#LM 1.7.5

[cliozaur]

The one about hardships of travel. I know that in Valjean’s case, they serve as a sign, discouraging him from persisting in his attempts to reach the trial in Arras, but all these hindrances were everyday reality of travel before widespread railway connections. As someone immersed in researching nineteenth-century travel and travel literature, I find this chapter to be a beautiful illustration of how unpleasant, tedious, and exhausting the journeys used to be. They were real ordeals.

Before railways, travel was riddled with challenges. Delays and disruptions were part of the everyday reality. If something went awry, travellers could find themselves stranded for hours or even days in the middle of nowhere. On muddy roads, carriages could become severely stuck, requiring coachmen to wear special boots over their regular footwear to extricate the carriage from the mud (you can see the picture of such boots below).  

 Valjean, fortunately, encounters assistance in the place where he gets stuck. The story about post-horses being used for ploughing is so interesting! I haven’t heard about anything like this from the sources. Valjean, seemingly making every effort to ensure the continuation of his journey, obviously feels relief when faced with insurmountable obstacles, interpreting it as an act of Providence. And he is very frustrated when his problem with a carriage is solved by an old woman with a boy. Therefore, he is furious with the boy who found a carriage for him. The passive-aggressive reaction to the boy echoes shades of the old Valjean, reminiscent of the period before his transformative encounter with the bishop. It seems that Providence wants him to be in Arras on time for the trial.

A coachman's boot from the Bata Shoe Museum

#les mis letters #lm 1.7.5 #les miserables #jean valjean

[the-wraxall-illustrations]

#my posts #les mis #les miserables #victor hugo #lascelles wraxall #wraxall translation #lynd ward #lm 1.7.5 #jean valjean

[thelawsofdaylight]

Also, for anyone who holds as much love in their heart for LM 1.7.5 as I do, I attempted a modernisation of it for last year's brick renouveautions event, which you can find here

I spent so long on google maps for this one and it took ages to complete because you can literally drive from montreuil-sur-mer to arras in like.... half an hour. So trying to invent ways to keep valjean away was a real exercise in frustration. But also really, really fun

#LM 1.7.5 #hindrances <3 #valjean #les mis letters #when i read les mis for the first time i remember just spending so much time with this chapter #it just had me in so much suspense #the war in valjean's mind... he's trying so hard to get somewhere he doesn't even want to go!!! #and there are multiple times when the easiest thing to do would be to turn back #and yet!!!!!

[lesmisletters]

Les Mis Letters February 29 2024

Hindrances

Volume I: Fantine; Book VII: The Champmathieu Affair; Chapter V: Hindrances

#les mis letters #Les Mis Letters #LM 1.7.5

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Hindrances, LM 1.7.5 ( I miserabili 1964)

“Monsieur,” said the woman, “my boy tells me that you wish to hire a cabriolet.”

These simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made the perspiration trickle down his limbs. He thought that he beheld the hand which had relaxed its grasp reappear in the darkness behind him, ready to seize him once more.

He answered:—

“Yes, my good woman; I am in search of a cabriolet which I can hire.”

And he hastened to add:—

“But there is none in the place.”

“Certainly there is,” said the old woman.

“Where?” interpolated the wheelwright.

“At my house,” replied the old woman.

He shuddered. The fatal hand had grasped him again.

#Les Mis #Les Mis Letters #Les Mis Letters in Adaptation #Les Miserables #I Mis 1964 #I Miserabili 1964 #Jean Valjean #Valjean #Gastone Moschin #lesmisedit #lesmiserablesedit #imiserabili1964edit #tvedit #pureanonedits #LM 1.7.5

[dolphin1812]

Hugo explicitly compares Valjean’s trip now to his nighttime journey through the plains around Digne, so it’s interesting to search for similarities. The most upsetting one? How he treats children. When the boy who found him a cart comes to ask him for payment for his services, Valjean says this:

“Ah! it’s you, you scamp?” said he; “you shall have nothing.”

It’s certainly not the same thing as robbing a child (as we saw with Petit Gervais), but given that Valjean has given something to every child we’ve seen him interact with since that moment (money to any Savoyard, toys for children who follow him in the street, etc), seeing this harshness seep into him now is concerning. I think Valjean is prone to isolating himself in general (as shown by his lifestyle in Montreuil-sur-Mer), but he’s normally kind; stress pushes him to reject others in a way that makes them more likely to reject him as well. We saw this with the bishop, too, in how he tried to emphasize that he was a criminal. This is more understated, but any selfishness or harshness from Valjean, especially towards children, remains shocking.

