7.do you have particular niche takes on this character? defend those takes. (openly controversial takes are permitted, but also: hyper-specific headcanons which you believe in and no one else has considered enough to disagree with yet. pick a hill to die on.)
ooh ok if this is gonna be Controversy let's do it:
Marius (in the novel) is much more relevant to Valjean's arc than Javert or even Thenardier are, because Marius is much more in Valjean's own footsteps than Javert is.
Obviously I'm not talking about material circumstances! But: both of them lose their family , or rather have their families stolen from them. Both of them spend a large chunk of their lives fully in the grip of the abusive power that took them from their family, and come out feeling cold and uncaring about the world; both, by chance, happen to find exactly the right person who works for the church to introduce them to kindness and love they had thought would never apply to them, and for both of them it sparks the beginning of their efforts to care about the larger world and be a better person. And they both stall out until they meet Cosette, who provides them the direct personal incentive they need to tune back into life a little more! At which point, exactly because they are messed up in so many of the same ways, they become absolutely opponents; they can't help seeing each other as a threat because they both have this fucked-up, love-starved experience of life.
And then, obviously, having to deal with all of Marius and his BS is the push Valjean needs to examine his own life and soul again in a way his more obvious antagonists, Thenardier and Javert, could never make him do; they're material threats, the needed reaction is pretty obvious (run! grab Cosette and run!)
But with Marius he has to actually take a look at his own motivations and consider his morals again! the threat is moral and existential, it's great. I may not agree with Valjean's conclusions XD but the need to double-check his own motives is important, and, right or wrong, definitely changes him!
Anyway. People don't have to like it. I don't like it. But facts is, Marius is essential to the story. Alas! etc. :P
24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?
27. What is a color or colors that you think of when you think of this character, be it their canon color(s) or not?
2. Favorite canon thing about this character?
24. What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?
...
Zuko, from Avatar the Last Airbender (original not any of the others bc I have not seen...those...)
it's about coming from a terrible family background and societal privilege that are inextricably linked, with a head full of bad ideas, glorifying their culture's imperialism as a way of being close to their family, maybe the only way of being close to their family, trying to uphold their Honor and be the kid they think their missing father wanted by following a totally misguided duty that is increasingly out of step with their own sense of morality and like. Basic Reality also ; being so committed to that Really Bad Idea they almost almost blow right past the Much Better life options that could actually help them become the person they want to be
in other ways of course there are some slight differences but no one needs to consider the horrors of a world where Marius Pontmercy can firebend
27. What is a color or colors that you think of when you think of this character, be it their canon color(s) or not?
BLACK THE COLOR OF well not the color of Marius' clothes actually, he would like it to be though so we'll honor that
2. Favorite canon thing about this character?
I like it when he's an awkward goober, I don't know why people want him to not be a goofy teenager/young adult. Marius just hanging out at the garden and staring at cabbages is peak Marius
4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?
Excellent question! hmmm. I think maybe a lighthearted point and click adventure game, something that can lean heavily into his Noodle tendencies. Marius wanders around Paris trying to find Cosette. If he succeeds he leaves her a letter under a rock and gets a kiss, but the point is the Wacky Adventures he has with everyone along the way. That'd be fun!
If I've gotta put him in something specific, geez, uh..Time Princess. He can be a Companion, sure. He's built to be the Kind of Boring Guy Option to Eponine's Cool Sapphic Option and Courfeyrac's ' guy you actually wanna hang out with' Option. Stand there and look pretty in the Lantern, Marius!
25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?
lmaoooooo my first impression was " incredibly confused" , given that that was the school production that had me thinking Eponine was Fantine in disguise and nothing got more normal from there XD
I would describe my sense of this character now as " more accurate" and " actually based on the original text instead of my choir teacher's uncaring and inaccurate plot summary" XD
OH SWEET MERCIFUL PLOT GODS NO. A THOUSAND TIMES NO. NEVER EVER. This guy is SO many problems and none of them are ones I want to deal with, even the hypothetical older version of him that wouldn't be horrifyingly young and unbaked to me. Do I even need to enumerate the issues XD I wish Cosette ALL joy of him but gad no.
14. Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.
EMOOOOOOO emo emo all day
pictured: Marius , And A Friend
(Sourced from that same Wiki article) (If you think I need to explain this choice...go read the Wiki article XD)
In Which It Will Not Be Explained How Marius Jumped to Conclusions
Just trying to figure out how Marius reached the opinion of Valjean he’s got in the chapter where Thenardier shows up, which is:
“Jean Valjean, as you have said, is an assassin and a thief. A thief, because he robbed a wealthy manufacturer, whose ruin he brought about. An assassin, because he assassinated police-agent Javert."
