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.
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timeasmymeasure
3.2.6
Date: 2014-06-12 02:09 am (UTC)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.