In Defense of Cosette
I'm an inveterate advocate of the underdog; in half the books and movies I see, I end up rooting either for the sidekick or the antagonist. Therefore, at the risk of drawing great scorching gouts of flame, I'm going to go to bat here for some much maligned characters: the lucky in love! On the stage, to be precise.
In the course of this going to bat, I'm going to say some mildly harsh things about my fellow (wo)man. Before I do it, I would like to say that any derogatory remarks herein apply only to limited groups of individuals, are used to make a point, and are meant, at worst, in a spirit of tolerant amusement. Anyone who still takes offense, well, truth hurts if you haven't got a sense of humor. :)
Now then.
I've been mucking about in Les Miserables circles for years now, and I can tell you that no character gets a worse rap from fans than Cosette. Cosette's a wimp, you'll hear them say; Cosette's a whiner, an ingrate; Cosette (say some diehards) is a callous bitch who stole Eponine's guy!
Now wait just a cotton-picking minute, says I. Would the immortal M. Hugo, in all fairness, stand for this? I doubt it. I sure won't.
Frankly, most of this vitriol comes from the legions of Eponine adorers, who deify the little scragbag and think it no less than blasphemy for *cough* Marius to crush on some other girl. How dare he. How dare this wench sail in and purloin his schoolboy affections, and she has the nerve to be bathed, too. The effrontery. When all it would take is a glance of those puppy-dog eyes and our heroine would have been SAVED.
Many of these are teenage or recently teenage girls who happen themselves to suffer from unrequited crushes, I hesitate to say love, and therefore identify heavily with the aforesaid scragbag. Granted unrequited crushes, in vulgar parlance, suck. But let's consider for a moment the problems associated with requited-but-thwarted crushes. How does it feel to fall madly in love, discover that you are also fallen madly in love with, and then it turns out that your paranoid and overprotective father wishes to skip the country, in part to separate you from the adored? Come on, now. I'm as fond of Jean Valjean or for that matter Eponine as the next girl, but doesn't Cosette deserve a little sympathy?
"Well," say the denouncers, "Cosette's not the great person that Eponine is." What does this mean? She's rich and she doesn't die? Let's do a reality check: Eponine is a spoiled brat who grows up to be a proven thief and liar; a stalker too, if you're inclined to be harsh. Neither can she take a hint. Granted she's had a lousy time of it, but so did Cosette during her formative years, and who ran tattling "Mommy, she's touching my stuff!"?
"Eponine's only embittered because her parents don't love her." Correction: her mother loves her dearly, however much of a mixed blessing that may be, and her father, while a complete scumbucket, provides for her after a fashion, which is more than you can say for Cosette's biological daddy, the louse.
"Eponine dies for her darling, the ultimate sacrifice!" Yeah, so? This is Les Miserables. That's not noteworthy. What did she have to live for anyway, Marius or no Marius, and beyond that, does suicide really make anyone admirable?
"Eponine" (here's the supposed kicker) "is spunky, she's gutsy, she's self-reliant! She wears pants! She doesn't hang out in a garden all the time!" Yes? Nowhere does it say that Cosette isn't any of these things. (Well, okay, so she doesn't wear pants.) Read the book. She's a girl with a mind of her own; sheltered yes, spoiled maybe, but no wimp. A lark and not a dove, as her creator remarked. And even in the play -- where, let's face it, she doesn't get much chance to prove herself -- if you get an actress who gives a darn, you can see there's a cool woman in there.
"There are times when I catch in the silence the sigh of a faraway song, and it sings of a world that I long to see, out of reach -- just a whisper away, waiting for me..."
That is a girl with dreams, with aspirations.
"In my life, I have all that I want; you are loving and gentle and good; but papa, dear papa, in your eyes I am just like a child who is lost in a wood... In my life, I'm no longer a child and I yearn for the truth..."
No, that is not a brat kid talking. That is a young woman wanting to know who she is and where she came from, and trying to sort out her differences with her father in a reasonable fashion.
Besides, even if you don't count Marius's opinion for much (I sure don't ;)), what about Valjean, who adores her? Is he a moonstruck dope too, or what are you into this story for?
So give Cosette a break, I say, and don't begrudge her her happiness or her lovable dork of a husband. (He really is a dork. I'm not gonna defend him. :))