On another note, I love the continued appearance of obstacles in this chapter. It adds so much suspense as we wonder not only if Valjean will decide not to go to Arras at all (either suddenly or because of these obstacles), but if it’s even possible for him to get there on time. It makes this chapter feel very fast-paced.

#Les mis letters #Lm 1.7.5 #Jean valjean

[gavroche-le-moineau]

JVJ this entire chapter: buying carts and horses left and right to get to Arras before tomorrow, absolutely critical he's there by TODAY

JVJ rolling in at 8pm, suddenly aware of the concept of time: oh right. those trials usually start at 9am don't they?

#les mis letters #lm 1.7.5 #jean valjean

[pilferingapples]

hmm. LM 1.7.5, Hapgood:

That Javert, who has been annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me-- good God! and which followed me everywhere; that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail: henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Jean Valjean. Who knows? it is even probable that he will wish to leave town! And all this has been brought about without any aid from me, and I count for nothing in it!

HM LM 1.7.5 again

He felt an immense joy.

It was evident that Providence was intervening. That it was it who had broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road. He had not yielded to this sort of first summons; he had just made every possible effort to continue the journey; he had loyally and scrupulously exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the season, nor fatigue, nor by the expense; he had nothing with which to reproach himself. If he went no further, that was no fault of his. It did not concern him further. It was no longer his fault. It was not the act of his own conscience, but the act of Providence.

He breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent of his lungs for the first time since Javert's visit. It seemed to him that the hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last twenty hours had just released him.

It seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.

He said himself that he had done all he could, and that now he had nothing to do but retrace his steps quietly.

HMMM

LM 4.15.3 He uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off of his own accord, freely, willingly. This man was going to his death, and he, Jean Valjean, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through no fault of his. Perhaps, even, he is already dead. Here his fever entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had evidently been intended for Cosette to read on the following morning; after the two discharges that were heard between eleven o'clock and midnight, nothing more has taken place; the barricade will not be attacked seriously until daybreak; but that makes no difference, from the moment when "that man" is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is caught in the gearing. Jean Valjean felt himself delivered. So he was about to find himself alone with Cosette once more. The rivalry would cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in his pocket. Cosette would never know what had become of that man. All that there requires to be done is to let things take their own course. This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain that he is about to die. What good fortune!

Valjean are you sensing your own Pattern

#Valjean and : the horrible burden of agency #sorry dude it's time to Protag

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 1.7.5 ‘Clogs in the wheels’

I was just talking with people about how Hugo doesn’t care about nitty gritty and logistics. And he doesn’t--except when it matters. And he’s very very good at deciding when it matters.

This chapter is a great juxtaposition of the grandiose and the fiddly. All the little details of travel and what makes it hard and what can go wrong are in here, along with vehicle types and mail wagon schedules and road mending and the needs and idiosyncratic personalities of horses. And that could feel tedious, except there are lives and souls at stake, and there’s the drama of how hard Valjean is trying to get there and how desperately he doesn’t want to, and so it’s beautifully suspenseful.

I’ve mentioned before how hard this story must be to adapt according to the modern standards of screenplays. Because a quiet, external view is in fashion, with very little voiceover or “telling,” the convention is to read how hard a person is trying to do a thing as how much he wants the thing. A musical could play up the drama of this scene, (if they wanted to get that granular with this very long story). I can imagine a song that contrasts the moments of movement with the moments of delay, and which has Valjean express an ironic, soaring joy at the delay and all the ominous, liminal, life-and-death mood of the travel when he’s making good progress. But if you don’t have a means of expressing paradoxical joy in your medium, this section is going to be Really hard.

Speaking of ominous, liminal, life-and-death space, wow we sure have some. There’s a sense that Valjean has stepped outside the world into the world-between-worlds. It’s a notion that all travel is as strange and removed from real life as that motionless world of pools that lead into other worlds in whatever Narnia book that was.

Because of this, Valjean now is closer than he’s been in a very long time to that earlier Valjean in the liminal space that followed the bishop. The huge moral crossroads he’s facing is part of that, but it’s not the whole thing. Rural France in this era is a place where the people don’t travel very much. Though there are migrant populations (Savoyards like Petit Gervais, for instance), and the well-off bourgeoisie travels, this is a world where most of the population spends their entire lives in earshot of the same church bell. Travel is one more thing that makes Valjean Other in these rural spaces.

And I don’t think he ever leaves this world between worlds. Or, at least, he knows now that it’s here and the only real place he belongs. He will descend again into one of those pools, into a world where he is Cosette’s father, and he’ll become attached to that wold. But he’s seen this liminal space clearly now, and he knows however much he grows to care about one of the little worlds one sights from this long road, this road is the only place he really belongs.

#def. thought i had nothing to say about this chapter #brickclub #lm 1.7.5

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.7.5 “Sticks In The Spokes”

Well, this entire chapter is just cart and horse imagery.

Big, armed, painted, clumsy cabriolet bearing a large load versus tiny little light open tilbury bearing nothing but a man, colliding in the wee hours of the morning. If Society is generally symbolized by carts, what do we get from two different carts going in opposite directions, briefly colliding, and both continuing on, until the smaller one realizes he won’t be able to? Valjean as a microcosm of society contained within himself vs actual, real society knocking him off balance. What I mean by microcosm is that at this moment, Valjean literally occupies two different social spaces. His true, original identity is (or will be) the lowest of the low, a repeat offender convict who has been on the run, who will be sentenced to life; and his other identity, Madeleine, is a respected, wealthy, trusted member of society in a leadership role. And then a sudden, intense blow from society: Javert’s confession, the revelation of a mistaken identity, the shock Valjean receives, and the way he continued on despite that shock. Only, he realizes later, once he’s sat down to think about it, that it damaged him more than he thought, that it actually could be a threat to his livelihood, his survival, his ability to continue.

“Where was he going? He couldn’t have said. Why was he in a hurry? He didn’t know. He was going forward as chance dictated.” Valjean leaves for Arras without really actually making a decision about what he’s going to do. He seems to know he made the decision to go to Arras but it’s like he’s still stuck in that moment in Gethsemane, asking that if there’s another way, please pick that one instead. Hugo tells us that he had decided nothing, and “none of his acts of conscience had been final.” He’s still asking for a different path, still unable to make a decision.

“Where? To Arras, no doubt; but perhaps he was going somewhere else, too. At moments he suspected so and shuddered at the thought.” The other “where” besides Arras is prison again, Toulon and the bagne and the galleys and the chain. We also get similar imagery to 1.2.8 and Hugo’s “inexorable night” of the sea.

The weird daze Valjean seems to be in at the beginning of this chapter reminds me of 1.2.10 and 1.2.5. In 1.2.5, while the bishop is showing Valjean to his bed in the alcove, Valjean raises his arm in a “strange gesture” that seems completely unconscious. Later, in 1.2.10, Valjean “finds himself somehow seated on his bed,” as though he sat up without thinking about it. This is another moment in which his brain is completely preoccupied with a swirling combination of memories and conflicted decisions, and his body is working completely on autopilot.

“...and nothing is so stubborn as supposition and conjecture...” This is really practically a throwaway line in this chapter, but I feel I should point it out because when Valjean reveals his identity in the courtroom, everyone thinks he’s gone crazy.

I looked up the breed of horse, the Boulonnais, and apparently it was originally bred to be a warhorse for knights to ride into battle around the time of the Crusades. Then it was used as a swift horse to run fresh fish the 200 miles from Boulogne to Paris in under 18 hours. (They’re also really pretty!)

Yet more broken cart imagery. Only, this time, the broken cart gets replaced. Also, this time, it’s the cart that breaks, not the horse. Scaufflaire’s horse is tired, but fine. This time, it’s not the poor workers and women bearing society that is breaking down: it’s society itself. Maybe only on a small scale, but still. And then it is replaced. Still crappy and falling apart, but enough to get from point A to point B. This thought isn’t really supported by anything, but I wonder if its almost a foreshadowing of what’s about to come? Madeleine is able to survive in one form as Madeleine (with Valjean lurking in the background) in order to get from M-sur-M to Arras; once he reaches Arras and reveals his identity, he returns to M-sur-M as Valjean (with Madeleine barely hanging on). In both instances his identity as Madeleine (a cart, any cart) still exists, but it’s been swapped out for something more rickety, more unreliable and breaking down.

“This simple speech, uttered by an old woman brought there by a boy, made the sweat stream down his back. He imagined he saw the hand from which he was just freed reappear in the shadow behind him, ready to seize him again.” Man I just love Hugo’s imagery. (Also did anyone else imagine the giant Master Hand boss from SSB? Because I totally did.) It’s interesting how many different forms the law/justice/authority takes. It’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t and cannot stick to one form of imagery or metaphor.

Interesting that instead of listening to the wheelwright and the boy saying that the carriole is terrible, which would be a similar excuse to the “there is no cabriolet,” Valjean pays the woman for it and continues on. Like, he fully has an out there, he could easily say “wow no I don’t feel safe driving this, these professionals say it’s shoddy and dangerous, I’ll just wait til my tilbury is fixed and/or go home.” He is given legit reasons to not use this vehicle, and yet instead of taking advantage of that, he sticks to his guns and pays the woman for her carriole.

“He examined that joy with a kind of anger, and thought it absurd. Why should he feel joy at going back? After all, he was making a journey of his own accord.” Valjean is still very conflicted about actually revealing his identity at Arras, but I do think it’s interesting that he thinks it’s ridiculous that he was excited to go back to M-sur-M and not go to Arras. The recognition that he’s making the journey of his own accord is also a moment of recognition that doing something out of integrity and free will is drastically different from being (or feeling) forced to do it. He knows that he could just as easily turn around and go back, but no one is forcing him to go to Arras--the important thing, morally, is that he’s doing it of his own free will.

Valjean’s refusal to give money to the boy who found him the carriole in Hesdin is an echo of his refusal to give Petit Gervais his coin back, an echo of the infamy that follows his name now. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t reflect on this instinct at all. He finds the request for money, despite the fact that he donates so much, ridiculous. It’s also weird because later on in the chapter he employs a stable-boy to drive his horses for him.

What’s with the “conversation” between Valjean and the German teamster about bitter bread? This little moment feels almost as surreal as the dream from the previous chapter. It’s weird, it’s like a strange in-between event, that’s weirdly similar to his experience with the carters in Digne, but not quite? Like, in Digne, he never gets food because it’s all reserved for the carters and they reject him. Here, he gets food as he sits beside this German carter, except he can’t eat it either, because it’s too bitter.

“The cold penetrated him. He had not eaten since the night before.” Hugo parallels language and events of Digne here, and literally points it out in the same sentence.

I really like the last paragraph of this chapter because it’s so ambivalent. The language doesn’t evoke hope or disappointment, just fact. Is Valjean hoping that he gets to Arras after the proceeding is over? Is he disappointed that he might? Probably a little of both. But we don’t get any definitive feelings here, just Valjean doing some distance calculations.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 1.7.5 #les mis #les mis meta

[fremedon]

Brickclub Retrobricking 1.7.5, “Sticks in the Spokes”

Valjean keeps reminding himself that he is doing everything of his own accord, and finding reassurance in that, even though he’s really...not, a lot of the time. In the last couple of chapters, he’s been moving forward on autopilot, and checking himself when he stops to think and decide; that’s going to get especially literal when he pulls himself out of the judge’s chambers before he enters the courtroom.

Shades of Petit-Gervais again, in Valjean refusing a coin to the boy who found the cart.

And here he says it’s February, despite the letter from Fantine having a date in March when we see it. VICTOR WHAT IS TIME.

Carts and Horses: Hugo spells out the fairly obvious travel = life metaphor, which I think is different from—or at least, does not overlap with—the thing he’s been doing with horses as workers/carts as society. Which, for the most part, is not doing the heavy lifting in this chapter that it has been throughout, because there’s no way to get Valjean to Arras without dealing with very literal carts and horses. Though it is notable that the moment Valjean leaves M-s-m, the cart is damaged, almost irreparably, though it keeps wobbling on for a while. And it may be significant that the person he complains to about the bitterness of the bread, who doesn’t understand him, is a carter. But it’s definitely significant, and I’m indebted to @everyonewasasbird for pointing out, that Champmathieu worked—on the Boulevard de l’Hôpital, no less, where the Gorbeau House is—as a *cartwright.* Valjean’s alter ego builds carts, which is to say, builds societal institutions.

And a lot of what Champmathieu has to say is a very specific description of working as a cartwright, outdoors, in the winter, for demanding bosses—doing exactly what Valjean is pushing the Hesdin wheelwright and his workers to do in this chapter.

