The Importance Of Enjolras’ Softness
and why i’m iffy abt most adaptions of les mis i’ve encountered so far
the great leaders of our world have virtually always been men. leadership is manly. to rule and guide and order other people around is manly.
anger is manly, too. rage. shouting, yelling, beating people up, fist fights. exerting power with violence, exposing muscles as a sign of strength, not showing fear or pain or tears. bracing oneself up, never asking for help, showing no emotions. all this is what we’re taught to think is manly.
what we’re taught to think real leaders are supposed to be.
try applying for a job in a leadership position. try doing it with smiles and kindness and devotion. now try doing it with ruthlessness, with fierceness, with your mind ruling over the heart, killing the heart, mocking everyone else’s hearts. the second one looks like a leader in your head now, no? the first one is, at best, a hufflepuff.
now was happens in les misérables? in this story about compassion, love and hope, where the protagonist is a protagonist because he is so good that he changes other people’s lives for the best - nothing else. he’s no action hero. no speech-giver (at least officially, cough cough), no soldier or king. his plot revolves solely around the people he encounters, and his life ensues by where his kindness leads him. this is jean valjean. this is who victor hugo decided to have as a protagonist.
what else did victor hugo write? a group of revolutionaries. and a leader.
but his leader isn’t abrasive. his leader isn’t cold. his leader doesn’t lack emotion or thinks himself perfect or faultless or high above his group. no. his leader, my beautiful, beautiful enjolras, is soft.
he is soft and so, so full of love.
he grouped those people around him not because he uses their abilities, their deaths, or because he wants power. he grouped the amis around himself because he loves them. he admires them. he trusts them. they’re his friends, not his minions.
enjolras sits by their discussions and listens, learning from their wisdom, their jokes. in the famous marius-loves-napoleon scene, enjolras doesn’t scoff or towers over marius to scold him, not at all, he crouches down by his side, makes himself smaller than his friend, and teaches him with patience and smiles. later on, he gives him a second chance. enjolras always gives second chances. he wants to send the fathers in his group home when he learns that they are all going to die, that there is no way out, because he can’t bear the idea that there will be children growing up without their fathers. enjolras is so full of compassion. an angel, who turns terrible, not because he can, but because he must - because the intruder poses danger to his friends. and even then he doesn’t rage. he’s calm and composed, even allows the intruder a last prayer.
every person is flawed, that is what victor hugo tells us. but every person also has the ability to be good with the good influence of others. enjolras’ influence is not on others, but them on him. he’s the leader not because he is loud and people group around him mindlessly. he’s the leader because he groups people together who are already so full of light, and he merely shows them the way.
there’s a reason he’s described to look like a girl, why victor is so careful to subvert expectations. by making enjolras cold and heartless - manly -, every adaption proves that they’d never be a jean valjean, but a javert. a victim of society who doesn’t question what they’re taught, who doesn’t listen to others, who are blinded by their ideas of how certain aspects of society simply have to be.
enjolras is soft. he is full of love. he leads because he hopes, not because he fears. please, i beg you, write him as such.
baratheonpilled
jacobvanloon
theartofmadeline
janainaart
germansingergirl
