#valjean is a lion but when hes with javert hes a mouse

[extraplanetarysabotage]

im like, yes, tell me more about the animal symbolism in victor hugos 1862 novel les miserables

[le-loup-et-lion]

I know I talked about this on Discord once ages ago but did I ever tell you guys about my absurd harvest-mouse!Javert au?

Basically it's brick canon until Javert says to Valjean "I will wait for you here", at which point due to inexplicable fairy tale-esque 'you told a lie for the first time in your life' magic curse bullshit Javert is transformed right in front of Valjean into one of these lil guys:

Conceptually it's completely ridiculous, but what makes it funny is that's it's played completely straight.

"Autumn, you seem like a fairly serious person when it comes to this fandom so why on earth would you come up with something this silly" you say? well. you see. it literally came to me in a dream (no, seriously).

I imagine it as a very terrifying and painful transformation, which starts out almost like the pangs of a heart attack, with Javert clutching his chest and doubling over with a grunt as Valjean is walking away, causing Valjean to turn back around and kneel down with him, grabbing him by his shoulders and trying to assess what's wrong with him, ending up bewildered as Javert begins to glow with an eerie golden light which eventually engulfs him (but not before Javert can look up and meet his eyes one last time with an utterly petrified, vulnerable, pleading look). Then this blinding luminous form shrinks in Valjean's grasp until it is naught but a small floating orb, at which point the light begins to fade and whatever is left of Javert starts to fall. Valjean catches it in his hands and, somewhat horrified and awestruck, opens them to reveal the tinest little mouse he's ever seen curled up in his palms within the faintest fading golden glow.

Javert goes unconscious during this transformation, leaving Valjean to trudge back to his apartment in complete confusion with him (very gently) in hand, highly questioning his own sanity the entire time until Javert is able to wake up again and respond to basic yes/no questions.

(Javert of course absolutely loses his mind at first and tries to run away as soon as he begins to process the situation, but is unused to his new body and runs right off the edge of the table without thinking, forcing Valjean to panic lunge across the tabletop and grab him midair to prevent him from falling and hurting himself)

Anyway they are both very rattled and perplexed by this and Valjean keeps him at his apartment because they don't know what else to do.

Their whole hunter/prey antagonist/protagonist relationship gets pretty immediately and completely derailed by this, but not in like, a neatly resolved way, because they can't really just have a conversation about it at first, leading to ... a pretty weird mental state for both of them for quite awhile.

It also levels the playing field between them in a way because Javert was the only one who "knew" Valjean, and now Valjean is the only one who "knows" Javert.

Javert can't talk obviously but he CAN dip his little tail in an inkwell and write with surprisingly humanlike penmanship. (Also harvest mice have prehensile tails which they use to climb around vegetation; so it's more useful than he initially realizes—I wonder if they would be dexterous enough for him to write with just the tail itself, without having to grasp it like a pen in his front paw?)

His top hat fell off while he was transforming so it didn't transform with him (thereby remaining the only real proof of the situation, sort of) and Valjean sat it on his bedside table and filled it with bits of fabric (I like to think they're different colored cravats) for Javert to use as a hiding place/bed, which is just. the cutest thing ever if you picture it.

People on Discord were laughing about the idea of him wearing, like, a little waistcoat from a doll or something bc he's nakey and embarrassed about it lmao

I was thinking that shortly after this Valjean might fall ill, perhaps due to some wounds he received at the barricade (bullet grazes?) becoming infected by all the sewer muck he was wading around in, leaving him bedridden and unsure of the future (hmm, just like Marius). This would give him plenty of time to talk openly with Javert without anyone seeing, but also mainly force him to worry about Javert's immediate future as well, perhaps in his own absence (though he doesn't die in the end, of course). And then, their overwhelming mortality would probably make Valjean start talking about things he wouldn't otherwise have brought up.

Eventually after a long time of living with Valjean and watching him interact with others, and realizing the kind of person he is/that people can change/that the law and justice are two separate concepts/that he has spent his life helping to oppress people who often didn't deserve it, Javert manages to tolerate/accept and even appreciate Valjean in a sort of backwards Beauty and the Beast type au, and would turn back into his old human self again. But I haven't figured out exactly what the specific caveats of this "curse" (and therefore the breaking thereof) would be yet.

Like. Is it about being honest with oneself and others? Is it about learning to love? Is it about how seeing the humanity of others and treating them humanely is fundamental to what makes us human? What would break the curse, exactly? A kiss? A confession of some kind? A selfless act? Certainly it is more about him learning to love than it is about him becoming loveable; but then, are those two concepts not inseparably intertwined?

And why did he turn into a mouse, specifically, to begin with? (The real answer here is that my subconscious picked it while I was asleep, so I'm not sure; but) I feel like, in a metaphorical sense, Javert is a mouse who wholeheartedly believes himself to be a lion.

