Les Caprices de Marianne: okay, apparently I CAN'T turn off my fangirl brain
So tonight toi_marguerite (AKA Elyse) and I went to the theeeatre to see Musset's Les Caprices de Marianne.
I was resolved to turn OFF my fangirl brain for this. No, I told myself, Marianne is not an allegory for France. She is a teenage girl who was raised in a convent and immediately married off to a creepy old judge. This shit was written before Les Mis was a gleam in Victor Hugo's eye; Coelio is not Enjolras; Octave is not Grantaire. No, I told myself in the middle of the first act, stop trying to slash them, this is a plot in the general mold of Cyrano de Bergerac. Coelio is madly in love with Marianne and can't talk to her, so he sends Octave to make his intentions known; Marianne falls for Octave instead. Simple.
Ha ha ha.
See, Coelio is a beautiful, poetic, pure, vaguely ethereal soul who has devoted his entire existence to Marianne. Who is totally not an allegory for France dammit. Octave is his scruffy, drunken, womanizing best friend. Coelio is repeatedly referred to as Octave's, for lack of a better translation, better half. It didn't help that the guy playing Coelio was pretty and blond, and the guy playing Octave looked vaguely Minarik-ish, and the two of them had more chemistry together than either of them had with Marianne.
It gets better: in the end Coelio is killed by the jealous husband, and the entirety of the last fifteen minutes of the play take place with Octave cradling his dead body in his arms, looking disturbingly like this. And soliloquizing about how Coelio was the dearest thing in his existence and he didn't actually love Marianne, he was just acting as a proxy for his better half. The subtext was completely, utterly oh shit it was really him I was in love with all along, and I only ever loved you because he loved you.
It's BEGGING for an allegorical interpretation. Marianne is France! The jealous old husband is tyranny! Coelio is the Republic! Or Enjolras. Or something. And Octave is totally Grantaire.
Wiki informs me that Les Caprices de Marianne was written in 1833 and first performed in summer 1851. I am not going to outright come out and SAY that Hugo saw it, put an allegorical spin on it after Napoleon III's coup d'état, and put it in his novel, but... oh shit, I just outright came out and said it.
I was resolved to turn OFF my fangirl brain for this. No, I told myself, Marianne is not an allegory for France. She is a teenage girl who was raised in a convent and immediately married off to a creepy old judge. This shit was written before Les Mis was a gleam in Victor Hugo's eye; Coelio is not Enjolras; Octave is not Grantaire. No, I told myself in the middle of the first act, stop trying to slash them, this is a plot in the general mold of Cyrano de Bergerac. Coelio is madly in love with Marianne and can't talk to her, so he sends Octave to make his intentions known; Marianne falls for Octave instead. Simple.
Ha ha ha.
See, Coelio is a beautiful, poetic, pure, vaguely ethereal soul who has devoted his entire existence to Marianne. Who is totally not an allegory for France dammit. Octave is his scruffy, drunken, womanizing best friend. Coelio is repeatedly referred to as Octave's, for lack of a better translation, better half. It didn't help that the guy playing Coelio was pretty and blond, and the guy playing Octave looked vaguely Minarik-ish, and the two of them had more chemistry together than either of them had with Marianne.
It gets better: in the end Coelio is killed by the jealous husband, and the entirety of the last fifteen minutes of the play take place with Octave cradling his dead body in his arms, looking disturbingly like this. And soliloquizing about how Coelio was the dearest thing in his existence and he didn't actually love Marianne, he was just acting as a proxy for his better half. The subtext was completely, utterly oh shit it was really him I was in love with all along, and I only ever loved you because he loved you.
It's BEGGING for an allegorical interpretation. Marianne is France! The jealous old husband is tyranny! Coelio is the Republic! Or Enjolras. Or something. And Octave is totally Grantaire.
Wiki informs me that Les Caprices de Marianne was written in 1833 and first performed in summer 1851. I am not going to outright come out and SAY that Hugo saw it, put an allegorical spin on it after Napoleon III's coup d'état, and put it in his novel, but... oh shit, I just outright came out and said it.