Author: Re-Reading Les Mis

Who Are Les Miserables?

A response to @matthewjmandel asking my thoughts on A Comparative Book / Movie Review of LES MISÉRABLES

It’s interesting. I agree with a lot of the comments about losing complexity, but I don’t have as much of a problem with the character changes (partly because I’m used to the stage version, where Gavroche is less political & the the Thenardiers are funny, but still dangerous)

Eponine’s probably the biggest change that isn’t just a simplification, but I think her role in the story still works, even if the details have been changed.

I do have a problem with the finale, because it’s *not* Jean Valjean’s heaven by any stretch of the imagination. It works better on stage, where it’s more like a curtain call for all the characters who have died.

The main place I disagree with the post, though, is about the theme and title. Listening to @readlesmispod talking about how the word is perceived in French makes it clear that *all* of the main characters are “miserables” and Hugo is linking the sympathetic wretched like Valjean and Fantine with the clearly evil wretched like the Thenardiers because, as far as society is concerned, they’re the same. Society looks at Fantine and thinks she’s just as depraved as Thenardier.

And Hugo is arguing that they *all* deserve compassion, that they *all* should have a better life, that society should treat them *all* better, whether they turn to evil when they fall or not.

So the musical is less of a complete inversion of the theme and (once again) more of a simplification.

@readlesmispod Yeah, I really like how it shows her resourcefulness as she switches tactics repeatedly, and the “you think you can intimidate *me*?” speech. And now I’m thinking of parallels with the chisel & powder keg.

@readlesmispod Yeah, I really like how it shows her resourcefulness as she switches tactics repeatedly, and the “you think you can intimidate *me*?” speech.

And now I’m thinking of parallels with the chisel & powder keg.

Malleability of identity: the two youngest Thénardier children swapped to Magnon, Thénardier becoming Jondrette, the obvious pseudonym of Mademoiselle Miss, taking up a new ID by moving a block away…

Malleability of identity: the two youngest Thénardier children swapped to Magnon, Thénardier becoming Jondrette, the obvious pseudonym of Mademoiselle Miss, taking up a new ID by moving a block away…

Marius & Cosette…

I really appreciate that in the novel, Marius & Cosette have an actual courtship, not the love at first sight that most of the adaptations go with for time.

It’s also amusing how much of it is done stealthily, stealing glances at each other across the park.

And it’s really amusing to watch how clumsy Marius is when it comes to not being noticed, while Cosette manages to keep things secret from her father even after Marius starts visiting her in her own garden, months later.

OTOH, there’s also the awkward stalker stage in between.

I’d forgotten just how much fool he makes himself over the handkerchief! 🤣🤣🤣

Todo: It looks like I didn’t actually incorporate this into the blog. Check to see how much it retreads Stealth Courtship and Rue Plumet from the first read-through, and overlap with the Wandering.Shop version.

The secret of bread

After reading Catching Fire, I was amused to see that the criminals in Les Miserables pass messages in and out of prison, and across prison yards, encoded (or sometimes simply hidden) in bread. Eponine checks out the Rue Plumet house while everyone else is in jail, and reports back with a biscuit, indicating that it’s not worth the effort.

TODO: Look up when I read Catching Fire and add a note on it to Just a Lark

Alias Undercover

It takes most of a year for Marius to learn Cosette’s name. Once while they’re stealing glances at each other in the park, Valjean drops his handkerchief by accident. It’s embroidered U.F. for Ultime Fauchelevent (his current alias). Marius finds it, believes it’s hers, and decides her name must be Ursula.  Later, when he learns that her father’s name starts with a U, he’s despondent, because the one thing he thought he knew about her has been taken away from him.

Since identity is the one thing that Hugo seems to keep limited to POV, for hundreds of pages they’re referred to by Courfeyrac’s nicknames for the duo: Monsieur Leblanc (because of his hair) and Mademoisele Lanoire (because she usually wears black, or did when she was younger).

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

I did not see you there…

While the musical takes liberties in condensing a year of Marius and Cosette’s courtship into two days, there is precedent in the novel for love at first sight…or at least, love at first glance.

Marius notices Jean Valjean and Cosette frequenting the same park as him for over a year, but pays them no mind until he stops going for a while, then comes back and she’s hit puberty. Even then, he doesn’t really notice until one day Marius’ and Cosette’s eyes meet. *ZAP!*

Suddenly he’s very self-conscious. The next day, he starts wearing his best clothes when going to the park, making sure he gets seen by her, and then starts thinking, huh, maybe the gentleman might think I’m acting a little odd.

