Brick Club 4.3.5, 4.3.6
Cosette: I’m not very pretty
Valjean, an old man who knows nothing at all: Why no! why! no!
This is basically the funniest thing ever and a microcosm of Valjean’s entire parenting style. I was very much chin in hands waiting for Hugo to explain to me what it feels like to be a young girl reaching adolescence but he took the safe route and mostly sticks to Valjean’s perspective. “This man who had passed through every distress, who was still all bleeding from the lacerations of his destiny, who had been almost evil…who, after having dragged the chain of the galleys now dragged the invisible but heavy chain of indefinite infamy” is plagued by early onset empty nest syndrome. Valjean feels everything so deeply that what I imagine is a typical dad feeling becomes a crisis of the soul.
Cosette is smart because she figured out fashion in the space of a month at fourteen and I still have not figured it out. “‘I shall never wear those horrid things again. With that machine on my head, I look like Madame Mad-dog.’ Jean Valjean sighed deeply.” Again, the funniest thing ever. This is all baffling to me, because when I was fourteen I mostly didn’t want anyone to look at me ever, not exactly a blossoming rose “pervaded by the joys of youth, innocence, and beauty.” Maybe I’m ignorant of the sort of youth that being naturally gorgeous affords you, but maybe Hugo overlooks the fact that fourteens year olds are comprised of pure, unadulterated awkward energy paired with a ‘fake it until you make it’ attitude and absolutely nothing else.
As much as I rolled my eyes at the insta-love power of a glance, I can’t help but find this exchange of lightning-struck passions compelling. First of all, getting Cosette’s perspective of all of this makes it feel like a real, mutual flirtation. “She thought of this unknown young man, so long indifferent and icy, who now seemed to give some attention to her, and it did not seem to her that this attention was in the least degree pleasant. She was rather a little angry at this disdainful beau.” Girl, yes. “It seemed to her…that at last she should be avenged.” Um, girl, yes. While Marius is anxious and in turmoil, Cosette is on the warpath.
Second, their dynamic is so appealing to me in an oddball sort of way. “As extreme artlessness meets extreme coquetry, she smiled upon him, very frankly.” They wound each other, unknowingly. They both begin to fixate on each other as distant, unreachable objects of adoration. They can’t meet yet, it would destroy both of them. And there’s some small part of each of them that somehow recognizes that and so they circle each other, deliberately. How did Hugo manage to make this insta-love romance a slow burn?
Hugo calls Cosette’s behavior ‘coquetry’ but a) I hate that term and b) I think it’s so much more than that. Marius and Cosette both have this kernel of darkness in them and it makes them wary of this thing. Marius reacts by shrinking back away from it and Cosette responds by grabbing at it. But they both end up caught in each other’s orbit, instinctively keeping this gravitational distance until something tips the balance. God, it’s so much better than it has a right to be.
