Brickclub I.5.13, “Resolving Some Questions of Municipal Policing”
“Curiosity is a form of gluttony," Hugo says, of the onlookers trying to peer through the station house door. "To see is to devour."
This is the most direct statement of a theme Hugo comes back to over and over--the destructive power of gossip and idle curiosity. It's a theme that pulls a lot of weight, but starting on this reread so soon after my last one, one thing I'm wondering is how much that theme is supposed to be setting us up to excuse Marius's lack of inquiry into the version of his history Valjean shares.
Observations on Fantine:
--Fantine, a panther during the fight, now cowers "like a frightened dog" in the station. I think the panther line might be the only feline metaphor Fantine gets.
--"She would have softened a heart of granite, but you cannot soften a heart of wood." Fantine has been turning herself to stone for the last few chapters, but there are worse things to be.
--And one of those is to become even stonier. In her last monologue, right before she attempts to leave: "Oh! I won't do it again, Monsieur Javert! Whatever anyone does to me now, I won't react in any way."
--Fantine's two long monologues keep coming back to two points: The injustice of prison wages, both to the prisoners and their competitors, and her ability to be respectable when given the means to support herself. She used to have so many changes of underwear, and now she just has one silk dress for the evenings. She still owes 100 francs to the Thenardiers, but she's up to date on her rent now, just ask her landlord. And at the end, Madeleine agrees with this: "I will give you all the money you need. You shall again become honest in again becoming happy."
We've seen, and will continue to see, how the lack of means bars access to 'honesty'/respectability, but the reverse of that statement is surprisingly hopeful: only provide the means to live honestly, and a person will be honest.
--Madeleine and Javert's battle for Fantine's liberty is framed almost exactly like the battle for Valjean's soul between his convict self and the bishop in "Petit-Gervais," and Fantine's heart softening back to trust is a much more direct parallel of Valjean's change of heart than I had realized. Valjean never manages to reach Javert this way, but he does pull Fantine back to humanity for her final weeks.
There is one major difference, though, and it’s not actually in the level of their transgressions. Fantine has spit in the face of the mayor in the place of his power; Valjean has stolen a sentimental treasure from his host, in the home where he was given shelter. Both insults are a thing that can be absorbed or shrugged off, practically, but with immense symbolic weight behind them.
But Valjean’s reverie ends with him obliterating the convict within him and letting the bishop take full possession of his soul. Fantine keeps hers. She doesn’t have to go through any of Valjean’s extreme self-abnegation to get her humanity back.
And speaking of extreme self-abnegation, there’s Javert. This got long.
Javert, despite being wood and not stone, is the one who gets the statue imagery in this scene. From the moment right before he stops Fantine from leaving, after Madeleine instructs that she be freed: "Up to that moment Javert had stood stock still, staring at the ground, out of place in the midst of this scene like some statue left in the way, waiting to be put somewhere." I am reminded of the cart in Montfermeil--the broken cart that is a metaphor for outmoded institutions, left in the way to finish decaying. Javert, the automaton of the law, is left in the way, waiting for a purpose.
Twice in this scene, we see him imagine himself an empty vessel for the law. It’s the only kind of grandiosity he ever has--humbleness to the point of self-obliteration, so he can embody The Law.
The first is while he is first handing down Fantine’s sentence, and I’m going to quote at length:
"It was one of those moments in which he exercised without restraint, but with all the scruples of a strict conscience, his formidable discretionary power. At this moment he felt that his policeman's stool was a bench of justice. He was conducting a trial. He was trying and condemning. He called all the ideas of which his mind was capable around the grand thing that he was doing. The more he examined the conduct of this girl, the more he revolted at it. It was clear that he had seen a crime committed. He had seen, there in the street, society, represented by a property holder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was an outlaw and an outcast. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen. He, Javert, had seen that himself. He wrote in silence." (Wilbour)
And the second is after Madeleine intervenes to demand Fantine’s liberty a second time:
"It was obvious that Javert must have been 'thrown out of kilter,' as they say, to allow himself to address the sergeant the way he did after the mayor's request that Fantine should be set free. Could he have forgotten monsieur le maire's presence? Had he in the end convinced himself it was impossible that any authority could have given such an order, and that surely monsieur le maire must have said one thing instead of another without meaning to? Or in view of the outrages he had witnessed over the past two hours, did he tell himself it was necessary to act with the utmost resolve, that the humble must assume greatness, the sleuth must turn himself into a judge, the police agent must become an agent of justice, and that in this exceptional extremity he, Javert, was the personification of law, order, morality, government, the whole of society?" (Donougher)
Hoooo boy. There is just so much to unpack here, and I’m glad we have another year and change of brickclub to keep unpacking it.