One day they walk by his bench, and she glances at him. He’s overcome…but also worried because his boots are dusty and he’s sure she must have noticed.

They steal glances at each other, flirting from a distance. Marius starts hiding behind trees and statues so that he and Cosette can see each other but Valjean can’t see him.

About this time Valjean starts getting suspicious and starts changing their routine to see if Marius will follow. Marius, being an idiot, does. Not long after, Valjean stops bringing Cosette to the park.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

Marius the convert

Marius is one of those people who throws himself whole-heartedly into his beliefs, especially when they reverse.

He grows up in a Restoration-friendly household that hates Napoleon, the Republic, and the Empire, but when he discovers they’ve lied about his father, who was a decorated soldier under Napoleon, he completely throws himself into supporting the Republic, to the extent that he embarrasses himself in front of his friends who, while they support the ideals of the Republic, aren’t too fond of Napoleon.

Later on he ties all his well-being to his hoped-for life with Cosette, going from the heights of happiness when they’re together to the depths of complete and utter despair when he fears he’ll never see her again.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

Turning points

Becoming Cosette’s surrogate father is as major a turning point for Valjean’s soul as the incident with the bishop. This doesn’t come through in the stage musical at all, but they made it central in the movie, and Victor Hugo flat-out compares the two epiphanies in the novel: The bishop taught him virtue, while Cosette taught him the meaning of love. Hugo even ponders whether Valjean’s no-good-deed-goes-unpunished experience would have sent him back into bitterness if he hadn’t met her.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

It was deliberate!

Jean Valjean in the book is very deliberate. He rarely takes a big action without looking at the situation and thinking it through. He spends all night and the next day trying to decide whether to reveal his identity, even after he reaches the courthouse. He spends an hour at the inn observing how the Thénardiers treat Cosette vs. their own children, intervening on her behalf several times. He contemplates the message on Cosette’s blotter and stares at Marius’ reply for along time before heading off to the barricade.

But when there’s an immediate threat to someone, he reacts instinctively: the cart, the mast, or Madame Thénardier threatening to beat Cosette. No hesitation.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

An Extra Wrinkle

Completely skipped by the musical: Jean Valjean is recaptured, tried for robbing the chimney-sweep boy after his release, and sent back to prison. He offers no defense (he did take the coin), even though the prosecution claims he committed armed robbery with accomplices, which gets him the death penalty (though the king commutes it to life in prison). What he really did was step on a coin and refuse to move his foot.

Not long after he’s sent back to prison, he saves the life of a crewman on a ship that’s in for repairs, then “falls” to his apparent death in the waters below. No body is found, but who could survive that?

Honestly, the whole sequence doesn’t add much that we don’t already know, though it does give him a little anonymity in that he’s presumed dead until Javert figures out that he isn’t, making it even more of a one-man crusade to recapture him.

It also sets up a nice parallel between Valjean’s escape and Javert’s suicide, which the musical picked up on by using the same song for Valjean breaking parole and Javert breaking down.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

Thénardier at Waterloo

The one scene in the entire 45-page section on Waterloo that figures into any character’s story occurs at the very end, when Thénardier accidentally saves Marius’ father’s life.  He was in a pile of dead bodies, and Thénardier pulled him out to better get at his stuff. The “body” wakes up. “You saved my life!” “Um, yes, I did!”

Years later, the dying Col. Pontmercy impresses upon his son that he must find and repay the great man who saved his life, leading to some difficult choices when Marius finds out just what kind of person Thénardier is.

This is also why you need to be careful when abridging. Yes, you can pick up the basics from Pontmercy’s letter…but he doesn’t know what Thénardier was really doing before he regained consciousness.

The year I read the book the first time, I was in high school, and one of my teachers was using an abridged version of Les Misérables in another of his classes. I caught a glimpse of a student’s character study of Thénardier. Because their edition left out Waterloo entirely, the later misrepresentation of his actions here was taken at face value. It significantly altered the character by giving him a noble past that he never actually had.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)

Who the heck am I?

On stage, Valjean’s debate over whether to reveal his identity takes a couple of minutes.  In the book, it takes about 50 pages of small print, from the sleepless night at home through the long, complicated journey to the courthouse in another town, though the hour he spends in the courthouse before he finally makes up his mind.

His two driving principles: redeem his soul and conceal his identity – have come into conflict for the first time. (Well, not really the first time. There was the incident with the cart, but that was only a minor risk.)

To take the chance fate has offered him, he has to do nothing. To make things right for the falsely accused, he has to go to great lengths just to get to the trial on time. He keeps deciding not to turn himself in, but taking another step towards reaching Arles, just in case he changes his mind.

On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)