For the character ask game: Cosette, 2 + 25 👀
Thanks for the ask, even though I'm answering it late! (For this ask meme)
#2. Favorite canon thing about this character?
My favorite canon thing about Cosette is the way she parallels Jean Valjean-- not just in their traumatic backstories, but also in the way they both often "perform" politeness and kindness. Cosette needs to perform happiness for Jean Valjean in order to convince him to take care of himself, and it's...deeply sad! She has to 'trick' him into not doing self-destructive things by framing it in cheerful lighthearted ways, papering over difficult problems with polite nothings, pretending not to be that frightened or upset, and it's...very sad. And it feels like something that he taught her.
The moments when she attempts to stop all the cheerfulness and talk to her father directly always tend to end with Jean Valjean breaking down-- like the moment when she asks "are you angry with me because I am happy?" or her attempts to ask directly about her mother, which both end with Jean Valjean shedding tears and avoiding her questions. There's something very realistic about that failure to communicate.
I don't know whether Hugo fully considered this a negative thing-- but I do think he understands the way that children often put on a great performance of happiness in order to help their parents.
Cosette is in many ways just Victor Hugo projecting his trauma over the death of his own young daughter onto Jean Valjean and Cosette's relationship, and like. As much as Cosette's writing is often deeply imperfect/ sexist, and as much as I think she should've been given more interiority and agency in the end of the story--- I think you can tell that Hugo did sincerely love his daughter? Cosette doesn't feel like a one-note cloying ingenue to me, but a fictionalized version of a real daughter Victor Hugo sincerely loved.
I also think that Child-Cosette in particular is written very well! Lots of authors struggle to write children, but Hugo really captures a lot of the way children think and speak-- young Cosette isn't a cloying innocent ingenue, she's a starving frightened angry child, and it makes her teenage self far more interesting as a contrast.
As a random addition: Hugo doesn't go into this, but it's fascinating how Cosette is extremely good at lying. She and Jean Valjean kind of share that talent. Very few people manage to trick Jean Valjean-- Marius fails utterly at pretending he's not in love with Cosette, and falls into all of his traps-- but Cosette manages to hide a secret love affair from him for a very long time. It's interesting how the two of them are very good at lying and concealing things from each other, and I don't fully know what to make of it.
Also my hot take is that anyone who thinks Cosette is a bland one-note ingenue should read Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and contrast her with Lucie Manette. XD I used to be obsessed with A Tale of Two Cities, but it's basically just "what if Les Mis was bad and all the criticisms about it were actually true?" That novel also features a young ingenue who takes care of her traumatized ex-prisoner father-- but unlike Cosette, Lucie has no interiority or depth, and doesn't feel like anything resembling a real human young girl. All of the interesting things about Cosette- like her naivete/coming of age story, or the way her excessive bubbliness is often an act she puts on for her father's happiness, or her silly funny dialogue, or her own hard past that parallels her father's-- just aren't there.
Again, there are lots of places where I think Hugo's writing of Cosette fails; but there's also a lot of interesting details that are easy for people to explore and dig deeper into in fanworks.
25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?
My first impression of this character was that she was Fine, but not very interesting? But the more I got invested in the novel and the fandom, the more I appreciated her as a character! Hugo's writing of her is deeply flawed, and she isn't given enough attention in the ending of the book specifically, but there's enough really compelling stuff there to be a great jumping off point for fanworks.
I think I already answered how I see her now in the previous question, but I want to add that I also like that she's nicknamed Madame LaNoir, or the Lady in Black. Goth Cosette is canon! That's very fun to me.
