Grass grows over and rain washes away

I’ve been debating how to open this blog. I thought maybe a rhetorical question could be good, real solid English class stuff y’know? I’ll list a few potential openings. Why do bad things happen to good people? Can a single person make a difference? What is the point of life? You can see why these are perhaps not the best openers. They’re a little much for a student travel blog…

The Seine, where Javert takes his fatal jump.

Truthfully though, during our time bookpacking I've asked myself more questions than I’ve answered. Getting an entire month to unpack (bookpack some might say) A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens and Les Misérables by Victor Hugo has been wonderful. It has been a gift to be able to take time and sit with the texts. To walk the streets as the characters did and try to place ourselves in their shoes. To imagine a Paris in the midst of revolution and domestic bliss.

A Tale of Two Cities was published in 1859, with Les Misérables published shortly after in 1862. That’s 167 years ago. Yet here we are, meeting outside the Sephora searching for traces of the higgledy-piggledy (a beloved phrase within our class) Paris of the past. So, here’s another loaded rhetorical question– why are we still reading books from 1859 and 1862 today?

I’ll give you my long-winded answer.

I knew, vaguely, that these were notable books before reading them and the titles were largely the reason I wanted to take the class. Both books have been on my “To Read” list for a while now, probably having been added after looking up classic literature lists. And yet, I knew, if I was not incentivised, I was never going to finish Les Misérables. When I was 8 my voice teacher showed me her copy in preparation of doing the musical. I looked at “the brick” as we call it and decided right then I could never do that. So, to spite myself I decided I could and I would. I’m grateful I did.

So, what makes us want to read these books today? Even when I was young, I understood there was something moving about Les Misérables. My sister was playing “a lady of the night” in the junior production of Les Misérables, so naturally we were front row for all 8 shows. I cried every single time. I don’t think I even understood what had upset me so much. I’m sure I hadn’t picked up on any of the plot, I just knew that people were experiencing great hardships that I could never have imagined. This was probably one of my first exposures to art exploring both the highs and lows of the human experience. As I read Les Misérables in preparation for the class, I once again found myself with tears in my eyes, but this time I was able to take in the work in its original, full, unabridged glory.

The view from a tower In Notre Dame.

Hugo’s work is so reminiscent of Paris itself. When we trace Jean Valjean and Cosette’s escape from Javert, you get a sense of how one can disappear amongst the diagonal streets and alleyways. When reading the book back home, it often felt so sprawling yet specific that it was hard to make sense of, but when you stand at the students’ barricade of 1832, you get a sense of the people over the individual. The book does a marvelous job of helping modern readers understand the political state and tension of the time. It covers important historic moments with a degree of detail not found in most academic materials. But even with the Waterloo tangent being delightfully entertaining, the most memorable moments for me, were tied to the personal journeys of characters. These moments are why I believe we still care so much about this text. Detached recountings of the July Monarchy and June Rebellion are plentiful, but heart wrenching tales of friends standing beside each other before the National Guard are more rare and to me, more valuable.

In my screenwriting courses at USC, we talk a lot about the personal being the universal. I find this to hold true for Les Misérables. The French Revolution, and the following cycles that Les Misérables follows, are incredibly important in human history’s march toward democracy. But numbers and facts can only tell you so much. It’s the characters and relationships that impart a sense of scale, cost, and purpose to such events. Through characters like Marius and his grandfather, we get to understand how different political beliefs interacted with each other. Marius being cast out of his own home by his royalist grandfather for his initial admiration for Napoleon speaks to the political tension of the time. Beyond this, Hugo can dive deeper than many academic works, he is not constricted by what we deem important enough to be remembered.

“History neglects nearly all these details, and cannot do otherwise: it would be overwhelmed by their infinitude. Yet these details, wrongly called trivial - there is no trivial fact in the affairs of man, no trivial leaf in the vegetable world - do serve a purpose. The features of the years are what the face of the century is composed of.”

