The reason I love Javert as the antagonist in Les Miserables is that he acts a lot like the protagonist. Most villains in stories show themselves as evil like killing innocents and craves power. Javert, however, doesn’t want that. Javert believes he hunts down a criminal because he is dangerous. He is a monarchist and defends his belief. He follows the law by the book and believes it is the right thing to do. I love antagonists like them. It shows that even though you think that something is righteous, doesn’t mean that everyone else should think so as well.
“[Javert was] a spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to everything, heard everything, and recollected everything, believing he was about to die; who spied even in his death throes, and who, leaning on the first step of the grave, had taken notes.”—les misérables, victor hugo (via itsquotational)
“When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when Javert had arrested him beside Fantine’s death-bed, had escaped from the town jail of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken himself to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost, and everything disappears in this belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea. No forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know this. They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save. The police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was summoned to Paris to throw light on their researches. Javert had, in fact, rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Jean Valjean. Javert’s zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked by M. Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Angles. M. Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Javert’s patron, had the inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris. There Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word may seem strange for such services, honorable manners.”—
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, Chapter X, Book 5
I’M LAUGHING SO HARD, OH MY GOD
VALJEAN IS THE ENTIRE REASON JAVERT GOT TRANSFERRED TO PARIS
Therefore, Valjean is indirectly responsible for Javert getting a promotion. Which is fucking hilarious, because if we rewind a few books to when Javert was trying to get himself dismissed, we get this line from Valjean (Then the mayor):
“Javert, you deserve promotion instead of degradation.”
“Javert had demanded assistance at the Prefecture, but he had not mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped to seize; that was his secret, and he had kept it for three reasons: in the first place, because the slightest indiscretion might put Jean Valjean on the alert; next, because, to lay hands on an ex-convict who had made his escape and was reputed dead, on a criminal whom justice had formerly classed forever as among malefactors of the most dangerous sort, was a magnificent success which the old members of the Parisian police would assuredly not leave to a new-comer like Javert, and he was afraid of being deprived of his convict; and lastly, because Javert, being an artist, had a taste for the unforeseen. He hated those well-heralded successes which are talked of long in advance and have had the bloom brushed off. He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and to unveil them suddenly at the last.”—
Les Misérables 2.5.10
Javert was afraid of being deprived of his convict.
“Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him–he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.”—Victor Hugo on Javert, Les Misérables (via anything-but-one-straight-line)
Of course, Javert is very much moved in the end, with the revelation of Jean Valjean’s sublime qualities. But while Marius responds to the same discovery by trying to make amends, Javert commits suicide. Having abandoned his own quest to bring the outlaw to justice, the policeman triggers a series of reflections that flesh out his psychological profile. The man with no inner life is amazed to find that he has “under [his] breast of bronze something preposterous and disobedient that almost resembles a heart” (1325). He has learned to understand, to empathize with, and therefore to care about another.
In consequence, he has rendered good for good without any regard to external factors. Perhaps most puzzling, he has been able “to sacrifice duty, that general obligation, to personal motives, and to feel in these personal motives something general too, and perhaps superior” (1320). Public affairs have yielded to personal concerns of equal, if not greater, weight. The dichotomy between the particular and the general has suddenly dissolved, as private emotions have become invested with the sense of universal value previously reserved for the legal code.
This capacity for discerning and affirming a unique identity brings not joy and liberation but terror and disorientation: “Javert’s ultimate anguish was the loss of all certainty. He felt uprooted. The code was no longer anything but a stump in his hand… . Within him there was a revelation of feeling entirely distinct from the declarations of the law; his only standard hitherto” (1323).
”—Les Miserables: Conversion, Revolution, Redemption by Kathryn M. Grossman (via mightbebeautiful)
“‘If you believe me, you will come in full force.’
The inspector threw Marius a glance such as Voltaire would have thrown at a provincial academician who had proposed a rhyme to him.”—les misérables, victor hugo (via itsquotational)
Javert really isn’t alert all the time. And it’s kind of adorable.
I mean, during Fantine’s arrest he is so shocked about the whole situation that he just stands there for a moment and doesn’t snap out of it before he hears the sound of the latch when Fantine tries to leave. And at that point he has momentarily forgotten all about Madeleine being there and that the Mayor already said that Fantine is free to go.
Again at the barricades, when Javert is working undercover. He has been observing the revolutionaries like a hawk, and when he’s done doing that, he just sits down and spaces out. He “doesn’t seem to see anything that’s going on”, doesn’t even notice Gavroche circling around him, and when Enjolras finally asks who he is, he just kind of startles awake.
Javert is a daydreamer pass it on.
Well he is described as a “melancholy dreamer,” so …
Okay so the other day I was casually rereading the brick again and at one point Javert says he was an adjutant guard.
Here is the definition of that courtesy of Google:
1. a military officer who acts as an administrative assistant to a senior officer.
a person’s assistant or deputy.
According to Wikipedia is corresponds roughly with a staff sergeant or a warrant officer.
Another site said that when addressing the adjutant guard the senior officer would say “mon adjutant” so basically “my assistant”
Anyways basically this means that yes brick Javert would have worn that guard outfit with the snazzy hat (no, not the bicorn; the other one):
But also it means he was some other guard’s assistant and I find that really interesting?? Like, he becomes a temporary assistant/bodyguard for the (then) secretary to the Prefect of Police later, which is why he is in M-sur-M … Does he have like this network of officials that give him referrals?
Also on a sort of unrelated note I found out that the gendarmerie, which was pretty much like the military force charged with police duties in the civilian population, kind of had a rivalry going with the local police (because they would sometimes have to fight over whose jurisdiction something fell under maybe??) And also the symbol of the gendarmerie was a flaming grenade. Silver laurel leaves seem to be a theme in the French Police (I think they’re worn on the collar?).
So is Javert actually higher ranking than a regular police officer? I had always thought he actually ranked below them, being given risky spy missions and such, but now I’m thinking the opposite. It does say he has subordinates in the brick.