Amph Follow me down the Brick road (Les Misérables -Eponine)

Grantaire is a fascinating character, and I think he is very much needed as a counterpoint to the other idealistic students.

 

Book 5 – The excellence of misfortune
So Marius is on his own now. He doesn’t contact his grandfather, though it’s clear that Gillenormand regrets the lost contact between them, or aunt and he doesn’t go to the Musain anymore. He keeps contact with Courfeyrac though, who helps him get a job. By living at the Gorbeau tenement and not eating much and not spending more than necessary on his clothes he manages to live quite comfortably. He is poor, but he doesn’t starve and he even helps his neighbours, the Jondrettes, by paying their rent just before they are kicked out of their home. Thus the novel leaps around three years forward.

I thought that this book was quite inspirational. Marius manages to build up a life for himself, starting from basically nothing but an unfinished law degree. Sure he has to give up on some comforts, but he is independent and not indebted to anyone. I think quite a few people in today’s society actually should read this part and see how it’s possible to build up a life, even if it’s maybe not the life you dreamt of as a child.

 

Book 6 – The Conjunction of two stars
Marius has grown up and become a man. He’s quite handsome but doesn’t really think about women. One of his habits is to take a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, where he routinely meets an old man and young girl out walking. They don’t talk, but the pass each other every time they are there. Then Marius stops going there, but a year later he returns again. He doesn’t meet the old man and girl, but instead his eyes catch a young beautiful woman. He’s astonished when he realizes that it’s in fact the girl that has grown up. Marius falls in love and starts obsessing about this girl, even if he doesn’t even know her name.

In this book we meet Marius as the romantic hero. Even his looks are described as romantic, down to his “large and passionate nostrils”. I’ve heard the comment that one bad thing with many adaptions, the music included, is that Marius falls in love just from a glance when in the novel it’s something comes along slowly. I would disagree with this. Sure he has seen the girl he has fallen in love of for several years, but Hugo makes clear that when he falls in love it’s like a being struck by thunderbolt. It feels as if it’s a very conventional love story, and I can’t help but think that I would love to see them at least talk to each other rather than just fantasize about their personalities, since they only things they know about each other are their looks.

So for fun, which of these Mariuses have the most passionate nostrils?

 

I loved this book as well, as I mentioned in my write up I was actually crying when I read it. I don't agree with you on the Petit Gervais incident though, I actually thought it was a good way of showing that Valjean's conversion wasn't quite there, just because the Bishop saved him. It is silly that the incident would be registered and be the reason why he should go back to the galleys for life, I still don't think that a police department in the early 19th century would care that much a young, itinerant musician having lost some money. I also think that where the incident has been rendered in adaptions it's been quite badly done, the important thing isn't the act itself, it's the thoughts that go through Valjean afterwards. That image of Valjean praying outside the bishop would not be such a powerful image if it hadn't been for the Petit Gervais incident.

 

Yes, the only adaptions where I've seen Petit Gervais is the American/French mini-series, and the Italian from 1964. In the American version it felt strange that the incident was there, when it rushed or cut away so many other things from the novel. I think Valjean's turn to remorse was a bit too fast to really give an impact, so it would have been better to skip it. I think this is a scene that works in written form, but it's hard to make it good on screen.

 

Book 7 – The Patron Minette
In which Hugo basically describes the worst criminals in Paris at the time, centered around the characters that form the Patron Minette gang.
I would say that this book is actually quite important in order to see Hugo’s view of society. He’s been telling so much about the unfortunate poor and even if they are miserable they aren’t that bad. Here though he describes the worst dregs that you can find, he even calls them pure evil. In all I think it shows that Hugo wasn’t just a dreamer when it came to hoping for an Utopia. It’s possible to build a better society, but one shouldn’t be blind for the darkness that lies far down at the bottom of both the human soul and the human society.

