{"id":2679,"date":"2024-02-03T19:19:44","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T00:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/?p=2679"},"modified":"2024-02-04T17:38:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T22:38:59","slug":"hugo-victor-les-miserables-tr-christine-donougher-spoilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2024\/02\/hugo-victor-les-miserables-tr-christine-donougher-spoilers\/","title":{"rendered":"Hugo, Victor: Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/cite> (tr. Christine Donougher) (SPOILERS)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the spoiler post for Les Mis\u00e9rables<\/em><\/strong>, in which I talk about the ending, the characters, and whatever else comes to mind as I browse my ebook notes. Here’s the non-spoiler post<\/a> if you haven’t read the book and\/or would like something marginally more coherent.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Citations are in the traditional form of Part.Book.Chapter.)<\/p>\n

I guess I’ll start with the ending since that’s the freshest. As I emailed some exceptionally patient and stone-faced friends: "I can’t tell which would be sappier, Jean Valjean living happily ever after in the bedroom next door to Cosette and Marius, or what we actually got." <\/p>\n

When I called Jean Valjean’s story "deeply dramatic and sentimental" in the main post, this was one of the things I was thinking of. And this is also one of the ways the plot relies on Hugo’s extremely horrible view of women, because if Cosette had not "yielded to the undefined but clear pressure of [Marius’s] unspoken intentions, and obeyed blindly" by not caring about her father<\/em> (5.9.1), then the whole thing would never have progressed so far as the deathbed reconciliation. (Which, by the way, is the occasion of one of the five perfect single tears that I counted, all from men of course (see: thingswithwings’ manpain vid<\/a>). The other four are the member of the Convention (1.1.10); Marius’s father’s dead body (3.3.4); Enjolras killing the artilleryman (5.1.8); and Jean Valjean walking toward Marius and Cosette’s house (5.8.4).)<\/p>\n

(The other main way that the plot relies on Hugo’s horrible view of women is Fantine\/Tholomy\u00e8s, because the text makes zero effort to justify her love of him. Nothing about his badly preserved buffoonish irony seems like it should be attractive to dreamy serious Fantine, and their sole textual interaction (1.3.7) is him telling her that he’s an illusion, when she’s not even listening, and then kissing the wrong girl!)<\/p>\n

I honestly don’t know what to think about Jean Valjean’s death. Is it a sop to the reader who still reflexively thinks that convicts don’t deserve a happy life? Is it to complete the incredibly unsubtle Christ parallels—although he was already<\/em> "like one crucified," on Cosette’s wedding night (5.6.4)? Is it some political parallel or message? Or is it just, let me drag as many tears out of the reader as I can?<\/p>\n

I can’t even be mad at Marius and Jean Valjean about it, because they’re so transparently the victims of their author and his incredibly shitty views, though I fully support those who are. (I will give Hugo credit for not making Marius jealous over his cousin, however. That was nice.)<\/p>\n

I was surprised that Javert killed himself; when I paused in my reading after the sewer digression, I vaguely speculated that maybe Jean Valjean and Javert would both die as part of Jean Valjean saving Marius. I was especially surprised that Javert killed himself so early in Part Five: where, I kept wondering as I read onward, is the plot<\/em>? Javert was gone, and Jean Valjean made Cosette good fake papers, so Th\u00e9nardier didn’t seem like a credible threat (as indeed he ended up not being, in a quite funny way honestly—"Th\u00e9nardier went away understanding nothing, astounded and delighted by this gentle battering with sacks of gold and this storm of banknotes breaking over him" (5.9.4)).<\/p>\n

(It is, of course, not funny that "With Marius\u2019s money Th\u00e9nardier established himself as a slave-trader" (5.9.4). Well done, Hugo. Did he know of the existence of the Confederate edition, by the way?)<\/p>\n

I don’t give a shit about Javert, but I did see a little toward the end where the old-man slashers (who I am advised exist, though I have not run across them organically) could be coming from, book-wise. (Normally I do like "the one who is so good\/the one who gets dragged into being good against their will by sheer proximity," but, ugh. Javert<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Of the other two main ships in the book, I was pleasantly surprised by aspects of both of them. Cosette\/Marius is of course difficult because it involves a woman written by Hugo, but at the start, when they were staring at each other, I liked that Cosette was<\/em> in the verge of forgetting about him after not seeing him for a while, and of course Marius wearing his good clothes every day and sniffing Jean Valjean’s handkerchief is excellent comedy. And Hugo does concede that Cosette "spoke with remarkable insight and at times said all kinds of true and discerning things" (4.8.1), so I will hope that they have a happy and intellectually-fulfilling life together. <\/p>\n

(Pour one out for \u00c9ponine, who was great and absolutely deserved better.)<\/p>\n

As for Enjolras\/Grantaire, I knew the pairing existed because I’d read contextless modern AUs back when the movie came out, but I did not expect how canon<\/em> Grantaire’s feelings were? "Grantaire admired, loved and revered Enjolras. … Always snubbed by Enjolras, spurned, rebuffed and back again for more, he said of Enjolras, \u2018What marmoreal magnificence!\u2019" (3.4.1.) And then, of course, they die hand-in-hand. (The fics I read did not, by the way, do justice to the complexity of that whole thing.) <\/p>\n

Speaking of the barricades and dying, the sequence that I mentioned in the non-spoiler post, the one that felt like an idiot plot, was Gavroche’s death. In general the barricades failed to bring tears to my eyes, because again of the distancing effect of the "I see what you’re doing there." Perhaps I’m heartless, but I simply cannot take seriously any scene that includes this (5.1.23): <\/p>\n

\n

A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Enjolras lowered his gun, saying, \u2018I feel as if I\u2019m going to be shooting a flower.\u2019 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Sorry, fans of Les Amis!<\/p>\n

I did like Gavroche generally, though, and in particular, the interlude with the elephant and his unknown brothers was excellent. One could criticize the novel for everyone being either Jean Valjean in disguise or a Th\u00e9nardier ditto, but not me; I rather liked that the core cast was kept small to counterbalance the wild sprawl of everything else. <\/p>\n

Hmmm, what else? I already wrote at Tumblr<\/a> about Hugo’s odd choices regarding narrative verisimilitude, and Jean Valjean choosing to turn himself in when he was mayor, so I won’t repeat that here. <\/p>\n

Going through my notes: <\/p>\n