Pilfering Apples: Brick!club Les Miserables 1.8.3 Javert Satisfied

pilferingapples:

IT IS STILL FRIDAY SOMEWHERE DARN IT I WILL NOT BE DENIED MY POST BECAUSE OF ~WEATHER~.

Especially not when it’s a whole chapter about the theory of strength/virtue as weakness/ fault, which is a thing I adore! And one of the reasons I really love characters in This Book Though, is that for all…

I think I’m a day late here, but this is Brick Club, not Rigid Deadlines Club.  

The title of this chapter and that of the last are obviously parallel, but I think it odd that Javert, who here achieves a sort of spiritual transcendence in his own mind, one that encompasses both stars and angels and other symbols Hugo likes a bit too much, and yet he is simple “content” whereas Fantine was “heureuse.”  It’s probably meant to evoke his external appearance of calm disturbed only by minor disarray in his uniform in contrast to Fantine’s raving delight.

Speaking of shoulder angels and demons, Javert has both “le visage d’un démon” and “la bestialité surhumaine d’un archange féroce” in this scene.  Forget Javert vilifying Lucifer in “Stars” – he basically is Lucifer, embodying (or so he thinks) the divine judgment demons are tasked to deliver as well as the ferocious qualities of non-fallen angels.  William Blake would be proud of this duality.

It kind of makes me even more irked about how straightforwardly self-righteous musical!Javert is, but such is the inevitable price of adaptation: Enjolras is much less queer, Éponine is much less social commentary, and Javert is much less morally complex statement on human justice.

Pilfering Apples: Brick!club Les Miserables 1.8.3 Javert Satisfied