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homeboundmonsters · 2 months

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I don't post a lot of analysis here but enjoy this mad scuffling of thoughts on the Tragedy of Javert as the Failed Lover

For me the moment Javert really loses it over Jean Valjean is not at the barricade but when Jean Valjean ‘dies’. In Toulon Jean Valjean belonged to the system, Javert’s eyes could watch him but they were not the only eyes that possessed Valjean with the intensity and scrutiny of the Law. In Montreuil-Sur-Mer Javert spends four years following him, stalking him. His eyes possess Valjean, he tries to offer him up to the law and is abandoned alone in his scrutiny and observation. Yes, Valjean belongs to the townspeople but not Really because they don’t see him like Javert sees him, they don’t have the intimacy of observation that Javert has. In his unaware and abstract way Javert is trying to understand Valjean, not intellectually but biologically: it is the broadness of his shoulders, the strength of his thighs, the gait he walks with; Javert seeks to understand the way his body speaks. For four years Javert is left alone in his desire and the intensity of his desire to penetrate Valjean’s secrets.

Then the rug is pulled out from under him. His understanding of why he consumes this man is ripped away and, all of a sudden, he has to reframe his understanding of why he feels this intensity of emotion, and desire for ‘knowing’, and he cannot understand it. Instead, he wants to run from it: he wants to be dismissed, to flee into mediocrity and the drudgery of agriculture. He can’t bear the burden of his guilt as a spy, but he has been more than a spy he has been a kind of peeping-Tom wanting to see inside of Madeleine and reveal him. This is an affront to Javert, not because he’s homophobic but because Madeleine is a superior: Madeleine is untouchable, a man of better class, better breeding. But mostly because Javert cannot understand his own feelings beyond the idea of them being an intrusion on the Better class of People that he has been determined to serve. He might as well as become aware of himself peeping into a bedroom window. He is a guard dog, he is not meant to experience what goes on in the house, his place is outside. Yet he has sought out the intimate knowledge of this man and in doing so has intruded beyond his status.

But worse for Javert is the world is turned on its axis again and he is proven right. He has NOT sought to go beyond his bounds, instead he has sniffed out a strange dog in the master’s parlour stealing the master’s meal. He is no longer troubled by the uncertainty of his years long passion. The world is set to right so he settles again into the comfort that his understanding of the world and his role in the world is correct. And then, after having Valjean for himself for four solid years, he gives him back to the prison system only… Javert is not there to observe him. Valjean is given over the scrutinising eyes of others and Javert satisfies himself with service to the Law.

So then, why is he so eager to believe that Valjean is still alive? Surely by all rights he should not care that Valjean is dead, Hugo emphasises that Javert shows little interest in the newspaper article. Well, the answer supplies itself when Javert thinks of Valjean is ‘his convict’. His pursuit of Valjean in Paris is defined by the fact that he does not try to share his suspicions, he does not try to share Valjean with anyone. Again and again he foils his own plans to catch the man. There is intimacy again between them, the kind of safe intimacy that comes without touching, only observing. Javert follows him to where he sleeps and secretes himself in a mirror room to Valjean’s: he is seeking again to have an intimate understanding of Valjean biologically; the way and shape in which he lives his life. He seeks evidence of the physical form, even though some part of himself knows it already his mind and eyes hunger for freedom from doubt. Is that not what Valjean always brings him: doubt? Uncertainty. Hunger, the pursuit of intimacy of understanding, the revealing of secrets and the concealed.

He is paralysed by Valjean’s disappearance at Petit-Picpus. He spends a week pacing outside searching for ways in. There is a physical barrier between him and Valjean, here he cannot observe him, here he cannot fabricate the intimacy that is brought on through observation. He is tormented by it. Why? Why does Valjean’s disappearance torment him in a way that the disappearance of Patron Minette? Javert meets Thernadier- a criminal on the run- in the sewers and is disinterested by him. Why because his mind is shaken by Valjean’s act of mercy? It is more than that. Valjean has breached the unspoken rule of their relationship again: there has been a crossing from observation into physicality and that is always destabilising for Javert. He feels safest when he is observing, that is why he is a spy. He likes to go unnoticed. Valjean brings him out into the open, not as a spy but as Javert the man. And for Javert, all these years he has felt that he understood Valjean, that he observed him and knew him as no one else did. That he had penetrated that man’s secrets, his mind, that he understood his desires and goals, and now he finds he knows nothing about him. All of that imagined intimacy is gone, torn from his hands by a man who tells him to shut up and leave already because he knows nothing.

In the carriage Javert battles with his passion, he desires physical intimacy with Valjean: seize and devour, which he can only understand within the framework of arresting him. And yet we know already that since Valjean has reappeared in Paris has been unable to share him, unwilling to give him away. To devour, to bring something into your body and make it a part of you, to process it until it becomes indistinguishable from yourself. These feelings are not new, the desire not to let Valjean go into the hands of others is not new, but for the first time Javert is wrestling with the idea that this means he must turn his back on his Mother and Father: The Law. It is the classic story of the Lover, the Lover must always leave his family to start his own with the object of his affection, but how can Javert do that when his Mother and Father, his ultimate authority, are the very outlining of society themselves? Besides that, he lacks the perceived intimacy that gave him confidence in their interactions before. How can he step out of the safety of his relationship with the Law into the unknown of this man who defies all understanding? Who blinds him, who IS the man who almost brought him to his knees in M-Sur-M? Love is terrifying, but love for someone completely unknowable? Love for someone whose very perspective of the world is so obscure to you that you feel blinded by a glimpse of it? For Javert love has always been self-sacrifice and service. He turned his back on his own people to become a prison guard, he served as a policeman suffering contempt and poverty; so, he loves Valjean how he understands love to be: he sacrifices himself. That at least makes sense to him when nothing else does.

But my point is, as rambling and incoherent as this has been, that Javert has loved Jean Valjean, and wanted to Love Jean Valjean for a long time and not known it. How can a person know Love when they have never experienced it? Not just romantic love, but familial, the love of friendship, the love of a pet. This man has been so abstracted from society by his birth and ethnicity that he never even understood to recognise love from the outsider’s view: he has never even looked on love as a concept. Why torment yourself with what you can’t have? But despite everything, Javert does love and he does love as someone should: self-sacrificingly, with constancy, with patience, with a desire to understand, with a desire to protect and preserve. Javert is the Failed Lover archetype, once upon a time he could have been Marius: watching and falling in love by glances, understanding, scaling walls to communicate and develop intimacy. But Javert, and Jean Valjean in turn, were always doomed to be on the outside, out in the cold.

#valvert #les mis #javert #valvert week #les miserable #lesmis #jean valjean #JVJ #I have many more thoughts

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absolxguardian · 7 months

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-Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck in Les Miserable and War and Peace

Average Les Mis fan

(in that last panel Scrooge is hiding from an IRS inspector who is Javert's present day incarnation/descendent)

#les mis #duck tales #les miserable #scrooge mcduck #donald duck

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thatnerdyqueer · 2 months

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I put 'little miss perfect' on my valvert playlist and now I snort every time i hear it

never skip though, never

#no matter how jarringly depressing the previous song was #its so them #prove me wrong #valvert #jean valjean #javert #les miserable #also 'when he sees me'#little miss perfect #waitress #when he sees me

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writing-fanics · 2 years

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literally all of the characters joseph Quinn has played has either died or is suffering

Warning spoilers and mentions of abuse and death

Tom Grant (GF no longer loves him also has obsessives thoughts of thinking he’s cheating)

Arthur Havisham (Being manipulated by the man who he thought was a friend. Who knows his secret as blackmail is also abused by said friend)

Billy (dealing with a huge massive amount of guilt and trauma)

Leonard Bast (struggling to make ends meat to feed his wife and himself and gets fucked by people trying to help and ends up dying)

Enjolras (dies along side his friends fighting for what he believes in)

Eddie Munson (is called a so called freak and is forced to go on the run because he’s framed for a murder he never committed)

Prince Paul (was oblivious to his own wife infidelity and dosent find out till his mother gives him the letters)

#howards end #make up 2019 #joseph Quinn #dickensian #Leonard Bast #Tom Grant #Arthur Havisham #Billy c.b strike #C.B. Strike #Les miserable #Enjolras

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stardancerluv · 9 months

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A Time to Love and a Time to Fight

Part Twenty - Four

Summary: A slice of life for Enjolras and his girl aboard the ship. The past visits.

Notes/Warnings: This is for 18 & up readers, thank you! Mentions of Belote (a game played at their time. Kind of made up how to play it in one scene!) drinking (be responsible!) consensual male/female pnv intimacy.

Thank you for reading! ❤️s & reblogs are always welcome. Feedback is also very…very welcome!

Waking, you caught as Enjolras splashed some water on his face. He looked the more relaxed then he had in a good long while. A little over a week on the ship and you both were getting used to particulars of being on board.

