#3.6.5

holding for chanyeol: day 411 of 548  ~  holding for baekhyun: day 373 of 640

Song : 3.6.5

Artist : EXO

Okay, I am super behind, because this month has been crazy and also I have no ability to restart habits once I've fallen out of them, but I am determined. So here we go.

In the grand tradition of this book, Marius continues to see hallucinatory light above Cosette, signalling that he is having a spiritual experience. I think, and I could be misremembering, that this is the first time the light has been blue. We've had hallucinatory white light and quasi-hallucinatory red light, but I think Cosette is the first instance of the light being blue. I know some stuff has been done about Hugo's color symbolism in this book, although I can't track it down right now, but blue is first and foremost a color associated with the heavens, both for Hugo and in general. Which is definitely something important! Cosette, a child who, as we recall, was never taught to pray and was completely innocent of God before Valjean found her, now carries the embodiment of the heavens, which is to say God, with her wherever she goes. That's some powerful symbolism right there.

And I want to say that there's a thing here too about how Cosette was raised in a convent and then left. Because, like, Hugo's whole thing about the convents was, in part, that they deny freedom to those who take their vows. He simultaneously admires the rigidity and mourns the sacrifice it demands. So Cosette, who was raised in the convent and thus exposed to that piety and purity, now transcends the limitations of that life by leaving the convent, bringing the spiritual purity with her out into the world. And also restoring her ability to become a mother, i.e. a full person, but we'll ignore that right now because I'm feeling charitable about cool symbolism and don't want to wreck it by remembering that this is Hugo writing about women.

Really it's such a shame that Cosette isn't allowed to do more, because with all her Symbolic Potential she could have changed the world. Thankfully we have the CosetteEnjolras AU, which fulfills all the Symbolic Potential Hugo was too afraid to write.

On one hand Marius and Cosette glancing at each other is likened to Spring which is a very Symbolic description of new things stirring and Marius’ walks in nature have led to this moment. It is also likened to ‘a flash of brilliance’ and ‘dawn breaking in the sky’ - light metaphors linked to new feelings and love stirring.

On the other hand, I wish Hugo would not talk about women because he comes across as really gross here with the whole talk about a woman’s gaze deliberately trapping a man. Women aren’t laying down traps for men when they look at them. It is a very stereotypical, boy and girl discover love at first sight, but I wish Hugo didn’t make it out as if women’s looks are wily, deceiving and full of traps and talk about ‘a virgin with a woman’s gaze’ because Cosette is fifteen, it would not be acceptable to talk of her at an older age too but she is fifteen so it is deeply uncomfortable when Hugo writes about a fifteen year old girl this way.

It is interesting though, I think it’s probably the first time Marius really has noticed someone properly and seen how he might appear in their eyes, which also causes him to notice how people see him.

3.6.4

I really like this line, ‘I have seen Marius’s new hat and coat with Marius in them.’ Courfeyrac is such a troll, he’s always making fun.

The appearance of the bourgeois and his admonitions of avoiding extremes is interesting especially since he himself does not seem to be avoiding any extremes, perhaps he is meant as a warning for Marius to not overdo things? But I can’t really take him and his warning seriously, so maybe we are not meant to.

I do find it hilarious that Marius has the same opinions that Hugo does comparing Racine and Moliere. Hugo in his Preface also compares them and even though it has been a while since I’ve read the Preface to Cromwell, I think he does not care for Racine’s classical bent and the Aristotelian unity, whereas he might be slightly more sympathetic to Moliere’s comedy. Hugo’s preface is not perfect in its arguments, but it is interesting as a Romantic Manifesto.

I also love how self-conscious Marius is with regards to his clothes and how amusing it is that Hugo attributes his own work to Marius, which was published when Marius was all of ten years old.

It’s also amusing that Marius thinks that Monsieur LeBlanc must think his new hat and trousers to be splendid and therefore judge him a good person and it is very much like Marius to forget to eat in his preoccupations.  

