Fantine - Blog Posts
Brick versions of some les mis characters! Can’t decide if I like the colored of the black and white version better.
Saying Fantine 'got out of the gutter' is a bit of a stretch, no? She's a factory worker paying a couple to house her child, and is forced by circumstance to become a prostitute the moment she's fired. She dies of a venereal disease at twenty-some and is buried in an unmarked grave. That's hardly out of the gutter. Javert makes what is a deeply unlikely ascent, but an ascent nontheless: he's born in prison and becomes a police officer with a steady income. He definately rises higher than Fantine ever did, even if he started a bit below. Of the three, Valjean rises the highest, out of a combination of sheer luck and trickery.
ok, i haven't posted on this blog in ages, but here we go. i agree that she definitely died in the gutter, and didn't have all that far to fall back in. it was a very tenuous situation! that's part of the whole point of her story, how thin the breaking point is. ditto javert and valjean. if you think javert lived in anything but poverty even while licking the boot, well. to say nothing of valjean and his whole Deal (tm). they're three faces of the same problem! in this valvertine essay i will
but i have difficulty with the idea that she didn't make it out even a little. there's a bit in the brick where her neighbor marguerite has to teach fantine how to live off nothing, like making her petticoat into a coverlet and so forth -- which is to say, as a kid fantine knew how to live on nothing, but at some point in her paris life, she forgot, because she wasn't living on nothing. she had a job as a piecemaker, which didn't make her Not Poor but it did give her enough to like, you know. have a little left over to buy millet to feed birds at her windowsill, and spend the time it takes to care for her appearance (which when you have hair that falls to your knees is nothing to sneeze at). she could afford the kind of personal maintenance that would accent her natural beauty and catch a law student's eye. and even after tholomyes dumps her, even though she has to give cosette up, at the factory she is still making a living! not law-student-allowance living, but still! one of her lines at her arrest, that sticks with me a lot, is 'i used to have linens, so many linens.' you know? a fall hits harder if you make it off the ground first.
me: alright i’m not so much concentrating on les mis anymore my new focus is the three musketeers! new interest! we’re broadening our scope! that’s diversification baby!
also me: If I See One More Alternate Universe Where Everyone Lives Except Fantine, Whose Death Apparently Is A Fixed Part Of The Timeline, I’m Gonna McFreakin’ Lose It
and she lived happily ever after, the end, tholomyès and bamatabois and everyone else can go choke.
the dress is essentially a blue version of @lesmiserablesfashions’ dress here, drawn without actually looking at the reference because i like to live dangerously.
we’re on a mission from God. we’ve got a full timeline of the beauxbatons au valvertine fic mapped out from january 1971 through to halloween 1981, got fourteen chapters already out, three chapters fully outlined, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.
hit it.
gold on her head, pearls in her mouth, blood under her fingernails : a Fantine Lives playlist (listen on spotify)
welcome to the jungle guns n’ roses | die young ke$ha | are you gonna be my girl jet | funplex the b-52s | you give love a bad name bon jovi | everybody’s fool evanescence | monster (alternate radio edit) skillet | i miss the misery halestorm | dance with the devil breaking benjamin | animal i have become three days grace | uma thurman fall out boy | ballroom blitz the sweet | beat it (single) michael jackson | no one’s here to sleep naughty boy & bastille | secrets onerepublic | back in black ac/dc
grantaire is in love with enjolras and enjolras is just wondering what this gremlin man is doing hanging around the friends of the abc so dang much and this upsets me greatly but not because i want them to kiss: an essay.
part four: “preliminary gayeties” – or, the gremlin is really starting to show, there, buddy.
part one | part two | part three
so as it turns out, the entire chapter -- all sixteen and a half pages, per my french version on kindle -- is chock full of interaction between the brunch trio, joly, bossuet, and grantaire. so we’re gonna do the whole thing, beginning to end.
over six pages’ worth of it is one single monologue by the man himself.
this .... this is gonna be a wild ride.
the hapgood english translation can be found here.
and off we go!
Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent. They were, what the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called, bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinthe to breakfast. Joly, who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to share. Laigle’s coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed.
It was about nine o'clock in the morning, when they opened the door of Corinthe.
They ascended to the first floor.
Matelote and Gibelotte received them.
“Oysters, cheese, and ham,” said Laigle.
And they seated themselves at a table.
ok, first of all, breakfast of champions.
if this is your last proper breakfast before you die, might as well breakfast in style, right?
The wine-shop was empty; there was no one there but themselves.
Gibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table.
While they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said: --
“I am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie cheese. I enter.” It was Grantaire.
i like to annotate my kindle editions of books, rather than scribbling in print editions, because it makes me feel better for some reason. i went to look at the note i had for this section, and this is what my original reaction was:
“good morning garbage boy date crasher [kissing emoji]”
... well, that about covers it. might as well stop the rest of the meta here.
(i kid. the train wreck is just getting started.)
Grantaire took a stool and drew up to the table.
At the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine on the table.
That made three.
“Are you going to drink those two bottles?” Laigle inquired of Grantaire.
Grantaire replied: --
“All are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man.”
H ... HONEY ......... IT’S NINE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING .............
if we didn’t fully comprehend how much of an alcoholic grantaire was before, now we see it in action, plain as ink. joly and bossuet share a single bottle of wine between them, but grantaire is known by the waitstaff to consume two bottles by himself in one sitting.
(and here we are again with the inconsistent thou/you usage, hapgood. these boys all tutoie each other. bossuet isn’t calling grantaire vous.)
The others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking. Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down.
“So you have a hole in your stomach?” began Laigle again.
“You have one in your elbow,” said Grantaire.
GRANTAIRE ... I AM CONCERNED ... AND SO ARE YOUR FRIENDS!
it really tickles me pink that of the three of them, bossuet is the mom friend. he’s the one who first made friendly overtures to marius, he’s the one who calmed down grantaire from his tizzy in the musain, he’s the one who inquires after marius when seeing him behaving strangely (though courfeyrac’s the one who says essentially “don’t follow him you ninny can’t you see he’s busy”), and now he is the one who’s expressing if not concern then at least pointed observation about grantaire’s drinking habits.
grantaire responds to this pointed remark with a quick riposte about bossuet’s threadbare coat. he seems to be in less than a good mood.
(can’t imagine why ...)
And after having emptied his glass, he added: --
“Ah, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old.”
“I should hope so,” retorted Laigle. “That’s why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds, it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my movements, I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends.”
“That's true,” ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, “an old goat is an old abi” (ami, friend).
