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I AM SO FUCKING GLAD YOU ASKED!!!

Introducing Gender Valgender: the non binary Les Misérables manifesto

There’s a lot to unpack here but from early on it the book it’s established that Valjean doesn’t seem to fit neatly into the world of men or women:

“Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother and of his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance.” (LM 1.2.7)

Right off the bat, Hugo establishes the trauma Valjean faced at the hands of men in the all male environment of Toulon has left him wary of them. He also establishes the small kindnesses Valjean revived came from women. In M-sur-M, as mayor, he avoids the company of both respectable men and women alike. Later in the book he ends up in the all female environment of the convent. The nuns are compared specifically to prisoners of Toulon except they are there voluntarily (please don’t make me reread the convent digression to find the quote). Yet Valjean is also othered there as he is still a “man” and has to wear a bell to warn the nuns and schoolgirls away from him. His perceived masculinity is a source of fear.

Once he and Cosette leave the convent, they seem to briefly find a place together where they both fit. But Cosette is growing up, and growing into a bourgeois young woman. Then we see another dimension to Valjean’s gender issues, the idea that he cannot fit into a heterosexual nuclear family:

“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me.” (LM 5.7.1, Hapgood)

Of course we all know how this ends, Valjean isolates himself and ends up dying without being a part of this nuclear family that he seems to both fear and revere.

Through his relationship with Cosette, Hugo explores a more feminine approach to Valjean’s character:

When she meditated in the evening, before falling asleep, as she had not a very clear idea that she was Jean Valjean’s daughter, and that he was her father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her. When he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white hair, and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself: “Perhaps this man is my mother.” (4.3.4)

Hugo is very culturally Catholic and this shines through in his veneration of mothers, first Fantine and then Valjean who seems to carry Fantine's spirit. Since Cosette has no family, Valjean is both her mother and father and in return she is his entire world, his daughter but also his mother, sister and whatever else (4.15.1). Hence the massive fall out when she gets married and he cannot follow her into her new life.

But as previously discussed, there is masculinity in Valjean's character. He possesses this enormous strength that hes almost afraid to use because of the ways it has hurt him in the past (see his hesitance to lift the cart off Fauchlevent because he’s worried Javert will recognise him as a convict). Throughout the book he uses this strength but without the associated violence (hoisting Cosette into the convent, burning himself to escape the Gorbeau robbery, shooting at the hats of the National Guard at the barricade as not to injure/kill anyone). Hopefully we're all woke enough here to know that being both gentle and strong doesn't make you less of a man but its interesting how this different characteristics with different traditional connotations combine in Valjean.

Jean Valjean had never loved anything; for twenty-five years he had been alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend. In the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and his sister’s children had left him only a vague and far-off memory which had finally almost completely vanished; he had made every effort to find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten them. Human nature is made thus; the other tender emotions of his youth, if he had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss.

When he saw Cosette, when he had taken possession of her, carried her off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.

All the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.

And then there’s also the way that— between Fantine’s death and picking up Cosette, Jean Valjean spends 9 months in prison. It’s literally symbolic Mpreg.

Slow down a little and let the person in the lane next to you merge.

Hold the door for someone if you go through first.

Offer napkins to the person at the next table who just spilled their drink.

Help someone pick up things they just dropped.

Say "Thankyou so much!" to workers who help you even though it's literally their job.

The cashier distractedly said Snickers, always a good choice.

The Snickers and water bottle were the last things on the belt, and the moment they were scanned, the woman said to the cashier, 'those are for you. Something to help you hang in there.'

everything about this is crazy.

‘[he] gazed at enjolras with an indescribable tenderness,’ ????!??!?!

“you know, i believe in you,” and he’s repeating it.

‘but still staring at him with fond and blurry eyes,’ 🙁

“let me sleep here, until i die” and he does.

“you’ll see” AND HE DOES.

they make me physically ill.

Cosette gets Valjean to take care of himself with the sweetest “Damn, bitch, you live like this?” ever.

"No miseries worth complainin' about."

And then you have Remmick and his song. There's uniformity in the dancing!!! in the singing!!!! in the movements!!!!!!! Those same people who were dancing so freely and expressively!!!!! Now following remmick step after step!!!!!