#tellmarch

Sorry, he's sympathetic and all, he gets Michelle back to health, but:  MICHELLE FLECHARD. Even Hugo's Weirdness About Motherhood--and there is some serious weirdness happening-- can't get in the way of my loving Michelle. Because Michelle is fighting like anything to rewrite this story, and she NEVER STOPS, not even when she's almost dead. She has no weapons except her words and her silence, and oh, doesn't she use them; she interrogates Tellmarch as soon as she's able, as best as she's able , and when he can offer her no information, when he tells her to Be Quiet, she GOES WITH IT, and she is ALL THE WAY QUIET-- not in cruelty but because she's obviously dealing with this situation on her own, and she is reserving her strength, and Tellmarch just made himself irrelevant. He can help Michelle; he can't help her help her kids; and so she doesn't need to talk to him. Because Michelle is a woman with FOCUS. 

I'm still trying to sort out the way I feel about their contrasting apoliticism, -- clearly they're both intellectually unattached to the current overarching battle. They're both peasants, they both care more about their immediate contacts than any Grand Ideal-- Neutral Good, or maybe True Neutral, even.

But there's an element of CHOICE there for Tellmarch that Michelle's lacked; he can read, he knows the local situation, he recognized the Marquis when they met. And Tellmarch has decided, for himself and for his own reasons, that he wants to stay out of that larger picture  (and I highly doubt the encounter with the Marquis has done anything to make him crave more involvement!).

Michelle, though-- Michelle's NOT aware of what's happening. She was a peasant, she was a Breton; she was made a French Citizen by adoption. Her husband was killed, she was shot, her house was burned-- and she doesn't know why, and NO ONE IS TELLING HER anymore, but she is asks; and when she doesn't get real answers, she doesn't waste time on a stranger who won't talk, who tells her to be silent; she recovers and makes a bag to travel and sets off on her own. So overall it seems to me AT THE MOMENT that Tellmarch is choosing to stay out of the public, as he has apparently chosen through his life, while Michelle is now choosing to engage.  BUT I COULD BE WRONG, I shall continue to turn this over! 

The narrative asks "What heroism is a poor peasant woman capable of?" She's capable of surviving TWO lost families, of chasing down THE ENTIRE DARN NARRATIVE to get her kids back, with no wise mentor to guide her,  basically no supplies-- without even a direction to look.

And she's doing this without arms, too. Military men in this novel keep talking about being "inexorable" -- I do not think it means what they think it means, but I think some of them might be about to learn.

Obligatory Note About Hugo Weirdness on Women: "The mother is no longer a woman, she is a wild creature. Her children are her cubs" " Hers is a blindness superhumanly enlightened."  etc. etc. What's so...unnerving about this, for me, is that OF COURSE I'm not about to say NO PARENTAL AFFECTION COUNTS FOR NOTHING. Parental love is LOVE, and when it's there it's a solid thing, I just spent most of the LAST book read going on about how very powerful love in its various forms can be, how much of an often-ignored influence it is.So I am totally with anyone who wants to say, basically, PEOPLE WILL GO THROUGH HELL FOR THE PEOPLE THEY LOVE. Yes, one hundred percent!

But this--this putting maternal love beyond the realm of the human, knocking it into the realm of not just the animal but the unavoidable--it removes so much of the heroism that love and attachment bring. Michelle DOES NOT have to go search for her children; no one would be surprised if she didn't. This is WAR, there are probably dozens of women in a ten mile radius who are embarking on their own journeys to recover from the loss of children, of various ages, to the fight, or to disease, and their roads will not be noticeable easier.

But Michelle is CHOOSING, for her story, to go find her children. She's CHOOSING to face pain for the family she might (might! only might!) have left, instead of facing pain to start anew. Love is her MOTIVE, and it's a fantastic motive, but it's not her shackle. She could choose something different.