“Especially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up,” said Grantaire.
i love this little passage, in part because of the pun (habit, coat, and abi/ami, friend), but mostly because of the comparison. old coats are just like old friends -- and we can see this in the way that these three fellas interact with each other. they get along. they don’t restrict each other, they are accustomed to each others’ idiosyncrasies, they move in concert, and their presence is warmth and comfort.
you know that picture of kermit the frog holding a photograph and there are little heart emojis all over the place? that’s me right now.
(i just ... wish ... that hapgood had chosen a different uh, translation for “s’écria joly entrant dans le dialogue” than the one she did. i would have. uh. said something else. “cried,” perhaps. ... oh no. oh god. not that. uh. “shouted”? yeah. shouted is better.)
“Grantaire,” demanded Laigle, “have you just come from the boulevard?”
“No.”
“We have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I.”
“It’s a marvellous sight,” said Joly.
“How quiet this street is!” exclaimed Laigle. “Who would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood! Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abbe Lebeuf. They were all round here, they fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines -- there was no end of them.”
“Don’t let’s talk of monks,” interrupted Grantaire, “it makes one want to scratch one’s self.”
i suspected there would be a pun here. and i did some digging. and i was sort of right.
“gratter”, to scratch, was slang for any number of things at the time, some of them quite inappropriate. but “se gratter” was slang for “rien recevoir,” or “se taper” -- receiving nothing -- specifically, receiving nothing to eat. this isn’t a pun exactly, but it is a euphemism: hapgood uses a literal translation where an ethnographic translation would make more sense.
in short: talking of monks makes grantaire cease to be hungry. even in the presence of oysters and brie.
my boy is really in a grumpy mood this morning.
Then he exclaimed: --
“Bouh! I’ve just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypochondria is taking possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Richelieu, in front of the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped?[51]
[51] Bipede sans plume: biped without feathers -- pen.
this is just a temper tantrum at the moment, even including the pun. he doesn’t have a goal to his ramble yet; he’s just begun; he isn’t yet trying to make a point. but hold on, because he’s about to swivel to an extremely specific target.
And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds.
grantaire knows this girl, but doesn’t provide her name. while he speaks of a specific grisette of his acquaintance, hugo uses this opportunity to speak of another young lady who was a grisette, worthy to be called floréal.
floréal: the eighth month of the french republican calendar: mid april to mid may: spring.
is there any other lady, a grisette in paris, young, beautiful, worthy to be called springtime itself, recently come into the acquaintance of a rich man, whom we know?
grantaire speaks of a girl that he knows. hugo speaks of fantine.
(clio, are you gonna bring up fantine in every single meta post you possibly can? YES, I AM. WATCH ME. AND IT WILL MAKE SENSE TOO, BY GOD.)
this girl (fantine) is delighted, enraptured, because a rich man has deigned to take a fancy to her. grantaire uses this verb, “deigns,” which is a direct cognate to the french -- and this verb is painfully accurate.
to deign: to do something that one considers to be beneath one’s dignity.
the rich man (tholomyès) has decided that even though he probably shouldn’t, and though he might think better of it later, for now he will pay attention to this pretty working-class girl.
notice that the banker is described as riddled with smallpox scars, and tholomyès is described as balding and toothless. the girls are poor, but physically speaking they are way out of these guys’ leagues.
grantaire laments: women seek protectors just as much as they seek lovers, and to a grisette, a rich man -- while ugly -- offers both societal and economic protection.
for the moment, anyway ...
Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face. Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by caterpillars are visible.
two months ago the girl (fantine) earned her living through piecework. she had a modest little flat, she took joy in flowers, and she was content with her lot in life.
now here she is a bankeress.
there are metas on the barrière du maine ; there are metas on floréal. some people interpret the term “bankeress” as the girl having married the rich man, and some people interpret it as the girl having slept with him, and some interpret it as her simply having met with him and gone on a date or two.
i don’t think the girl is married to the banker. i think she’s agreed to become his mistress. why? because of the rest of what grantaire says.
now -- is it gross of grantaire to call her a jade (a promiscuous woman) because she agreed to align herself with a rich man? yeah. yeah it is. (i call him my garbage son for a reason.) but that is so very much not the point of this little story.
she is just as pretty today as she was yesterday, when she had not yet agreed. there was no physical transformation after the agreement. this, grantaire feels, is a bad thing.
why should there be transformation? hugo has already told us why, with fantine.
floréal (fantine) becomes the banker’s (tholomyès’) mistress. he spoils her with pretty dresses, with nights out at the theater and the opera, concerts, long walks in the gardens in the middle of the afternoon, picnics, luxurious food, maybe even a new expensive apartment near his. he calls on her at any time, he takes her dancing, he shows her off to his rich friends.
and she stops her piecework, because her lover is taking care of her now. and she becomes accustomed to a level of richesse and idleness that, perhaps, she had only ever seen before in shop windows or on passersby in the street.
and if (when) her lover grows tired of her, he leaves her no money. he takes back the apartment, leaving her to scramble for a new place to live, as she had vacated her old flat.
and her time, which first was taken up with work and then was taken up with him, is now a vast empty gulf.
so she must struggle to become accustomed to work again, to say nothing of finding new work after such a lapse.
and that’s the best case scenario for young ma’amzelle floréal. fantine was left with a child out of wedlock, in addition to the above.
is grantaire entirely cognizant of the tragedy that hovers, like an anvil, waiting to strike poor floréal to the earth? no, probably not, at least not all of it. but he is a former student, with access to some money, and so plenty of his classmates (if none of his friends; i hope to GOD none of his friends) have probably done the exact same thing that tholomyès did, that this banker is planning to do.
to quote the song “some girls” from the wonderful show once on this island:
some girls you marry. some you love.
grantaire may not be aware of all the implications, but he knows that this man is going to drop this girl in the dust, and she will be worse off for it.
Ah! there is no morality on earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace, the apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips, and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats.
not much substance here. but we’ve got a weird translation error, a fun bit of argot, a strange but cool translation, and a damn good joke. so let’s concentrate on those for a second, because gawd this has been depressing so far and it’s gonna get depressing again in a minute.
first up: in french, it’s “le laurier, symbole de la guerre”. symbol of war, not air. how the hell do you get air out of war??
i went and found my print edition of hapgood to check to see if it was just a transcription typo from putting it online. nope. it’s a rulio trulio translation error. i ... i can’t see what else it could be.
next up: “l’olivier, ce bêta, symbole de la paix”. bêta in modern french means beta, as in the greek letter of the alphabet. but in old argot, it means crétin, niais. simpleton, thickhead, blockhead.
(the mental image of grantaire as lucy from peanuts just occurred to me. and you know what, i can easily imagine grantaire telling bossuet that he’s for sure gonna let him actually kick the football this time.)
then: “the apple-tree which came nearest rangling adam with its pips”. the french just has it as “the apple which failed to strangle adam”, so at first i thought “came nearest rangling” was another error. but oh man is it not, and oh man is it such a cool mental image.