3.6.5

Courfeyrac gives everyone nicknames. It is said that he does not take anything seriously but I’m not sure if he is meant to be very terrible, Brujon does not seem such a bad nickname. And yet we do know that Courfeyrac takes some things like politics very seriously. He’s showing his playful side here and probably also does not mean to be offensive with the nickname, although we don’t really get to see things from his point of view here. I also find it interesting how being in the fandom has made me approach the amis probably slightly differently than I would have if I didn’t already like them a lot, so I am willing to think a lot more favourably of Courfeyrac than maybe I would. Maybe I would be as confused with him as Marius is. I do think Courfeyrac is very much a paladin and a thoroughly decent guy but he has his mischievous/playful streak. 

Also, once again Madame Brujon seems to be made fun of by the narrative, she’s only curious where Marius is going everyday in his new hat and coat everyday which is a valid concern, since he is living in cheap accommodations, he might be doing something suspicious.  I find it annoying how Hugo so easily dismisses or makes fun of minor women characters.

3.6.6

Cosette and Valjean’s approach towards Marius is once again compared with all the light symbolisms. Cosette glances at him but once again I find the whole bit about her beauty being feminine and angelic kind of off-putting because she is still very young but this time we get to see it from Marius’ point of view and what he thinks of her and yet he is still worried about his boots, which is a very Pontmercy thing and I do like it. I like Marius being a dork and he’s being a dork in the way that I find sweet.

I don’t like Hugo going, ‘A woman’s look is like powerful mechanisms’ that work on you while you are not aware, and you find you have given up your future and your soul. It’s not…it’s not how love is supposed to work. Cosette was just going about her way, being a young girl- this is blaming Cosette for her casual look which was not meant to make anyone think that she was interested (granted I am speaking from a 21st century feminist perspective, but I really think Hugo is not being fair here even from a 19th Century perspective on love). 

It’s also, I don’t know, their love at this moment feels passive in many ways. Cosette glanced in his direction without any intentions to fall in love and Hugo was the one being weird about how women’s looks are traps which start a process over which Marius has no control. I guess this is how love at first sight maybe happens, I don’t know (Hugo knew Adele before they fell in love so it can’t really be about his own courtship), but it still feels slightly too much of a thing that happened to them rather than both of them choosing it. It feels more like a coincidence or something that was meant to be, without their choosing.

Courfeyrac makes a passing remark to keeping women as a collection, and he makes the remark outside of the hat shop girl’s hearing, perhaps to emphasise that he is not like Tholomyes, but in some ways he is. He seems to have some of his views on treating love as a transaction, although as other people mentioned, he would make sure to not abandon his lover and also that everyone was having a good time, so he is not.

Continuing the metaphor of love and womanhood as an affliction or a poison, Marius falls under the effect of ‘une grande maladie.’

Marius is performing an act known as “peacocking” except he’s very bad at it. A major part of him is still trying to throw off the effects of this illness.

He makes the utterly baffling claim that, “I was the real author of the dissertation on Marcos Obregon de la Ronda, which Francois de Neufchateau has put, as his own, at the beginning of his edition of Gil Blas!” Hmm...a couple of things here. Considering that Neufchateau published his edition of Gil Blas in 1820, when Marius would have been about ten years old, this seems unlikely. Additionally, Marius is a law student and I doubt he’s spending his time writing dissertations about 16th century Spanish poets.

However, while Marius is clearly mistaken, a certain young author and intellectual named Victor Hugo is credited with writing Neufchateau’s Gil Blas preface. In case you needed more evidence that Marius is a young Hugo. This raises more questions than Hugo is willing to answer, all for the sake of a throwaway boast. Does Marius actually believe he wrote that dissertation? In the universe of Les Mis, did he actually write it? At age ten? How much of Victor Hugo himself is diegetic in this world? We know he is narrating this story because of his asides to the reader, but where does that begin and end? In our world, Les Miserables was written by Victor Hugo, but, in the fictional world of Les Mis, could Marius himself have written the novel post-barricade? Answer me, Hugo!

Will Courfeyrac hold nothing sacred? This terrible fellow...

If Marius is spending every day in the Luxembourg, is he no longer going to school or work? Subsisting entirely on the radiant aura of burgeoning attraction?

Cosette is making a name for herself as a manic pixie dream girl, she’s beautiful, but there’s something sad and wild about her. I really want Hugo to lean more into this contradiction Cosette has. She’s still the same girl who endured an unbearable childhood and escaped the city climbing over walls in the middle of the night. She’s a survivor! And understanding her through that lens is much more interesting than the naive pretty girl trope she’s often forced into.