Weird: the 2012 Jekyll & Hyde album sounds more Nineties than the 1994 Jekyll & Hyde.
Author: Re-Reading Les Mis
Phone has whiplash switching btw Hamilton & A Year w/Frog & Toad depending on whether kid’s in the car. Now the songs are dueling in my head
Phone has whiplash switching btw Hamilton & A Year w/Frog & Toad depending on whether kid’s in the car. Now the songs are dueling in my head
Search hit: “Why doesn’t Gavroche live with his parents?” Answer: They’re the Thénardiers. I wouldn’t want to live with them either.
Search hit: “Why doesn’t Gavroche live with his parents?” Answer: They’re the Thénardiers. I wouldn’t want to live with them either.
Marius’ Friends
After the wedding, Cosette starts spending time with “new acquaintances brought to her by marriage.” Who? All of Marius’ friends are dead.
Note: this is in the middle of a much longer blog entry. Need to decide whether to link just the picture, or u-syndication the whole thing, or what.
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)There’s a 52-episode anime adaptation of Les Miserables?
There’s a 52-episode anime adaptation of Les Miserables? Shōjo Cosette
Eye, Eye, Eye!
Cosette keeps her feelings hidden, and Marius makes an ass of himself over and over. Hugo says it’s a rule that in these sort of courtships, “the girl never falls into any trap and the young man falls into all of them.” Valjean is convinced that Cosette has no clue who Marius is, so he starts looking daggers at Marius while Marius is making goo-goo eyes at Cosette. At one point, Valjean glares at Marius in a way that “even he could not fail to notice.”
It’s like an eye conversation.
Marius’ eyes (shouting): I LOVE YOU!
Cosette’s eyes (whispering): I love you too.
Valjean’s eyes (whispering coldly): Stay the hell away from my daughter.
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)Barricade Day Tweets
Barricades were so popular in June 1832 that 27 sprang up in an hour in one district alone.
Courfeyrac realizes he left his hat at home and runs in to grab it as the procession walks past.
Grantaire just wants to get drunk. Too bad they set up the barricade outside his chosen bar.
Marius just wants to die. Conveniently, his friends are about to stand in front of a lot of bullets.
I cringed at “Who’s There?” “The French Revolution!” Turns out it’s actually in the book.
Marius “deathwish” Pontmercy arrives guns blazing & saves the day…then sinks back into depression.
After weeks, Valjean finally catches on to what his daughter has been up to in the evenings.
Combeferre and Bossuet start geeking out over artillery when the soldiers bring out a cannon.
Day 2: Cosette hasn’t read the news & wonders why people are slamming doors so early in the morning.
Javert is the first person at the barricade to actually recognize Éponine, or that she’s a woman.
Javert is rather embarrassed that Valjean didn’t just kill him, and says so. #Tact
“You are robbing Hell of its pavements!” “That is why our barricade is built of good intentions.”
Grantaire wakes up as a firing squad is about to shoot Enjolras. He doesn’t want to be left out.
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.
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)If you can’t be with the one you love…?
Montparnasse and Éponine have something going on, though it’s not clear what.
Montparnasse escaped capture after the attempted robbery because he left early, “more in a mood to amuse himself with the daughter than play hired assassin for the father.” In a later chapter, he’s described as “perhaps [Thénardier’s] unofficial son-in-law.”
It’s not clear how far it goes, though he’s more interested than she is. (She clearly has a thing for Marius from the moment you first meet her as a teenager.) In any case, it’s odd that Hugo dances around this, considering how frank he is about, for instance, Fantine’s relationship with Tholomyes.
Mostly in
https://hyperborea.org/les-mis/book/lark/
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)Grantaire is just along for the ride
At one point during the campaign to build up support for the revolution, Enjolras starts sending his lieutenants out to recruit various guilds and workers for their cause. He has one last group to recruit. He was thinking of sending Marius, but he doesn’t show up anymore. (He’s despondent over having caught a glimpse of the girl whose name he still doesn’t know after all this time, and realizing he’ll never see her again.)
Grantaire volunteers.
“But you don’t believe in anything?”
“I believe in you.” *bats eyelashes* (OK, no eyelashes).
Yeah, he’s desperate to prove himself, specifically to Enjolras. It’s never entirely clear whether it’s hero worship or a crush (though in the case of the latter, it’s not as if Hugo would have made it clear in the 1860s)
Or…maybe he’s not so eager. Enjolras checks up on him later, and he’s playing dominoes with the marble-workers he was supposed to recruit.
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)Thenardier: The Original 419 Scammer
When we meet the Thenardiers again in Paris, they’ve lost the inn, and M. Thenardier is running a series of scams begging for money through letters. He diversifies his identities, tactics and targets in the pitches. Today he’d claim to be a Nigerian prince in one letter and a lottery commissioner in another. But the letter begging his neighbor (a penniless student named Marius) for money is about as honest as it could be…except for his name, which he’s given as Jondrette.
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)Eponine and the Infinite Sadness
Eponine in the musical is sad, but seems to be mostly getting along as best as she can under the circumstances. In the book, though, the Thenardiers are dirt poor after they lose the inn. She’s malnourished, dressed in rags that don’t have a hope of keeping her warm even in the snow, has a husky voice like “a bronchitic old man,” is missing teeth, and is down to skin and bones. “A blend of fifty and fifteen.” When she first visits Marius, she hasn’t eaten in three days.
Hugo compares her, and girls like her, to “flowers dropped in the street which lie fading in the mud until a cartwheel comes to crush them.”
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)Another search hit: “thenardiar’s inn menu” – Are you really sure you want to know?
Another search hit: “thenardiar’s inn menu” – Are you really sure you want to know?
Search hit: “thenardier live under bridge” – No, you’re thinking of trolls.
Search hit: “thenardier live under bridge” – No, you’re thinking of trolls.
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)You can give Valjean a happy ending…if you stop early. Otherwise, it would be untrue to the character.
You can give Valjean a happy ending…if you stop early. Otherwise, it would be untrue to the character.
To read aloud is to assure oneself that one is reading…
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)To read aloud is to assure oneself that one is reading, and there are persons who read very loudly indeed, as though positively proclaiming the fact.
he was not a royalist, a Bonapartist, a chartist, an Orleanist, or an anarchist — simply a book-ist
Like everyone else he had a label, since at that time nobody could live without one, but his ‘ism’ was of a non-committed kind: he was not a royalist, a Bonapartist, a chartist, an Orleanist, or an anarchist — simply a book-ist.
Victor Hugo’s description of Pere Mabeuf, a friend of Marius’
On Tumblr (Re-Reading Les Mis)Cosette: “there won’t be any more of this “Madame – Monsieur Jean” nonsense, we’re a republic and we call each other tu, don’t we, Marius?”
Cosette: “there won’t be any more of this “Madame – Monsieur Jean” nonsense, we’re a republic and we call each other tu, don’t we, Marius?”