Classics and the Western Canon discussion

I'm starting to see a pattern here. Hugo seems to love to present us with an extended discussion of some person or topic and only tie it into what appears to be the main storyline at the end. Myriel is discussed at length and tied in only when Javert knocks on his door. The battle of Waterloo only ties in at the very end. The lengthy digression on convents eventually ties in when Javert shows up. And now we get a lengthy discussion of Paris street urchins.

Is it accurate to say that we're seeing a pattern? Or am I not seeing clearly enough what Hugo is up to?

Disclaimer: because of the amount of time I've had to spend dealing with computer problems I'm a bit behind on my reading -- am only partway through this week's reading. So if I'm later to the discussion table, forgive me. Just move forward and I'll catch up soon.

Yes. There is definitely a pattern. And there is a tie to the Waterloo story too in our reading for this week.

Sandybanks wrote: "Yes. There is definitely a pattern. And there is a tie to the Waterloo story too in our reading for this week."

Yup. One of our big questions will be answered. I think we would do well to relax and trust our author. He seems to see the end from the beginning.

I feel bad for Gavroche, both he and Cosette were abandoned and abused. But his situation is worse. Although Cosette endured physical abuse, once JVJ took her away, her abuse ended. But Gavroche is living daily with rejection. He visited “his family”, the ones that have excluded him. His father, mother, and his 2 older sisters all live together in a rent while he, the youngest, is outside on the streets. “This little boy never felt so happy as when in the streets. For him the pavement was not so hard as the heart of his mother.” -- He is the “ultimate outsider”.

I don’t know … the street urchin section may be one too many tangents for me. My apologies to anyone who liked them, but I didn’t think the Waterloo, the Paris street layout or the monastery digressions added much to the story line. Their length jarringly interrupts the narrative flow. Hugo argues about their importance before launching into each of these subjects and it reads like a rebuttal to his editor for suggesting the trimming of these sections. If some background material is important for a future plot point, surely it could have been done without the distracting length of Hugo’s treatises. I can see why there are abridged versions of this book.

Dawn wrote: I can see why there are abridged versions of this book.

LOL! While I had mild interest in the monastery digression, overall the first three I found tedious to the point of impatience. The street urchin one resonated somewhat for me though. I kept thinking of Elvis Presley singing "In the Ghetto."

Dawn wrote: "I don’t know … the street urchin section may be one too many tangents for me. My apologies to anyone who liked them, but I didn’t think the Waterloo, the Paris street layout or the monastery digres..."

I half agree with you.

The half of me that wants a story to be a story, to progress, to move me forward, agrees with you.

But the other half enjoys a casual stroll in the literary countryside, examining this tree and that flower in great detail, wanting to see the full background against which the events of the book are playing out, being the kind of person who, visiting Rome, doesn't go straight to the "sights" but wanders down back streets just to see where they go, sitting down for a cup of coffee or a glass of wine at some streetside cafe to soak in the ambiance of the place and see the people in their full natural environment. That half enjoys these digressions.

But I have to admit that I found myself skimming a bit in the first book of Marius. So to that extent, I was at least then more on your side.

The digressions are fine with me, so far. I find the monastery mini-history interesting, and the digressions into Parisian urban history and the street urchins give a vivid sense of the living, changing city with all its complexities. The thing that troubles me is when his writing becomes disjointed (such as when he writes about politics or the battle of Waterloo). I suppose that all these were recent (and familiar) history for his original audience, so he was more interested in airing his opinions rather than expounding about them, but it sure makes for a confusing reading.

Peregrine wrote: "While I had mild interest in the monastery digression, overall the first three I found tedious to the point of impatience. ..."

I was beginning to wonder if my lack of enjoyment from these sections means that I have no appreciation of classics and literature ! So I am just having a normal reaction of boredom to something totally unfamiliar. I have still one more book to go for Cossette ! Got to catch up.

Carol: I feel bad for Gavroche, both he and Cosette were abandoned and abused. But his situation is worse. Although Cosette endured physical abuse, once JVJ took her away, her abuse ended. But Gavroche is living daily with rejection.

I would like to dig a bit into this assertion Carol. In my reading Hugo is using Gavroche in two, perhaps contradictory, ways. On the one hand, as you pick up on, he is presented as deserving pity. Hugo wants society to care for its children; he is incensed that the King needs poor children so they can grow up to man his galleys as slaves.

On the other hand, he romanticizes the street urchin (le gamin)as a child of nature and free as a bird. "The small being is bursting with joy. He doesn't eat every day, but he goes to a show every night if he feels like it." And: "He had no roof over his head,no bread, no fire, no love, but he was jubilant because he was free."

We may see him as "rejected," but he doesn't see himself that way. The omniscient narrator (an aspect of the book I hope we will discuss eventually) describes him: "The boy lived in this lack of affection like pale grass that grows up in cellars. He did not suffer by being in this situation and he did not blame anybody. He had no idea what a mother and father should be like."

We see this today in the astonishing resilience of children. How can children in Gaza play soccer? How can girls in impoverished Afghanistan still smile? Why do those in our own inner cities laugh as they skip rope together?

