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Hear me out, Gabe & Cosette

Gabe who absolutely expects to hate Cosette and is very uncomfortable with his dad having a girlfriend his age, but then Gaston says something particularly cruel to him and Cosette shuts it down so fast, tells Gaston that if he ever says or does anything the slightest bit mean/abusive to Gabe again, she's done and gone

Gabe would be so thrown off by that but Cosette just stays so protective of him (she also has her own tiny hidden cottage and she'd give Gabe a key and tell him to never bring anyone else, but it's always there if he needs a safe place to go to)

I love you "boring" female characters. I love you ingenues. I love you female characters who aren't "modern" enough. I love you female characters who aren't "badass" enough. iI love you female characters who aren't "empowering" enough. I love you quiet female characters. I love you unappreciated female characters. I love you polite female characters. I love you female characters who "can't appeal to modern audiences." I love you frightened female characters. I love you female characters labeled as not complex just for being nice. I love you female characters who get criticism just for not being their tomboy or femme fatale counterpart. I love you silk hiding steel trope.

He could not make up his mind whether she was a human being, a fairy, or an angel.

Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831)

Before writing Les Mis, Hugo’s beloved 19-year-old daughter Leopoldine tragically drowned. As a result Les Mis is full of drowning imagery— drowning as a a symbol of impossible grief and loss, drowning as a symbol of being left behind by a society that doesn’t care about protecting your life, drowning as a method of suicide.

The les mis letters chapter today is the first chapter where Hugo highlights the drowning imagery that becomes central to the rest of the novel. The horrible symbolic death Valjean suffers as a result of being entirely isolated and forgotten by a society that doesn’t value his life is also foreshadowing of Javert’s eventual death.

Throughout the novel, Eponine also frequently talks about her desire to drown herself in the Seine; Thenardier monologues about how “the river is the true grave” and when bodies fall in it “justice makes no inquiries;” later Valjean escapes prison by faking his death by drowning, and so on and so on. There’s this emphasis that drowning doesn’t just mean death, it means erasing yourself from existence. It means you’re forgotten.

One of the saddest references to the death of Leopoldine is the way Valjean and Javert learn about the other’s death (or “death.”)

Hugo learned about his daughter’s death not from a family member/friend, but by reading about it in a newspaper. He was on vacation away from his family at the time. He was reading the news in a cafe and happened to stumble on an article about Leopoldine’s horrible tragic drowning, which was how he first learned that she was dead.

When Javert learns about Valjean’s “death” in prison (when Valjean pretends to drown in order to escape), he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper. When Valjean learns about Javert’s death by drowning, he learns about it by reading it in the newspaper.

So…yeah :(. Les Mis is full of all these agonized metaphors around drowning (as a metaphor for death/grief/being entirely forgotten by the people around you) and part of that comes from Hugo’s own deep personal trauma around the death of death of his daughter.

THE AMOUNT OF EXCITEMENT RUNNING THROUGH MY BODY

(My grandma went out shopping and then remembered she had a Brick TM at home and bestowed it onto me…)

It’s so thick and gorgeous and I can’t wait to read it! The translation is Norman Denny, for those wondering.

Also, I’m a first time Brick-reader. I have seen the musical and 2012 movie. But, I have also heard about the infamous Battle of Waterloo tangents and the Parisian sewer system tangents…

Wish me luck and good luck to the fellow Brick-readers 🙏🙏

nothing will ever be funnier to me about jean valjeans ONLY slip up in the whole becoming gods servant and being compassionate lifestyle being just the faintest hint that some dude might have a crush on his daughter and he just goes batshit

some perfectly nice guy in the general vicinity of his baby (17 y/o) girl: *smiles*

jean valjean *fighting every urge in his body to not go ballistic*: i want him dead

Les mis twitter: *sees that one illustration of Cosette* put that girl in a situation immediately

he's such a fucking idiot helppp

Cosette is better than me because if my weirdo recluse father suddenly showed up with a massive, festering burn scar acting completely unconcerned and telling me to call a vet for him instead of a human doctor, I would have simply started killing.

More Cosette appreciation is in order

Had to make two versions, cause why should I be forced to choose?

Cosette has two hands after all

👰‍♀️ (i think this is right?) Cosette, specific to Raphael? 👀🥺

bonus: wedding night 👀

y'all y'all

Les Mis 2000 is not very good

Y’all

I've said this before but the funny thing about the Cosette adoption chapters is that, from Cosette's perspective, she literally just got adopted by Santa Claus. Valjean is a mysterious kind semi-magical white-haired figure who arrives on Christmas eve to give Cosette her dream gifts, and then drops a coin in her shoe as is a Christmas tradition! And then he gives Cosette the best Christmas gift of taking her away to the North Pole Paris. Even outside of the Cosette stuff, all the parallels between Valjean and the historical Saint Nicholas of Myra are really funny...The fact that he breaks into people's houses to secretly give them money, for example, is a very St Nick Thing(tm). He also makes toys out of straw for children in M-Sur-M! But the interesting thing is that the historical St Nicholas was, among other things, the patron saint of repented thieves and children. He was known for saving people from poverty, execution, and unjust prison sentences, which are thematically relevant. But yeah. Good on Cosette for getting swept away by Convict Santa. Sadly i don't think the sleigh and reindeer were part of the legend yet and that's super sad, bc they couldve helped against Javert later u_u

the amount of old men i draw are directly proportional to my stress levels so here’s a compilation of the most presentable old men i drew this year that i never posted, in no particular order