#les mis meta

Fantine is introduced as being an outsider amongst the other grisettes. I think Hugo’s intention here was to paint her as innocent and virtuous in comparison to them but the way it reads to me is that she is someone who just can’t quite connect with her peers. She is described as being dreamy and “always having a queer look about her” in the words of Favourite.

The way Fantine is treated by the other girls rings very true to me as an autistic woman in my experience with friendship. She does consider the other grisettes her friends yet they speak cruelly about her behind her back (Favourite saying she puts on airs) and to her face (Dahlia mocking her for crying over a dead horse). Yet she offers no resistance, in fact she barely seems to acknowledge these things as offensive, because that’s just what being friends is.

The friendship between the four grisettes is shown to be truly shallow when after Tholomyes’ “prank”, they all go their separate ways, with Hugo saying it was like they’d never been friends in the first place. Realistically, one of the few examples of female friendship in the brick being portrayed as shallow and catty is most likely down to some lingering misogyny on Hugo’s part but it is something I find relatable as someone who has allowed myself to be treated poorly by others because I thought that’s how friendship was supposed to be. I’m sure a lot of other autistic people can relate to this as well.

Additionally, I think it’s interesting how the other grisettes criticisms of Fantine come down to her not acting in the expected way and fitting in with group. Favourite accuses her of putting on airs because she won’t swing like the other girls (therefore let the men look up her skirt). Dahlia laughs at her for getting emotional over the dead horse because her emotions are tainting the happy outing they’re all having. Fantine being empathetic towards animals isn’t an inherently autistic trait by itself but her inability to suppress her emotions or just go along with what everyone else is doing is something I think a lot of neurodivergent people can relate to.

Her relationship with Tholomyes is probably the biggest example of Fantine not understanding unspoken social rules. I’m no history expert and people have definitely written more in depth posts on the relationships between upper class men and working class women in France in this period but from what I’ve gathered it was understood that these relationships were purely transactional. The men got sex and attention and the women got gifts and nice days out to places they couldn’t afford by themselves. There’s more nuance than that I’m sure but that’s the gist.

We know the other three grisettes are aware of this aspect of the relationship. They are eager to receive a “surprise”, an expensive gift they could later sell on. Favourite flatters her lover to his face and says all the things he expects of her but confesses to the other girls that she doesn’t like him because he isn’t playing his role of spending money on her.

Fantine is seemingly oblivious to all of this. Maybe it’s her ostracisation from the other girls that is keeping her ignorant or maybe she knows how it is for them but genuinely believes she and Tholomyes are different. Either way it’s clear to me that her and Tholomyes have very different ideas about their relationship and that subtext has not been picked up by Fantine. For the record, this is completely on Tholomyes, even if he’s supposed to be playing the expected role, leaving his mistress without any financial aid for their child together is bad even by the standards of the time. However Fantine is definitely naïve.

Also if you read Fantine as autistic, her reasons for being in love with Tholomyes make a lot more sense. From Hugo’s description, it doesn’t seem like Tholomyes has many redeeming features: he’s balding and missing teeth, he’s a student in his thirties and he is in poor health. Yet he pays attention to Fantine, he flatters her and spends money to keep her in a nice apartment.

If we assume that Fantine is autistic and has spent her life being an outsider, this onslaught of affection would lead her to let her guard down and believe that this is what love should look like. Even without the autism, Fantine was an orphan, she didn’t have any examples of what a marriage was supposed to look like growing up so how could she possibly resist a man who seems to be doing and saying all the right things?

Hugo loves doing a Thing where he painstakingly describes a person’s long arduous life, inner conflict, and turmoil until they reach a point of Crisis— then cuts us off from their internal monologue, right at the moment when they make some huge dramatic decision. We only see the final decision from the perspective of others.

One of the most obvious examples of this is the Champmatheiu trial, and Tempest in a Skull, as Valjean considers giving himself up to save the man arrested in his place. We get long arduous tortured descriptions of the many internal and external things driving Valjean to make his final decision… and then, at the moment when he makes his choice and stands up and declares himself Jean Valjean, we are cut off from his perspective entirely. We see him only from the perspective of the courtroom.

Why did he eventually make the sacrifice that he did? We don’t know; we have all the information about his earlier crisis, and the perspective of people in the courtroom, but in the end we Don’t Know why he made his final sacrifice.

Mabeuf reminds me of that as well: long descriptions of his gradual descent into poverty and suffering, multiple chapters close to his POV until— like Valjean— he reaches this rock bottom crisis point, and makes a decision.

