les_miserables | (no subject)

thjazi posting in

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)

Current Mood: confused

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From:

bobcatmoran

Going back to your original question:

It never even occurred to me that it would be odd for them to be students, as the tie between students and radical uprisings and protests has been so strong throughout history. I think it has a lot to do with university/college/higher-education-of-chosen-place-and-time students generally coming from relatively privileged backgrounds, where they have the time and money and social standing to be able to focus on more than just getting through one more day. Not that people from less privileged situations don't rise up (not at all!) but when your belly is full and you don't have to worry about how you're going to manage the necessities of life, (and you don't have to worry that, if you do participate in a radical action, that you'll lose your livelihood and your means of affording such things) that's brainpower and energy that you can dedicate to other things. Like the revolution, perhaps.

That, and students are generally in an environment that encourages one to think deeply about things and expand your horizons — not only because of classwork, but because institutions of higher learning oftentimes bring together people from different locations and backgrounds. Ot top of that, they tend to be in cities, which also bring together people from an even greater variety of locations and backgrounds. It makes it easy to be exposed to new ideas, new ways of looking at the world, stepping outside the comfortable bubble of childhood and perhaps seeing the injustice in the world and wondering, "How can I make this better?" Add to that the fact that young people are less wedded to the power stuctures, more open-minded because they're less likely to have decided "This is the way the world works, period," and it's no wonder that so many of Les Amis are students.

From:

tenlittlebullets

YEAH, it would never have occurred to me as weird either because student radicals are such a trope and it makes sense in-narrative--the place where it gets weird, and I never noticed it until I buried myself in Saint-Merry research, is that the actual stats of the June Rebellion were the exact opposite. The Amis in the book are mostly students with some token workers thrown in; the real-life insurgents were mostly working-class--and within that category, mostly educated skilled artisans--with a handful of students.

To get into specifics: At Saint-Merry there were two law students joined by a third on the night of the 5th, a Polytechnicien who showed up on the 6th to great acclaim and was immediately given a command post, and a student of the Alfort veterinary school found dead in the building where they made their last stand. All of them sufficiently remarked-upon that I doubt there were many others. Geography comes into play here--Saint-Merry is across the river from the Latin Quarter, so it's likely that as the uprising was suppressed on the Left Bank, students started sneaking across under cover of night to join the holdouts at Saint-Merry, and many of them were probably caught and detained before they could get there. But still. Five students out of about 120 insurgents.

Which would still be down to artistic license except that so much of the stuff from the barricades is pulled almost verbatim from history, and Enjolras is so clearly modeled on Charles Jeanne. It seems like a really stinkeye-inducing thing for Hugo to change. The best I can come up with is that the Chanvrerie barricade was sort of a remix of Saint-Merry with elements taken from a bunch of different revolts throughout the 19th century, and it could be that Hugo wanted to celebrate the tradition of student radicals by having a student-led barricade exist in parallel with the worker-led barricade. But. Like. It's just an impression, but I get the feeling Hugo was uncomfortable writing about the skilled, educated working classes, because they're kind of an awkward fit with the social narrative he was trying to construct with Les Mis--he's comfortable writing about (and criticizing) the bourgeoisie, and advocating on behalf of the destitute and marginalized, and the existence of people who are neither but are still getting pushed around and fucked over by the system and have their own voice and initiative in fighting it kind of throws him for a loop.

From:

bobcatmoran

Huh, okay, that is weird then, especially since, like you said, Hugo basically filed the serial numbers off of real events for the barricades. I had no idea that it was less than one in twenty insurgents there who were students. *side-eyes Hugo HARD*

From: (Anonymous)

It's Pliny! Just saying: wow, thank you so much for commenting on it, because it really struck me reading the Jeanne letters that, wait, uh, Enjolras is basically the upper-class rewrite of this person. I wonder if it's also because the Amis are so tied into Marius? Their choices have to reflect back on his choices and his life at the end, and also -- perhaps because I think he's imagining his audience as bourgeois? that is the impression I get from his tone/the "we" imagined, so he figures the people behind social change as people like his imagined (male, upper or middle-class) readers in some way.

