Joyful Journeys

He stopped and said to his daughters, ‘You two, clear out of here! Strange that it didn’t leap out at you!’ They got up to obey. The mother stammered out, ‘With that bad hand of hers?’ ‘The air will do it good,’ said Jondrette. ‘Get going!’

😒😒😒😒😒

‘And shall I tell you something? The young lady—’ ‘Well?’ retorted his wife. ‘What about the young lady?’ Marius could be in no doubt, she was the one they were talking about. He listened with a burning anxiety. He was all ears, as if his life depended on it. But Jondrette bent over and spoke to his wife in a whisper. Then he straightened up and concluded out loud, ‘That’s her!’ ‘Her?’ said the wife. ‘Her!’ said the husband. No expression could convey what was contained in the mother’s ‘Her?’ It was a mixture of surprise, rage, hatred and anger, and all in an appalling tone of voice.

Oh yeah there it is there's the woman who despises Cosette, the evidence grows

‘Impossible!’ she cried. ‘To think that my girls are going barefoot and haven’t got a single dress to wear! What! A satin cloak trimmed with fur, a velvet hood, ankle-boots and everything – more than two hundred francs’ worth of clothes! So that anyone would think she was a lady! No, you’ve got it wrong! Why, in the first place the other one was a fright, and this one isn’t bad-looking! She really isn’t bad-looking! It can’t be her!’ ‘I tell you it’s her. You’ll see.’

I'm telling you, a situation swap, it's perfect drama, the girls switching who is dressed in rags and who gets to wear proper clothes.

He went on, ‘By heaven! It wasn’t so very long ago I was a parishioner of the die-of-hunger-if-you-have-a-fire-die-of-cold-if-you-have-bread parish! I’ve had enough of misery! Mine and other people’s! I’m not joking any more, I don’t see anything funny about it any more – enough of this farce, for God’s sake! No more messing about, Father Almighty! I want to eat my fill! I want to drink my fill! Make a pig of myself! Sleep! Do nothing! I just want my turn! Before I drop dead I want to be a bit of a millionaire!’

Okay I'm not gonna lie, this little rant kind of made me laugh. Maybe it shouldn't have but it did. Nothing's funny about it anymore, he says, but it made me laugh anyway.

He took a turn round the hovel and added, ‘Like some others.’ ‘What do you mean?’ asked the woman. He shook his head, winked, then raised his voice like some street-corner quack about to give a demonstration. ‘What do I mean? Listen!’ ‘Shh!’ muttered the woman. ‘Not so loud! These are things that no one else should hear.’ ‘Bah! Who’s going to hear? Our next-door neighbour? I saw him go out a little while ago. Besides, does he hear anything, that great numbskull? In any case, I saw him go out, I tell you.’

HAHAHAHA THAT GREAT NUMBSKULL INDEED

‘Listen carefully. . . . Everything’s fixed. I’ve seen some people. He’ll come this evening at six o’clock. To bring his sixty francs, the bastard! Did you see how I came out with all that, my sixty francs, my landlord, my fourth of February! It’s not even a quarter-day! Isn’t that stupid? So he’ll come at six! The time when our neighbour will be gone for his meal. Mère Burgon is in town washing dishes. There’s no one in the house. The neighbour never comes home before eleven. The girls will keep a lookout. You’ll give us a hand. He’ll do as he’s told.’ ‘And what if he doesn’t?’ asked his wife. Jondrette made a sinister gesture and said, ‘We’ll do him in.’ And he burst out laughing. This was the first time Marius had seen him laugh. The laughter was cold and quiet and chilling.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oh boy good luck taking down a guy that strong. I mean, I guess it's been 8 years 🤔 maybe he's gotten weaker...

‘You know, it’s a great stroke of luck, after all, that he didn’t recognize me! If he had, he wouldn’t be coming back. He’d have slipped through our fingers! It’s my beard that saved me! My Romantic beard! My nice little Romantic beard!’

HAHAHA hear that everyone if you ever need a disguise, get yourself a nice little Romantic beard.

‘I nearly forgot,’ he said. ‘Have a charcoal brazier burning.’ . . . ‘A charcoal brazier?’ his wife queried. . . . ‘That will come to thirty sous. With what’s left over, I’ll buy something to eat.’ ‘No, damn it. . . . Don’t go and spend the whole five francs.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because there’s something I need to buy.’ ‘What?’ ‘Something.’ ‘How much will you need?’ ‘Where’s the nearest ironmonger’s?’ ‘Rue Mouffetard.’ ‘Ah! yes, I can picture it. The shop on the street corner.’ ‘Well, tell me how much you’ll need for what you want to buy.’ ‘Fifty sous – three francs.’ ‘There won’t be much left for dinner.’ ‘Today’s not the day for eating. There’s something better to do.’ ‘Whatever you say, love.’

