#lm 5.1.19

[secretmellowblog]

Feeling normal about Javert and Eponine today

[ruedesfillesducalvaire]

I'm feeling a little insane about Javert recognising Éponine at the barricade, whereas the people who should actually know and care about her repeatedly fail to recognise her!!!

here's her own father, Thénardier, not recognising her (4.8.4):

At the same moment, he perceived a pale girl standing before him. The man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings. He bristled up in hideous wise; nothing is so formidable to behold as ferocious beasts who are uneasy; their terrified air evokes terror. He recoiled and stammered:— “What jade is this?” “Your daughter.” It was, in fact, Éponine, who had addressed Thénardier.

and here's Marius not recognising her (4.14.6):

The fire-pot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool of blood. Marius indistinctly made out a pale head which was lifted towards him and which was saying to him:— “You do not recognize me?” “No.” “Éponine.”

but Javert, who knows her only as a juvenile delinquent he's arrested before—Javert recognises her, even after she's dead.

Javert gazed askance at this body, and, profoundly calm, said in a low tone: “It strikes me that I know that girl.”

I would also venture to say that the fact he brings it up at all, especially at such a critical moment (he's literally about to be shot as far as he knows), illustrates that he is actually bothered by this on some level.

(this train of thought was prompted by @secretmellowblog's excellent post about Javert + Éponine parallels)

[coquelicoq]

if there is a god watching over jean valjean i bet he's just super exhausted. when valjean takes javert out behind the barricade and pretends to execute him god's probably watching that like okay you could have just saved his life and let him go, you didn't have to also give him your address so he could come arrest you later. like come on dude. just don't do that part. it is a full-time job looking out for you, would it kill you to throw me a bone here? ben affleck smoking dot jpg.

[gavroche-le-moineau]

Translation notes for LM 5.1.19: Jean Valjean Takes His Revenge

First, I just wanted to highlight two skipped sentences in the Hapgood translation, at the point where we see Éponine. The section in French reads:

“Quand ils eurent enjambé ce barrage, ils se trouvèrent seuls dans la ruelle. Personne ne les voyait plus. Le coude des maisons les cachait aux insurgés. Les cadavres retirés de la barricade faisaient un monceau terrible à quelques pas. On distinguait dans le tas des morts une face livide,...”

The sentences in bold are omitted from the Hapgood translation:

“When they had crossed this barrier, they found themselves alone in the lane. No one saw them. [missing sentences] Among the heap they could distinguish a livid face,...”

With the missing sentences it would read something like:

"When they had crossed this barrier, they found themselves alone in the lane. No one could see them anymore. The bend in the houses hid them from the insurgents. The dead bodies pulled away from the barricade made a terrible heap a few feet away. Among the pile, a pale face could be distinguished..."

Second, I wanted to talk about the famous line, “You annoy me. Kill me, rather.” / “Vous m’ennuyez. Tuez-moi plutôt.”

As a non-native French speaker, the verb "ennuyer" has always given me a bit of trouble in interpretation due to its wide range of translations into English. I would love any input from someone who has a more intuitive grasp of French about what they feel this word expresses in different contexts!

The verb comes from "ennui," a feeling of weariness or dissatisfaction. In French to English dictionaries, you will commonly see the translation as both "to bore" and "to annoy" (along with verbs like "to bother, concern, trouble, worry"). A fun fact for any valvert shippers out there is that in Hugo's time it was also used to mean "to feel nostalgia for" or "to feel annoyed by the absence of something" though it should definitely be noted that the construction of the phrase would have to be different for it to have this meaning (Je m'ennuie de vous). Nevertheless, these are all sentiments that float around the context of this particular word, making it, for me anyway, somewhat difficult to translate.

[dolphin1812]

“The supremacy of enchained authority” is such a good way of describing Javert! But his calm remains disturbing.

It’s also awful that this is happening in front of Éponine’s corpse and that Javert vaguely recognizes her. They both share some dog imagery, so they parallel each other in a sense, with Éponine initially defending Marius’ future (by helping him find Cosette and have a romance befitting his imagined status) as Javert defends the social order, but it hurts to be reminded of the fact that she’s been ignored in the chaos of combat. 

Not entirely surprisingly, Jean Valjean doesn’t kill Javert. Between his pacifism and his lack of self-worth, it’s not shocking that he’d let the person best poised to ruin his life go free. Interestingly, Javert snarls “like a tiger,” moving to cat imagery. Cats, wild or not, are typically linked to rebellion in the novel, and Valjean was compared to a tiger at the beginning of the novel when he robbed the bishop. For Javert to be compared to a tiger emphasizes just how much this disturbed him. That he demands to be killed (“You annoy me. Kill me, rather” is a funny way to demand being killed, but it’s disturbing nonetheless) and addresses Valjean formally (vous instead of tu) underscores this as well.