“rangle” is a real english word! it is a falconry term for small bits of gravel, fed to hawks to aid in their digestion. so while grantaire refers to the apple as that which nearly killed adam (and thus humanity) but didn’t, hapgood refers to the apple as that which came closest to aiding in adam’s (and thus humanity’s) digestion. and wow isn’t that an interesting theological implication!
and last before crud gets real again: “le figuier, grand-père des jupons.” the fig, grandfather of petticoats or slips. i’m just ... kinda cackling over here.
i love my garbage son.
As for right, do you know what right is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: ‘The wrong that Alba did to you, the wrong that Fidenae did to you, the wrong that the Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your neighbors. The Clusians are ours. We understand neighborliness just as you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.’ Rome said: ‘You shall not take Clusium.’ Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: ‘Vae victis!’ That is what right is. Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world! What eagles! It makes my flesh creep.”
this is pretty clear-cut; no need to go digging for references. grantaire translates himself for us.
two things here.
“vae victis!” -> “woe to the vanquished!”. this is a latin phrase which apparently implies that those who are conquered are entirely at the mercy of their conquerors, but should not expect to be given any quarter whatsoever.
“what eagles!” -> a blatant reference to napoleon, who as we know had some imperial tendencies himself.
history repeats itself, brutally.
He held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and went on, having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine, of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice: --
JOLY DON’T FUCKING ENCOURAGE HIM.
“Brennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette is an eagle. There is no more modesty in the one case than in the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality: drink. Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it matters little, drink.
brennus conquers rome, and let rome expect no mercy from brennus. the banker conquers the grisette, and let the grisette expect no mercy from the banker.
the microcosm of brutality is tholomyès’ conquest of fantine. the macrocosm is the whole of human history.
(and .. the word in french is “coq,” as in rooster. as in chicken. R isn’t deliberately being obscene here. the obscenity of human misery is bad enough.)
You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession, et caetera, et caetera. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch, it won’t work. Quick, a revolution!
“another revolution?” he says, as if he didn’t know his friends were planning it. and yet the weariness is entirely justified, i think. it’s only two years ago that they had the three glorious days and upset charles x. can’t there be a little more peace and quiet before turning everything upside down again? and anyway, how much did that change things?
well, things did change a little. and with the june rebellion of 1832, things will change a little again. but ... yeah. sorry. not enough. not yet.
grantaire’s little conceit here of revolution by human hands being God’s way of fixing his machine is sad, but also feels familiar to me despite my not having read this passage since -- well, since summer of 2011 when i first cracked open the norman denny translation in my local library. (i know, i know, denny. scream in horror with me.)
i remember back in 2011-2012 on the les mis message boards there was a habit among some of the people there to refer to God as the watchmaker -- per the deist analogy about the universe being a made and abandoned watch on a beach. there’s a similar feeling here. grantaire might believe in a higher power, but he doesn’t think much of his handle on the goings-on down below.
The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cart-grease. If I were in his place, I’d be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I’d lead the human race in a straightforward way, I’d weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory.
if he had made the world, there would be no need for revolutions.
... oh, honey.
What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for event nor for men: among men geniuses are required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors needed for its performance.
enjolras, an actor, an extraordinary man, a genius needed for heaven’s performance of the great event: revolution.
and here we come to comets -- one of the most poetic things grantaire has said so far in the book.
At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the death of Caesar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet. Crac, and behold an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man; ‘93 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! Boum! Boum! extraordinary show! Raise your eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama. Good God, it is too much and not enough.
i feel like if i was familiar with natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812 then i would be able to add more cogent commentary at this point. as it is, all i can do is point to the onomatopoeia and the sudden descriptive nature of grantaire’s speech. he really is waxing a bit rhapsodic here.
“what a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! boum! boum! extraordinary show!”
if grantaire could exist in the here and now, and see a production of the les mis musical, no doubt he would alternate between laughing and crying so much that one could hardly distinguish between the two actions.
it is too much and not enough.
These resources, gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty. My friends, Providence has come down to expedients. What does a revolution prove? That God is in a quandry. He effects a coup d’etat because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah’s fortune; and when I see so much distress in heaven and on earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand livres of income, when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the Prince de Conde hung, when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, when I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives a ball.
OH GOD, NO, HE HURTS, AND IT HURTS ME TO SEE HIM HURT.
look at this pretty prose and the way it devolves. the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills. drops of dew, those mock pearls. humanity ripped apart and events patched up.
he sees the beauty of the physical world, and he sees the misery of humanity, and he thinks: how can god be all-powerful, all-knowing, all-kind, when this exists? and then he comes to the conclusion that god creates revolutions -- or hosts them, as a tradesman hosts a party -- with the same frantic half-hearted effort of someone trying to pretend everything is just fine, when everything very clearly is not.
God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am discontented.
:’(
Here it is the 4th of June, it is almost night; ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I bet that it won’t come all day. This is the inexactness of an ill-paid clerk.
in french it’s the fifth of june ; i had hoped this was a typo on behalf of the online uploader, but nope, it’s another translation error ; my buddy R isn’t quite so far gone as to confuse the dates ...
but onto the meat of the sentence. “ever since this morning i have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and i bet that it won’t come all day.”
red, a world about to dawn. black, the night that ends at last.
grantaire has been waiting for the new world to dawn. maybe he hasn’t been conscious of it, but that is, in his heart of hearts, what he wants -- as we’ve just seen. he is weary of, disgusted with, saddened by the misery of the world as it is now. he wants things to change.
but he has been waiting for the new world to dawn; and it has not dawned, and he bets that it won’t dawn all day.
this day: june fifth: the day the barricade rises.
this barricade will not end the night.
Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world is all warped, I take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease. It’s like children, those who want them have none, and those who don’t want them have them. Total: I’m vexed.
and we have a brief savage jab from hugo at the thénardiers, who sell their children literally -- in multiple ways.
“je bisque.” -> “i am furious.”
WELL AFTER THIS WHOLE BIT, MEDITATING ON THE HORROR OF THE WORLD, WHO WOULDN’T BE?
Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without evil intent and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.
this bit puzzles me; it feels like a non sequitur at this point. but at the same time, grantaire has just finished his big argument. he isn’t trying to prove anything anymore. i kind of imagine him pausing (briefly) for breath, or for a top-up for his glass, and then focusing his attention on bossuet and starting off again.
if my garbage son did paragraph breaks, this would be one of them, i think.
he’s uh, saying that he doesn’t insult, but just before that he says that bossuet offends his sight. honey. no. that ... that counts as an insult.
reminds me of those “hey i’m not mean i’m just being honest” folks. makes me want to punch em in the throat.
hey, just being honest.
Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers. I was made to be a Turk, watching oriental houris all day long, executing those exquisite Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost!
hoo, there’s a lot to unpack there. okay.
grantaire doesn’t want to be a parisian. at this point in french history, uh, who does? but this is from the same guy who said, in the café musain four years ago (when he was young and unafraid) that paris carried the day, that “diogenes would have loved to be a rag-picker of the place maubert better than to be a philosopher at the piraeus.”
though four years ago, in 1828, the argument with charles x hadn’t happened yet; barricades were not looming again on the horizon. being a parisian was a little less stressful four years ago.
so he doesn’t want to be in paris anymore. he wants to be in constantinople, watching pretty virgin girls dancing. he wants to be in the north of france, maybe breeding dogs (the beauceron dog being a sort of floppy-eared german shepherd look-alike). he wants to be in venice, entertaining a salon of pretty girls and pretty boys, discussing the arts. he wants to be a german princeling, adding his rabble of foot-soldiers to a distant war and then spending his free time airing out his feet in his spacious backyard.
there’s enough variety in the examples he gives that there’s only one theme to be drawn from it that i can see -- he wants to be away from here, thinking about other things. possibly not even thinking at all.
then he comes back to islam and, er, is rather sacrilegious about it all. but then again, this is the same guy who said of the crucifix, “there is a gibbet which has been a success.” he doesn’t care what religion it is, he’s gonna treat it irreverently.
Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bric-a-brac merchant’s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!”
grantaire had made his point, but now he finally comes to the real reason why he is upset. all of his friends, whom he loves dearly, are going to and get themselves killed -- when instead they could be looking at the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, or watching the beautiful blue theater’s flashes from a distance, and most importantly, being alive to see it.
he has studied history. he knows what comes next. he knows that they are all going to die. and he knows that they are giving their lives away to martyrdom gladly.
and he’s angry, and he’s bitter, and he’s sad.
And Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which was well earned.
you said it, not me.
“A propos of revolution,” said Joly, “it is decidedly abberent that Barius is in lub.”
“Does any one know with whom?” demanded Laigle.
“Do.”
“No?”
“Do! I tell you.”
“Marius’ love affairs!” exclaimed Grantaire. “I can imagine it. Marius is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Marius is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbraeus Apollo. Marius and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.”
THE ..... MOST POETIC FUCKING THING ........
this is the other quote that people pull out for their e/R shippy stuff, and boy oh boy i cannot blame them. what a quote.
i do have to say that “ecstasies in which they forget to kiss” made me howl with laughter though, because that is exactly how marius and cosette spent their first few hours in close proximity. just staring into each other’s eyes, murmuring the occasional word, sitting on a bench, not even touching. priceless. they’re pining for each other even when they know their love is requited.
“i know just what it is like.” yeah, honey, i bet you do.
... oh no. i made myself sad about grantaire again. damn it.
Grantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second harangue,
NO --
when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the stairs.
-- thank gawd. someone interrupted him.
It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small, yellow, with an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air.
The child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.
“Are you Monsieur Bossuet?”
“That is my nickname,” replied Laigle. “What do you want with me?”
“This. A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me: ‘Do you know Mother Hucheloup?’ I said: ‘Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the old man's widow;’ he said to me: ‘Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from me: “A B C”.’ It’s a joke that they're playing on you, isn’t it. He gave me ten sous.”
“Joly, lend me ten sous,” said Laigle; and, turning to Grantaire: “Grantaire, lend me ten sous.”
This made twenty sous, which Laigle handed to the lad.
“Thank you, sir,” said the urchin.
“What is your name?” inquired Laigle.
“Navet, Gavroche's friend.”
“Stay with us,” said Laigle.
“Breakfast with us,” said Grantaire.
The child replied: --
“I can’t, I belong in the procession, I’m the one to shout ‘Down with Polignac!’”
And executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is the most respectful of all possible salutes, he took his departure.
I’M UHHH CRYING? I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH.
i don’t have anything witty to add. i just love my disaster brunch trio.
The child gone, Grantaire took the word: --
“That is the pure-bred gamin. There are a great many varieties of the gamin species. The notary’s gamin is called Skip-the-Gutter, the cook’s gamin is called a scullion, the baker’s gamin is called a mitron, the lackey’s gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is called the cabin-boy, the soldier’s gamin is called the drummer-boy, the painter’s gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman’s gamin is called an errand-boy, the courtesan gamin is called the minion, the kingly gamin is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called the bambino.”
In the meantime, Laigle was engaged in reflection;
yeah, honestly, i’m with you there, bossuet. R is just nattering nonsense at this point. though, like his little tongue-twister in the musain speech, this bit is definitely more impressive in french than in english. for one thing, it rhymes a hell of a lot more.
he said half aloud: --
“A B C, that is to say: the burial of Lamarque.”
“The tall blonde,” remarked Grantaire, “is Enjolras, who is sending you a warning.”
“Shall we go?” ejaculated Bossuet.
CEASE THIS !!
“It’s raiding,” said Joly. “I have sworn to go through fire, but not through water. I don’t wand to ged a gold.”
“I shall stay here,” said Grantaire. “I prefer a breakfast to a hearse.”
“Conclusion: we remain,” said Laigle. “Well, then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot.”
I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. MY BOYS.
and i love. i love that hugo decided to remind us, over and over with the orthography of joly’s speech, that he has a head cold. head colds are like death warmed over, but gawd it’s adorable to hear joly speak with his nose stuffed up.
“Ah! the riot, I am with you!” cried Joly.
Laigle rubbed his hands.
“Now we’re going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it does hurt the people along the seams.”
“I don’t think much of your revolution,” said Grantaire. “I don’t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven.”
WHY DID YOU ... SAY THAT ... TO THEIR FACES ...
puts head in hands.
this kind of talk is why enjolras was so surprised that you volunteered for the barrière du maine, honey.
(and i love bossuet’s turn of phrase there, about touching up the revolution of 1830. that’s just ... guh. he has such a way with words. i love him so much.)
The room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every one having gone off “to watch events.”
“Is it mid-day or midnight?” cried Bossuet. “You can’t see your hand before your face. Gibelotte, fetch a light.”
Grantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.
as he .... has been doing the whole morning .......
but bossuet is trying to cheer him up. mom mode activated. God bless.
