"For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes"

Soooo I accidentally meta'd on tumblr about Courfeyrac and Tholomyes in response to someone else's reblog of someone else's gif, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS ON TUMBLR.

So I thought I'd best repost here.


I've seen a lot of people complain about the "For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes" thing, so when I finally got to that part of the brick I was PAYING ATTENTION. Because Hugo clearly thought he was saying something here, and you KNOW Hugo wasn't down with Tholomyes' behaviour and was down with Courfeyrac's.

And you know what? I actually really like what Hugo's doing here! Because there are some superficial similarities between the two: cheerful, charming, into the ladies, etc.

"That Tholomyes is astounding!" said the others, with veneration. "What trousers! What energy!"

That's the sort of thing you could totally imagine being said about Courfeyrac, amiright?

BUT. Although Hugo says, "For Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes," he follows that up with this:

"any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honorable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin."

So what Hugo's saying ISN'T that Courfeyrac is a terrible person like Tholomyes, he's saying that ALTHOUGH Courfeyrac is a lot like Tholomyes in a lot of ways, he's different in one VERY IMPORTANT way: he's honourable! So Hugo's saying that it's not inevitable that young men of that nature are thoughtless and terrible human beings! It's not inevitable that Tholomyes behave in such an awful way to Fantine, because Courfeyrac is proof that a Tholomyesish person can be a GOOD HUMAN BEING.

So my read is that Hugo is using the comparison to DISS THOLOMYES EVEN FURTHER through the comparison with the awesomeness of Courfeyrac; he's not trying to drag Courfeyrac's name through the muck but let him shine the brighter through the comparison with the reprehensible behaviour of Tholomyes.

And I think that's pretty awesome!

OKAY, THERE

There are my thoughts on Courfeyrac and Tholomyes that I have been meaning to write up for -- oh gosh, SIX WEEKS? REALLY? *headdesk*


(all brick quotes in the above are from the Hapgood translation because yay for ctrl-f on webpages and yay for project gutenberg!)