#joly talk

First impression

wow he’s just a total sweetheart?? 

Impression now

yes, definitely a total sweetheart! 

Favorite moment

**standing in the middle of a battle zone, having just lost two of his dearest friends, hungry and thirsty and with no certainty about what’s coming **  “ LOOK A KITTY, obviously God is real and also Good if there are cats”  

#relatable tbh

Idea for a story

…If I could fic, which I cannot, I would love to do something with how he and Bahorel got to apparently being gossip-and-feels buddies. They’re so obviously different, but they get one of the bigger bits of conversation that doesn’t involve Grantaire! when and how did they Click?  And how illegal was what they were doing at the time? :D

Unpopular opinion

Not so much an Unpopular thing as just one that is maybe uncommon..?  

There’s this line from the Conventionist when he’s talking with Myriel: 

“L’homme ne doit être gouverne que par la science.”“Et la conscience”, ajouta la eveque.“C’est la même chose. La conscience, c’est la quantité de science innée que nous avons en nous.” 

 Man must be governed by science; Conscience is the amount of science innate  within us. 

 From that lens, what Enjolras sees as Joly’s gift of science  takes on a much deeper resonance–and one that works with what we see of him on-page , too. Joly’s focus on science all comes with a human-scale focus; no doubt he can get excited about trains and telegraphs too , but the science that occupies him is all on a much more intimate scale.  It may go off on what we now think of as wacky tangents, but none of Joly’s experiments that we’re told of are harmful –much less than a lot of the standard medicine of his day, in fact.  It’s all based on being immediately aware of surrounding environment and circumstance. And it’s all about human health and comfort, on a personal, workable scale.

Keeping an eye on your own weakness, treating it with compassion and an eye to how external factors are affecting it, while always being open to trying new things to be better,healthier  (and of course, always remembering that You Are Mortal)–does that not sound like an approach Bishop Myriel might recognize? Even to seeing the goodness of God in the presence of small, easily overlooked creatures?

Joly’s a goofy good-natured nerd, and a lot about him is easy to read as silly– he is silly! But like the Amis as a whole, I think it’s a mistake to think he’s just  silly. His cheerful, optimistic involvement is a promise that the Amis would never have lost their conscience in cold absolutism–would never have forgotten that innate science in themselves.  No wonder Enjolras thinks it’s Joly’s greatest gift. 

Favorite relationship

With Bossuet, obviously!  I wish we saw more of them, but I love that their Dynamic is so clear from the little we do see–the constantly high-energy fussbird who wants to poke at everything and the laid-back-to-the-point-of-becoming-a-mural guy, Goofballs United:D. (Granted Joly is also part of one of one of the few heteromances in the book that seem at all potentially good though; I really appreciate that even when he’s fighting with Musichetta he has nothing  bad to say about her, he’s just sad about the fight– I just don’t see enough of Musichetta for it match the onpage relationship with Legle.) Either way , though, what a good bean. 

Favorite headcanon

The first Cats of the Republic get a mention pretty early, during 1817, in Bombarda’s (1.3.5).  And it gets a lot  of Mention! (all bolding mine):

"It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief of Police Anglès to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines:—

“Taking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. (Non-Cat comments snipped) ...In short, it is an amiable rabble.”

Prefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Anglès possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Piræus, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too “rose-colored” a light; it is not so much of “an amiable rabble” as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury... He is Napoleon’s stay and Danton’s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys...It is thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing but la Carmagnole, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will free the world.

I’ve included most of this long passage here because it ties into some pretty obvious other imagery later!

I’m not gonna try to myth- or history- check Hugo here because it’s not the point of this post; the point is, look at all this imagery and cat-association he’s giving us!  Cats the animal of Minerva, “the very image of liberty”!  The power of a Parisian’s song to  drive a revolution!  Epic rage hair!  The Parisian, says Hugo, is like the cat, it is “heedless”,“indolent” , “frivolous”,”lazy” -but it can transform into a lion, and even as a cat ,is a symbol of Liberty in a Republic. 

Then we move on , and our next Revolutionary Cat Mention of course shows up in 3.4.1, when one lands right in the center  of our actual revolutionaries:

Courfeyrac had, in fact, that animation of youth which may be called the beauté du diable of the mind. Later on, this disappears like the playfulness of the kitten, and all this grace ends, with the bourgeois, on two legs, and with the tomcat, on four paws.

Courfeyrac is a kitten! And he’ll grow up to be a  good Parisian Cat, no doubt, ready to turn into a lion at a moment’s notice. 

Oh, here’s a moment for a Fans of LM Animal Symbolism!  From 4.11.2, Gavroche On The March:

The gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied themselves only with their own concerns. Three of them were portresses, and the fourth was a rag-picker with her basket on her back.

All four of them seemed to be standing at the four corners of old age, which are decrepitude, decay, ruin, and sadness...Things of this nature were said:—

“Ah, by the way, is your cat still cross?”

“Good gracious, cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know. It’s the dogs who complain.”

“And people also.”

“But the fleas from a cat don’t go after people.”

“That’s not the trouble, dogs are dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that it was necessary to put it in the newspapers. That was at the time when there were at the Tuileries great sheep that drew the little carriage of the King of Rome. 

The opinion on the street, from the poor women who really know things at this level:  dogs are dangerous, and cats are the enemies of dogs.  What a statement, given the most prominent dog in the book! 

And of course, in chapter 5.1.2,  the final solid Revolutionary Cat of the Republic, sighted at the Corinth, the very image , not of Liberty now, but of the evidence of God’s care in Creation!:

Joly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter (a cat in Corinth!), extracted philosophy from it.

“What is the cat?” he exclaimed. “It is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: ‘Hullo! I have committed a blunder.’ And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected.”

These are our most obvious links, and they are very clear; the people of Paris--indecisive, fickle, and hedonistic-- are cats. But they are cats who are also lions, and lions and the revolution and the barricade in particular get linked a lot. Just a few mentions:   “(The army) gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion’s den.” (4.14.4);  “The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes. The assault was so furious, that for one moment, it was inundated with assailants; but it shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs” (5.1.21)

And, of course;

“All at once (Enjolras) threw back his head, his blond locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars, they were like the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo” 5.1.5

EPIC PARISIAN RAGE HAIR, in its true form as a lion’s mane!:P

I joke, but there really is a nice clear line of Paris As Cat/POTENTIAL REVOLUTIONARY WERELION running through the novel!  It’s about as consistent as Javert’s dog metaphors (and wow someone could probably right a paper on Javert/the cops as dogs and Paris As Cat in Les Mis). 

Anyway it’s commonly noticed (among fancademia, academia pays not a lick of attention to this stuff that I’ve found) that the Amis in their intro have a bit of a sliding scale of, well, Various Concepts really,  from Enjolras at one end to Grantaire at the other. And one of the very obvious concepts is “The Domestic” as thought at the time would have it–that would include women, romance, family, home life, housekeeping–all the things that could also be summed up as “Women’s Sphere”, you know? 

And on the other end was The Political– public life, politics in the sense of Actual Government Action, military Whatever, Economics-with-a-Capital E, The Patriarchy, etc. Manly! 

And obviously these things have a lot of overlap! But they were  seen as Spheres and being Complementary rather than, IDK, Inherently Unified. 

Also, as suggested above, suuuuuuper  gendered. Like whoa  gendered. I’m not getting into this and the evolving concept of gender roles in the 19C the way it deserves because that would take semesters of lectures and essays I am not remotely qualified to write but like. Consider it noted, right?

This concept of Domestic  is exactly what Enjolras rejects. Hugo goes to some length to make it clear that this is what Enjolras rejects. That’s what the whole thing about him not being moved by the bare breast of Evadne and thinking flowers are only good to hide swords and giving the Abyssal Glare to women who try to flirt with him is about–he rejects the importance of Family Life, Women, Romance, etc etc.* Enjolras, when introduced, is 100 percent About The Manly Political Aspect of the Revolution and of the Republic.

On the other end of the list, Grantaire cares about nothing at all in the Manly Political Sphere. “He loves the girls and he loves good wine”, but really  what he loves is personal, domestic -type connections. He doesn’t care a single damn about the government or abstract social theory or social ideals or any of it.  He loves Enjolras, he loves his friends, his knowledge of Paris is entirely framed in personal, home-comfortish ways— he knows the best places for dancing, dating, dinner . (Grantaire being the internally incoherent disaster man he is, he starts his arc unwilling to admit even to loving his friends, because even that  is too much commitment for him. But the narrator is tattling on him from the get-go.)

Obviously the idea that these things are complete separate or  genuinely separable is absurd. But that’s the social concept Hugo is dealing with in this regard!

–Also obviously, there is a certain Secret Sneaky Crossover Link here and it’s Friendship, but Friendship And The Amis is like. A Mini-novelette length essay if I ever have the focus. I’m not good at focus, as we’re seeing! 

ANYWAY!  From Enjolras to Grantaire the Amis generally take up an increasing weight of “domestic”associations. Combeferre and Jehan are, like Enjolras, very much about Ideas and Ideals  and Politics and Philosophy, though their philosophy is increasingly more concerned with those domestic aspects of society (women, families, children, feelings ).  Feuilly, Courfeyrac, and Bahorel are very much About the Manly Man World of politics–they’re all Actiony and Political and even Combative, tied to Politics and Work and Socializing in a Very Activist Way. But Feuilly gets more family-linked language in his intro than Enjolras or Combeferre do, and Feuilly’s family is dead.  Courfeyrac rejects an aspect of his family identity, but we hear about it!  

Bahorel, coming after the Balancing Point that Courfeyrac represents, is explicitly linked not just to concepts  of family , but in a happy relationship to his own Actual Family, and their history– and he personally   holds this up as part of his identity, too. (We also hear more specifics about Bahorel’s fashion choices in just his intro  than we do about Enjolras or Combeferre’s or Feuilly’s in ever–  another Domestic, Personal signifier.) After Bahorel, things take a massive  turn for the Personal and Domestic in Intro-land. Bossuet gets a whole story about his family background,and  dating stories,  and ..well, and Joly   (who in his turn gets all his science being directed into personal concerns and home treatments and furniture arranging , like…this is a very homey couple of revolutionaries here) Bossuet and Joly are explicitly, practically linked at the start, and then again repeatedly and at length in other passages in the novel. They have separate characters, but a major part of both those characters is this..well..pair-bond.  Between two people who live, eat, and sleep together.  Super domestic!  AND NOW the “of the Revolution” part!

In Preliminary Gayeties–well, a lot happens. And it’s all, again, domestic as hell.  They eat, they drink, they support a friend in a very (specifically!) not political way.  And in this chapter with a title that echoes the chapter title of children being raised at the convent –seriously the domestic coding is intense –  their personal bond is not only stressed again, it’s pretty much established as key to their function as political actors.  “They are what the subordinate monks are called, BINI”–  the bini  were, as established, monks who were supposed to go out into the world paired, to support and aid each other in  carrying out their Divine Mission.  In this case the Divine Mission is trying to bring about the Republic–and in this chapter we specifically see them doing their double-act as part of leading a friend back to the cause (who keeps Grantaire where the barricade is? Who’s Grantaire quoting with “J’en suis”?  Yeah.) , relying on personal connection and simple, domestic  comforts to work. 

And to those who will say “oh come on, they’re just a couple of dorks hanging out”– yeah. They are. That’s kind of the Point. 

Because that’s the thing,–there’s no way to completely separate the Political and the Personal , the Public and the Domestic.  Any modern reader has probably heard “The Personal is Political” to the point of it wearing flat, but, well, it is . And the political is personal, too– if someone’s mother can be The Republic, if they can take Humanity and Justice for their mother and father, then they can make their friends their republic, too; they can seek justice and progress and societal balance through personal connections and friendship and just being kind. And in fact people kinda have to; the systemic plays out on the personal level, after all. A major part of Enjolras’ character arc is getting to the point where he can embrace that personal domestic aspect and understand its importance to the (per Hugo) Divine Ideal.  But Joly and Bossuet are already there; it’s what they are. 

Sources! 

There’s too many things to mention about the Gender Role stuff and I’m doing synthesis more than specific quotes, but: start with Socialism’s Muse by Naomi J Andrews and follow the bibliography from there if you’re really wanting to get into it.  

For the Bini stuff, please look at @barricadeur‘s excellent posts on the topic; I’m particularly referencing this one, which has a bucket o’sources on The Importance of the Buddy System in Catholic Thought, including Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and , you know, the Gospel.