Tag: Eponine

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)

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)