...I don't know...how much that reflects the background of the members of the Petit Cenacle either? I had the vague feeling that they were not of the kind of milieu that Charles Jeanne and the workers are coming from, and obviously they inspire the Amis hugely, and...were the people Hugo personally knew at the time.

But, yeah, it's actually an overall Really Weird Historical Erasure, that's fascinating. Like to an extent the fictional barricade exists alongside and magnifies the glory of the historical barricade, but it's also, now, these days, the barricade people recognise; more people have heard of Enjolras than Charles Jeanne.

((...also I guess in Ninety-Three Gauvain is a viscount and Cimourdain - "His parents, peasants, in making a priest of him, had wished to remove him from the people; he had come back to the people." Which I don't want to, like, put any great meaning onto, because both Gauvain's familial relationship to Lantenac and Cimourdain's position as tutor are vital to the plot, but I guess the result is that it's not an exception.))

It's interesting that in some ways despite being SUPER RADICAL Hugo's poorer characters get...somewhat defined by how they act towards the order of things? it's the Amis for whom violent resistance is reserved; redemption via forgiveness and sacrifice of life for Marius & Cosette's happiness is what Eponine & Valjean get. Sorry to ramble at you!! I, just, yes, I think he's more comfortable with anger-on-behalf-of-others than for *oneself*. WITH GAVROCHE AS THE EXCEPTION HERE, I NOW REALISE (& Feuilly, although actually Feuilly's revolutionary fervour is explicitly again about other people, other causes than stemming direct from his own life).

...this is double weird because I'm *sure* someone mentioned an IRL model for Feuilly, and yet he gets like 26 words of dialogue. Also I guess because Hugo is trying to square everything onto this very Christian(/Deistical) sacrifice-for-others model if that...makes...sense?

From: (Anonymous)

also to add obviously THAT IS NOT GOOD I DO NOT APPROVE OF REMOVING PEOPLE'S AGENCY IN THAT WAY

but also yes a Hugolian blindspot perhaps?

...also I mean, one of the revolutions he's mixing into his thoughts on the Amis is surely (like, textually mentioned repeatedly) June '48 and that's its own...uh....

maybe also it's the Yes In The Days When There Was One Republicanism And It Brought All People Together strain if that makes sense, which making everyone students kinda highlights re: 1832 as historical moment (/Feb 1848, though I have NO IDEA what the demographics of that was)

My apologies if this makes no sense.

(Also, '93 has Radoub! I MOMENTARILY FORGOT RADOUB. Who is (a) a good non-terrifying revolutionary and (b) not a viscount)

From:

thjazi

Yeah, Les Mis really seems to be directed at a very presumed-bourgeois audience. Which, I mean, FAIR ENOUGH in its way, but it resulted in some weird grafting of characters, I think. :/

Aside from Prouvaire and Bahorel, I don't know how many/how much the Amis were based on Hugo's personal friends? The more reading I've done on Borel, at least, the more I've been surprised at just how direct a translation to character was going on there-- which may be why Bahorel also (I'd argue) gets to be one of the few of the Barricade Gang who gets to be really angry on, as you say, his own behalf, what with his mocking the bourgeoisie and tearing up All The Things and whatnot. As far as HE goes, I know Borel really was involved with The Friends of the People and other radical groups in a street-tearing capacity for pretty much as long as he physically COULD be, and Bahorel doesn't get a total class upgrade anyway...but that almost makes it WEIRDER, because Borel was both younger and well done with being an official student..? And most of the Cenacle gang seems to have been in sort of the same boat? Trying to live off their various arts, and all.
Which makes me wonder if to some extent this is a Most Writers Are Writers situation, where Hugo went "okay, we should have doctors....and at least one worker...and then...uh..young people? What do Young People do, if they're not artisting? Students! NON-ARTING GUYS IN THEIR 20s ARE STUDENTS, PROBLEM SOLVED,Dramatic Forehead Pose time!"

...which isn't to say that I don't think there's some Gross Class Stuff happening here, because OH THERE CERTAINLY IS, just saying it might also have gotten mixed up worse by a certain degree of Writerly Myopia.

(tagged: Missing My Tags, I am seriously lost without that odd rhetorical device anymore, also no one listen to me I don't actually know anything special, I'm just blue blue skying.)