Not getting into the Javert stuff yet, let’s start with the Madeleine stuff
... We borrow the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It bears the date of July 25, 1823.
“ An arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the theatre of an event quite out of the ordinary course. A man, who was a stranger in the Department, and who bore the name of M. Madeleine, had, thanks to the new methods, resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry, the manufacture of jet and of black glass trinkets. He had made his fortune in the business, and that of the arrondissement as well, we will admit. He had been appointed mayor, in recognition of his services. The police discovered that M. Madeleine was no other than an ex-convict who had broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean has been recommitted to prison. It appears that previous to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from the hands of M. Laffitte, a sum of over half a million which he had lodged there, and which he had, moreover, and by perfectly legitimate means, acquired in his business. No one has been able to discover where Jean Valjean has concealed this money since his return to prison at Toulon.”
The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is an extract from the Journal de Paris, of the same date.
“ A former convict, who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean, has just appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var, under circumstances calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the police, he had changed his name, and had succeeded in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns; in this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who died of a shock at the moment of his arrest.
This scoundrel, who is endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or four days after his flight the police laid their hands on him once more, in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of those little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this interval of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself alone, and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However that may be, the said Jean Valjean has just been brought before the Assizes of the Department of the Var as accused of highway robbery accompanied with violence, about eight years ago, on the person of one of those honest children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said, in immortal verse,
". . . Arrive from Savoy every year,
And who, with gentle hands, do clear
Those long canals choked up with soot."
This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful and eloquent representative of the public prosecutor, that the theft was committed in complicity with others, and that Jean Valjean was a member of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.”
These articles obviously take different approaches, but they’re both very clear that Madeleine and Jean Valjean ARE the same person, and that the money he got from Lafitte WAS his own money, deposited there earlier. That’s what’s on the public record! And these are given as representatives of what all the papers are saying.
So how does Marius get to THIS:
“(Madeleine) refused the cross, he was appointed Mayor. A liberated convict knew the secret of a penalty incurred by this man in former days; he denounced him, and had him arrested, and profited by the arrest to come to Paris and cause the banker Laffitte,--I have the fact from the cashier himself,--by means of a false signature, to hand over to him the sum of over half a million which belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine was Jean Valjean.”
Like--he talks to the cashier, but how did he know to do that? All Valjean said about it was “ As for the six hundred thousand francs, you do not mention them to me, but I forestall your thought, they are a deposit. How did that deposit come into my hands? What does that matter? I restore the deposit. “ Where did Marius learn about the Lafitte stuff (inaccurately!)? Why did he do absolutely zero follow up on anything else? It’s no good saying he couldn’t have found the newspaper accounts; he found out about Madeleine and the bank account, and Thenardier was able to track down the newspapers, it’s clearly not at all impossible!
It’s one thing for Hugo to say (and he does say!) that Marius made up his mind about Valjean based on extensive research he made up in his own head; that’s unfair but about right for Marius at this point. But then he did SOME research and somehow never looked at the newspapers?
As for the Javert stuff, that’s even more confusing, because it’s recent! and the police are right there! Marius, good rich bourgeois Marius, could have walked in and asked about an officer; or he could have just checked the recent papers, which include, as Thenardier found:
...a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, announced the suicide of Javert, adding that it appeared from a verbal report of Javert to the prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, holding him under his pistol, had fired into the air, instead of blowing out his brains.
Like! Even without the mention of the insurgent saving Javert’s life, the very fact that he gave a verbal report to the prefect after the barricade proves it wasn’t Valjean (at least, it wasn’t Valjean at the barricade!). This was in the paper! one of the biggest papers! Marius!! How did you miss this?!?
...these are the research skill that got Marius a law degree. Bahorel makes more sense all the time.
In your opinion. If Marius had found out that the Thenardiers were Cosette’s abusers, but still thought that Monsieur legitimately saved his father, would he still have thrown money at them at the end?
Also hi :) have a good day I love your blog
Aw, thank you! Sorry to take a whle on this!
Hm. Of course it would be nice to say "definitely Marius wouldn't give the Thenardiers anything but a kick out the door if he knew about Cosette" but...Marius makes real bad calls when he thinks he Owes Someone. *
I tend to ultimately think it would go something like it does in @everyonewasabird's fantastic fic, Not Even Miracles , where it takes Marius a while, and Cosette has to be way more assertive about how they shouldn't support the people who abused and traumatized her than she should ever have to be, but he does come around, eventually.
