#shes valid

Both Myriel and Valjean’s families were scattered— the Myriels by the French Revolution, the Valjeans by illness/poverty. But after everything fell apart the brother and sister stuck together. They took care of each other. They stayed by each other even in the midst of poverty (although yeah it is important to note that the Myriel household’s poverty is voluntary, and is extremely different from the actual poverty of the Valjean household.) 

  It feels like a commentary on the way the revolutions/Napoleonic wars/upheaval of the past decades affected different classes very differently. You have the Myriel family representing the trauma of the aristocrats, and then the Valjean family representing the trauma of the peasants. 

Both Valjean and Myriel were also in a situation where they lost contact with their family for a while and had to survive by laboring– Valjean during his imprisonment, Myriel during the Revolution. Valjean's family was broken in 1795, Myriel's in 1793.  “Our family was ruined….In ‘93 one had no relatives,” Myriel says to Valjean about his experience. “One had only one’s arms.” He’s trying to reach out to Valjean by implying that he understands something of what he's going through— that the pain aristocrats like him experienced during the revolution has something in common with the pain that peasants like Valjean have experienced as a result of poverty. Myriel’s also been separated from his family, he’s also been exiled from the places where he used to live, and he’s also been forced to labor in order to survive. And If he survived it then there’s hope for Valjean too. 

But because Myriel is an aristocrat and Valjean is a peasant, Myriel’s situation was and is radically different, less painful, and less dire. And Myriel seems to understand that, but it’s still… well, it’s still a thing!  I don’t think Myriel is doing anything “wrong” here, but there are clearly limits to how much he actually understands. He talks about how he had “no relatives” during the Revolution, but a moment before he was talking with his sister about their many many relatives. He talks about laboring and having nothing but his arms— but he’s never been in the galleys; has he really experienced that? Like yes, Myriel’s family has been through terrible trauma. Myriel’s wife died in exile, for reasons we never learn, and his family was scattered/broken in a way that utterly changed him as a person.  But he doesn’t know what it actually means to lose everyone. He doesn’t know what it means to lose everything. Myriel might have felt like he did at one point, but he doesn’t. 

Because Myriel’s sister is still here.

1.2.4 is written from Baptistine’s point of view. She happily describes her brother to one of her friends, and seems content to be living with him. 

But Valjean’s sister is gone. She might be dead, or might as well be dead— he will never see her again. 

I don’t think Myriel is doing anything wrong here at all. He’s being a perfect kind host. He’s doing all he can to help Valjean without being condescending or preachy. He’s talking to him as a friend, and trying to help Valjean talk about his own past without shame by revealing some of the struggles he’s been through. But at the same time…when Valjean says he has nothing, it doesn’t mean “he’s lost a lot” it means he has nothing. When Valjean says he has no family, it doesn’t mean “he has some distant cousins he rarely talks to” it means that literally everyone he has ever loved is dead or gone forever.  

Myriel’s aristocratic family may have lost a lot in the Revolution, but it's not even comparable to what Valjean’s family has lost as a result of poverty and prison. 

Myriel’s original plan was to give Valjean a good night’s sleep and breakfast, then send him on his way to Pontarlier and hope he’ll get hired to work with the cheesemakers there. And that was a great plan! It was probably the best thing he could do in that situation. But like…would the people of Pontarlier have been any less bigoted towards Valjean than the people of Digne? Valjean probably doesn’t have hope that will happen. Again, I think Myriel was doing everything “right”-- it’s just that he’s only one person and doing everything he could might not have been enough. It’s like that earlier scene where the Bishop helped the man who was on Death Row. The Bishop thinks the Death Penalty is a moral evil, but he doesn’t have the power to get rid of it or even the power to rescue someone from it. He does all that he can to help the man on death row, by comforting him…. but it isn’t enough. And Myriel's aware that it isn't enough, that there are limits to how much he can help.

 In 1.2.4 Baptistine praises her brother for treating Valjean as an equal. At the same time, in her own narration, she portrays Valjean in the same pitying kinda-condescending way that she praises her brother for avoiding. 

Valjean spent nineteen years in prison because he was trying to help his sister and his sister’s children.