🤨🤨🤨 now what is he going to buy there 🤨🤨🤨 acting pretty suspicious, he is....

Even more, just what will Marius do?

Joly is referred to as 'le malade imaginare.' Now used for what we would call hypochondria, the term originates from Molière's 1637 play of the same title. Molière's play follows the character Argan. Joly's description makes him the anti-Argan. Argan is old, Joly is young. Argan is irritable and 'ill-natured'; Joly is agreeable and cheerful. Argan is miserly; Joly allows his friend to live off him. Most notably, Argan is not actually ill. While Joly may be eccentric and obsessive, he is explicitly described as being 'malingre', sickly, and is ill in one of the chapters. Argan becomes a doctor because '[t]here is no disease bold enough to dare to attack the person of a doctor,' whereas '[w]hat [Joly] had won in medicine was to be more of an invalid than a doctor.' The disease does attack the doctor.

Argan himself comes from the Commedia dell'arte stock character of Il Doctore, the doctor, a character who was often old and academic, and whose cures were unpleasant. Molière was strongly critical of the medical establishment of his time and in his plays criticised doctors as being self-righteous, opaque, and intentionally taking advantage of their higher-learning over others despite not actually being able to help anyone. Molière, who had TB, lived several centuries before Hugo, so was writing about a different climate. Molière's and Hugo's respective feelings towards the medical establishment come out through their characters. Joly is far more sympathetic than Argan or any of Molière's doctors. He is intelligent, and his scientific knowledge, rather than being useless, is what Enjolras needs him for. Scientific and medical progress are an aspect of the revolution. Hugo was conscious of the medical advancements of his day. Joly, while a comic character, represents Hugo's hopes and respect for the medical field. The medical field has often ignored disabled voices; it is refreshing that here it should be represented by a disabled character.

Thank you to everyone who listened to my panel! Below are two of my favourite Jolys, Olivier LeBeau from Les Mis '72 & Bastien Jacquemart from the 2024 Châtelet revival.

Marius almost reproached himself for the daydreams and the love that had preoccupied him, preventing him until today from taking a look at his neighbours.

Good.

Only a wall separated him from these forsaken individuals, leading a groping existence in the dark, excluded from the rest of humanity; . . . he heard them living, or rather agonizing, alongside him, and he took no notice! His mind was elsewhere, in dreams, impossible joys, fantasies of love, wild conceits. And meanwhile other human beings, his brothers in Jesus Christ, his brothers in the people, agonized beside him, agonized in vain! He was even part of their misfortune, and he made it worse. For had they had a different neighbour, a less fanciful and more attentive neighbour, an ordinary and charitable man, obviously their penury would have been noticed, their signals of distress would have been perceived, and perhaps long ago help would have been given to them and they would have been saved!

YEAH FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

. . . he stared at the wall that separated him from the Jondrettes, as if he might be able to see through this partition with his eyes full of pity, and comfort those poor wretches. The wall was a thin layer of plaster held together on laths and beams, and as the reader has just learned, it allowed the sound of voices and words to be heard perfectly clearly. It took a dreamer like Marius not to have noticed this before.

💀 Imagine living next to someone with paper thin walls for years and never hearing them

He had just noticed up at the top, near the ceiling, a triangular hole resulting from three laths with a gap between them.

..... (Glances at the chapter title again)

Marius. Hold on a moment there. Yes you can feel guilty you never noticed the sufferings of your neighbors but let's maybe not leap to the other end of spying on them. First stalking the girl, now...

Spying on misfortune in order to relieve it is permissible.

IS IT THOUGH???? He already knows they're struggling. It's not like he's merely suspicious and needs to confirm.

‘Let’s take a look and see what these people are like,’ thought Marius, ‘and what their situation is.’ He climbed on the chest of drawers, put his eye to the hole, and looked.

I think you already know their situation is extremely bad, is that not enough

What will this serve you that you haven't actually gained from the Jondrette girl

Marius.... Aight this guy is just nosy with pretense. "No harm stalking the girl I love, it will satisfy my cravings to learn more about her." "No harm in reading the letters, they're already open and I might get needed information from them." "No harm spying on my neighbors, this will somehow allow me to assist them better."