Les Amis in this case are a little like the people in the courtroom at the Champmathieu trial, who were awed by Valjean’s sacrifice without understanding it.

I don’t think Courfeyrac’s version of Mabeuf (as simply a poor senile old man) is meant to be the Accurate Take, anymore than the other people seeing Mabeuf a longtime revolutionary & Regicide is an accurate take.

Courfeyrac doesn’t know the depths of despair Mabeuf was put into, anymore than the rest understand the way Mabeuf would rather not have been here if he didn’t have any other choice.

There’s a Thing in the barricades section where people come to the barricades because there Is Nothing Else Left For Them; they give their lives in a moment of fury/anger/indignation because it’s better than losing their lives alone in despair. Dying in an act of rage is better than dying alone and purposeless.

Mabeuf’s death— after a long life of being “apolitical” until circumstances beyond his control drove him into severe poverty and into the barricades—- reminds me of that.

There’s a connection here between that bit where Hugo talks about how revolutions sweep up a wide variety of people with grievances against society, who are there for various reasons that have all been channeled into the same anger; and also something about a comparison between the way Eponine says that she doesn’t care whether she dies alone and drowned or whether she’s murdered for taking a stand against her father.

after putting nearly everything into an annuity providing an income of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which would terminate with his own demise. He had not hesitated, little concerned about leaving any legacy.

(LM 3.2.5)

So I have done a lot of research in the not so distant past about inheritance laws in France! Please correct me if I'm wrong - and maybe somebody else has already talked about this, and possibly talked about it better than I will, and if someone else has already been over this, I'd love a link! - but at this time, the law meant that everything was to be divided up equally between the children, and if they had no children there was this whole order of who it went to (the wife was so much farther down in the list than she should've been and didn't get much 💀 unless the husband wrote something into his will to make sure she got more, which thankfully, it sounds like was pretty common because a lot of people wanted to keep to the old way of doing things rather then just letting the current and somewhat newer laws take place upon their possessions).

Before I continue, I want to add that everything I've read about has only talked about estates, I don't know if this includes other assets.

Continuing on: One could also get around the equal split in order to continue favoring the eldest by bequeathing upon them land and money prior to the person's death (though there was a limit, to ensure that other kids would get something after death), or, for some nobles, they could actually bestow a bit more to an eldest son upon their death regardless with a special law for them (Majorat). But at least any of the other kids would get something, and even included illegitimate children as long as the father had legally recognized them at some point (albeit less for them).

That aside, there was also the option of giving part of what you had away instead of leaving as an inheritance. As I mentioned before, it could be written up to go to a spouse, or it could go to a friend, charity - whatever it was you wished. Thus, less would go to their kids, grandkids, parents, siblings, grandparents, spouse, or other relatives (yes, that was the order of precedence for inheritance - see how far down the spouse is? Crazy).

Now here's the weird thing... According to law, the amount that could be used in this way was specific and depended on the number of children you had. You had to leave behind a portion as an inheritance (called the résèrve légale). If you had one child, like Gillenormand had, half of the estate was to go to that child. And then the number continued to grow if you had more kids.

So how the heck was he getting away with disposing of 3/4 of his finances? Because, from what I understand, rente (aka the annuity he's living on) comes from property. That property should still be part of the inheritance, and half of that should go to his daughter by law. So????

That aside, continuing on:

Besides, he had noticed that unexpected things happened to patrimonies, for instance they became ‘national assets’.

So initially I had figured he just meant he was going to let the government take 3/4 of his assets after he died instead of providing more for his daughter (female children were equally as entitled to inheritance as long as they were not married!) Though again, this makes no sense by law, that he can get rid of 3/4 of it.... Legal limitations should mean she gets 1/2... Unless the Majorat law came into play?

So remember how I said some nobles could get away with giving more to their eldest son? If Gillenormand had a noble title attached to some land given to him by Napoleon or Louis XVIII, that could go to his eldest son directly. But he doesn't have an eldest son. Maybe that meant he could do whatever he wanted with that property?? Maybe that's 1/4 of his assets, which means "half" of the rest would be... Another 1/4, if I'm a mathing correctly (bad at math sorry), Which means 3/4 of his total assets could be up to him as to how he wants to dispose of them... That is if whatever he has under Majorat could be done away without ever he chooses since he doesn't have an eldest son. I don't know how that works. Does anyone else know?

