David Matthewman

Over the last few weeks I've been listening to Les Misérables (the novel, rather than the musical), and having finished it last night I have a few observations. Firstly, it is very long, definitely the longest novel I've ever read, and arguably the longest book*, but I found it surprisingly easy going compared to other lengthy 19th century works I've tackled. It's possible that the audiobook format made a difference there, and I must admit that although I was paying pretty close attention when there was actual plot, my mind did wander a bit in some of the digressions.

Which brings me to my second observation. I now know considerably more than I ever expected to about, amongst other things, the history of the Parisian sewer system. Hugo certainly did his research, and he wanted to make sure it didn't go to waste! According to Wikipedia, more than a quarter of the novel is "devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot".

My third, and perhaps least trivial observation is that Marius is an absolute cunt. In the musical he mostly comes across as a bit wet and lacking in personality, particularly compared to Valjean and Javert, whereas in the novel he is unsurprisingly a lot more fleshed out. But he is fleshed out as a ghastly, manipulative, self-centred, abusive stalker. To begin with, when he first encounters Cosette, he is in his early 20s and she is a plain gawky adolescent, and he completely fails to notice her. When he sees her again few months later she has turned fifteen and 'blossomed', he becomes obsessed, and for some time he stalks her, but without actually speaking to her. At some point during this period the wind blows her skirt up displaying her ankles to anyone who might be watching, and he spends the next fortnight in an angry jealous sulk with /a woman he has never spoken to/. Later, once they have actually met and declared their love for one another, Valjean, believing that Javert is once again on his tail, decides to leave Paris for England. When Cosette tells Marius this, and indicates that she has little choice but to go with him, he first accuses her of never having loved him, and then threatens to kill himself if she leaves. After they are married, he becomes financially controlling, not allowing Cosette to spend any of 'their' money (the vast majority of which was originally hers) on anything remotely luxurious. When he learns of Valjean's past, whilst he doesn't outright forbid him from visiting, because that might make him look like the bad guy, he makes it so unpleasant and embarrassingly clear that he is unwelcome that he eventually stops coming, and essentially dies of a broken heart.

The way he treats Éponine is if anything even worse. He is utterly disdainful and callous, but perfectly happy to take advantage of her when she is useful to him. One way this comes across is in their manner of address. When they first meet, he tutoies her, which is either done mutually within a very close and intimate relationship, by adults speaking to children, or when you want to draw attention to the fact that someone is your social inferior. She meekly accepts this, continuing to vouvoyer him, but obviously on some level kidding herself that it's an indication of intimacy rather than disdain. Some time later, after she had done him some major favours, he switches to vouvoiment. Not because he has begun to respect her or anything decent like that, but because he and Cosette are now tutoying mutually, and he feels the need to insert some clarifying distance with Éponine. She, reasonably enough, asks if she's offended him, which he ignores, and despite her feelings for him being blindingly obvious from this point, he continues to expect her to act as a gobetween and facilitator for his relationship with Cosette.

A final observation is that this interaction with Éponine is one of at least three or four in which the use of, or change between tutoiment and vouvoiment is significant in terms of plot and/or character development, and at some point I'm going to have to see how English translators handled these scenes, because it seems like it would be very difficult to preserve the social nuances without making it very clumsy.

*Other possible candidates being the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, but I don't think either of those really counts as one book.