(no subject)

[thjazi]

Wow it's really quiet around here.

Uh.

So.

HOW ABOUT HUGO SHIFTING OVER ALMOST ALL HIS RADICALS TO BEING STUDENTS, WHAT'S UP WITH THAT.


(it's either that or I start trying to talk about Communion Meal parallels between dinner at the Bishop's and breakfast at the Corinth which is admittedly my current focus but I'm not sure how to even launch into that)


(if this were Tumblr I could tagnatter as I flee but it's not so BALL'S IN YOUR COURT GEN)

Comments

[flo_nelja]

I think because he was writing both a group of radicals and a group which reminded him of his group of friends when he was young - students with students interests? I have absolutely no proof, though.

[thjazi]

See that's the weird thing?? As far as I can tell Hugo's running crew WASN'T dominantly students, they were -- well, artists and radicals and slackers extraordinaire, and sure SOME of them were students, but by no means all. And Charles Jeanne surely wasn't a student, and like the letters TenLB's been translating show Jeanne is a serious chunk of Enjolras' construction. And like, MOST of the Amis aren't involved with things that particularly require studenting? Like, the med students yes, and Courfeyrac and Bossuet need to be in school for Marius-plot-purposes at least, but the other five of them really don't have any plot-need for the student tag. Is it to play up the Education For All aspect? It's just a Curious Thing, at this point, but I don't trust Hugo to do ANYTHING in this book by accident anymore.*


*The Hercle thing BROKE me. That was the point where I totally gave up on coincidence in favor of HUGO WHAT ARE YOU DOING forever. :P

[genarti]

Oh interesting. That's not a connection I'd made -- I just sort of, you know, assumed the characters were students because that was an easy way to have them running around with a lot of free time to spend on radical politics. Which of course has to have been part of the reason, but it's certainly not the only way to accomplish that, and I hadn't realized it was actually a departure from what Hugo's social circle at the time was. (I figured they were mostly theoretically students while also being artists and radicals and slackers extraordinaire.)

I suppose some of them have to be bourgeois-background students in order to be compared with Marius? Both narratively, and for Marius to hook into their society (uh, insofar as he ever does). But you're right that they certainly don't all have to be, especially since Marius never really hooks into their society all that much.

I don't have any immediate answers or insight, but now I'm curious too.

This is a record number of words to say "I DUNNO, GOOD QUESTION."