The Ladies of Les Miz and Why I Like Eponine Best

Yes, I know, this blogpost is incredibly late. But you see, dear reader, organizing my life and dealing with things we call emotions are very taxing tasks. Excuses put aside, I haven’t been writing much. I plan to make up and keep up.

Finally getting out of my damned mini-depression through reading an inspirational book, crying my eyes out, and telling myself that my heart is less significant than so many other things, I finally watched Les Miserables.  I must admit: I’ve never read the book, nor have I seen the musical. I’m still looking for people kind enough to give me a copy though.

Watching Les Miz was an awesome experience. The characters were raw and very much human: Jean Valjean's strength of character, Javert's obsessive and myopic tendencies, Fantine's self-sacrifice, Enjolras's love for his country.

I love Enjolras. He was an activist ready to put aside his own life for his country. Marius, despite breaking through his elite roots to fight for France (which is enough a reason as to why I'd want to date a guy), loses points for falling in love within a span of 3.98 seconds and for being an overall insensitive jerk. More on this later.

I don't know about other girls, but I would almost always look for a female character that I would identify as the heroine of any story. And thus this mini-nalysis of the femmes of the movie.

The stark contrast between the ladies of Les Miz is very obvious.
Images are stills from the movie as well as promotional pictures.

Anne Hathaway, whose version of "I Dreamed a Dream" I watched several times on Youtube, was as good as I expected her to be (although, unfortunately, I had also watched her Ricky Lo interview). Her portrayal of Fantine made my inner feminist roar for justice. Had I been a character in the novel, I would have probably formed a barricade for a totally different purpose: protecting women's rights. In the movie, Fantine has a child out of wedlock. She leaves the child with the Thenardiers so she can look for work and provide for her daughter. This is not uncommon today. Apparently penis-less men who would voluntarily abandon their children are as common before as it is today. The problem is, in Fantine's time, being a single mom can mean the difference between decent work and and a not-so-decent one. And because it is Les Miz, she gets fired from the factory she works in and had to result to prostitution (as well as selling her glorious hair and a couple of teeth) to provide for her kid. Fantine later dies of consumption, breaking my heart for the first time.

Which leads us to Cosette (played by Amanda Seyfried, but this isn't really about her, is it?). Cosette is many things: Fantine's daughter, Jean Valjean's redemption, Marius's love. Ironically, she also does absolutely nothing, except sing a few songs and go emo for about a couple of minutes. A friend of mine told me that Cosette is not really a character, but more of a symbolism for "hope", but I find her lack of character almost as offensive as Bella Swan. Nothing beats the Twilight protagonist, though. At least Cosette is somewhat self-sacrificing, whereas Bella is just plain selfish. Despite this obvious trait, her passive personality makes her fade into the background. I mean, Javert is obsessive to the point of being borderline immoral, Enjolras is ready to die for France, whereas Cosette is just there, doing nothing, unaware of what is happening. It would have been an interesting to see her character develop. After all, she does have an interesting back story, but I guess Victor Hugo believed that her role as a symbol means she must be as unreal as possible in a cast of tangible personalities. 

A stark contrast to what my officemate called as "bland blonde Cosette" is Eponine. If Cosette is translucent, Eponine is fire. She is introduced as the daughter of of Cosette's former caretakers, a poor, unkempt girl with bad rep who's in love with the unattainable Monsieur Marius. She loses Marius's heart to beautiful Cosette and is friendzoned bigtime. But she dies as the most badass female character in the movie. I mean, after Marius leaves her heart in pieces, she binds her breasts, runs off to the barricade, shoots down a couple of Javert's men, then gets killed by a bullet through the chest so she can save Marius. Wow. Just wow. 

Marius does not pay much attention to Eponine because, in a setting where a woman is desirable mostly if she is well-clothed and beautiful and virtuous, Eponine does not meet the requirements. She is no Cosette. And thus the merits of her character are not appreciated: her bravery, her self-sacrifice to make a loved one happy, her attempt at redemption. 

Eponine's character is much more endearing than Cosette's, simply because instead of standing in the sidelines and being Mary Sue-ish, as in the case of many badly-written literature portraying women, Eponine chose to act. She chose to get down and dirty. She chose to actively participate in creating her destiny rather than stand idly and letting her anyone manipulate it. Her struggle, despite the inevitable tragic end (it is Les Miz, after all), is bittersweet and very much human.