#but yeah i’m like sad about valjean again

I’m rereading Les mis again, and one thing I didn’t notice on my first reads is just how Militarized every single town is? Even in scenes where characters are just going about their ordinary day there are always soldiers in the street, and everyone’s always mentioning prison, and the police are always there, and there are always traces of the recent wars all around—

No matter what the characters are doing, the threat of state violence is always There. The threat of the military and police and government is always hanging over them.

Like in Fantine’s chapters with Tholomyes! As the four couples are going on their dates, there are constant references to how “Everything is Fine Now Because the Monarchy has Finally Put Down those Nasty Rebels and is Back in Power Again.”As the couples flirt and play, there are gendarmes in the street and people singing rowdy songs about the return of the king. There’s an entire intro chapter about the year’s historical context, and the rest of the chapters contains sprinkles of anecdotes about the new regime.

Hugo draws what I feel is a pretty explicit parallel between Tholomyes and the new King. We’re told that is fine in Paris because King Louis is on the throne: and we’re told that everything is idyllic in Fantine’s friend group because Tholomyes is its (quote) “dictator” who leads in a way that obligates everyone to obey.

Of course in the end Everything is Not Fine and these dictators can’t actually be trusted to rule over their people, and are going to especially hurt marginalized people like Fantine.

But it’s not just this one subplot obviously, it’s Every Single One. The threat of military violence is the background noise of the entire book.

Montreuil-sur-Mer where Valjean becomes mayor is literally a garrrison town for the military; Paris is always swarming with police and gendarmes; Marius’s story centers on his changing feelings about his Bonapartist soldier father; the Thenardiers live at the Waterloo Inn and constantly go on about Monsieur Thenardier’s military history; like the threat of the military/police is always there in the background of every scene, long before it comes to a head at the barricade.

One of the subplots that illustrates this best is Everything that Happens In Digne after Valjean is released from prison.

Valjean shows his yellow passport to the mayor and is immediately followed by a gendarme before he heads to an inn. His passport causes every inn to refuse service to him. After he asks a kind-looking peasant man at home with his family if he can stay at his house for the night, the man pulls out a gun and threatens to murder him. He attempts to get temporary housing at a prison, which refuses him.

We’re later given an explanation for what the townspeople think and say about their police force, and why they’re so determined to beat Valjean away. We’re told that the townspeople say:

“The police was very badly organized, moreover, because there was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure each other by making things happen.It behooved wise people to play the part of their own police, and to guard themselves well, and care must be taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and to fasten the doors well.”

Which is a terrifying philosophy that we see throughout the book? The reason everyone is so cruel to Valjean is because in a world where everything is militarized, ordinary people have decided to become unofficial cops. It’s like they believe the problem with their society is that there aren’t enough police/soldiers on the street—even though we see police and soldiers on Every Page.

There’s something terrifyingly familiar about the mentality that looks at cities swarming with police and says “the way to fix this is to Add More Police. Or for regular citizens to Do Police Work themselves!”

And I feel like that tension, that constant pervasive threat of government violence that never goes away because ordinary people are actively supporting these institutions too, is such a tragically relevant part of the book.