I do think he'd take some serious convincing, rather than working it out himself-- if he were capable of just going "well this matters to Cosette, so it should have equal ranking to my own sense of duty" then we wouldn't get the whole end of the novel playing out the way it does :/ And he is Not Great at shifting gears when he thinks he's discovered a Grand Moral Concept (see: him running away from the Amis meetings because he's afraid if he keeps going he'll have to change his politics again ><) but...he's not impervious to new arguments, it just takes him a while. I've gotta believe he would come around and accept that he had an inomplete picture of Thenardier and reassess his own duty in that light, if only for Cosette's sake.
* This is part of why I'm so upset about JVJ refusing to "confess" that he rescued Marius-- it leaves the door open for a thenardier-type to come in and con him out of house and home. Which I was actually expecting to happen the first time I read the book-- a lot of authors would have run with that , too D: Marius is so lucky he's got Author Avatar Protection!
Headcanon: Marius hadn’t actually seen Georges since he was a baby baby--still having trouble with holding his head up level-- because of the military campaigns, and his father’s injuries. Given everything we ever see about Marius, if he’d remembered his dad at all after his mother’s death, he’d have run away from the Gillenormand house rather than give up on a personal connection.
(...alternate, even more heartbreaking headcanon- he did remember and run away, but because he was all of six he ran away to nowhere in particular and got lost, and when he was found, Gillenormand used the fact that Georges didn’t come find Marius as “proof” that he didn’t want him, when of course Georges knew nothing about it at all D:)
Heartcanon: Mabeuf really taught him a lot about gardening in his visits! Marius takes a sincere interest in whatever the people he’s idolizing like; he would have read so much and tried so hard to help in the garden. Marius makes a point to seek out Mabeuf’s Flora and when he and Cosette have their own place, he grows some of the flowers from it, in memory.
Gutcanon: while he can, eventually, translate written English and German pretty well, he has absolutely no idea how to pronounce most of it. Occasional in-person conversations with tourists pretty much have him feeling like a combo of this and this. (Courfeyrac , meanwhile, knows absolutely zero English and gets by fine with gestures and social enthusiasm.)
Spleencanon: HE MOVES HIMSELF AND COSETTE OUT OF HIS GRANDPA’S HOUSE RIGHT AFTER THE STORY CLOSES
it’s part of his big revelation, he realizes that he’s repeating Old Bad Family Patterns and gets the Abyss out of there ; he and Cosette still go see his family once a month or so, but Gillenormand doesn’t get to constantly hover over them ever again
just thinking about this, invoking the Forbidden Magics of Math a bit, and if I have this right...
Gillenormand is rich;he has an income of 15,000 francs via annuity (we’re not told exactly how his family got that money he invested but that’s a different topic). 3/4 of that expires on his death and he specifically does not worry about leaving an inheritance. So that would leave about 3,750f.
If I’m interpreting Napoleonic inheritance code right, Mlle. Gillenormad has an automatic right to half of that; about 1,875f. (note that she has her own wealth from a different inheritance, and will be rich regardless.) Marius may be the only other legal heir; for simplicity’s sake, let’s assume so, and just give him the rest of the inheritance (which is more than a grandson is necessarily entitled to, but I think with the addition of the quotit disponible , which Gillenormand would certainly assign to Marius, it will work out the same.)*
1,875 f works out to around 5 francs a day per year. That’s not quite twice what Feuilly makes; it’s a little more than Bamatabois is said to make, and not quite half of Tholomyes’ allowance, and about 300f a year more than Marius was offered after college (though that job came with room and board!). It’s not starvation wages, but it’s not rich either, by any means. It’s about half of what Hugo was earning in his early years as a father and husband, and the Hugos were running things on the lean side at that point. It’s definitely not the kind of life M. “15k a year is Poor” Gillenormand wants to leave to the grandson who is ,as far as he cares, his Only Heir.
But Gillenormand also clearly has no inclination to see Marius turn to lawyering as an actual career and source of steady income (probably this would be a step down, class-wise?) . Which means he was always counting on Marius marrying into Money for his future. That’s not exactly an astonishing plan for people in their class, but it does maybe add to Gillenormand’s motives for initially dismissing the marriage with Cosette out of hand. And also it makes me wonder exactly what Gillenormand thought Marius was going to have to offer his hypothetical future rich bride! Just sailin’ in there on the winds of passionate nostrils, I guess..??
* Gillenormand and Marius both seem to think of the situation as meaning that Marius will inherit the full remaining annuity; I think this is less that either they or Hugo are mistaken about the law, and more that they both, per Hugo, pretty much forget Mlle G exists and don’t take her into their plans D:
