Discussion Post: 3.2.6 A Healed Wound, A Bleeding Heart

[thjazi]

Well, that's what my edition says, anyway!  Discuss away!

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MICHELLE IS BACK also some other things

[thjazi]

MICHELLE MICHELLE MICHELLE

MICHELLE IS BACK AND SHE’S WONDERFUL

also Tellmarch is back and he’s

back

Sorry, he’s sympathetic and all, he gets Michelle back to health, but: MICHELLE FLECHARD. Even Hugo’s Weirdness About Motherhood—and there is some serious weirdness happening— can’t get in the way of my loving Michelle. Because Michelle is fighting like anything to rewrite this story, and she NEVER STOPS, not even when she’s almost dead. She has no weapons except her words and her silence, and oh, doesn’t she use them; she interrogates Tellmarch as soon as she’s able, as best as she’s able , and when he can offer her no information, when he tells her to Be Quiet, she GOES WITH IT, and she is ALL THE WAY QUIET— not in cruelty but because she’s obviously dealing with this situation on her own, and she is reserving her strength, and Tellmarch just made himself irrelevant. He can help Michelle; he can’t help her help her kids; and so she doesn’t need to talk to him. Because Michelle is a woman with FOCUS.

I’m still trying to sort out the way I feel about their contrasting apoliticism, — clearly they’re both intellectually unattached to the current overarching battle. They’re both peasants, they both care more about their immediate contacts than any Grand Ideal— Neutral Good, or maybe True Neutral, even.

But there’s an element of CHOICE there for Tellmarch that Michelle’s lacked; he can read, he knows the local situation, he recognized the Marquis when they met. And Tellmarch has decided, for himself and for his own reasons, that he wants to stay out of that larger picture (and I highly doubt the encounter with the Marquis has done anything to make him crave more involvement!).

Michelle, though— Michelle’s NOT aware of what’s happening. She was a peasant, she was a Breton; she was made a French Citizen by adoption. Her husband was killed, she was shot, her house was burned— and she doesn’t know why, and NO ONE IS TELLING HER anymore, but she is asks; and when she doesn’t get real answers, she doesn’t waste time on a stranger who won’t talk, who tells her to be silent; she recovers and makes a bag to travel and sets off on her own.

So overall it seems to me AT THE MOMENT that Tellmarch is choosing to stay out of the public, as he has apparently chosen through his life, while Michelle is now choosing to engage. BUT I COULD BE WRONG, I shall continue to turn this over!

The narrative asks “What heroism is a poor peasant woman capable of?” She’s capable of surviving TWO lost families, of chasing down THE ENTIRE DARN NARRATIVE to get her kids back, with no wise mentor to guide her, basically no supplies— without even a direction to look.

And she’s doing this without arms, too. Military men in this novel keep talking about being “inexorable” — I do not think it means what they think it means, but I think some of them might be about to learn.

Obligatory Note About Hugo Weirdness on Women: “The mother is no longer a woman, she is a wild creature. Her children are her cubs” ” Hers is a blindness superhumanly enlightened.” etc. etc. What’s so…unnerving about this, for me, is that OF COURSE I’m not about to say NO PARENTAL AFFECTION COUNTS FOR NOTHING. Parental love is LOVE, and when it’s there it’s a solid thing, I just spent most of the LAST book read going on about how very powerful love in its various forms can be, how much of an often-ignored influence it is.So I am totally with anyone who wants to say, basically, PEOPLE WILL GO THROUGH HELL FOR THE PEOPLE THEY LOVE. Yes, one hundred percent!

But this—this putting maternal love beyond the realm of the human, knocking it into the realm of not just the animal but the unavoidable—it removes so much of the heroism that love and attachment bring. Michelle DOES NOT have to go search for her children; no one would be surprised if she didn’t. This is WAR, there are probably dozens of women in a ten mile radius who are embarking on their own journeys to recover from the loss of children, of various ages, to the fight, or to disease, and their roads will not be noticeable easier.

But Michelle is CHOOSING, for her story, to go find her children. She’s CHOOSING to face pain for the family she might (might! only might!) have left, instead of facing pain to start anew. Love is her MOTIVE, and it’s a fantastic motive, but it’s not her shackle. She could choose something different.

But she won’t, and THAT’S THE HEROISM SHE’S CAPABLE OF, is choosing the risk and the unknown, even shot and shattered, and I AM SO ANGRY AT HUGO FOR TRYING TO OVERWRITE IT WITH TALK OF INSTINCT.

3.2.6

[bobbiewickham]

I love this view of Michelle as she recovers, demanding answers desperately and angrily from Tellmarch, and not getting anything but vague, sheepish demurrals and irrelevant patronizing warnings about her health (which reminds me of the doctor’s treatment of Fantine in M-sur-M).

Tellmarch evades because he feels guilty, even though his impulse is always to save his fellow man, even if the fellow man isn’t acting much like it. He who saves the wolf kills the prey. I love the complexity of Tellmarch here. He is the kind of man it’s easy to portray as saintly: he stays out of politics, he stays out of any worldly affairs, he is wholly non-violent, he loves nature and simple life (shades of Valjean), and he will help anyone who crosses his path. But his isolation and indiscriminate mercy has its price. We’ve already seen the bloody consequences of his mercy to Lantenac (and I love how Hugo adds that Lantenac certainly stopped thinking of Tellmarch long ago), but now we’re seeing the harmful consequences of his isolation. Because of his ways, he’s the town oddball, and can’t get answers for Michelle.

Michelle’s dark night of the soul, her anger, her desire to die so she can be a protective spirit for her children—all of these are great, despite Hugo’s irritating aside about women and motherhood. That aside perfectly encapsulates the idiocy of the patriarchal worldview. A mother isn’t a woman, she’s a “female,” animal but divine, inferior but also somehow superior, but never equal, never capable of reason, and never human. A beast of burden who is occasionally given lip-service and called an angel.

Michelle descends into despair, and comes through it into action, and she marches off to find her children. And it is heroic, fuck you very much, Hugo.

[primeideal]

"a cure is a paternity," Like Cimourdain, who feels an even deeper affinity to Gauvain after saving his life (both times, actually!) The healing contribution is an indirect way of "parenting" someone—this "fatherly" relationship contrasts to Michelle’s motherhood, which is more physical and earthly. At least, according to this narrator.

"Hence there was a certain dread regarding him." We talked in the first part about how Tellmarch’s saving Lantenac actually didn’t come back to bite him, personally—he let the guy go free to slaughter people, but Tellmarch personally wasn’t then attacked by Lantenac, and in some sense this is kind of avoiding consequences. Here, we see that there is a price Tellmarch has to pay, not for any specific actions, but for being the kind of guy who saves people without question while everyone else is busy with civil war. He’s cut off from his social environment, and can’t even get any information to help Michelle.

"You did wrong to save me," Another take on the ends and means back-and-forth. According to this logic, he shouldn’t have tried to save her life for life’s sake—she’d be better off dead where she can protect her children.

"And how to make this mother’s all-absorbing idea listen to reason? Maternity is illogical; one cannot reason with it." Up till this point the rhetoric has actually been pretty believable! She’s motivated out of the deep need to protect her children, Tellmarch doesn’t really understand because he’s never been there. It’s just here that we go from "all-absorbing" to "illogical," because reason can’t interfere with the emotions.