Marius recognizes Javert at the worst possible time, but it’s also a bit funny that he’s thinking of his pistol debt at the barricade of all places.

[wanderinghedgehog]

What’s so interesting about 5.1.19 in Les Mis is how we’ve seen this before. Valjean is now the authority, Javert asks for something he probably shouldn’t want, and Valjean refuses. This is exactly what happened in M-sur-M.

[cliozaur]

Can you imagine? We've been discussing what is happening in Corinthe, on the barricade, and around it for 41 days already! And the events of the morning of 5 June—add another dozen days or so. That was the longest 24 hours I have ever lived through!

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 5.1.19 “Jean Valjean takes his revenge”

Marius’s sense of morality is wild.

This memory, however, was misty and indistinct, like all his ideas. It was not an affirmation he was making to himself, it was a question: "Isn't this that police inspec­tor who told me his name was Javert?"

Perhaps there was still time to intervene for this man? But he would first have to know if it were indeed that Javert.

HOW does he think ethics works? What is even the logic here? “If I’ve met this man in my life before this, it is my solemn duty to save him; if I haven’t, let him die who cares.”

All of which of course leaves aside the pretty pressing point that Marius still hasn’t learned that Cops Aren’t His Friends. God, he’s not paying attention. He never is, of course. I shouldn’t be surprised.

But he’s also not engaging with any of the coherent moralities. There’s “pragmatic acts up to and including killing enemy combatants and spies need to be done when one is participating in a war that one believes is worth waging” or there’s “all lives are worth saving to the best of one’s ability” which are both positions one could theoretically take. But he’s not even achieving Combeferre’s dubious and confused mashup of the two of those.

I mean, it’s not not a very human thing to do, being able to sympathize better with people you’ve interacted with, but. I just. I can’t get over “I need to find out this guy’s name to know if I’m honor bound to save him by virtue of having met him once.”

That’s not even Marius’s weird gratitude thing. Wtf IS that?

...Unless his gratitude thing applies even to “gave me pistols once.” Oh god, it might. Is this seriously about the fact that Javert once did him the stupidest of slight favors? Oh my god. Marius, those pistols were a blight on your life, you’re VERY well rid of them.

And then there’s Valjean’s reasoning about who to save. Like Marius, he hasn’t at all thought about what harm Javert might do to any of the insurgents here, should they happen to live. Valjean is specifically focusing his saving people on... well, it’s not “anybody I met one time”; it seems to be more like “I’m going to save specifically the people I think are guaranteed to ruin my life.”

Which is also weird, but it’s extremely Valjean.

Meanwhile, Javert’s straightening his coat and squaring his shoulders reminds me very much of Valjean stealing the coin from Petit-Gervais. Something has changed so suddenly and irrevocably for him that the only thing he knows how to do is pantomime the forms and actions of the old self he hasn’t realized yet that he’s lost.

[pilferingapples]

in the musical, near the end, why does valjean give javert his address and tell him where he can find him, if he knows that'll it'll probably lead to javert arresting him, which will mean cosette will be alone?

To be clear, he does this in the book too!

Jean Valjean cut the martingale which Javert had about his neck, then he cut the cords on his wrists, then, stooping down, he cut the cord on his feet; and, straightening himself up, he said to him: “You are free.” Javert was not easily astonished. Still, master of himself though he was, he could not repress a start. He remained open-mouthed and motionless. Jean Valjean continued: “I do not think that I shall escape from this place. But if, by chance, I do, I live, under the name of Fauchelevent, in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.” Javert snarled like a tiger, which made him half open one corner of his mouth, and he muttered between his teeth: “Have a care.” “Go,” said Jean Valjean. Javert began again: “Thou saidst Fauchelevent, Rue de l’Homme Armé?” “Number 7.” Javert repeated in a low voice:—“Number 7.” -LM 5.1.19, Valjean Takes His Revenge (Hapgood translation)

As to why he does it...well that's a really good question, and it's one of those things that is fodder for endless discussion! Some known emotional factors: - he already feels his life is over, since Cosette will be getting married and "leaving"him - he doesn't think Cosette will be alone if he lives, since he's going to bring her Marius, and he expects Marius to take care of Cosette now - he already feels like he can never truly escape the bagne, as we see in his confession with Marius. So he may feel he's just yielding to the inevitable? More options: - he's really trying to save Javert's life (he is!) and thinks offering his address will help convince Javert to leave -maybe he's not so confident of escape himself, and thinks he won't be there to be arrested--and this way at least someone will tell Cosette where he was? - Other Options Up To The Reader! Basically it's hugely up to interpretation! Which is fascinating, right? Such a big moment in the story, and Hugo basically turns to the audience and invites us to try and understand why Valjean makes his choices here the way he does. And then the musical follows that cue!

