Marius and a Shakespearean trope (warning: long and rambling)

I've been listening to the podcasts of Dr. Emma Smith’s Approaching Shakespeare lectures from the University of Oxford. In the lecture on Much Ado About Nothing, she points out an interesting trope found in Shakespeare’s comedies – as well as a wider cultural idea – that I had never really thought of before, at least not in depth. The trope is this: that in a man’s youth, male friendships and social bonds are his most important relationships, but that as he matures, those bonds “must” lose importance in favor of romance and marriage to a woman.

Smith cites this trope in Much Ado About Nothing to explain just why Claudio trusts Don John and not Hero (in his culture and stage of life, male “friends” are inherently placed above women; in the end he matures by learning John’s deceit and reconciling with Hero) and to interpret Benedick’s character arc too (moving from a misogynistic, male friendship-centered life, to embracing his love for Beatrice, and to choosing that love over male friendship by agreeing to kill Claudio). She also discusses the similar “love vs. friendship” themes in Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Love’s Labour’s Lost, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, and in a tragic variation, Othello. While she doesn’t mention this theme in Romeo and Juliet, I thought instantly of two essays I’d read in the past that highlighted Romeo’s dilemma of “Juliet vs. Mercutio.” This is definitely a recurring Shakespearean theme.

I wish I were taking a literature course, because I want to write an essay about Les Misérables’s use of this trope in Marius’s character arc. Particularly in the musical, where Marius is much more “as one” with his friends than in the novel and “love vs. revolution” (which is implicitly “love vs. friendship” too) becomes a central dilemma for him. I already have so many thoughts on the subject, but no definitive conclusions.