“Enjolras disdains me,” he muttered. “Enjolras said: ‘Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.’ It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Enjolras! I won't go to his funeral.”
well .... he was right, wasn’t he? joly is ill, and grantaire is drunk. and bossuet is the mom friend, anyway. for all that he’s the unlucky one, he’s also the responsible one.
but the phrase “if he had come for me, i would have followed him” is all the more painful after the barrière du maine sequence. enjolras saw a singular moment of failure and decided not to give grantaire a second chance. he stands at a height -- grantaire stands at a depth -- and grantaire reaches up to him once, and falls, and enjolras walks away.
what if enjolras had ever tried to help him up? what would have happened then?
and oh God, the dramatic irony of “i won’t go to his funeral” is breathtaking.
This resolution once arrived at, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from the wine-shop. By two o'clock in the afternoon, the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning on it, one in a flat copper candlestick which was perfectly green, the other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Grantaire had seduced Joly and Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had conducted Grantaire back towards cheerfulness.
I’M NOT CRYING, YOU’RE CRYING.
THEY LOVE EACH OTHER SO MUCH.
As for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer of dreams, ever since mid-day.
oh PLEASE tell me they didn’t break out the absinthe.
Wine enjoys only a conventional popularity with serious drinkers. There is, in fact, in the matter of inebriety, white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a terrible fit of drunkenness yawning before him, far from arresting him, attracted him. He had abandoned the bottle and taken to the beerglass. The beer-glass is the abyss.
aw fuck. oh no. nooooo.
Having neither opium nor hashish on hand, and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight, he had had recourse to that fearful mixture of brandy, stout, absinthe, which produces the most terrible of lethargies. It is of these three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is composed. They are three grooms; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there are formed there in a membranous smoke, vaguely condensed into the wing of the bat, three mute furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover about the slumbering Psyche.
N O O OOOOOOOOOO STOP IT OH GOD.
NO THIS IS SO MUCH WORSE.
okay. OKAY. since it seems that victor hugo is intent on breaking into my house and smashing all of my dishes while maintaining perfect eye contact just to ruin my day, personally, let’s go through this psyche comparison.
psyche, a beautiful mortal but a mere mortal all the same, falls in love with cupid, a pure perfect god.
(already you can see why i am in a bad mood about this.)
the events of the marriage and the invisibility et cetera don’t really apply here, so we’ll skip past her accidentally waking cupid and most of her trials by aphrodite to win cupid back, and we’ll skip to her last trial.
psyche is tasked with retrieving a box of persephone’s beauty to give to aphrodite. psyche returns from the underworld with this box, but she is curious, so she opens the box and some stygian vapors emerge from it, which become a fugue, which bespell psyche into a death-like sleep.
Sound Familiar?
cupid wakes psyche from her death-like sleep, and they go to mount olympus, the home of the gods.
Sound Familiar??
and it is there, at the home of the gods, that psyche eats of ambrosia and becomes a goddess: becomes cupid’s equal at last.
I’m Going To Tear My Hair Out.
hugo has just spelled out “orestes fasting and pylades drunk” for us. whole friggin’ chapters ahead of time.
hey, sabrina, which dotted line do i sign on so that the dark lord satan will give me dread powers of awful necromancy or whatever? i want to resurrect victor hugo’s moldy corpse just so i can sock him in the jaw.
Grantaire had not yet reached that lamentable phase; far from it. He was tremendously gay, and Bossuet and Joly retorted. They clinked glasses.
i’ve always imagined joly of medium height and slim build, and bossuet of tall and lanky build, versus a shorter and stockier grantaire (who as we all know from part one, “a group which barely missed being historic”, is also fcking shredded on account of singlesticks). but joly and bossuet keep up with grantaire, even if they aren’t drinking quite as much as he is.
Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and ideas, a peculiarity of gesture; he rested his left fist on his knee with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and, with cravat untied, seated astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand, he hurled solemn words at the big maid-servant Matelote: --
“Let the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup. Let us drink.”
And turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added: --
“Woman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate thee!”
And Joly exclaimed: --
“Matelote and Gibelotte, dod’t gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality, two francs and ninety-five centibes.”
puts head in hands.
it’s two o’clock in the afternoon. y’all started at nine. it’s been a five hour solid drinking marathon and you’re only stopping him now?
And Grantaire began again: --
“Who has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles?”
Bossuet, though very drunk, preserved his equanimity.
He was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back in the falling rain, and gazing at his two friends.
i fcking LOVE that quote.
also, what an image. marry me, bossuet.
All at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of “To arms!” He turned round and saw in the Rue Saint-Denis, at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Enjolras passing, gun in hand, and Gavroche with his pistol, Feuilly with his sword, Courfeyrac with his sword, and Jean Prouvaire with his blunderbuss, Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his gun, and the whole armed and stormy rabble which was following them.
i’m gonna be pedantic and nitpicky about the type of swords that feuilly and courfeyrac have, because i’m me and y’all know i like stabby things.
feuilly has “un sabre” -- a sabre. courfeyrac has “un épée” -- the generic french term for a sword.
sabres are one-handed, one-edged swords with a slight curve to them. similar to the cutlass or cavalry sword.
an épée in the english refers to a thin, whippy, rapier-type blade, similar to the fencing foil but longer and less flexible. however, this is the french term we’re speaking of and frankly courfeyrac is headed for combat -- so what he’s got is probably closer to an arming sword, a double-edged one-handed sword, than a fencing épée.
this is the part where i obnoxiously refer back to grantaire and singlesticks. if grantaire wasn’t drunk off his gourd right now, he could be very useful in combat. my garbage son knows how to scrap! and fighting dirty, fighting brutally, would be much more useful at a barricade than the refinement of fencing!
these are not schoolboys who’ve never held a gun. but all the same, they are not trained for combat. they need all the help they can get.
The Rue de la Chanvrerie was not more than a gunshot long.
WOW, THANKS FOR THAT.
Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet from his two hands placed around his mouth, and shouted: --
“Courfeyrac! Courfeyrac! Hohee!”
Courfeyrac heard the shout, caught sight of Bossuet, and advanced a few paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, shouting: “What do you want?” which crossed a “Where are you going?”
“To make a barricade,” replied Courfeyrac.
“Well, here! This is a good place! Make it here!”
“That’s true, Aigle,” said Courfeyrac.
And at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.
AAAAAND SCENE!
good God, that was a lot.
the next chapter picks up right where this one leaves off. we are in pre-barricade mode: after this next chapter, we are in full barricade mode: and that’s curtain on the friends of the abc.
this is fine.
this is fine!
................. this is not fine.
it’s not fantine week anymore but that doesn’t mean i’m not eternally thinking about fantine so *fingerguns* here we go.
