I know I just said I didn't want to just be complaining about everything so I'll try to word this in a more constructive way asdfghjkl
It's hard to be an Eponine fan in a world where the musical -and On My Own specifically- is sooooo mainstream. Because imo as much as On My Own itself is kind of a half-decent, if simplified, encapsulation of Eponine's struggle with her love for Marius if you analise the lyrics in isolation, the musical as a whole, her role in the narrative as the unrequited love diva (I'm also simplifying here. I don't think this is super fair to the anglo musical, but compared to the book there's no question of how they reworked her into a glamorous 80s diva contralto because musical theatre has usually very strict gender roles), did her so dirty. So dirty. And imo often her character is reduced to her pining in fandom as a result. And I don't like that, personally.
I love that girl so much. I love that she is just young enough to still be a child but adult enough to be aware of her social role. She has one foot in the gamin life and one foot in the adult world. I love the tragedy that is the fact that she likes the beauty and pomp of high society girls and wish she could have silk shoes but knowing she can't.
And also being super resigned to her class despite it, she doesn't believe she ever will have any of that. She resents that too, somewhat. The tragedy of her knowing that she couldn't be with Marius because of his social class and her accepting that (angrily? sadly?). I love her self-banishment as his guard dog because of this. I love her drunk sailor voice. I love how manipulative she is and that she isn't Marius's friend at all. He's just her one neighbor who wasn't a total asshole one time. He was, later. But not at first. And she can't be in his head and know he thinks she's kinda despicable because crime because Marius is a judgemental little shithead.
And Eponine isn't an idealist, she's resigned to her position. I understand why she gets paired with grantaire in fics but her canon narrative parallel is Javert, they both believe they are excluded from society from their outcast position and so become the watchdogs for it. Eponine a kind of guardian (in her own words a devil, not an angel) and Javert the same. That's why he's the one person who sees her in the barricade, he's the same as her. Marius saw her but that's only cause he had a use for her in that moment, as soon as she didn't he forgot all about it.
I think also Gavroche, with his ability to be kind of a figure above the narrative, with his gamin skills of being almost omnipresent is something Eponine used to have, but with her age she's starting to lose that. She's starting to grown old enough that she's required to be IN the world and not supercede it. Gavroche is also almost there, if he had been allowed to grow up he would've lost that ability too. They both inhabit this sort of magical surreal world superimposed on our own.
A lot of Les Mis and Notre Dame de Paris can be kinda described as magical realism, I would go so far as calling them urban fantasy. And characters like Babet, Thenardier sometimes, Gavroche, Eponine (and Javert sometimes as well) are inhabiting this magically charged layer. This reality that's imposed Over the real world.
Talking about that One Series Of Wizard Books is a bit passé rn so uh. Doctor Who. Particularly the initial New Who seasons before they got that huge budget. That's a good parallel to what I'm getting at. The real world is still the same but there are certain characters that inhabit this mystical overlayer and are able to transverse from one to the other (Javert can't really because he is stuck forever outside and the second he understands that you CAN'T be an unbiased outsider who only enforces the norm without participating he freaks out and literally dies about it). Eponine is right in the eye of the storm tho. She manipulates reality to get her way, to die with Marius, because that's as close as she can get to being with him. And she manipulates reality to protect him too. Contradictions be damned. She has many contradictory feelings that make her complex and cool and an awesome character whom I love and wish would stop being reduced to the glamurous mysical theatre role with a single black stain on her face and a beautiful actor and a big unrequited love song about a random boy (whose personality was also changed for the musical and I argue is probably the character that was most fucked up by it in the public perception because he's such an weird little self-insert of an even weirder guy. But I get it, the musical is long enough as it is).
Anyway, I wish eponine could be more of a mongrel, a little gremlin. A little rat child that's just beginning to grow into an adult and is self aware of her role in the narrative society. She's a teenage girl which already sucks to go through when you're not constantly starving and cold and being forced by your father to work and do con jobs. Marius is the object she attaches herself to, but it could've been literally anything. Javert did that with the social order, he protects and guards it. She just chose Some Guy instead. Which, we all have that one friend who does that too. Like girl you're too good for him. Come on let's get you sone ice cream. And clean clothes and a roof. Literally anything. Bread.
I think if Eponine had a roof over her head and like, food on the regular she would forget Marius exists. Same as Cosette if she had moved to England. Like he'd be that one intense crush they had as teenagers. Can't say the same for him tho. He would hold onto that for the rest of time.
kianamaiart
gamechangershow
2087
germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
gracieabrams