So what are your ideas about it, Nonny? :D

[ruedesfillesducalvaire]

I always thought the "You annoy me. Kill me, rather" line was delivered right after Valjean cuts the ropes and frees Javert (thanks Les Mis '78 brainrot I guess), but I just reread this bit and realised Javert walks away up the street for several MINUTES before turning around and shouting it to Valjean at the top of his lungs.

why is he like this

[cliozaur]

It’s the last short-ish and entertaining chapter before the sequence of long and extremely painful ones. There are several moments here that are open for multiple interpretations.

Javert noticing Éponine’s body, singling her out of “a terrible pile” of corpses, is an interesting detail, suggesting that Hugo wants us to draw a link between Javert and Éponine. Javert appears to be genuinely surprised to recognize her, as he says it aloud. I imagine that her corpse was the only female body in the pile. And now I am angry at Marius: Javert, who saw Éponine only once, maybe twice in his life, somehow recognized her, while Marius failed to immediately recognize her almost each time they met. Furthermore, he did not have enough decency to take her body away from the street – though he did this for Gavroche. It seems that his stupid sense of obligation towards Thénardier never involved Éponine. Anyway, Javert is the last person who, in his peculiar way, conveyed a symbolic farewell to Éponine.

“You annoy me. Kill me, rather.” Javert was not the only one annoyed to the point of self-destruction. I believe that Jean Valjean giving Javert his address is also motivated by a similar kind of annoyance. In this case, a horrible end is better than an endless horror. But their dynamic at this moment is so entertaining! So tense. I wonder how Javert’s head didn’t just blow up! And switching from vous to tu or vice versa is also very telling. Javert addressing Valjean tu all the time but switching to vous in “You annoy me.” And Valjean being polite and addressing Javert with vous.

Marius out of blue wanting to intervene before it’s too late to save Javert – it’s just typical Marius. This is something similar to his never-ending urge to thank Thénardier. Perhaps, he feels obliged to Javert for whatever he thinks happened in the Gorbeau hut. Because he is Marius and he has a strange, bourgeois sense of honour and morality. I won’t even try to understand it. But plot-wise, it is important for his further relations with Valjean.

[pilferingapples]

Eponine and Javert

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.

Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert. --LM  1.5.5

(Eponine) began to laugh in a terrible way:—

“As you like, but you shall not enter here. I’m not the daughter of a dog, since I’m the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I’m a woman. You don’t frighten me. I tell you that you shan’t enter this house, because it doesn’t suit me. If you approach, I’ll bark. I told you, I’m the dog, and I don’t care a straw for you. Go your way, you bore me! Go where you please, but don’t come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I’ll use kicks; it’s all the same to me, come on!”--LM 4.8.4

While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard over the gate, and while the six ruffians were yielding to a girl, Marius was by Cosette’s side. -LM 4.8.6

When they had crossed this barrier, they found themselves alone in the lane. No one saw them. Among the heap they could distinguish a livid face, streaming hair, a pierced hand and the half nude breast of a woman. It was Éponine. The corner of the houses hid them from the insurgents. The corpses carried away from the barricade formed a terrible pile a few paces distant.

Javert gazed askance at this body, and, profoundly calm, said in a low tone:

“It strikes me that I know that girl.”-LM 5.1.19

(Hapgood translation, bolding mine) 

I very rarely see the textual connection between Eponine and Javert discussed (and to be clear, I mean that I rarely see it discussed in academic articles and analysis; this isn’t a fanslam, fandom discussion is about the only  place  I’ve seen it even really noticed, let alone explored).  Eponine tends to be discussed-- tends to be dismissed, really-- as Just a Girl In Love, the Unrequited Tragic line of the love triangle. A lot of adaptations are guilty of this too--and even of just tossing her out entirely.

But Eponine’s role is so much more than that. Not only is she very directly set up as a mirror to Cosette (the role a lot of analysis notices if it bothers to notice her beyond Sad Love Interest at all); she shares this  incredible thematic line with Javert: being the child of criminals, who turns against criminals, to guard a version of the society they want to attack. They even both get showdowns with the Patron Minette specifically! 

There’s so much to be said about these two characters and the way their different motivations and different kinds of separation from society lead them to similar paths-- to something that makes even Javert pause in recognition, before what he expects will be his own death. 

( @lawisnotmocked, I know you Care about Animal Symbolism in Les Mis too:D)