By which I mean, he was born into a position of powerlessness in society due to classism, racism, moral persecution, and economic inequality, and because of this he sought respect and power; but instead of trying to gain these things by fighting against the oppressive system he faced (as he believed it to be an unwinnable battle), he caved into it entirely and chose to become a servant of it, in return for a scant amount of personal security and the illusion of authority.

At the end of the day, however, he is still impoverished, disrespected, and distrusted. He is lying to himself in that he believes that through his self-sacrificial and self-stifling choices, he has fulfilled his goals to rise through the ranks of society, becoming his "morally best" self—but the reality is almost exactly the opposite. He has become the self-same monster that would gladly oppress people like him and his family. And he makes the choice to continue being that monster every day, because at least now he feels powerful; at least now people fear him enough to pretend they respect him.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that his illusions finally break around him as he chooses to knowingly lie, not just to himself this time, but finally—and for the very first time—out loud. And in the admittance of his dishonesty to himself, he transforms physically into what he truly was all along—meek and small, voiceless and powerless; an inconvenient and easily forgotten pest in the eyes of society.

Would the acceptance of this truth, and the embracing of true humility, be what breaks him of the curse then; restoring to him his physical humanity at the restoration of his spiritual humanity?

I never fully figured out the plot direction for this au but I still think about it now and then and try to add to it in my head. So possibly, one day longggg in the future, you may see. a very silly little fic on AO3

[fremedon]

Brickclub 2.5.10, “How Javert Came to Find the Bird Had Flown”

Here we meet Javert at the beginning of his corruption.

I am now firmly sold on the idea that Javert broke his geas when he killed Fantine. In taking a life the law had no claim on, he has lost his ability to act as an empty vessel for the law.

He has none of the self-awareness about his corruption that he will have started, barely, to develop by the barricade. He doesn’t seem to realize or acknowledge any culpability in Fantine’s death:

The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered that Jean Valjean had made him burst out laughing by asking for three days’ grace to go fetch that creature’s child. He recalled that Jean Valjean had been arrested in Paris as he was getting into the coach for Montfermeil. Some indications even then had led to speculation that it was the second time he was taking that coach, and that he had already made a previous trip the day before to somewhere on the outskirts of that village, for he had not been seen in the village itself. Why was he going to that place, Montfermeil? No one could work it out. Javert now understood. Fantine’s daughter was there. Jean Valjean was going to fetch her.

But he must be starting to realize that his instincts and his self-gaslighting are more openly at war with each other than they used to be. In Arras, months after recognizing Valjean and making a meticulous case against him, he immediately throws it all out when presented with an officially-identified Jean Valjean, makes a positive identification of Champmathieu, and is certain enough about it to recount the whole story to Valjean’s face.

But here, officialdom (and the newspaper) says that Valjean is dead; Javert’s instincts say Valjean is alive (and, given free rein, lead him straight to the Pont d’Austerlitz); and Javert...doubts. He hesitates, waits for verification he doesn’t need, wastes time going for backup.

But at the same time, Javert is also enjoying his job on a personal level. From being an empty vessel, Javert has become “an artist,” and in this context that is not a good thing.

And then there’s that pinch of snuff once he thinks he has Valjean cornered. I always think that this passage cannot possibly be as horny as I remember it being, and it is always even hornier:

Then he began to have fun. He experienced a moment of fiendish delight, letting his man go on ahead, knowing he had him in his grasp but wanting to delay to the utmost the moment of arrest, taking pleasure in being aware that the man was caught; and seeing him free, gloating over him with that relish the spider takes in the flitting of the fly and the cat takes in the scurrying of the mouse. Claws and talons enjoy a monstrous thrill: that is, the unseen movements of the creature imprisoned in their grip. How delicious is this snuffing-out! Javert was in ecstasy. His net was firmly staked. All he had to do now was tighten his grip. With the backup he had, the very idea of resistance was absurd, no matter how energetic, strong, and desperate Jean Valjean might be. Javert advanced slowly, delving into every nook on his way down the street, as into the pockets of a thief. When he reached the center of his web he found the fly was gone. You can imagine his fury.

We kind of don’t need to, Victor. You’ve spelled things out very clearly.

I remember mentioning when we met Javert that he was the only major character whose introduction did not immediately situate him with regard to Napoleon. And we do get a Napoleon reference at the end of this chapter: “Certainly, Napoleon made mistakes during the war in Russia,” at the start of the long litany of colossal mistakes made by great men. It is telling that Javert only gets the Great Man comparisons here, at the start of his corruption and in the moment of his failure.