— Victor Hugo

With this in mind, it makes sense why Hugo covered the students’ barricade of 1832. There was no great change as a result of the fight, and the students are brought down in a horrific, beautiful ending. Its lack of place in textbooks does not make it insignificant. Real people’s lives were lost, real lasting damage was done.

Depiction of the barricade from Les Misérables.

Les Misérables does not let you separate yourself from the past, it puts you in it. And once you are in it, it can feel an awful lot like today. And for me, that’s why it is still moving. Circumstances change, but grief and pain are a human truth that 167 years cannot change. There are many ways in which you could draw comparisons between modern day and Les Misérables. Parallels are plentiful for the inequality and injustice of life, and these instances are best felt through the experiences of characters. The unfairness of Jean Valjean's punishment evokes the same anger within me that cases of oppression do today. This is a gift. Hugo reminds readers,

“The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future. This specter, this past, is given to falsifying its own passport. Let us inform ourselves of the trap. Let us be on our guard. The past has a visage, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the visage and let us tear off the mask.” ”

— Victor Hugo

Here lies one of the great importances of connecting to our past. Hugo provides a wonderful opportunity to fulfill our great duty.

Sculpture from Victor Hugo’s Paris residence. The piece was inspired by imagery from Hugo’s political poem Souvenir de la nuit du 4 ("Memory of the Night of the 4th").

Honestly though, the most special part of reading this book had nothing to do with recognizing that we are constantly writing the history of tomorrow. To me, I cried while reading this because it reminded me that while there will always be darkness, there will always be light. Les Misérables does not sound like a happy book, but happy is a strong word. Les Misérables does not shy away from the hard and horrible truths of life. The world and the society we have created is unfair and unequal. Circumstance is not always under your control. Bad things will happen to good people.

I lie awake a lot thinking about this. Why? Why do bad things happen to good people? I haven’t got an answer and Les Misérables does not try to offer one. Instead, it offers time to grieve and a reason to hope. Marius loses the friends that had become his brothers. Hugo does not try to diminish or distract from that grief. He acknowledges it and holds your hand. He says to find joy and happiness not in spite of pain, but because of it. Life is as horrible as it is incredible. During Marius and Cosette’s wedding Hugo writes,

“To have suffered, how good it is! Their grief made a halo around their happiness.”

— Victor Hugo

I’m not sure I have quite as much conviction, but I can appreciate the sentiment. Hugo provides hope where he cannot provide answers. Monseigneur Bienvenu, the bishop who sets Jean Valjean on his path to goodness, is a testament to the change a single person can create. He wasn’t like Napoleon, deliberately deciding the fates of so many men. Monseigneur Bienvenue lived his life with compassion and kindness, and even if it had only reached one person, he still would’ve changed the world. In just Jean Valjean’s story, the lives of many were improved and so much love was born. And is that not the point of it all? To love others and be loved in return? Death is an unchangeable facet of life and what it takes cannot be returned. This is the hardest truth I’ve ever had to reckon with. In my life I’ve been trying to figure out how to go on living while those that I love cannot. I tried to cry quietly as we watched the musical adaptation of Les Misérables. The haunting loneliness and pain of “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” seemed to speak to my grief so profoundly I didn’t know what to do myself. So I cling to Hugo’s closing reflections, the one that reminds me why the book mattered then, today, and tomorrow.

“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”

— Victor Hugo

A Woman, Ideal, or Object?

As a part of our class we had to write an essay, (sadly, we don’t spend all our time walking around pretending to be Jean Valjean). I wrote my paper in response to the question of how well Victor Hugo speaks to contemporary audiences. One of the main issues I grappled with, was the role of women within Les Misérables. However, as we’ve worked our way through Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, other art, and history I’ve been looking at this question more broadly.