You let your eyes move over your beloved. There was no scarf tied around his throat. His jacket laid over the back of the chair. He was clad in his trousers and a few buttons were undone on his white shirt. The sight, brought a peace to you didn’t realize you needed. It also made your heart leap in your chest there was a handsomeness about him, you hoped would always grab you.

“Oh!” He turned and gave you a quick smile. “I had not meant to wake you.” He rubbed his face and came over. The bed dipped as he sat down.

You rubbed an eye. “I probably slept long enough.”

He took your hand in his, his thumb grazed your knuckles. “It had meant a lot to me when you showed me your hands.” He squeezed yours, his eyes were warm when they met yours.

“I had fretted over it.”

“I remember.”

Shifting, you sat up and placed a hand over his. Grateful it was still there. “The doctor did a good job taking of it.”

“He did.”

Your heart continued to flutter as he cupped your cheek.

“My brave wife. We’re half way to our new home. Everyday I rise, I am grateful that Lachesis entwined our threads.”

“I am as well.”

Your heart began to thud as he drew your face up. You inhaled.

“I have missed your…”

As his lips grazed yours the ability to form words vanished. Your breath shortened.

“I have as well.” His voice grew deeper. His lips curled into a smile as he pulled back and met your eyes.

“Then I will not deny either of us, mon amour.”

You sighed as he pulled you close. Despite laying and sleeping along side him all these days, this was different.

Gently, moving with you he eased you back into the bed. Reaching, you nestled your fingers into his soft curls. His breath was warm as he broke the kiss. You could practically feel as his eyes moved over you.

“My heart, my body yearns to feel you.”

He settled and rested beside you. His fingers gently fiddled with the laces of your chemise.

“Please, I miss the feel of you.”

“Oh, mon doux ange. That would please me.”

As his lips met yours once again; you felt his fingers brushed against your skin. A soft sound came from you as he slid your chemise to your hips. With trembling fingers you removed your undergarment soon followed.

The sight of him, unbuttoning his trousers caused you to tremble. He was so handsome and his strength made you feel so safe. Carefully, he moved so that he between your legs and that his weight was not fully on you.

“My beautiful wife.” He whispered against your lips while he finally freed himself.

“My love.” You replied. A gasp came from you as you felt him brush against the apex between your legs.

“You remind me of flower petals with a fresh dew.”

Your cheeks warmed with a flush.

“And just as lovely.”

As he entered you, a soft moan poured from the two of you. It mingled and became one like the rest of you.

“I had better seal your soft lips with mine. I do not want side glances or people to be aware of the pleasure you and I share.”

“Oh, my sweet love thank you.” Your voice squeezed as pleasure ripped through you.

Pleasure continued to build between the two of you. Breathes shortened, as moans threatened to spill from the two of you. Your kisses momentarily would break so you could find a breath before your lips found each other again. You clutched onto each other.

Your fingers nestled in his curls as you drew close to the peak you both moved towards.

*******

As he stood behind you lacing your dress; his eyes drifted from your smooth back to the scar that remained on his hand. His thoughts wandered to Claude, the older man who had patched him up; he had done good. Enjolras hoped he was safe. Claude was only a man of medicine. Chewing on his cheek, he cursed the royal army.

He gave your laces a good knot. It would keep all the layers of your dress together. A faint smile curled his lips, as he pressed a brief kiss to where there was a hint of your bare skin.

“Lovely. You are ready to face the sun on the deck or the passengers below or…” His eyes met yours in the very small reflective glass. “The rats as they scurry past your boots.”

As you turned to him a squeal of a mirth came from you. You tugged gently on his coat. “Julien! Don’t even mention those rats.” He caught your gloved hands before you could fidget further. He brought them up to give them each a kiss.

He smiled and just shook his head. “We saw only one.” He met your eyes. “There is a chance you might see more then one.”

“Julien! Don’t scare me.”

He chuckled and pulled you against him. “Oh, how I love making my wife all flustered.“ He chuckled again. “Just stomp them ange; and if you need me, I shall be in the parlor suite. I will be playing Belote with the men.”

“I certainly will.” You smiled.

*****

The sky was so clear you felt as if you could see till the end of the ocean. You were getting used to not needing your scarves around shoulders while on this boat. As you had walked the streets back home, you could not even imagine being without one.

On the deck you found a place, you enjoyed tucking yourself into. Sitting there; the sails fluttered and flapped while the ropes stretched to where they were needed.

You imagined your father sitting and keeping his journal or looking out with the salty air hitting his face. That salty air would cling to his beard so much that when he’d return, you could still smell it.

As you sat there, you could practically feel how his large arm had wrapped around you and told you of his latest adventure. His eyes filled with delight, his laughter filling sitting room.