But even though the Napoleon reference is to the Russian campaign and not to Waterloo, I think it is supposed to prime us to think about Waterloo, because the long dissection of Javert’s failures brings us to this:

Great strategists have their weaknesses.

The greatest follies, like the stoutest ropes, are often composed of a multitude of strands. Take the cable thread by thread, take separately each petty determining motive, and you can snap them one by one and say, ‘There’s no more to it than that!’ Braid them and twist them together, and what you have is momentous: Atilla wavering between Marican in the east and Valentinian in the west, Hannibal lingering at Capua, Danton going to sleep at Arcis-sur-Aube.

We’re back to watching fatalité at work in history--accident, carelessness, oversight, the accumulation of small debts, the guide who points the wrong direction. Javert is getting the Great Man treatment, Doylistically, because Valjean already has, and he needs to be well-matched as a threat. But we’ve already seen that great men can be--and should be, must be--brought down by small things. A single failure isn’t a judgement Javert’s skills or potential, or the new level of personhood he’s starting to develop--but we should be asking what those skills, and that potential, are in service of.

Other stray observations:

The old verger, “muttering prayers and spying through his prayerfulness,” does not inspire confidence in the convent as a refuge. 

“In this world there are two beings that shudder to their core: the mother finding her child and the tiger finding his prey. Javert felt this profound thrill.” FUCK YOU JAVERT, that should have been Fantine’s feeling and you stole it from her.

Besides the by-this-point usual tiger images for Javert, Valjean is both a stag hunted by hounds, and a lion.

Javert has learned the streets of Paris extremely thoroughly in less than a year on the job.

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.4.2 “First Sketch of Two Equivocal Faces”

Time to meet the two least likable characters in this book, after Tholomyes. Mme Victurnien and Bamatabois try, but they can’t beat the Thenardier parents for slime factor.

The Thenardiers are animals (cats specifically) before we ever get to know them as people. Also I think this is one of the only instances where Hugo frames cats in a truly negative light? Usually cats are Liberty and Revolution and also Secret Lions. This time they’re cunning creatures taking advantage of a tiny mouse.

Hugo making quick work of some Class Opinions here. Hugo is describing this sort of in-between class, a limbo between middle and lower, made up of two types of people, of which I assume both Thenardiers are the former. When he compares them to the working class and the bourgeoisie, it’s about what they don’t have. I’m guessing that by “generous impulses” of the worker, he means solidarity? Working class people were/are more likely to help each other and engage in mutual aid, at least to a larger extent than others. Unless he’s emphasizing impulses, in which case maybe it’s more about being reckless? FMA says the bourgeois have “respectability”; Hapgood calls it “honest order.” Either way, that seems to be referencing a more “polite society,” a set of expected characteristics or behaviors and a certain level of success or money. I don’t know. It’s weird. Hugo’s class opinions are complicated and I don’t think I understand enough about French class history and culture to properly analyze all of this.

“There are souls that, crablike, crawl continually toward darkness, going backward in life rather than advancing, using their experience to increase their deformity, growing continually worse, and becoming steeped more and more thoroughly in an intensifying viciousness.”

I can’t help but think about Valjean here. Javert isn’t Valjean’s opposite, he’s Valjean’s weird parallel. Thenardier is Valjean’s opposite. Valjean is a soul that climbs towards the light despite spending so long in darkness, while Thenardier crawls towards darkness. In the moments when Valjean is actively working to become better, Thenardier is simultaneously actively becoming worse. After rescuing Cosette, Hugo mentions that Valjean had been on the brink of falling back into old habits and instincts from prison, but Cosette rehabilitated him and reminded him to work towards being good. At the same time, the Thenardiers are presumably falling into poverty and in the process of losing their inn. Later, Valjean decides to teach Cosette charity and bring her with him to help the poor. I think in general he is, at this point, doing more charity work than ever before. Thenardier kidnaps him and tries to hold him for ransom; in the process he also destroys parts of his own home. When Valjean saves Marius, after an active effort to realize that he needs to sacrifice to make Cosette happy, Thenardier is in the sewers stealing from corpses (or presumed corpses, anyway). As Valjean is dying, again sacrificing himself for what he thinks will be the good of Cosette, Thenardier is trying to trick Marius into doubting Valjean’s goodness and reputation, and trying to get money out of him. As Valjean dies loved and good, Thenardier goes to America to become a slave trader. Valjean and Javert’s entire lives run parallel to each other; Thenardier is like a perpendicular line that they both end up crossing at the same time each time. Thenardier is Valjean’s opposite in that he embodies exactly what Valjean had the potential to become.

Hugo says “We only have to look at some men to distrust them” and I wonder if that’s part of why we don’t actually see M Thenardier until now. The entire scene last chapter was full of all these bad omens and ominous imagery, so we were already suitably aware of the danger. Only, now we’re getting a real grasp and a true description of the reality of that danger for Cosette.