Discussing women in 19th-century literature can be a tricky subject. Personally, I find it difficult to find the line between understanding that social norms and conventions were wildly different from modern feminism versus condemning authors for their treatment and views on women. I enjoyed both Les Misérables and A Tale of Two Cities, and I found it easy to get lost within their worlds. Then, they hit you with a “One of the generosity of women is to yield,” and I’m yanked right back out. I’d say this is an eye-rollable offense. Annoying reminders of the patriarchal thought process like this are present in both books. And yet, I liked the books. Does this make me a bad feminist? I certainly hope not. When deciding my own distinction between period-typical attitudes and book-ruining offenses, I found that intention played an important role. I don’t believe Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens meant to intentionally degrade and suppress women’s rights and autonomy; to me, their offenses are born of ignorance but not malicious intent. Their ignorance would be a bigger obstacle if their female characters did not push against the authors’ own limitations. I believe that if either book were written today, the perpetuation of women as wholly submissive creatures would not be present. Alas, these books were written in the 19th century.

The bedroom of Charles Dickens’ sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth. Mary died in Charles arms at just 17 and is said to be the inspiration for many of Dickens’ pure and perfect female characters, like Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities.

I find Dickens’ treatment of women quite baffling. His novel contains a perfect, beautiful, dutiful woman whose entire purpose revolves around the men in her life. Lucie Manette has no ambition beyond her role as a daughter, wife, and mother. She’s entirely good, angelic, and unflawed. All to say, she’s boring and absolutely fictional. And yet, the novel also contains a fascinating portrait of a vindictive, unforgiving, and intelligent woman whose autonomy leads her to storm the Bastille. When you meet Madame Defarge, she’s silently knitting while her husband runs the wine shop. How absolutely predictable of Dickens. I quickly learned that my own immediate dismissal of Madame Defarge was ill-placed. She isn’t just knitting; she's “knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads” (wow). She isn’t knitting socks or mittens but writing and marking enemies of the revolution to die. She directs all the women in the neighborhood to do the same and even remains in charge within her marriage. I feel I should include one of my amazingly academic annotations about Madame Defarge to fully illustrate her character. Here, the husband, “Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth walked up and down complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life,” to which I wrote she is running this man. Or when Defarge questions how long it may take the revolution to succeed, she responds with, “‘Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule’… ‘How long’ demanded madame, composedly, ‘does it take to make and store lightning? Tell me?’” I, of course, wrote GOTTEM BADDIE. For all of Lucie’s angelicness, Madame Defarge makes up for it with maliciousness. I would have loved to see a female character that fell somewhere in the middle, but I still can applaud such a marvelously flawed woman.

Hugo also walks the line between saintly and realistic female characters. Fantine becomes pregnant before being married and is abandoned before the father ever knows. This, at the time, would have been scandalous and damning. Fantine sells her hair, teeth, and body to provide for her daughter– saintly actions by unsaintly means. By the time she falls ill, she transcends into an angelic figure, even to the nuns taking care of her. When we first began talking about Cosette, Fantine’s daughter, it seemed like she was a Lucie Manette figure, beautiful, devoted to her father and husband, and lacking any personality. But as I looked back, there was so much of her character that we were simply erasing. She certainly is not the most nuanced or well-developed character, even by 19th-century standards (Jane Eyre anyone???), but still, as readers we’ve ignored aspects of her character so that we could take the easy route and throw her into the innocent, naive, subservient female character bucket. I don’t think Cosette is so easily classified. One day she learns that she is pretty (and Hugo has some… interesting takes on what that does to a woman) and wields it “like a knife”. Her train of thought isn’t saintly; after meeting Marius, she decides the officer she used to watch is “dull, inane, stupid, feckless, conceited, disagreeable, impertinent, and very ugly” (I even included this quote in my essay; it was too funny to ignore). We allow Marius, Cosette’s husband, to retain other pieces of his character after he falls in love but reduce Cosette to an infatuated girl in love. Which, to be fair, she is. Still, Marius is the one writing her love poems, and Cosette is 15! And I don’t know about you, but a 15-year-old girl with a crush is a fearsome thing to behold.

