Archive for Musicals.Net Musicals.Net
 


       Musicals.Net Forums -> Les Miserables
going_like_elsie

Jean Valjean and Cosette

Do you think that on some level Jean Valjean could be in love with Cosette? I remember reading a part in the book describing how Jean Valjean had never felt romantic love for anyone before and so his love for Cosette had filled that void... It was a long time since I had read that but I have been thinking of it recently. I don't think that Valjean would ever act on this feeling- or even really recognize it within himself but it is kind of interesting to think about. What do you think?
Trevor reincarnate

I was watching the True Hollywood Story or whatever about Angelina Jolie and how she adopted her son at the same time she split from Billy Bob Thornton and cut ties with her father. She said in an interview that her son filled the void she had as a result of those two big splits.

Does that mean she's in love with her son? No. Does that mean she LOVES her son? Yes.

There's a difference. So no, I don't think Valjean romantically felt anything for Cosette.
The Very Angry Woman

Re: Jean Valjean and Cosette

going_like_elsie wrote:
What do you think?


I think you need to read Behr's book, especially the part about Valjean's latent sexuality.
lesmisloony

Were you involved with the screenplay for the 2000 miniseries?

*bleaches brain*

STOP IT, ALL OF YOU.
Fantine

Well it's a reasonable thing to ask. I've wondered about it myself.

But I agree with Trevor.
(Never thought I'd say that).
Trevor reincarnate

Fantine wrote:
(Never thought I'd say that).


Wow. You're cool.
Ulkis

I don't think he wanted to have sex with her. But like it said in the book, since she was the only person in his life, he loved her like he would other figures in his life if he had them (mother, sister, wife, daughter, etc.) So I think subconsciously he expected Cosette to stay with him and be at his side as a wife would be, even if he didn't expect anything sexually of her.
mastachen

I bet him and Cosette had some really awkward moments as she was going through puberty.
Monsieur D'Arque

Wasn't there something about this in the deleted scenes from the Brick?
LesMisForever

Re: Jean Valjean and Cosette

going_like_elsie wrote:
Do you think that on some level Jean Valjean could be in love with Cosette?


NO!
Orestes Fasting

Quote:
I don't think he wanted to have sex with her. But like it said in the book, since she was the only person in his life, he loved her like he would other figures in his life if he had them (mother, sister, wife, daughter, etc.) So I think subconsciously he expected Cosette to stay with him and be at his side as a wife would be, even if he didn't expect anything sexually of her.


I agree with this. I think there's a sort of collective fandom knee-jerk reaction against the concept of Valjean being in love with Cosette, both because any shade of father-daughter incest is incredibly icky and because the 2000 miniseries made the idea explicit. But I do think the thought is lurking there in the depths of Valjean's mind, if not in a conscious or developed or outright sexual way. Think about his reflexive jealous hatred of Marius, for example.

Then also, Valjean's whole life is stripped of anything sexual, so I have no trouble believing that he could simultaneously love Cosette as a daughter, a sister, a wife, and not be skeevy about it.

Monsieur D'Arque wrote:
Wasn't there something about this in the deleted scenes from the Brick?


Not really, just this:

...he asked Cosette, "Aren't you going to put on your dress and your hat, you know the ones?"
This happened in Cosette's room. Cosette turned towards the wardrobe where her schoolgirl clothes were hanging.
"That disguise!" she said. "Father, what do you want me to do with that? Oh, the idea! No, I'll never put on those horrors again. With that machine on my head, I look like Madame Mad-Dog."]
"Well," said Jean Tr�jean, "give them to me."
"Oh, gladly, Father," cried Cosette, "but what will you do with them?"
"That's my business."
"I understand, Father. They're for the poor."
"Yes," he replied, "they're for the poor."
Jean Tr�jean retired early that night. He took "those horrors" into his room, and when he was alone, he took the poor merino dress and the poor plush hat, those horrors, spread them out on his pallet with a painful smile, and kissed them, then his white head fell on these cast-offs, and if there had been somebody in the room at that moment, he would have heard the good old man sobbing. His heart was bursting: he could not have said what it was... He felt as one would feel in front of the clothing of his dead child.
He locked this dress and hat in an armoire which he never opened, and when he had put away the key to this armoire, it seemed to him that it was a tomb he had just closed, and that he had put his happiness inside it.
Brunnhilde

A book? I'd like to read it.

And... are there any serious rewievs of the Brick readable online? Especially Freudian ones. Very Happy
Set_Buildin_Dad

Brunnhilde wrote:
A book? I'd like to read it.

And... are there any serious rewievs of the Brick readable online? Especially Freudian ones. Very Happy


Get the book, read it, make it a summer project. This is one of the great pieces of literature of the 19th century. Every educated person should read it.
Ghost

In the mini series starring Gerard Depardieau and John Malkovich there is dialogue that goes something like this.