“i only understand love and liberty” is something that grantaire says but it might as well be fantine’s motto too because let’s be real here, these people come at it from different directions but they come to the same conclusion.
big old ramble under the cut.
grantaire is a student, or a former student by the time 1832 rolls around; he’s bossuet’s age, which i think comes to 4 years older than enjolras, which puts him at a solid age 30 at the barricade, 26 when marius meets the ensemble at the musain. in his debut, which is to say his introduction in a scene versus a description by hugo, he gives a grand declamation which takes up over five pages. i tried reading the whole thing in french and my eyes glazed over; in english it’s little better, if more decipherable since it’s my native language. friends, grantaire is verbose. but we can gather a few things from his long-ass rant:
that he apprenticed under gros, a painter of the time, and stole the apples he was supposed to have been drawing from still life (presumably ate them too). what we can take from this is that he is from a wealthy enough family to devote his time to learning how to paint, rather than a trade, e.g. feuilly.
that he believes virtue can easily turn into vice, saying almost the same thing in dialogue as a throwaway line that hugo said in description about javert when he got his terrible st michael on while arresting valjean in m-sur-m. (he also, in a single throwaway line -- the hapgood translation is “a bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra” -- sums up fantine’s entire awful fate.)
that he is probably not an atheist, but definitely isn’t on board with the idea of an all-knowing all-powerful all-merciful god.
that a big part of why he believes this is because he sees how the world suffers. he has studied history and sees the way it repeats itself; he gives several classical examples and compares them to the contemporary history of his day. he also gives a statistic (how accurate it is i couldn’t tell you) about the number of deaths from hunger in a single neighborhood of london. he uses this as a reason to condemn all of england.
in short: grantaire is a skeptic, yes, but as the saying goes: a skeptic is only a bitterly disappointed optimist.
grantaire does not believe in the revolution because he does not think humankind has the ability to rise from its present miserable condition, and he does not think it has the will to rise from that condition either.
(at this point in time, he’s wrong about the first part, but tragically right about the second. and it’s the second one that’s the kicker.)
fantine was a gamine and a grisette. she was as musichetta is; the difference is that joly probably would actually marry musichetta, and we all know how tholomyès worked out for fantine. (poorly.) fantine was a gutter kid, who worked for her living. given an alt canon where she survives 1823 and makes it to paris with valjean and cosette (age 36 at the barricade), we can assume the following:
that while she has a comfortable place in the fauchelevent household, she will probably still be doing much of the sewing and upkeep; louison would likely take a much smaller role. she can teach cosette about coquetry and fashion, she can show cosette a little about upper society, but she cannot be part of that society any longer. she is masquerading as the shy retiring wife to a shy retiring man. theater, the arts, et cetera, these are all faded memories carefully preserved in her mind. any indulgences the fauchelevents take are pretty much relegated to walks in the luxembourg gardens.
that she has been through hell and back, and knows intrinsically both the good and the evil that every man is capable of. jean valjean in particular encapsulates this: when she knew him as mayor madeleine, he was both an angel and the very devil. so the inherent goodness of man is a complicated thing for her. perhaps some people are simply born wicked, but certainly some have wickedness thrust upon them. (yes, i know that’s from wicked, yes, i know the original shakespeare quote is a dick joke, yes, i got it, yes, grantaire would laugh his ass off at this, yes. however. still kinda true.)
that even after going through the worst hell a human can imagine, she still believes not only that there is a god but that he is good. we know this in particular because there is a bit of dialogue when she is in the hospital where she is planning what sort of confirmation dress little cosette is going to wear.
that seeing students on the street talking of barricades and rebellion would make her hackles rise like those of a cornered wolf. fantine was born in 1796, just two years after the reign of terror ended. she grew up watching napoleon’s rise to power, she grew up watching the wars, she was a young woman for the bourbon restoration. she knows what revolutions do: she is a product of one. we can reasonably extrapolate from hugo’s introduction of her character that the revolution is why she has no family and why she grew up as a gutter kid, but again: she grew up watching everything.
so fantine knows, has known from birth, how unfair the world is.
does she want the world to be better? well, sure. but while she knows that individuals can change for the better, she also knows from experience that The People generally don’t.
grantaire and fantine having a conversation about belief and revolution would be an interesting one, i think.
... and now i want to write a fic about it. damn it.
@fantineweek 2018 - day three: family | friendship.
this is gonna be one part angsty canon meta, and one part angsty headcanon. because, uhhh, because i have a lot of feelings about this.
(extra long post too, whoops.)
friendship first.
okay. as much as i really, really do want fantine to have a whole bunch of friends who love and support her, and as much as i would love for favourite / dahlia / zéphine to belong to that category --
she really doesn’t have any friends at all. especially not the rest of the paris quartet.
believe me, i want favourite to be fantine’s best friend. i want dahlia to be the one who taught her which particular type of maroon made her blonde hair glow best. i want zéphine to have sat up with fantine during those restless nights when cosette was an infant and helped her with all the small important things involved with caring for a child of that age.
but while canon gives us not very much interaction between these ladies at all, it does give us just enough to say “uh-uh. the only reason these people spend any time together at all is because their boyfriends are best friends.”
from “tholomyes [sic] is so merry that he sings a spanish ditty” :
all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Fantine, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. “You always have a queer look about you,” said Favourite to her.
okay, but just because hapgood has this translation, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what hugo originally wrote. (i parsed a little of this with the quartet last year here on my fantine blog.)
“tholomyès est si joyeux qu’il chante une chanson espagnole” :
toute recevaient un peu çà et là les baisers de tous, excepté Fantine, en fermée dans sa vague résistance rêveuse et farouche, et qui aimait. -- Toi, lui disait Favourite, tu as toujours l’air chose.
“avoir l’air chose” can be read as “you’re always daydreaming” or “there’s something peculiar about you” -- or any other number of ways to tell someone that they’re the odd one out.
fantine is the only one vouvoied by the entire party, except for tholomyès who of course tutoies her. we see why in this section -- because even though this is only one afternoon, and only one of the three ladies talking to her, we can reasonably extrapolate that this is how the dynamic has been between all of them for at least the past two years.
fantine is the only one who doesn’t want to play their game of exchanging kisses indiscriminately. the only one she’s in love with is tholomyès, so the only person she wants to be kissing her is tholomyès. meanwhile, the other ladies aren’t actually in love with their gentlemen: they see them as hobbies to drop when one or both parties get bored: of course they don’t care who kisses who.
the oldest, favourite, is twenty-three; the youngest, fantine, is twenty-one. that’s the same age gap between me and my sister. hugo treats this like an insurmountable distance. but it isn’t the age gap which isolates fantine from the other three ladies. it’s simply that she sees the world so differently than they do.
how could such different people be real friends?
in fact, the only person who extends a hand of friendship -- and i mean that in the sense of providing warmth and kindness in her life, out of no sense of obligation (*cough* valjean *cough*) -- is marguerite, her elderly neighbor.
from “madame victurnien’s success” :
She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she began to pay the Thenardiers [sic] irregularly.