This will come up more in the next book but I want to mention it here, since there is so much else happening in the next book. It seems to me that Hugo thinks that one of the worst things in society is idleness. The home of the Jondrette family is described as run down in a way that you can only get if you are lazy and don’t care about anything. Montparnasse, one of the Patron Minette, also runs into one person in the next book that warns him that it’s his idleness that will force him to labour. Meaning that Montparnasse doesn’t want to work, but since he’s quite the snob when it comes to clothing he has turned to crime instead of honest work in order to afford his clothes, and the crime will lead him to prison and forced labour. Compare that to the view of Fantine who’s elevated due to her desperate attempts to support herself with sewing and other kinds of crafts, or Jean Valjean who took over the factory and became the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer by hard work. And even when he didn’t have to in order to support himself he was happy with being a gardner. Marius himself is quite the hero due to the fact the he built up a life where he supported himself fully, even if it wasn’t in his planned career as a lawyer.

 

Book 8 – The Obnoxious Poor
With this we have now left volume one of my edition, so yes we are halfway through. This book is in a way the book that ties together many of the ends from volume one, and thus also sets the stage for the rest of the plot.

Marius hasn’t been able to see the beautiful girl again, but he has run into the daughters of his neighbor, the Jondrettes. The Jondrettes are trying to scam money from people by having their daughters deliver letters to possible donators. One of the persons who goes into the trap and agrees to come to their apartment is a mysterious philanthropist called M. Leblanc. Marius has discovered a whole in the wall between his room and the Jondrettes, so he can see everything that goes on. The Jondrettes prepare to receive M. Leblanc by making their home look even more miserable than it is. When Leblanc arrives Marius is startled to discover that it is the man from the Luxembourg gardens, and his daughter, Marius’ love, has come with him. He finally has a trace of who they are. The Jondrettes on their side get angry when Leblanc only offers food and not money, but after telling a lie about how they need money urgently Leblanc agrees to come back later with more money. He leaves.

Now it’s time for the first reveal for the reader. Of course Leblanc is Valjean, and his daughter is Cosette. The Jondrettes are actually the Thénardier family, and they recognized Valjean and Cosette, and now plan to skin them of their money. Thénardier goes to emply the Patron Minette gang for the evening when Valjean will return. Marius on his side is bewildered about having found his love and wants to stop the planned attack. He finally goes to the police and tells what’s going to happen, and guess what the police inspector happens to be Javert. Javert gives Marius a pistol and tells him to shoot a warning shot when the ambush occurs, so that the police can rush in and arrest the Patron Minette gang.

The evening comes and Valjean returns. He is ambushed and Thénardier explains that his name isn’t Jondrette but Thénardier and that he now wants to have a large sum of money from Valjean. This is of course the next big reveal of the book. Not for the reader but to Marius has lived with his father’s last will of helping a person called Thénardier in any way possible. Here now is Thénardier, but he is robbing the father of his love, and Marius has already alerted the police about it. Marius is torn about what he should do, save M. Leblanc, who is now called Fabre, or save his father’s savior. In the end Valjean breaks free, there is a ruckus, Javert has become impatient and storms in without waiting for Marius’ warning shot. Javert arrests Thénardier and some members of the gang, while some get away. He is surprised to find that the victim has also disappeared and realizes that the victim might have been a bigger catch than the bandits.

So a lot goes on in this chapter and it gives us this:

• · Marius has a name and trace of his love
• · Marius has also found the man, that his father has told him to help in any way
• · Eponine Thénardier has met Marius
• · Thénardier has gotten arrested
• · Javert has been alerted that there is man out there that runs from the police even when he gets ambushed.

As a final chapter in the book it’s made clear that the gamin Gavroche is actually the son of the Thénardiers, but has been thrown on the streets to care for himself.