Just on the surface: Law, order, morality, government, and society are all the same thing to Javert. The purpose of law is to uphold the social order. It is a contradiction in terms that authority should seek to undermine itself:
"Javert felt he was about to go mad. At that moment he underwent in rapid succession and almost all at once the most violent emotions he had ever experienced in his life. To see a common prostitute spit in the face of a mayor--this was something so monstrous that in his most dreadful imaginings he would have regarded it as sacrilege to believe it were possible. On the other hand, obscurely, at the back of his mind, he made a hideous comparison between what this woman was and what this mayor might be, and then he had an inkling of something very simple about this extraordinary attack that appalled him. But when he saw this mayor, this magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say, 'Set this woman free,' he was stunned, thoughts and words failed him equally. His capacity for astonishment was exceeded. He remained speechless." (Donougher)
Refusing to punish this transgression against established hierarchies undercuts Madeleine’s legitimacy in his head so much that he takes it upon himself to contradict the mayor, to argue with him, to put forward his abstract embodied Authority as more valid than the mayor’s actual authority. Madeleine only wins by literally citing the legal code, in a scene that reads almost like a battle between wizards.
Going back to Fantine’s attempted departure--"The sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression of supreme authority, an expression that is always the more frightening the lower the level at which power is invested, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man of no account." Wilbour says "in the undeveloped man"; I prefer Donougher here, because it gets the ambiguity in "the lower the level at which power is invested"--both that power is frightening in the hands of beings who cannot, personally, wield it well, but also that small concentrations of unaccountable power create petty tyrannies.
Javert knows he is a small man who, on his own merits, neither possesses nor deserves power over others. But he is a small man channeling the whole of social authority, and that makes him terrifying.
If what he were channeling was actually Justice, it would also make him--well, it would make him Enjolras. But it’s not. I talked a couple of chapters ago about the themes I’m starting to think of as Hugo’s major arcana, and one of the big ones is Fatalite. He brings it up in the very first sentence of the prologue:
“So long as there shall exists, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates with human fatalite a destiny that is divine...”
The divine destiny--the intention of Providence--seems to be whatever humanity is capable of achieving. Fatalite is whatever human-made factors interfere with that achievement: Social condemnation. Custom. And Law. It’s all fatalite.
The more Javert imagines himself an empty vessel for the law, the more self-abnegating he is in his duty, the worse he is, because what he is channeling is the force that creates hells on earth.
He has lost this purity in Paris, and to some extent that accompanies real tolerance of corruption--this Javert would have resigned rather than serve with men he knows are taking bribes and enabling double agents like Le Cabuc. But this Javert would also never have casually granted Bigrenaille's request for tobacco in solitary. And I’m not sure this Javert would have noticed the grievances in his suicide memo--certainly, he doesn’t respond at all to Fantine’s repeated refrain about the prison wages.
I really like @everyonewasabird's idea that Javert, in frightening Fantine to death--in taking an innocent life, one he has no claim over--Javert will break a geas. He loses the ability to be this empty vessel, and is muddling through on his own instincts and prejudices after that--and his own instincts and prejudices are terrible, make no mistake. But they’re malleable, in a way that the whole force of abstract social condemnation isn’t.
And also, god, now I’m thinking about Valjean standing there listening to Fantine talk about the unfairness of prison wages. What must be going through his head.
“There is in all small cities, and there was at M-- sur M-- in particular, a set of young men who nibble at their fifteen hundred livres of income in the country with the same air with which their fellows devour two hundred francs a year at Paris.”
I wish I knew what to make of that income of 1500 francs (approximately. A franc was actually 1 livre 3 deniers, or 1 and 1/80 livres; livre was used interchangeably with franc, and was the usual word when discussing real estate or large sums). It’s half of Bahorel’s allowance from his peasant parents, five years later in Paris, and Bahorel has the leisure to spend 11 years not finishing law school, keep a mistress (if she was kept; it’s not clear how much financial independence she came into the relationship with), and dress both eccentrically and well. I would assume that the difference in costs of living between a small town and Paris allowed Bamatabois to live on a similar scale--comfortably idle--except that in the next chapter, Javert has this to say:
"This girl fell upon Monsieur Bamatabois, who is an elector and the owner of that fine house with a balcony that stands at the corner of the esplanade, three stories high and all of hewn stone.” (Wilbour; Donougher has “the enfranchised owner.”)
And just to underline it, Hugo tells us that Tholomyes would have been one of these men had he never seen Paris--and the last thing he told us about Tholomyes was that he became a sound voter and a severe magistrate.
To vote in 1823, you had to pay 300 francs a year in direct taxes. I am having the hardest time trying to find a good overview of what that level of taxation might have corresponded to in income and wealth. There was no general income tax--Bahorel’s peasant parents, despite being pretty flush with cash, aren’t paying enough in taxes to vote. (That’s an assumption, but I feel like if they were, it would have come up.)
Could Bamatabois have been paying at least a sixth of his total income in taxes on that really nice house--and other property; the “my fields, my peasants, my woods” is a general quote from this class of parasite, but Bamatabois is supposed to be emblematic of the class.
The contrast between Fantine’s icy demeanor while Bamatabois insults her--”in silence, with sombre regularity, carried on regardless with her perambulations which every five minutes brought her back to this taunting, like the soldier condemned to a flogging who keeps regaining consciousness”--and her sudden panther-like fury when he throws the snow down her back is just awful. And I’m impressed by how little space Hugo takes to establish just how beaten down she is, and how hard she’s trying to hold on to one last bit of dignity and control.
And then Javert arrives, and Fantine instantly changes again, “from livid to ashen.” Dignity is already gone; now she’s lost hope, too. However bad things were, they’ve just gotten worse.
