epitomizes the main mesage of the book, combining its two major focus points - the problems of today and progress, leading to a brighter tomorrow. It shows that it is inevitable, like a literal law of nature, that the darkness will be followed by light, so even though it may currently be night, there is day behind it."