Anyway, the really buckwild thing to me about this is it sounds like he's not giving it to anything at all. He doesn't want the government to have it even? He's just.... Like completely dissolving the existence of it I guess??? He could let his daughter have it (or even give part of it to Marius), but instead he'd rather just. Destroy it entirely. Dang. This guy. 💀

EDIT: From what I can find, it seems that if there were no male relatives to take the Majorat, it became extinct. So that might be our answer! Except... He had Marius?? 🤔 Geez, I dunno LOL

Refs:

https://www.placedauphine.net/projects/inheritancelaw.html

Page 679-689: https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1182&context=lalrev

https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2023/01/16/revolution-rentes/

https://tontinecoffeehouse.com/2024/01/29/wealth-in-fin-de-siecle-france/

https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/oa_edited_volume/chapter/2476298

https://jerripedia.org/wiki/Rentes

Last year I wrote my bachelor's thesis about ensembles in musicals and in Les Mis in particular, so I thought it would be fun to post something about the conclusion of my research for this year's barricade day. I am currently writing another thesis (also related to Les Mis lmao), so I did not have the time to reformat it or anything, but I think my original conclusion of the case study + part of the conclusion of the thesis together make my point pretty well either way. I hope y'all find it as interesting to read as I found to research it!

These two thoughts [to escape men and to return to God] were so closely intertwined in his mind that they formed but a single one there; both were equally absorbing and imperative and ruled his slightest actions. In general, they conspired to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the gloom; they rendered him kindly and simple; they counselled him to the same things. Sometimes, however, they conflicted.

while Javert (we'll find this out later so no quotes yet) is a man who has trouble seeing below the surface. He abhors thinking and reflection and more practically in the end, he has trouble literally feeling Marius's pulse and understanding the things that can happen inside of a house? This is a genuinely incredible detail about him and about the concept of buildings in Hugolandia that building interiors sometimes physically manifest people's interiors. Javert does not know what happens inside of a home. Rather tragically I may add, because he never really had a "proper" one.

In Déraillé he is forced to look inwards and see he has a soul and a heart and is capable of kindness and of love and isn't just a pure representative of real world mundane law. He isn't made of stone no matter how much he may want to.

Here's from Fantine's arrest:

Javert up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some displaced statue, which is waiting to be put away somewhere.[...] From time to time she paused, and tenderly kissed the police agent’s coat. She would have softened a heart of granite; but a heart of wood cannot be softened.

And here is from Derailed:

Terrible situation! to be moved. To be made of granite, and doubt! To be the statue of punishment cast all of one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to perceive that you have under your bronze bosom something absurd and disobedient, which almost resembles a heart!

Now for Valjean: He is faced here with a question impossible to be resolved kindly. Valjean represents divine goodness in the same way Javert represents the law. On the one hand, ignoring Champmathieu means saving the people of the town, maybe even Cosette, on the other, Champathieu will endure the 'artificial hell' in Valjean's place. There is no possible answer that leads to universal good. So Valjean makes the choice to sacrifice himself, suffer a symbolic (and later a false) death by turning himself in and then jumping onto the sea.

Like I said, it's important to understand that Les Mis is interested in symmetries. Beginnings that mirror endings, people who go toward evil and people who go toward good. Miners that work to change society and miners that work to undermine it. Paris above, the sewers below. "justice" and Justice. Hougoumont at Waterloo and the Barricade during the june rebellion.

Javert and Enjolras have blue eyes and blond golden hair, reminiscent of the artistic depiction of angels, a shining gaze that can pierce the soul, the light of their ideal moving them.

And JVJ and Grantaire have a lot of black in their design. Black clothes, black hair (tho JVJ's become grey as he gets more trauma :c) and brow eyes that look basically RED in the color illustrations, and they have a sad cynical demeanor even tho they're inspired by someone else and they ultimately defy their own desperation and cynism to die for someone else and for a higher ideal!

And the chapter where Enjolras tells Javert, now a prisoner, that he's willing to die for his belief and Javert looks impassively and the reader GETS that Javert is also willing to die for his, except he doesn't get his wish in that very same chapter.

If Enjolras is the Achilles of the republic and freedom, Javert is an Achilles that chooses to serve the regime that oppresses him. They have the same fervor and the same almost religious faith in ideals that aren't compatible.

And when the imperfect, tormented Patroclus introduces greyness to their worldview, makes them open their eyes to how they were mistaken, they break but differently. Enjolras breaks gently in the moment of his death, shared by Grantaire, in an embrace that unifies love for humans in general and love for a person in particular.

Javert breaks many minor times thanks to Jean Valjean and the result is never pretty. It all accumulates into him understanding that whatever he does, he's making the wrong choice so he condemns himself. Jean Valjean also condemns himself to death, for the happiness of Cosette.