Despite everything happening in this action filled book I thought it was pretty boring. It’s probably because many of the revelations to the characters, aren’t actually revelations to the reader. We already know about Jondrette/Thénardier and it’s almost impossible to miss that the girl that Marius has fallen in love with is Cosette. As I said in a way this whole book feels like a setting of the stage, from now on all the major characters are aware of each other and they have been brought together by fate. My favorite part of the book is actually Javert, who act like an ice cold and efficient policeman. If you had only read this chapter I bet that you would think that Javert is a really cool and interesting character, and he could definitely be a hero detective. He more or less stares down a loaded gun! So in a way this is Javert´s chance to shine, and compared to Thénardier it’s clear that even though Javert is considered the villain it comes from a twisted sense of morals, while Thénardier in this book is even more just pure evil and showing his true colours as scum of society.

 

I know that some people see Eponine as having some mental problems, but I wouldn't go that far. It's a young girl who's fallen in love, while at the same time trying to stay alive in a hostile environment. Her actions regarding Marius isn't exactly much different than when Fantine kept believing that Tholomyés would come back to her. Unstable is maybe the right word, especially when it comes to her luring Marius to the barricade later on, but I would rather call her emotionally immature. Overall Eponine definitely gets a pass in the musical, where she's much more interesting than Cosette and you don't get much of her backstory and her taking part both in the bullying of Cosette and helping her father with his shady business.

 

Part four: Saint Denis and idyll of Rue Plumet

Book 1: A few pages of history
So after a book with a lot of action, Hugo makes a halt in the plot again. This time it’s to explain his views on king Louis-Philippe and the July monarchy. It’s actually quite a neutral passage. Louis-Philippe was the embodiment of a bourgeois king, who just happened to end up on the throne but could have lived a happy life being an upper middle class person. Still the July revolution ended up kidnapped by the people of the upper classes, and when we the plot comes back we are into 1832 and there is a lot of unrest and movements in the working class and student quarters of Paris. One of the groups involved in all this is of course the Friends of the ABC, that we met a couple of books ago. In the last chapter of the book Enjolras sends out his friends to make contact with other groups. At first he is hesitant to let Grantaire do so, and it turns out that Enjolras is right. Grantaire goes to meet up with their fellow plotters, but when Enjolras goes to check his progress he is drunk and playing cards, not advancing the revolution.

So this is a fairly short book and one of those passages that Hugo uses to show what he thinks of society. It’s clear that he’s sympathetic to the would be-revolutionaries, and it’s actually quite exciting to read about what went on in Paris in the spring of 1832. There are a lot of descriptions on communications between different cells of people, and that of course leads into the final chapter where Enjolras is shown as being the real leader, while Grantaire fails in his mission.

 

Book 2: Eponine
We are back to Marius as the main character. He no longer wants to stay at the Gorbeau house so instead he moves in with Courfeyrac. Compared to earlier though he has what the book describes as “fallen into melancholy”. He wanders aimlessly around, having yet again lost contact with his beloved Ursule, eventhough he know calls her “the lark”. At the end of the first chapter he finds a patch of ground called “the field of the lark” and he goes there every day.

Then the book deals with what happened to the Patron-Minette gang after their arrests. It turns out that some got away, but Thenardier is in solitary confinement, and Eponine is released after a while. As soon as she is out she goes to investigate a house at Rue Plumet, but sends back a message that it’s not worth the effort of a break in. There is also quite a lot of descriptions on how messages are sent and the meaning of words in prisons. Eponine also goes to meet M. Mabeuf, the old man who was acquainted to Marius. By helping him she learns that Marius always goes to “the field of the lark”, and of course she goes there. She finds Marius and tells him that she knows the address of the girl.

I think this book is an interesting way of showing two people who are clearly in love, but they handle their situations very differently. Marius gets depressed and does nothing, while Eponine acts and goes to great lengths to help Marius, eventhough that mean helping him to find her rival. We touched upon it previously, but I think it’s worth mentioning again what a fascinating character Eponine is. I think her character, at least so far in the novel, is very well summarized by the exchange between M. MAbeuf and herself. He calls her an angel for helping her, and she answers “I am the devil, but it’s all the same to me”. The book also gives her more depth in that she’s not unwilling to help the Patron-Minette or take part in less legal activities, in many adaptions she’s been quite whitewashed and don’t like to cooperate with the gang or her father.