Valjean: "Cossette, i love you"
Cossette: "Yes, as a daughter."
Valjean: "No"

So that interpretation certainly exists.
Brunnhilde

Set_Buildin_Dad wrote:
Brunnhilde wrote:
A book? I'd like to read it.

And... are there any serious rewievs of the Brick readable online? Especially Freudian ones. Very Happy


Get the book, read it, make it a summer project. This is one of the great pieces of literature of the 19th century. Every educated person should read it.


I don't think you understood me. I meant somebody mentioned here a book ABOUT the brick, analysation or what. I've read the Brick at last 25 times.

And I meant analysations online.

H�lye picsa, mit k�pzelsz, ki vagy? Baszd meg a kurva any�d. �s nyald ki a seggem.
sopranodespair

Ghost wrote:
In the mini series starring Gerard Depardieau and John Malkovich there is dialogue that goes something like this.

Valjean: "Cossette, i love you"
Cossette: "Yes, as a daughter."
Valjean: "No"

So that interpretation certainly exists.


I never thought Valjean had romantic feelings for her, but that's interesting. I'll have to watch that series.
Fantine

Cossette? Who's that?
lesmisloony

Enjorlas's secret mistress, duh.



Also, as all you people should know by now, the dialogue is as follows:
JVJ: J'aime Cosette.
Marius: Oui... comme un pere...
JVJ: Non. J'aime Cosette.
Marius: Je crois qu'il vaut mieux si vous sortiez.

Now stop making me have to transcribe that.
bigR

lesmisloony wrote:


Now stop making me have to transcribe that.


Very Happy Very Happy

Now, really, Hugo says that Cosette is everything for Valjean (mother, sister, daughter, wife) so maybe, on a very uncounciously level there is something of it. But for a paragraph where he hints at it, we have dozen of pages about the purity of his love.
I mean, he had such a lonely live that Cosette was everything for him. He's never known any kind of love. He's got everything in one person. But he certainly doesn't lust after her as icky Depardieu Valjean does!
Also, from the way he keeps cosette old clothes, it is evident that he misses the little child. He would had been happy if Cosette had stayed his little daughter for ever. And when he is dying she remembers her as a small child.
So, even if Cosette was everything for him, this is very very far away from the "I love Cosette" of the miniseries, where Valjean is in love with woman!cosette and teenager!cosette.
Brunnhilde

I hate Depardieu. Why does he think he must play all the classic French heroes? He's UGLY and untalented. Great French actors? See Gabin. Delon. Trintignant.
LesMisForever

Ghost wrote:
In the mini series starring Gerard Depardieau and John Malkovich there is dialogue that goes something like this.

Valjean: "Cossette, i love you"
Cossette: "Yes, as a daughter."
Valjean: "No"

So that interpretation certainly exists.


Not necessarily.

A movie, play, or musical can create their own version based on their whole vision of the work.

The musical is guilty of that as well. Mme Thenardiers wouldn't stand up to her husband at all, let alone mock him in public. She listened to what he said, and accepted it without much arguments.

So, just because we see something in one adaptation, or another, that doesn't mean it has bases in the original. Actually, sometimes adaptation goes blatantly against the source.
Tenalto

Quote:
Actually, sometimes adaptation goes blatantly against the source.


A great example of this: Read Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. Then see the film. Oh, better yet, The Princess Diaries. *sigh* I want to like Anne Hathaway, but she's been in so many films that completely destroyed the books I loved as a kid.
Catherine

Hey Tenalto, have to read the 6th Princess Diaries? It mentions how they're always messing up movies of her life, and how in one film, they made her grandmother nice and her dad dead, and thats exactly how the film portrayed it! I laughed a lottt when I read thast.
Tenalto

Yeah, I read that! I've always wondered how authors feel when their works get warped and they can't do anything about it. At least that time it could be mocked!
Jennifer Lynn

Agreed on those who say it wasn't a sexual thing, but that Cosette replaced all those other women that should have been in his life--mother, wife, daughter.

The 1935 movie isn't always on the money, but it has a very subtle scene that touches on this, and it's conveyed with no more than Frederic March's facial expression. In the words of Arlene C. Harris, author of the LM-themed novel Pont-Au-Change (unlike the other sequels, it's quite well-written) and mistress of the excellent Les Miserables Media Comparison Checklist:

Quote:
A very strange moment not covered in the other versions: when Cosette confesses her love for Marius to Valjean, she says, "He's all the world to me," and Valjean says, "Have you nothing left for me?" And Cosette replies, "But you're my father... I mean, I know you're not my real father, but...." And a light clicks on in Valjean's eyes�though they aren't related, they are. He realizes that his love for her is not the same as her love for Marius, and that though she is everything to him he can never be anything but her father. For Valjean, this is a major blow�he has never loved anyone but her, so she had to be everything for him... but, he is not everything for her. All in all, an interesting twist on the possibilities....
       Musicals.Net Forums -> Les Miserables
Page 1 of 1