I really like that we get the line “he knew how to do a little of everything--all badly” because it’s yet another way in which he is Valjean’s opposite. Valjean knows how to do a little of everything as well, only he manages to do those things well and to succeed.

Hugo talks about Mme Thenardier’s love of trashy romance novels and throws in a bunch of references, conveniently in chronological order. Clelie goes with Mlle de Scuderi; Madeleine de Scudery wrote her novel Clelie (10 volumes!) in the mid 1600s. As far as I can tell, Clelie is about the siege of Rome and the romances between a bunch of different characters, and it’s very elaborate with a lot of long conversations. She used Roman/Persian/Greek characters as a thinly veiled disguise for contemporary society figures and political commentary. Lodoiska was a 1791 opera based on the novel Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas by Jean Baptiste Louvet du Couvray. The opera (and presumably the novel) is a classic story of a nobleman rescuing his fiancee from a man who has kidnapped and wants to marry her. There isn’t much I could find on Mme Barthelemy-Hadot, except that she wrote melodramas in the early 19th century.  Mme de Lafayette wrote La Princesse de Cleves, a highly realistic psychological novel, in the mid-1600s. She also wrote La Princesse de Monpensier, which was a prototype for the historical novel. There’s not much on Charlotte Bournon-Malarme, except that she was a writer in the late 1700s. Hugo is criticizing the chronological downturn of classic “romance” novels, how they’ve gone from realism and critique to dumbed-down adventure novels. It seems as though Mme Thenardier fills her time and her head with the latter.

Okay I’m not sure if I’m going to interpret the “Mégère parted company with Pamela” line right, because it might be a detail from a romance novel that I just can’t catch because I haven’t read romances from the 17th/18th century. However, I do know that Mégère was one of the Furies, the “jealous one,” and can be slang for a jealous or spiteful woman. The Pamela reference is a little bit harder, since there were two popular Pamela-based novels, but what I’m guessing at is that as Mme Thenardier aged and became less fierce and jealous all the time, she was just a woman who had been forced to marry a man 15 years older than her, who didn’t think much and was boring. I’m really not sure.

I can’t find much on Guillame Pigault-Lebrun, except that he was a fairly popular novelist during the Empire, whose quality flagged during the Restoration. He also apparently wrote some anti-Christian works, which seems to make sense for M Thenardier.

First of all, “the anarchy of baptismal names” is a fantastic band name.

So, from what I can figure out, pre-Revolution, a baby was named after a saint whose name was associated with the day of birth. For example, my birthday is April 14, so I would have been Ludivine. (I’m not sure what happens if someone’s birthday falls on a day with an opposite-gender saint associated with it. Did they just masculinize/feminize the name?) The French Revolution, as well as doing away with the old calendar, also did away with this tradition. People were now allowed to name their children (or themselves, if they did the paperwork) whatever they wanted. In 1803, this law was changed, and from what I can tell, you could either name your children the names of (Catholic) saints, or the names of people from classical/ancient history.

I’m not really sure how the Thenardiers got around this law, at least for Azelma. Epona is a Celtic goddess. Euphrasia was a saint from the 4th century. I have no idea what Azelma is. I suppose that’s the “anarchy” indicated. But maybe I’m missing something? Please someone correct me if I got stuff wrong.

Anyway, Hugo praises these changes as an aspect of equality. People aren’t restricted to the few names associated with their name day. They can branch out. Anyone can have the more “elegant” names associated with the classical/ancient history names, even workingmen. It’s also something that can’t be chiseled away like the Ns on buildings or removed like statues. People with those weird names from the decade they were allowed are living, breathing proof of the progress of the Revolution and force people around them to confront the fact that it happened, even if they’re back to celebrating the Restoration. Yet another minor but weirdly significant ripple of change.

[pilferingapples]

Cats on the Barricade!

This one’s for @lawisnotmocked ! A Further Elaboration of Hugo’s linking of cats and revolutionaries!

For this I did a word search on the Hapgood for any mention of “cat” or “cats”, “kitten”, “kittens”, “tom” and “feline”.  There may have been a couple cat mentions I missed with that method, but I caught quite a few! And they make for a pretty consistent metaphor, too!  Between me and Hugo, this is a long  post, so under the cut for length!

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). 

These are of course not the only mention of these animals in the novel-- Valjean gets compared to a lion a lot (...which , now that I think of it: of course  Hugo would make his symbolic Jesus Man an Honorary Parisian By Metaphorical Association:P) and getting into the lion/ cat dichotomy would make this post way longer than it already is.  And there’s another character who gets a lot of cat  imagery that I want to get into in another post. But the Cat Of Revolution is really consistent on its own, and deserves head scritches! er, and citation.