Archiving my Twitter, Facebook and other social network activity
Something I wrote after my third time through #LesMiserables:
Fiction can’t *prove* a point about about reality, but it can make you *think* about it, and consider connections or perspectives that you might not have considered before. And that’s a very valuable thing.
Tholomyes is losing his hair and teeth. How the heck did I not make that connection before?
The bishop keeps reminding Jean Valjean about the cheese makers in the region he’s required to go to for his parole, and I can’t stop thinking of the joke in The Life of Brian where people mishear “peacemakers”
The latest episode of the Les Miserables Reading Companion podcast covers the amazing scene where Eponine single-handedly stares down 6 hardened criminals and wins.
As always, their analysis turns up some really interesting connections with other parts of the book – like the fact that Eponine channels both Javert and Thenardier, the two main antagonists, but uses their traits to act heroically.
https://readlesmis.libsyn.com/ep40-iv8i-v-the-dangers-girls-face
Listened to the latest episode of the #LesMiserables Reading Companion. Up to the introduction of Patron-Minette & the “Jondrette” family.
1. Wow, the callback to the miner’s candlestick from back in Digne (lost in the Denny translation).
2. I hadn’t made the connection between Éponine’s 1st & Fantine’s last appearances.
3. Three times through the book & I never caught on to the implications of just how far Thénardier goes in exploiting his daughters. Ugh.
https://readlesmis.libsyn.com/ep30-iii7i-iii8iv-miners-tools
The barricade is taken in the early afternoon of June 6. I just finished reading the chapter. In real time, apparently.
@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…
One of many things that gets lost in adaptation is the extended courtship between Marius & Cosette (usually condensed to love at first sight). They pass each other in the park on a daily basis w/o paying much attention to each other, until she hits puberty & they start stealing glances at each other, trying to keep Valjean from noticing. She’s a lot better at that part than he is, though, which gets funny at times.
It does get creepy later on when Marius starts, well, creeping around her garden at night.
But at this point, it’s funny watching Marius hide behind trees so he & Cosette can make eyes at each other w/o Valjean seeing, make a fool over himself with the handkerchief he thinks she dropped (it was actually Valjean’s, so she can’t understand why he’s so fascinated by it), etc.
And when Valjean gets suspicious, and sets traps? Marius blunders into every single one.
TODO: Check to see how much it retreads Stealth Courtship and Rue Plumet from the first read-through, and overlap with the Twitter version.
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.
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
“How Could I Ever Know?”
“Castle on a Cloud”
“Someone Else’s Story”
“I Know Him So Well”
“I’m Not That Girl”
“You Must Love Me”
“Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again”
Good grief, is there anything HAPPY on this playlist?
“Brand New Day” from Dr. Horrible.
Eh, close enough.
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: “thenardier live under bridge” – No, you’re thinking of trolls.
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)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 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)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)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)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)