However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.
Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing's worth of millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one's petticoat, and a petticoat of one's coverlet; how to save one's candle, by taking one's meals by the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being a talent.
[...]
The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.
this is where the angsty headcanon about family comes in.
hugo does nothing by accident. except for his math, which he does badly on purpose, because he hates math.
in one of the earlier drafts of les misérables, he gives fantine the name of marguerite louet. he scratched this out later, of course; he gave her a diminutive instead of a proper name, to show better how much of a street urchin she was.
but he kept the name marguerite, and he gave it to the elderly spinster neighbor who helped fantine.
marguerite is a type of daisy. it is also the french version of the name margaret, which ultimately derives from the greek word margaron, meaning pearl.
y’all know where i’m heading with this.
it would be too much of a stretch to headcanon that marguerite is fantine’s mother. marguerite is probably too old to be her mother -- and she takes a grandmotherly sort of role, anyway.
more likely that marguerite is the older aunt to a niece she did not even know existed.
maybe fantine is the spit and image of marguerite’s youngest sister. maybe fantine has the same nose that their dad had, the same high forehead as her brother, the same smile as the one she sees in the mirror (the same pearls).
or maybe it’s cosette who embodies those things, and if marguerite saw that little girl, she would be struck with a living image of the past.
@fantineweek 2018 - day two: gold.
once more we are going off the hapgood translation available here.
i guess i could technically put this under the “sacrifice” prompt, but ... i honestly think that her hair alone is its own category.
two things related to fantine’s hair which account for a lot of symbolism in her story: the fact that it is gold, and the fact that she sells it.
so starting off with the fact that it is gold --
i haven’t seen many of the movie adaptations -- in fact i am avoiding the liam neeson & uma thurman one like the plague, for probably obvious reasons -- but in lm 2012, and the 25th anniversary cast, we basically see that cosette’s hair color and fantine’s hair color is switched. the same thing will be true of the bbc miniseries. it’s basically only staged productions that i’ve seen that stay true to the book.
this bothered me for a while, and at first i thought the only reason it bothered me was because i am a stickler for details. marius ought to have dark hair, grantaire ought to be ugly, the barricade is on rue de la chanvrerie not rue de villette, musical, i don’t care if it doesn’t rhyme.
except ... well, hugo writes these things, even the smallest of details, for a reason. marius has dark hair because he is a Romantic, which is associated with melancholy, and you can’t very well have a byronic brooding sort of fellow with golden hair. and you can see the same care for details with his physical descriptions of grantaire, enjolras, éponine, et cetera. there’s an element of symbolism involved.
he writes the fallen woman, fantine, with long golden hair.
this being western society, and all the issues that it entails, blond hair is associated with not only beauty but purity. we give princesses like rapunzel and cinderella blonde hair; we give prince charming blond hair; we give stained glass angels blond hair.
in the picture of dorian gray, oscar wilde gives dorian blond hair to emphasize the fact that he hides under an image of purity to conduct his evil deeds. he uses the trope of blond hair = purity to turn our character expectations upside down.
hugo gives fantine blonde hair, and tells us she is innocent; tells us she works hard; tells us she is good. then he shows us how society devours her, starting with her blonde hair. he uses the trope, and the expectations that follow that trope, to show the reader (who at that time would have been a bourgeois not unlike tholomyès or bamatabois) that despite her abasement, fantine never deserves what happens to her.
hugo is intent on hammering it into our heads that she never actually did anything wrong, and he uses her hair as a symbol for her purity and innocence.
she sells that pure golden hair herself.
-- which brings me to my second point.
in the musical, it is the wigmaker who approaches fantine. it is the wigmaker who tells her what pretty hair she has, and how much money she can make by selling it. fantine is reluctant -- she stubbornly digs in her heels at first, she is horrified by the prospect (and rightly so!). it is only the thought of cosette which forces her to accept the wigmaker’s offer.
i can’t find a picture of it, so let me describe what i saw at the us tour:
fantine, wrapped in a shawl, on the left. the wigmaker, stage center, a crone, hunched over -- and at the words “ten francs may save my poor cosette,” she raises her right hand in a slow arc towards the ceiling, holding her shears aloft -- the shears are open, the moment is predatory triumph, and as soon as the note ends she practically leaps upon her victim to drag her offstage.
this scene gives us the hungry jaws of society which devour fantine. it’s horrible. but the book gives us something even more horrifying, for all that it’s brief.
from “result of the success” :
One day they wrote to her that her little Cosette was entirely naked in that cold weather, that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must send at least ten francs for this. She received the letter, and crushed it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber’s shop at the corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair fell to her knees.
“What splendid hair!” exclaimed the barber.
“How much will you give me for it?” said she.
“Ten francs.”
“Cut it off.”
within twelve hours of receiving the letter, she has willingly given up her hair for the sake of her child.
her hair: the symbol of her purity.
okay, pretend we’re talking about an actual human being and not a character for two seconds.
she is known, earlier in the book, as fantine la blonde. part of her identity is taken up by the fact that she has this glossy beautiful hair.
this hair falls down to her knees. her knees.
this? (source)
is a LOT OF HAIR.
and it STILL doesn’t even come down to the knees. this is maybe just over HALF as long as fantine’s hair is.
my hair used to go down to the middle of my back before i had it cut off in a pixie in 2016. so without realizing it i sort of did a mini fantine ... you know, sans the rest of the trauma that goes along with her entire situation.
my hair only went to the middle of my back. call that 2.5, 3 feet of hair total. it was long enough that if it was loose, it would get caught in my armpits if i wasn’t paying attention. (super glamorous, right?) i can only imagine what having hair like that ^ would be like, let alone hair that goes down to the knees. long enough to sit on, for God’s sake!
hair that long has to be maintained daily. combing it, washing it, drying it, making sure it doesn’t tangle, making sure it doesn’t get caught in things and snap off, getting rid of split ends. braiding it, learning different hairstyles, all the little accessories like pins and combs and brushes. it’s practically its own hobby -- and when we consider that this is the only pleasure left in fantine’s life, that she spends the entire rest of her day sewing piecework ...
i had my hair cut to a pixie and everyone in my life who knew me before the pixie cut went crazy over it. part of a woman’s identity is in her hair, and there are other writers more articulate than i am who will happily talk at length about how different hair lengths make society perceive you in different ways. feminine, masculine, whatever. i’m not here to talk about that part. i’m talking about how her hair, her long hair which was a part of her identity simply because of its length, is also a part of her body.
man, i got my hair cut to a pixie on purpose, because i wanted to and because i thought it would be a cute low-maintenance haircut. there was no emotional turmoil involved in that decision. i made it willingly, and i had been looking forward to it for a few months. yet even then -- even now, two years later when my hair’s grown down past my shoulders again -- i still miss having hair down to the middle of my back.