A painting of Juliette Drouet, Victor Hugo’s mistress and companion for 50 years, in his Paris home.

Something I found really interesting was the difference between the relative “innocence” of female characters in the books and the art we’ve seen in museums and even churches in London and Paris. Dickens and Hugo both draw very strict lines on what they deem as invasive to portray in their books. A lot of the other artists of this period, or even earlier, don’t seem to have such qualms. Semi- or full nudity seems incredibly common in the artwork of the 19th century, which seems a little strange considering the strict societal conventions about public decency. Once again, another distinction must be made: what is art and what is sexual provocation dressed up as allegory. Calling a nude statue a goddess does not negate its true purpose. Once again, intention matters. Nudity or even sexuality is certainly not inherently nefarious; it can be honest, empowering, and beautiful. However, consent from those involved and awareness from the artist of the power they hold are essential when crafting such vulnerable pieces. There must be a larger purpose than simply gratifying voyeuristic tendencies of the men who could afford this art at the time.

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) by Édouard Manet in 1862 and 1863. The painting calls out how women are treated in art without hiding behind the guise of allegory.

Men portraying women in art is a conversation that is very much relevant today. In fact, I learned about Laura Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze when reading her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema for a Cinema and Media Studies class at USC. I find it quite sad how similar the male gaze functions between traditional visual art forms, like paintings or sculptures, and modern forms of visual media, like film, animation, and video games. At their worst, they remove the woman and leave only a shell meant to be sexualized behind. It’s hard to watch as people stand around and take pictures of paintings that seem to intentionally remove humanity in favor of sexuality. It appears that the woman in the painting is offering herself to the viewer, or at worst, there for the taking. This plays into the voyeuristic aspect of art, and I would argue contributes to the “ego libido” of the viewer. For the paintings driven by and for the male gaze, the women are explicitly crafted as objects. In film, the narcissistic gratification of ego libido is achieved by viewers identifying with the powerful male protagonists who have these women at their disposal. The viewer simply inserts themselves into these roles. For these paintings, the owners essentially play the part of the male protagonist. These women are at their disposal. They may view them when they please and control who else may get that privilege. I don’t believe those who commissioned such paintings actually cared about the goddess or figure the woman was supposed to be portraying; I feel their pleasure from these paintings came from knowing it was a real woman being depicted, over whom they had control. Please note, I have intentionally only alluded to male gaze-driven paintings vaguely as I don’t feel it necessary to subject those pieces to more attention.

This isn’t to say women and femininity can’t be appreciated and depicted in art; I vehemently want more of that. I want more women with character, more with flaws, more who wield their body as they see fit. It’s heartbreaking to see the same issues of a 19th-century painting present in an advertisement on the metro. Just as we adjust our expectations for feminism in past centuries, those in the future will have to adjust to ours. I, for one, hope they condemn our complacency. And if life imitates art, I fear I must get working.  

French Conviction and Slow Walkers

I’ve never felt so American until I got to Paris. I try my best to wear clothes appropriate for Paris, always say bonjour when entering a boulangerie, and even fight my instincts and not smile at pedestrians (smiling at strangers is an American symptom). And yet, you take one look at me speed walking down the streets (yay, walkable city!) and you know that I am afflicted with the American hustle and bustle. Parisians love to amble– I do not.

For class, we read a fascinating excerpt from The Flâneur by Edmund White, which defines Flâneur as a Parisian figure that wanders the streets without an end destination while observing and pondering every facet of the city. White, an American himself, points out that “Americans are particularly ill-suited to be flâneurs.” I obviously immediately took offense until I realized that he was probably right.

There were so many differences in opinion to be found and I found myself surprised at how violently I was reacting to a mandatory piece of sourcework. I think I actually eye rolled at this:

“I asked a French couple who recently visited me in New York for their first impressions after just twenty-four hours in America. The wife said, ‘In New York you can tell by people’s body language that no one cares what other people think of them, whereas in Paris everyone is judging everyone and the only people who have this American-style insouciance are the insane.’””

