#four walls and a door

everyonewasabird:

fremedon:

riotstarruika:

everyonewasabird:

fremedon:

secretmellowblog:

Underrated hero of Les mis: the porter who responds to Marius’s questions about Valjean with “WHAT ARE YOU, a COP?”

“And what is that gentleman’s business?” began Marius again.

“He is a gentleman of property, sir. A very kind man who does good to the unfortunate, though not rich himself.”

“What is his name?” resumed Marius.

The porter raised his head and said:—

“Are you a police spy, sir?”

For context: this is when Marius, after seeing Cosette in the Luxembourg gardens, decides to follow her home and interrogate the porter about who her dad is. Later the porter also doesn’t tell Marius anything about where Valjean has fled to.

“Where is he living now?”

“I don’t know anything about it.”

“So he has not left his new address?”

“No.”

And the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Marius.

“Come! So it’s you!” said he; “but you are decidedly a spy then?”

Idk it’s nice that in a world where everyone keeps narcing on Valjean, there’s one random dude who hears a cop asking for information and— with no other context— responds

“He’s a nice guy and I don’t talk to cops.”

It’s also a neat parallel with Valjean’s portress from M-Sur-M, who’s also one of the only people in town to stand by him after he’s revealed to be a convict. Hugo puts a much bigger emphasis on Sister Simplice’s lie, but the portress’s more subtle undramatic heroism that happens right before is really touching:

Three or four persons in all the town remained faithful to his memory. The old portress who had served him was among the number.

(…)

(Valjean) heard a tumult of ascending footsteps, and the old portress saying in her loudest and most piercing tones:—

“My good sir, I swear to you by the good God, that not a soul has entered this house all day, nor all the evening, and that I have not even left the door.”

I also think there’s a sort of tragedy to the portress in that subplot? Her lie isn’t able to save Valjean because she’s just a portress, and poor, and Javert doesn’t put any weight on the words of someone like her. She is not the kind of person who Javert would ever listen to. He ignores her lie and brushes last her.

It’s only when the exact same lie is repeated by Sister Simplice, who has a level of Authority/social standing that the portress doesn’t, that Javert is forced to believe it.

But these two porters contrast with the Principal Tenant at the Gorbeau House, who happily sells Valjean out to cops. I wonder if it has something to do with her being a Landlady as much as portress? I still haven’t gotten to Toussaint and the second part of the book, but to me the way Valjean’s porters stand up against police for him seems sorta like it might be a bit of subtle Class Solidarity. I wonder if that continues through the entire book.

#oohh i love this#YES about the porters siding with valjean!#i love the point that the portress in m-sur-m did the same thing as simplice#just with less power#it continues to the end too–the portress at the rue de l'homme arme is the one who keeps trying to get him to eat#and gets a doctor for him when he’s cut off ties to everyone else in his life#</3 (via @everyonewasabird​)

Opening doors–or not opening them–is, throughout the book, just about the most significant moral choice a person can make, starting with the bishop who always opens his.

RIGHT!

..and continuing with Gillenormand’s policy of never opening his door before five o’clock, to keep out the riffraff. :(

And reaching peak metaphor for being-too-afraid-to-welcome-progress with the citizens of the Rue de la Chanvrerie that don’t open their doors to the insurgents on the barricade:

‘A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. ‘

#YEP#that feels like the thing all the door talk leads to: do you side with the government or with the people?#choose now because they’re all about to die#in Other Notable Doors#thinking about the convent when valjean is on the run and how not only are all the doors closed to him but#there’s a Gigantic Fake Door that looks like a door but it’s decorative it’s just a wall#obviously it’s part of the whole Convent Is Very Bad News thing; it’s the onlookers that don’t help#but also….. oh dang#it’s the answer to the question hugo wrestles with#about whether the convent’s method of saving people works#ALSO: oh shit i feel like the penny just dropped on what the door thing is about???#maybe the darkest metaphor in this book is ‘four walls’#it comes up a lot and it’s generally some terrible doom#and if you’re trapped between four walls#what’s the way out?#A DOOR (via @everyonewasabird​)

And that’s also part of what the mines are doing–they’re the door you can find even when you’re surrounded by four unbroken walls.

OH. OH MAN. THIS, THIS, is part of why Valjean’s methods aren’t enough. He spends the whole book getting in and out of places without using doors–out of the barricade through the sewers; into the convent over the walls–but that still leaves the four walls in place. It doesn’t make a door that anyone else can use.

…oh gosh, this is why we get the focus on the courtroom doors in Arras, isn’t it? Because he’s bringing Champmathieu out.

ooooh yes. He stops using doors and therefore stops making escape routes for other people/opts out of being a miner. But also he stops using doors because he’s learned that doors are inherently barred against him and always will be.