This gets to Hugo's broader point in introducing Gavroche as Le Gamin. In the sentence following the one I quoted about being "jubilent," Hugo widens his lens: "When these poor beings have grown into men, the millstone of the social order almost always catches up with them and grinds them to a pulp, but while they are children, they escape being little. The tiniest hole saves them."

In my opinion, "saving them" is the intent of Hugo's writing. In addition to being a melodrama and romance, this is a political book in many ways. And Hugo has a social project that he proposes in several places. This is one of them.

Gavroche is "the man of the people as a child...The gamin is a national treasure and, at the same time, a disease." This disease can be cured by "Light;" Light "purifies" and it "enlightens."

Perhaps not the most helpful agenda, but a start. We should remember that the Revolution is supposed to be the product of the Age of Enlightenment.

While I won't type it out here, this might be a time to go back and reread the epigraph for the book which Hugo wrote from self-imposed exile during the second Empire in France.

Zeke: In my opinion, "saving them" is the intent of Hugo's writing. In addition to being a melodrama and romance, this is a political book in many ways. And Hugo has a social project that he proposes in several places. This is one of them.
-----------------------------

I agree. Hugo, in a few places advocates for Universal Education. In part, that is the purpose I think of this latest digression.

chapter X
"We must make whole men, whole men, by bringing light to them that they may bring us warmth. Sooner or later the splendid challenge of universal education will confront us with the authority of absolute truth; and those who govern under the scrutiny of the French Idea will then have to make this choice: Are we to have children of France or street-urchins of Paris, flames burning in the light of day or will -o- the- wisps in shadow."

chapter VI-
"hated of popular education had become dogma"

Dawn wrote: "I don’t know … the street urchin section may be one too many tangents for me. My apologies to anyone who liked them, but I didn’t think the Waterloo, the Paris street layout or the monastery digres..."

I agree with you Dawn. I could have swore I read this book when I was younger but now I am thinking that maybe I didn't because I don't remember any of this and I sure don't remember the story flipping back and forth so much with so much seemingly unnecessary information. It seems like I just get involved with a character and then Hugo goes and switches gears on me. That is making it difficult for me to stay engaged. I guess Tolstoy does this in War and Peace as well but somehow he pulls it off for me while I am finding Hugo to be annoying. I want to know what happens between Marius and Cosette and then I get pulled into a world that reminds me of the movie The Gangs of New York. I'm loving the romantic picture Hugo paints of 2 people infatuated with each other and want to see that to the end. Hugo does have the ability to paint great pictures of his characters, but they are either horribly ugly and disturbing like the girl that comes to see Marius about money for her family or unrealistically ethereal like Cosette as a young woman. It seems like there is no in between.

Does it strike anyone else as humorous that Marius is a voyer in chapter III. Maybe it's just my weird sense of humor but I laughed out loud when I read about him climbing up to see through the hole in the wall.

I think our strikingly different reactions to the book are so fascinating. I love the digressions, but I can't put my finger on why. I don't know if it's because I'm reading several other books at the same time, so am not likely to get too impatient? Or because the characters strike me as so melodramatic that I'm not particularly anxious about what will happen to them, but just mildly curious. I'm enjoying the book, but in very different ways from most of the readers, I think? Is anyone else perfectly happy with digressions?

I think Hugo meant these digressions as integral parts of the big picture, part and parcel of what he was trying to say about the ills of their society. The parts about Valjean are most interesting to me but it will all come together at some point.

Marius is an interesting character. It says (about Marius): "Misery, we must insist, had been good to him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is magnificent in that it turns the whole will toward effort and the whole soul toaward aspiration."
Is he saying that poverty while young has a refining effect and makes a better person, and would do the same for others? But he's talking about youth and not childhood, because we've seen what poverty did to Cosette and to the little street urchins, right?

Evalyn wrote: "Marius is an interesting character. It says (about Marius): "Misery, we must insist, had been good to him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is magnificent in that it turns the whole will toward..."

I think he's saying that youths who are given everything do not see the need for effort and aspiration--they've already got the fruits of such--but those who are poor ("when it succeeds") are the stronger for their lack of things. Which makes me wonder just how much of a socialist Hugo is. Not much, I'd say.

I like the digressions. I think it gives some nice space between the main plot line which is quite action packed.

But what I'm enjoying most about this book is when Hugo introduces a new character. I really enjoyed the character studies when he introduced the ABC Society.

Evalyn wrote: "I think Hugo meant these digressions as integral parts of the big picture, part and parcel of what he was trying to say about the ills of their society. "

I'm fascinated, like several others, by the different views of the digressions. I agree to some extent, Evalyn, about his using them to talk about the ills of society, but I think it's more than that. I think he's concerned about enriching the context or background of the stories he's weaving together.

The comparisons people have been making with War and Peace are, I think, apt, but I don't think Hugo is as skilled as Tolstoy in this. Still, I'm getting a much better picture of the society in which these lives are being lived than I would if he stuck more closely to the story.

But I admit that the street urchin section began to pall on me, and I started skimming for the first time.