He’s being an asshole customer, which is understandable under the circumstances. But more than that, it’s the first moment where we see him actually try to apply his superpower of Unlimited Money, and fail. He thinks it’s because Providence has stepped in; Champmathieu’s speech in the courtroom is going to be an abrupt reminder that throwing money at a problem actually means throwing someone else’s labor at it.

Another shadowy plain under another abyssal sky at the end of the chapter. “A strong wind blowing in from the sea made a noise in the sky all around like furniture being moved.” I love this—it’s such a specific and evocative description, but it also calls back to Madeleine’s doorkeeper the night before, hearing and remarking on Madeleine moving furniture upstairs. It’s as everything is in such upheaval that God is having to dig out some of his old things and burn some IOUs.

#brickclub #lm 1.7.5

[gpllife]

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[eirenical]

Les Mis 1.7.5 Sticks in the Spokes

I realize it's been a long time and this is yesterday's chapter, not today's, but I have to start somewhere with jumping back in and I have THINGS TO SAY about this chapter.  (Also, I have to be out the door to go see Les Mis in like... 45 minutes, and I don't have time to do both yesterday's AND today's.  OOPS.)

ANYWAY.  Moving on.

The reason I wanted to discuss this chapter is because I feel SO much for Valjean in this chapter.  My heart just absolutely aches for him, because I DO THIS.  I do this all the time.  I am so familiar with this thought pattern it's ridiculous:

I can't make the decision.

No matter what I pick it's going to screw someone over.

I'd rather it screw me over than other people.

But still... I don't want it to screw me over, either.

So I will act as if I want to do the thing that will screw me over and HOPE LIKE FUCK that some higher power will intervene and enable me to not do the thing, after all.

And then said higher power DOES intervene, call it fate, G-d, a cabriolet driver who isn't paying attention, whatever you want, and it looks like you are going to get out of doing the thing that will screw you over.  And the feeling of relief is just MASSIVE.  Like, you want to lay down on the ground and just cry because you are so grateful that you won't have to do the thing after all and EVEN BETTER, it's not your fault.  You don't have to think of yourself as a rotten human being, because (even if your heart wasn't in it), you TRIED.  You tried everything you could to prove that you would do the thing if you could.  And if you can't... well, you really did try.

And then just when you begin to think that it's all OK and you're going to be able to go home and call it a day... fate intervenes AGAIN and says, "Hahaha!  You thought you got away, but NO.  YOU DID NOT.  YOU WILL HAVE TO DO THE THING AFTER ALL. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha."

And in that moment, you finally have to make the decision you've been struggling with all along -- do you do the thing, knowing it will screw you over, or do you attempt to get out of it, knowing that you COULD have done it and you'll now be screwing over someone else.

Only now, you have the added bonus of knowing that, in your heart, you never wanted to do the thing.  You were looking for an excuse to get out of it all along.  And the part of you who genuinely doesn't want to see someone else suffer, the part of you who genuinely thinks YOU deserve to get screwed over because you think that little of yourself... that part is deeply ashamed that you even let yourself feel that moment of relief.  So that part of you forces you to throw yourself into the task that much harder when you take it back up again.

It's brutal, and it's not fair.  Because that same part of you refuses to see all the good you HAVE done; that you don't actually deserve whatever cruel fate you're trying to dodge; that you're not a shit person for wanting to dodge it in the first place.

Seriously, Valjean is so HUMAN to me in this chapter, and it breaks my heart.  Because he's going to do the right thing if it kills him... but the whole time he's going to convince himself that he's a terrible person because just for that one moment... he didn't want to.

AND I AM CRY.  TT^TT

#lm 1.7.5 #lesmis365 #valjean #eirenical reads the brick #eirenical.meta #seriously you have NO IDEA #i do this to myself all the time #and there is a certain grim satisfaction when fate finally beats you at that game #...it's almost like a self-flagellation really #like see? #see how much i can endure? #I AM STRONGER THAN YOU #I WILL NOT BREAK #NO MATTER HOW MUCH SHIT I LET YOU THROW AT ME #BRING IT ON FUCKER #and then there's that grim satisfaction when they DO #and even when it hurts #and even when you're suffering #on some level you're glad of it #because you think you deserve it #and it's all very horrible #and valjean does NOT deserve it #he's MORE than atoned for his one tiny crime #and #I AM CRY #AGAIN #TT^TT #*sobs aggressively*