A single tear fell down your cheek; so with a gloved hand you brushed it away. You’d were grateful for the memory but it hurt so much. Standing, you decided at that moment to go and see your husband.

*******

He eyed his cards, he took a long sip from his tankard. The ale warmed him. He was having several good hands. If only Grantaire could see the cards he was being dealt now.

******

The wind made the wooden slat behind him rattle against the window sill he sat near. Through the small openings he could just make out the rain streaking down the glass panes. He shifted in his seat.

“Enjolras, if you hold your cards any closer to you; one would think they turned into your angel.”

His lips curled as he slid his comrade a look. Who in turn only raised their eyes and tore of a bite from his loaf of bread; crumbs clinging his unkept mustache.

“I’ll hold.”

“Yes, see I told you his cards have come to remind him of his sweet girl. We better inform her of his wicked ways.”

“Come on. Be respectful for once Grantaire.”

Enjolras barked, slamming his hand on the table making the tankards and plates tremble and rattle.

“Let us enjoy a game without your nonsense.”

Everyone drew silent. They glanced his way then away. He chuckled then, a smile spread from ear to ear. He then revealed his winning hand.

******

“Julien, good gentleman how shall you be playing?” His old chum inquired bringing him away from the memory that visited and wished to linger in his mind’s eye.

He murmured something and grabbed a few cards, the memory faded like fog on a day that grows warm.

He glanced at the men around him. None of them paid him any attention as their eyes remained on their respective cards. He took another long sip from his tankard. He would need more soon.

His mind flickered to seeing Grantaire hopefully slumped in a corner sodden with drink as the soldiers slammed into the doors. He had taken your hand and ran to the other side the led to the narrow alley. Before going through that last door, he had glanced back. The main had remained still in that lone corner. In his heart, he clung to the hope they saw his comrade, his too loud and brash friend as a drunk and nothing more. He brought his tankard to his lips and took a long sip. He welcomed the warmth it continued to envelop him in. The warmth pushed away the chill of the past and the worry of the present gave.

@aftertheglitterfades @corrodedcoffn @dealswiththedevilsblog @randomstory56 @pl1nfa1 @phantomxoxo @ladybug0095 @the-iridescent-phoenix @maryan028 @kindablackenedsuperhero @amethyst-serenade @moondev1l @samunson83 @julieteagk @little-wormwood @wafflepixie @shadyhamiltonfanatic @gretavankleep37 @peacefroggg23

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popcornoncemore · 3 days

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The more I work my minimum wage high school retail job, the more I find myself thinking of Feuilly

#les amis #les mis #feuilly #les miserable #popcornwithnate

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for-the-love-of-javert · 2 months

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Bowing out for tonight with this. One of my favourite songs from Les Mis performed by Samantha Barks - On My Own

youtube

#les miserable #les mis #eponine spam #female characters #eponine on my own #samantha barks #Youtube

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adreamshouldneverdie · 8 months

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Jamie Muscato's roles

So let's talk about Jamie Muscato's roles...in no particular order

Bonnie and Clyde. Clyde. He dies.

Heathers. JD. He dies.

Les Mis. Stage and Movie. Different amis. He dies.

West side story. Tony. He dies.

Lady M. Banquo. Well the musical wasn't on stage yet, but it's still Macbeth, right? I assume he dies.

anybody else see a pattern here?

#jamie muscato #well in Moulin rouge he doesn't die #only the love of his life does #christian the composer #moulin rouge #bonnie and clyde #les miserable #west side story #lady m musical

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porktato · 2 years

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marisette dump yeehaw

#les mis #les miserable #Marius Pontmercy #cosette fauchelevent #marisette #the brick #Victor Hugo #fanart #digital art #doodle #sketches #ew french people

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bobadiin · 1 year

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combeferre/grantaire, combeferre calls grantaire both babyboy and babygirl. it started kind of as a joke but now it's just genuinely his terms of supreme love and affection for grantaire

#combeferre #grantaire #wtf is their ship name #combetaire #granferre #????#combeferre/grantaire #grantaire/combeferre #les mis #les miserable #10 points if grantaire is nonbinary #combefaire

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heartbreakterrorbird · 7 months

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Marius/Cosette is the Yuri version of the Yaoi couple Javert/Valjean

#factual information #les mis #les miserable #valvert #javert #jvj #jean valjean

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homeboundmonsters · 2 months

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More Jumbled Thoughts on the Psychology of Inspector Javert

Building on the mention of Prison Mother and Law Father:

Javert exits his mother's womb into another symbolic womb: the prison, a place where transformation happens, where men are turned into beasts. Like a womb the prison entraps, monitors, maintains and sustains the life of its prisoner, but also can kill him. Because of her ethnicity and estrangement from society, Javert divorces himself from his biological mother and, in this way, the prison system holds the symbolic role of the mother in Javert's life. Because Javert is born without a father there is a symbolic void, an absence which he fills with The Law. In the philosophy of Carl Jung the Father archetype represents authority and responsibility; he is the protector and provider. Javert requires this figure to form a family triad, every child requires stability and that stability is found in parental figures- whether biological or otherwise. It is in prison where Javert adopts his affinity with observing: observing is safe, observing is a guilt-free activity because it is amoral: the observer does not partake in, and thus approve of, or disapprove of the activity he observes. In addition, observation is a passive activity. Prison and the Law teach Javert to be passive, because to be passive is to be safe from unwelcome observation, it is to be small and unseen. We see this in how Javert behaves at the barricade, like Valjean he turns into himself returning to the state of dissociation that gave him comfort in childhood.

By the time Javert leaves the womb he is already a man and so he is trapped in a sort of psychological infancy. He cannot develop beyond the idea of black and white right or wrong. He cannot move, like a man does, away from the overbearing and domineering psychological influence of his parents. He seeks to please them and when he feels he has failed he suffers mental and emotional distress and anguish. He prefers straightforward tasks, requires reassurance and praise, and seeks out the attention and approval of his parents in all things. He has been taught to be obedient and passive from birth and has not had the experience of a life outside of ‘the family’ with which he might compare his way of living. As he divorced his biological mother, Javert divorces his symbolic mother by abandoning the prison system and moving to the Law pure to work as a police officer. This is because, as a man, he seeks to identify with the masculine identity in himself as if represented by his Father. But also because the approval of his father is the ultimate form of safety because in reality, Javert’s Father figure is the Dark Father: he is critical, often cruel, emotionally distant, he is the father who consumes their own child. For what does the Law give Javert? Not social status, not family, not community, not love, not an appeasement of hunger or the safety of a good solid income.

Like the son who never flies the nest, he forms few to no other social or sexual relationships. How can he when all of his psychological and emotional energy is going into fulfilling his parents' perceived needs? This is part of the danger of Jean Valjean. He disrupts, he invites in Javert sentiments and psychological excitements which draw him away from his primary focus of satisfying his parents. He entices with an alternate way of life in which a man might live by his own values, independent and seeking only his own approval. And he introduces physical desire into Javert's life also, forcing him through a sort of psychological puberty from sexless child to confused and frustrated yearning adult. What emotions he should have had years to understand he is forced to process in short and destabilising bursts. He does not even have the language to express to himself what he desires, beyond the framework of service and pleasing a superior figure or destroying and harming the cause of the destabilisation.

Jean Valjean also entices because he is The Father. This can be seen in the development of his relationships: as a young man he is the father figure to his nieces and nephews, then he is Father Madeleine to M-Sur-M, then he is Cosette’s adopted father. Valjean represents what Javert has searched for since childhood, a figure to fill the symbolic void of the absent father. Unlike his cruel, judgemental Dark Father in the figure of The Law, Valjean is accepting, merciful, gentle, patient and forgiving. He offers praise, community, tenderness, but without the lack of any traditional masculine traits; he is strong, powerfully built, handsome, respectable, wise, intelligent, masterful, dominant, and holds social influence. To put it in a vulgar terminology: Javert has Daddy Issues. Valjean is the symbolic Father he has yearned for to treat the wounds of his agonised childhood. Now, this is not to say he wishes Valjean to be his father, that would be a naive interpretation. It is to say that he requires a figure to take that role in his emotional and psychological hierarchy. But it is also why he has such an internal conflict: to abandon the Law Father is to turn his back on a lifetime of programming, but worse: to accept that he is lovable and deserving of respect, mercy and tenderness without having to deprive himself and exhaust himself mentally and emotionally to earn those things. And worst of all, to face the belief that he has already proven through his acts that he is not worthy of this freely given love and approval that his potential Good Father offers him. The Dark Father is ingrained in Javert’s very psychology, even outside of his presence (as outside as he can ever be) he is ruled by the critical and cruel judgements and strict rules that his Dark Father has set for him. In a moment of agonised realisation, Javert comes to understand that he is worthy of Love and that he has made himself unworthy of it all at once: the perspectives of two warring Father symbols whose conflict ultimately tears apart Javert’s fragile psyche.

#les mis #valvert #javert #lesmis #les miserable #theorising #analysis #valvert week #I like this old man

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