The other thing I don't recall being mentioned is that he was writing for a society in which there were many fewer distractions, and so perhaps more time for leisurely reading and less pressure for everything to be always moving at a fast pace.

Zeke wrote: In my reading Hugo is using Gavroche in two, perhaps contradictory, ways. On the one hand, as you pick up on, he is presented as deserving pity. Hugo wants society to care for its children; he is incensed that the King needs poor children so they can grow up to man his galleys as slaves.

On the other hand, he romanticizes the street urchin (le gamin)as a child of nature and free as a bird.

I really like this analysis, Zeke. It balances, in a way, the ambiguity Hugo offers about Valjean and his two knapsacks. He seems to like pointing to the two contradictory sides of his characters.

Everyman wrote: "Evalyn wrote: "I think Hugo meant these digressions as integral parts of the big picture, part and parcel of what he was trying to say about the ills of their society. "

I'm fascinated, like sever..."

I think it's true for all of these 19th century novelists, except that Les Mis, unlike Dickens' or Tolstoy's novels, was not serialized in a magazine prior to its publication as a novel. I don't think that magazine readers would have tolerated such lengthy digressions. Perhaps Les Mis would have been a very different book had Hugo been forced to write it as a serial.

And I agree with Everyman that Tolstoy does a better job in integrating the background information into the main story than Hugo.

Marius's research into his father has once again brought to my attention how important Hugo considers Bonaparte to have been in the history of France. I hadn't thought of that before, not being much concerned with French history, and the French Revolution getting most of the attention with respect to French history, but Bonaparte is certainly a focus of Hugo's concern.

Everyman wrote: "Marius's research into his father has once again brought to my attention how important Hugo considers Bonaparte to have been in the history of France. I hadn't thought of that before, not being mu..."

If you ever go to Paris you will undoubtedly visit Napoleon's magnificent resting place and see just how important he still is to the French.

Laurele wrote: "If you ever go to Paris you will undoubtedly visit Napoleon's magnificent resting place and see just how important he still is to the French."

Hoping that this will NOT open a current political debate, I thought this opinion piece on the importance of Napoleon in today's New York Times fit right in with your comment.

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10...

Everyman wrote: "Laurele wrote: "If you ever go to Paris you will undoubtedly visit Napoleon's magnificent resting place and see just how important he still is to the French."

Hoping that this will NOT open a curr..."

Interesting. I didn't know that Montana and Missouri were French territories.

And I agree with that op-ed piece : those wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are just adding fuel to the terror, but now that the US has started them, it couldn't just leave those countries to themselves.

*getting off my soap box*

Sandybanks wrote: "Everyman wrote: "Laurele wrote: "If you ever go to Paris you will undoubtedly visit Napoleon's magnificent resting place and see just how important he still is to the French."

Hoping that this wil..."

Missouri and Montana were part of the French claim sold to us in the Louisiana Purchase. St Louis was founded by the French, but I doubt any Frenchman set foot in Montana before the Purchase.

I think this section does such a nice job of portraying the turmoil in Marius' mind as he moves from one set of political/ethical opposites to another and then yet another. It seems to me a very accurate portrayal of what today we consider a certain level of reasoning and development, the tendency to see everything as black or white, good or bad and the inability to consider more than one interpretation of a situation or character at one time. It seems like a good reflection of the kind of thinking I see in my students who are about the same age.

Andrea: I think this section does such a nice job of portraying the turmoil in Marius' mind as he moves from one set of political/ethical opposites to another and then yet another. It seems to me a very accurate portrayal of what today we consider a certain level of reasoning and development, the tendency to see everything as black or white, good or bad and the inability to consider more than one interpretation of a situation or character at one time. It seems like a good reflection of the kind of thinking I see in my students who are about the same age.

Andrea, I really welcomed your appreciation of the portrait of Marius, and how he reminded you of your students. I was much harsher on him in my reading; I thought of him as the epitome of a callow youth. You remind me that Hugo is pretty good at drawing portraits from life rather then from the way old curmudgeons think people should behave!

Zeke, if I didn't see my students' bright potential, I would go mad!:) But of course, I don't know how Marius will eventually turn out.

Nor can you know how your students will turn out; that's part of what makes teaching (and reading) fun.

I think my problem with Marius and the others at this point in the book is with their earnestness and idealism. And, in that, I know that being worn down by experience has something to do with my reaction.

I can't recall who said it, but some politician said, "I wish I could be as certain of anything as they are of everything.

Evalyn wrote: "Marius is an interesting character. It says (about Marius): "Misery, we must insist, had been good to him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, is magnificent in that it turns the whole will toward..."
The key words seem to be "When it succeeds". There are plenty of examples in the story of folks in poverty who do not turn out so well as Eponine or Gavroche. Education or wealth might also be substituted for poverty and succeed or fail to turn the whole will... The narrator seems to give examples on both sides, making this thick volume a snapshot of life in which the poor gamin may become generous and caring or an insensitive criminal. What determines if poverty in youth "succeeds"? Destiny? Will?

Susan, I wonder this too. I don't have any answers, just the observation that Montparnasse is only a couple of years past the gamin stage, and already he's described as a cutthroat.