One important thing about Les Mis that I feel a lot of people miss is that…… Javert is not the novel’s symbol of justice. Enjolrasis.
Javert represents authority, which is often cruel and unjust. Enjolras represents actual justice, social justice, he represents the laws of conscience/love that are superior to the flawed and bigoted laws of mankind (which is why he’s literally compared to Themis, the goddess of justice.)
Lots of adaptations write Javert as someone who cares about making society better and protecting the innocent, but he isn’t and he doesn’t??? Javert cares about authority.His entire personality is built on “respect for authority and hatred of rebellion.”
Javert doesn’t care about “having compassion or making tough decisions to protect people;” he cares about submitting to authority at all times. The government is right because it is the government. Any crime or rebellion is wrong because it is against the government. Anyone who is treated badly by the government deserves to be treated badly, because authority is always right. Rich people are always morally superior to poor people, and the outcasts of society deserve to be beaten down because they are outcasts – and the thing that’s tragic about his horrible violent mentality is that he is a part of the same class of outcasts he’s beating down, and doesn’t value the lives of other people because he doesn’t value his own.
If mercy is kindness you don’t deserve, while justice is the treatment you do deserve– then Javert isn’t just merciless, he’s unjust.
He can’t be a symbol of justice because all he cares about is blindly obeying authority and calling that “justice.” Sending Valjean to prison for stealing a loaf of bread and a coin isn’t just merciless, it’s unjust. Tormenting Fantine until her death for acting in self-defense isn’t just merciless, it’s unjust. They didn’t deserve what he did to them, and the only reason he can believe it’s right is because he canonically Refuses to Think about it– because he’s literally so Brainwashed by authority as a result of his tragic past that he believes any independent thought is a form of rebellion that must be suppressed.
Thought was something to which he was unused, and which was peculiarly painful. In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion; and it irritated him to have that within him.
Enjolras, meanwhile, actually cares about helping people and creating a better world. Enjolras cares about uplifting the people around him, he cares about giving people the help and the support that they deserve. He wants the world to be free. The goal of the rebels is to replace the monarchy, a dictatorship, with a republic where people can vote for their leaders. They want to eliminate poverty, fight for universal education, and give people the dignity they’re entitled to.
Meanwhile Javert is a tragically brainwashed authoritarian whose only goal is to punish anyone who doesn’t keep their head low enough– including punishing himself. He’s motivated entirely by fear and hatred; the hatred of people like Valjean and Fantine, and the fear that he’ll become like them. (Javert cares so little about protecting people that it’s a plot point multiple times that he’s so busy Punishing the perpetrator of a crime that he doesn’t talk to the victim at all. He respects authority, but he doesn’t love it, and doesn’t care about protecting people. He only cares about punishing the people who the government has told him to hate.)
I guess the thing is: adaptations are in love with the idea that Valjean represents mercy while Javert represents justice. But I feel like Enjolras is a much better counterpoint to Valjean’s philosophy than Javert.
Valjean and Enjolras are like:
Valjean: I think that it’s important to focus on mercy above justice.
Enjolras: But we can’t have forgiveness until we’ve had accountability. I agonize over every decision I make, but sometimes there is absolutely no way to create a better world without causing harm to the people who are currently abusing their power to hurt us. True justice can only come when the people in power are making reparations.
While Valjean and Javert are like:
Valjean:I think that it’s important to focus on mercy above justice
Javert: You THINK about things??? Even when the government hasn’t ORDERED you to think????
Valjean: uh
Javert: *rocking back and forth in the fetal position covering his ears with his hands* The government does all the thinking for us, so we don’t have to!! Anyone who has their own thoughts is a rebel who should be shot. The State says that poor people are bad and deserve to suffer! Disagreeing with the government makes you a rebel!!!!!! Having thoughts of your own makes you a rebel! Any “kindness” that goes against the orders of the state is FALSE KINDNESS that will turn the world inside out!!!!!!! Supporting poor people against rich people, the people who are low in the world against the people who are high– that is FALSE KINDNESS!!!!! Real justice is when you shut off your brain, accept your place, and blindly obey the government without thinking!!!
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.
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. ‘
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.
I need to draw illustration for la brique. I drew a lot of stories, so now it’s hard to find new ones. Suggest scenes and quotes from the BOOK. I would be grateful.