— Edmund White

To my senses it seemed like an argument against themselves? Frankly, the stress of trying to always be presentable and perfect in Paris has worn me down. Another culture shock has been, let’s say, the language of love here. For all the smiling we do in America, we don’t usually flirt with people on the street. My use of flirting really is being quite generous. As White puts it “American-style feminism had restrained men not to ogle women”. Interestingly, here White is explaining to a french couple who were upset by the lack of attention they had received in the United States.

That’s when it hit me. Maybe I was so upset because the French seem as strong in their conviction as Americans. Would you look at that?

Throughout our study of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, we’d been talking about the differences between Britain and France and how they viewed one another. It seems strange now that the countries would have viewed themselves so differently, especially when both were poised for some sort of change in the monarchy. The political cartoons against each other were, of course, cartoonish, but still reveal their deeper sentiments towards one another. Both countries had deep rooted convictions that since it was the way they did it, it was the right way.

With this understanding, the hatred aimed at Darnay, for being an aristocratic emigrant in A Tale of Two Cities, started to make more sense. Of course, much of the French public’s resentment is due to his station of power, but after experiencing the culture alongside reading the book, I think much of their anger was flamed by what they feel is a betrayal to France, and its ideals by retreating to England.

The strength of the French public's conviction about France’s own ideals are memorialized around the city. Nearly every official looking building has three words carved into it, “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité”. As you may have surmised this translates to “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”. This is certainly an achievement after a horribly oppressive monarchy, (but please allow this American Feminist an eyeroll at the use of fraternity, but to be fair, “democratic” nations hadn’t quite thought to include women or people of color in their liberation). A whole country will never abhor a single ideal, and such a fundamental shift from a monarchy to a republic (not to mention an empire) will never be clean. I knew very little about the french revolution before this class as it is majorly simplified in a world history curriculum, so I found myself surprised by the complexity of beliefs within Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Hugo explores the varying beliefs and ideals of the French through numerous different characters within the novel. For instance, in just one family you have several different ideas of ideals about what France should be fighting for. Grand-père who is a firm royalist and denounces his son who became a commander for Napoleon. Marius, not unlike France itself, experiences several transformations. He’s raised as a royalist under his grandfather, but after learning the truth of the father he never knew upon his death, he shifts to revere Napoleon and becomes a Bonapartist. Later, he befriends some student revolutionaries, learns about liberty, and eventually fights at the barricade in the name of the Republic.

“To all the glories of France”

It is hard to fathom how so many ideals can exist alongside each other. To my surprise, the Palace Of Versailles illustrates this beautifully. As orchestrated by Louis Philippe, the last King of France, Versailles attempts to honor all parts of France’s history. Versailles is large enough to encompass all these warring yet all french beliefs. There is a huge painting of Napoleon crowning himself emperor just as there are statues of Louis XIV and Louis Philippe himself.

In this, I find something enviable from the French. Can we as Americans build a bridge between the fractured pieces of our beliefs. Can we acknowledge those differences while moving forward for the common good? Only time will tell, and it must be remembered this unity inherent from the start, but consciously crafted with the benefit of hindsight and self reflection.

So, in respect to the culture we have been immersed in, I forced myself to slow down and flâneur. I wandered without extensive research and didn’t even overtake smooching couples on the street (ew). However, as White pointed out earlier, Americans really aren’t predisposed to flâneuring. So I flâneured myself into the thing Americans love just as much as ice and air conditioning, shopping!