fantine has no time to contemplate that decision. she does not want to make that decision. she is poor, she lives off practically nothing, and combing her hair is the one thing left in her life that affords her some happiness. her hair is the only beautiful thing left in her life.
one thing the lm 2012 movie did right is it showed fantine’s face during the haircut, and anne hathaway looks like she’s a split second away from bursting into tears. there is an element of trauma here. i can only imagine that fantine spends a fair few nights crying over that loss, and she would be justified in doing so.
it’s after the loss of her hair that she falls into anger and bitterness. this was the last bit of joy in her life, and she has sold it away willingly.
nobody makes the decision for her that her hair is worth selling. nobody gives her a choice to make that she can decline or accept. she comes up with the idea on her own.
to take an image from little shop of horrors, she chooses to step into the monster’s mouth.
this is a literal way that fantine sells herself, months before she becomes a woman of the town. the way she becomes a prostitute is exactly the same: no pimp approaches her, no women in the chorus tell her she’ll make easy money. she comes to the conclusion herself, and she takes that final step.
from “christus nos liberavit” :
Misery offers; society accepts.
@fantineweek 2018 - day one: youth | childhood.
going off the hapgood translation available online here.
She was born at M. sur M. Of what parents? Who can say? She had never known father or mother. She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory still existed. She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name; the Church no longer existed. She bore the name which pleased the first random passer-by, who had encountered her, when a very small child, running bare-legged in the street. She received the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained. She was called little Fantine. No one knew more than that. This human creature had entered life in just this way. At the age of ten, Fantine quitted the town and went to service with some farmers in the neighborhood. At fifteen she came to Paris “to seek her fortune.”
this is the only paragraph we have that describes anything of her youth. as far as hugo is concerned, her story begins in 1817, when she is 21 years old and two years a mother.
fantine, as in (en)fantine - childlike. the obvious connotation there is innocence.
it is pretty much implied that fantine grows up on the street much the same way that gavroche and the mômes did. and yet hugo spends so much time after this telling us how much she is naively in love with tholomyès; how young she is, how sweet this first love is, even if tholomyès does not requite it.
that naïveté might be solely attached to her romantic inclinations, though, i think.
fantine survives a childhood in the gutter. yet hugo only devotes two sentences (two! out of this enormous book, only two!) to her rise from gamine to grisette.
she is clever enough to realize that she will not be able to get anywhere in life if she stays where she is. hugo says she quits montreuil-sur-mer at the age of ten. ten years old. what on earth was i doing at the age of ten? pretending to be a gargoyle at recess? reading books about talking owls? fantine volunteered to work at a farm; she worked there for five years; and when she wanted more out of life, at the age of fifteen (only two years younger than cosette in 1832!) she walks to paris.
four years later she becomes a mother.
when we first see fantine in “double quartette” and “four and four”, she is young; she is quiet, prone to melancholy daydreaming; she is in love with tholomyès.
(side note: digging through “four and four” for quotes, i found this:
Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged in discussing their professors, explained to Fantine the difference that existed between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.
blondeau, that old rat! eleven years from now we’ll be hearing your funeral oration courtesy of bossuet! it’s little nuggets like these that keep me in love with this book, dammit.)
fantine wears fashionable if modest clothes, and hugo takes great care to describe not only the curve of her throat and the dimple between her shoulder (uh ... thanks, buddy) but the type of fabric that she wears, the particular color of the muslin, et cetera. fantine is a pieceworker at this point -- she clearly knows what she is doing, even if she is less coquettish about it than the other girls in the quartet. this gives us an inkling of what she spent her time doing from the age of fifteen onward. though, really, this is only a different venue for what she had been doing ever since she was ten.
she spent her time climbing up the ladder. she found a new skill, and she learned it, and she made herself useful. i don’t call that particularly naive.
she got out of the gutter, and the horrors that this entails. she made herself a comfortable life away from the constraints of what she was born into.
contrast this with the stories of valjean and javert:
valjean did not start in the gutter. he was forced into prison, and he was forced into the abyss that is being an ex-convict. only the grace of m. myriel allowed him to climb out of that pit -- not just his kindness, but his silver. ( “i have bought your soul for God.” )
javert started in the gutter, but unlike fantine -- let’s be honest here -- given the social and historical context in which hugo was writing, the terms with which he describes javert can easily be interpreted as javert being part romani -- javert does not have the same options to rise from his horrible circumstances. he has no miraculous donor to give him money. and he is not a blonde white girl.
so fantine and valjean get out. there is a catch; of course there is.
it is valjean’s history which is the pitfall waiting for him. as long as someone knows who he is, and will take advantage of it, he will always have the specter of the bagne lurking over him.
and fantine’s fate? well, by the time we meet her, as young as she still is (21! by God, she’s only twenty-one years old!), the trap has already been baited and set for her, and she’s already been caught in it. tholomyès has made her the mother of his child, but he has refused to make her his wife.
i don’t believe that fantine is so innocent she cannot comprehend it is only tholomyès’ whim which keeps her, an unmarried mother, out of the yawning abyss. i can’t believe it. she must have seen enough of life, both in paris and in m-sur-m before that, to know how society devours unmarried mothers.
i can, however, believe that it is her innocent love which blinds her to the fact that he is willing to condemn her to such despair.
Title: Wisdom to Know the Difference Rating: General Audiences Fandom(s): Les Misérables Relationships: Fantine & Javert, Fantine/Javert, Fantine & Javert & Jean Valjean Characters: Fantine, Javert, Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevent, Marius Pontmercy Additional Tags: AU - canon divergence, Javert Lives, Ghost Fantine, Slow Build, Work in Progress
Dead doesn’t necessarily mean gone. In the ugly morning hours of June 7th, Javert falls over the bridge’s edge, and Fantine’s ghost pulls him out of the river. Now they’ll just have to live with the skeletons in their collective closets - for a given value of “live”, anyway.
Chapter 2: They yell at each other a bit. Fantine gets the feeling this is going to be par for the course.
Title: Wisdom to Know the Difference Rating: General Audiences Fandom(s): Les Misérables Relationships: Fantine & Javert, Fantine/Javert, Fantine & Javert & Jean Valjean Characters: Fantine, Javert, Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevent, Marius Pontmercy Additional Tags: AU - canon divergence, Javert Lives, Ghost Fantine, Slow Build, Work in Progress
Dead doesn't necessarily mean gone. In the ugly morning hours of June 7th, Javert falls over the bridge's edge, and Fantine's ghost pulls him out of the river. Now they'll just have to live with the skeletons in their collective closets - for a given value of “live”, anyway.