Jean Valjean the Blocking Figure

(This is a 10-page pseudo academic essay I wrote just to process all my feelings about Valjean and Cosette. In the future I might write more in the same vein: e.g. “Javert the Obsessed Pursuer” or “Éponine the...” I’m not sure what, since she’s been reduced to so many things.)

The term “blocking figure” is one often heard in academia to describe a stock character of romantic comedy, both in the classical Roman plays of Plautus and Terence and in Shakespeare. This is the character, typically the father or guardian of one of the principle young lovers, who initially prevents those lovers from marrying, but is doomed to be thwarted in the end. He most often takes the form of the senex iratus – “angry old man” or “angry father.” In the classical Roman plays, he’s usually the father of the male lover, who disapproves of the female lover because she’s beneath their station. But in Shakespeare and in later examples such as Italian commedia dell’arte and opera buffa, he’s usually the girl’s father or guardian, who uses his patriarchal authority to withhold her from the boy. In some examples he knows about their love and actively opposes it; in others the lovers know instinctively that he will oppose it, forcing them to keep their romance a secret. This trope is hardly exclusive to comedy either and not even always male.

Based on everything I’ve read about the BBC Les Mis, it sounds like the whole thing is 100 times more “tropey” than it ever needed to be. And tropey in a gender essentialist way too.

(sarcasm mode below)

Of course Valjean is an aggressive edgy anti-hero, instead of a man who privately struggles but still succeeds at being “almost holy” – he’s more “interesting” and “real” now than Hugo made him. Of course he relates to women in terms of sexuality. Of course he's ultra-controlling of Cosette and they argue like King Triton and Ariel – that’s just what fathers and teenage daughters do. Of course Javert is personally obsessed with him with blatant homoerotic subtext. Of course Marius’s reverence for his father becomes more about Georges’s bravery and action heroism than about his love – action and war are what “men” care about. Of course the Amis go whoring and are creepy about women, even about starving, ragged teenage girls – “boys will be boys.” Of course even Marius is creepily attracted to Éponine – it’s only “realistic.” Of course Thénardier beats his wife – whoever heard of a man keeping a woman in psychological thrall without needing to physically abuse her? 

Even the race and hair color discourse plays into all this. Of course the ingenue is a pale blonde while her doomed prostitute mother is a brunette; of course the sleazy, thieving, wife- and child-beating villain and his sexualized daughters are people of color while most of the leads are white. The classic tropes were ready and waiting.

We probably should have been prepared for this from the start. Even Davies’ one creation that’s almost universally loved, the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, is a fairly tropey rendition of the book. I’ve read some good discussions of this topic from @anghraine – one of the few Austen fans out there who doesn’t like Davies’ version. She’s pointed out that no one’s hair color is ever mentioned in the book of P&P, but of course Colin Firth’s natural light brown hair had to be swapped out for dark Byronic curls; of course blonde Jennifer Ehle had to be wigged brunette, because Elizabeth-like heroines are always brunette; of course sweet, proper Jane and Georgiana had to be the blondes. And of course, for better or worse, Firth’s Darcy is a brooding romantic hero (Austen’s Darcy is stiff and cold, but he’s described as smiling surprisingly often) and of course there are added scenes that highlight his smoldering sexual attraction and attractiveness to Elizabeth. If Austen’s Darcy is less overtly sexual, the critics say it’s just because he’s “a woman’s fantasy of a man,” not a “real man.”

I’m tempted to check out all of Davies’ literary adaptations now and see if they all take a tropey approach to characterization . Because in Les Mis, that definitely seems to be what we’re getting

More rambling that’s not about “Les Mis”

Trope I’m sick of seeing in fiction: The widowed father who turns cold and distant toward his child/children in his grief over the mother’s death.

Whether it’s because she died in childbirth and he blames the kid, or because the kid(s) remind him too much of her, or because he’s obsessed with avenging her death at the expense of all else, or because he buries himself in his work to distract himself, or just because he’s depressed and apathetic to everything, I’ve seen and read this trope so, so many times. Yet we only occasionally see it with the genders reversed; most widowed moms in fiction are perfectly good, warm parents. But dads? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

While of course the trope can be done effectively, I think it’s time to give it a rest. It shouldn’t be a woman’s job to keep the family functional and make her husband invest in his own offspring. That’s too much pressure on us. Besides, to impressionable kids, seeing the trope too many times is scary. One of my worst fears growing up, which I still haven’t quite shaken, was that all men emotionally “check out” in the face of traumatic loss. I lived (sometimes still live) in terror of my mom dying before my dad, because I was convinced I’d effectively lose him too then.

So please, no more of this.