The Arc of a City

Getting to walk around London has been a wonderful experience. Everywhere you turn is layered with history and progress. I find the mix of modern and old architecture just spectacular. We marvel at the Tower of London, dating back to William the Conqueror in 1066, as it sits in the foreground in front of the gleaming glass of London’s modern skyline. Within this setting, it’s inescapable to connect to Charles Dickens’ own opening of A Tale of Two Cities.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness… in short, the period was so far like the present period that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on it being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only”

— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

While Dickens was writing about the comparison of 1775 and 1859, the sentiment holds true in 2026.

When you walk around Westminster Abbey, it’s hard to not feel in awe of the incredible feat of human achievement. It’s easy to wander around and remark at how beautiful it is. It’s nearly inevitable to snap an aesthetic picture for your Instagram story, which I admit, I did. But as the initial shock wears off, you realize the church worships its monarchy as much as its faith. There are plaques commemorating the “brave” souls who, we now recognize, were colonizers. At every moment in time, we reach new highs in human achievements and new lows in humanity.

I started to feel like “the mender of roads”, from A Tale of Two Cities, so easily distracted from reasoning by beautiful presentation. When you look upon the Royalties' beautiful shrines, its difficult to not fall under their influence. From the outside it isn’t easy to understand the royalists of 1775, how could they possibly want a monarchy with how they treat them? But then you walk by Buckingham palace, and while you may not understand, you certainly gleam some insight.

The past is nuanced, complicated, and long. Just as Dickens’ presents many points of views and opinions in his book, London shared its own stories as we made our way around the city.

On a surface level, the many statues scattered around the city add to its artistic and charming nature. But if you read the plaques, or are lucky enough to have a professor who is very knowledgeable in British history, you can get a glimpse into the mixed beliefs of the people's past.

The statue of Oliver Cromwell stands directly outside the House of Commons. Across the way the small bust of King Charles I is mounted to St. Margaret’s Church. While I had never heard of Cromwell before the class, I quickly learned his significance and a brief understanding of his complicated story. Cromwell was a commander in The New Model Army in 1645, who fought against an absolute monarchy in the English Civil War. He later played a large role in the execution of Charles I. In 1899, the statue was placed in front of the parliamentary House of Commons. It was controversial from the beginning. Some people opposed it for his anti-monarchy views, while others opposed his later shift into a military dictator and the role he played in Ireland. The glaring face of Charles I, who looks directly across at Cromwell, highlights this opposition well. The symbol of Cromwell, checking the power of the monarchy as he stands in front of Parliament is powerful and articulates this moment in history better than simply reading about it.

Not surprisingly, many of the statues we saw were described as controversial figures. I suppose if you are important enough to have a statue in England, you probably have to be controversial. There are statues of colonizers, conquerors and kings as well as more modern figures like Winston Churchill.

I also found the statues of Trafalgar Square fascinating. The square contains four plinths, but only three statues. The first of George IV, the second Sir Charles James Napier, the third Sir Henry Havelock. The fourth plinth was, I apologize that I keep using this word, controversial. It remained empty for a while and suggestions kept cropping up. After Margaret Thatcher’s death, she was even in the conversation. That was, even for England, too controversial. Thus it was finally decided to use the fourth plinth as a rotating art installation. When we visited, the artwork included casts of nonbinary and queer peoples faces. It is quite extraordinary to have Charles I on one corner and a testament to human progress on another.

As we read about A Tale of Two Cities, we’ve spoken about the arc of history and the march towards democracy. I feel these statues demonstrate this quite beautifully.

Another statue I found quite moving, and incidentally related to A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables, is not really an official statue at all. Banksy, the street artist and activist, has recently installed a piece at Waterloo Place. When the class came across it, we spoke about how we each interpreted it. Blinded by the own flag he carries, the figure is about to step off his own plinth. Most of us felt it is a reference to blind patriotism, especially with its proximity to Britain’s Military prowess. I also thought it was really cool that the statue was being looked over by a security guard. In this instance, the right to speak out was not only being allowed but protected. \

The tragedy during the fight for democracy in A Tale of Two Cities can be harrowing, but I hope that these small yet meaningful acts would make the people in the arc of history proud.