So I’ll preface this by saying that I don’t really watch much television and Call the Midwife is very typically Sunday teatime viewing from the BBC (women frequently give birth on the show in about two minutes with absolutely no mess at all, so…) which isn’t a criticism as such, just something to…
Probable spoilers at the link for non-UK peeps, but I’m just going to take the opportunity to highly, highly, highly recommend both this television series and the basis memoirs by Jennifer Worth (the second book just became available on the Kindle here in the US). I’m only about ¼ into the second book, but learning about some of the workhouse conditions endured by the impoverished has been so incredibly sobering (and frightening).
I second all of this, Call The Midwife is brilliant. And while last episode was hard to watch, I think it was worth it.
“Here’s an even better idea,” said Grantaire. “How about I take on eight of your hellish host? For each one of you I outdrink, you release a name on my list back into the land of the living.”
“You have yourself a wager,” said the Devil. “Who will we be starting with? This— Enjolras?”
“Let’s save him for last,” said Grantaire. “I’ll get to him.”
Or: Grantaire survives the barricades and marches down into the underworld to bring all of Les Amis back to life. They are all in hell because they are Deist heathens, the lot of them.
He knows the revolution will fail, he knows the world and his soul are both voids. He has nothing to believe in. He drinks.
From his position in the dark in the corner of the bar, he paints them all a leader- part man, part angel, leading them into battle. But his imagination only stretches so far. He takes the hand of this being he created. He dies beside him with joy. There’s still a little light in the endless darkness, there’s still a little light in him. But he can’t imagine living, let alone living with love. He buys red paint.
The barricades fall. He still drinks. His angel stares from the canvas half-accusing and half-pitying. Before long, only the paintings remain.
Okay, so as soon as this episode got going it was easy to guess there would be some sort of twist? We tried to work out what it was. My boyfriend guessed that all the characters were actually inside some giant computer program, and Victoria was a virus, and the hunters were just particularly stylish/creative anti-virus programs-
-he wasn’t that far off, actually.
Actually Victoria was a child-killer, or one half of a duo of child-killers- her boyfriend killed a little girl while she filmed it. Now she’s basically condemned to her own personal hell, locked up in the ‘White Bear Justice Park’ and running for her life everyday from crazed killers and senseless phone-carrying zombies filming her, before her memory is erased and she has to do it all over again. Wait, it gets worse! The Justice Park is open to the public, where visitors are encouraged to pick up their phones and follow Victoria around at a distance, filming her terror. Later they get to hurl things at her while she’s behind glass. There are kids there, too, so this is obviously considered a fun family day out-
Ouch.
Definitely a response to the discourse on the death penalty that pops up whenever something really bad and involving a child happens in Britain. Victoria wasn’t actually punished with death, but at the end we see her begging for it. The actors involved in the Justice Park (lulling her into a false sense of security before trying to kill her, chasing her with masks and chainsaws…) seem to be enjoying themselves a little too much. There’s a stall where people can buy blood-covered sponges to throw at Victoria. (For £2.) At what point has she been punished enough? Probably never, no-one seems like they’re going to stop anytime soon and it must be a pretty good moneymaker.
So yes. All very…line-blurry. And the details of what Victoria actually did to the girl were left pretty vague, it seemed like her (now dead) boyfriend actually commited the crime and she ‘just’ filmed it without intervening. Will people eventually get tired of watching her cower in terror and they’ll move a new criminal in? Will she eventually just die from the terror and the stress? (Lenora Crichlow deserves all the BAFTAs for this, by the way.) What exactly was Victoria’s relation to her victim, since she was apparently close enough to her to film her playing happily in a house once?
I remember ages ago I read an interview with Martin Freeman where the Bulger killers were brought up for some reason, and he said he’d have stoned those kids to death given half the chance. If you know about that case, you probably know that’s not an uncommon reaction, but it’s what I was thinking of during this episode…that park got everyone to join in with the stone-throwing, and they all seemed pretty happy about it…
This
is the third time I’m restarting this post about Fantine. It’s
difficult for me to know how to begin talking about this character who
has been so important to me over the past 14 years. I just passed her
death in my reread, and she has been on my mind a great deal. Fantine is
a woman capable of many things. She strikes for Paris completely on her
own when she is a teenager. She feels sympathy for old cart horses. She
manages to laugh with her friends when the man she loves leaves her,
waiting until she’s alone to cry. Courage, compassion, dignity. A woman
anyone would be lucky to know.
But not many people do know her.
She slips away, unnoticed by the world. Even her daughter, the most
important person in her life, leaves her life by a chain in the road.
Fantine thinks that she’s giving Cosette shelter and safety and even
playmates; she’s wrong. Fantine is wrong about a lot of things. She
thinks the Thenardiers will give her daughter the dress that she buys
with the money from her hair. She thinks that she saves Cosette from
disease with the money from her teeth. She thinks, until the moments
before her death, that she will see Cosette again.
If you saw her
on the street and actually noticed her, you wouldn’t know all of the
untrue things that she believed. You wouldn’t know how she was fired and
too simultaneously ashamed and proud to speak to the man who supposedly
fired her when he would only humiliate her a second time (wrong again).
You wouldn’t know that she had been in an abusive relationship. You
wouldn’t know why she had no hair and front teeth. You wouldn’t know
about the moment she decided “All right! I’ll sell what’s left.”
She
was wrong about a lot of things, but based on what she knew, “all
right, I’ll sell what’s left” was the right thing to do. In this book,
what society deems wrong is often right. Breaking parole, becoming a
prostitute. Both Jean Valjean and Fantine have their plights related to
Christ’s at various points. To me, Fantine’s love is divine and radical
in its abjection. Lose her place in society completely, endure what she
clearly does not want to endure? That’s fine. She expects nothing but
her daughter’s safety in return for her sacrifice. She dreams of
Cosette, and in the hospital she believes she will see her again, but at
the moment of “all right, I’ll sell what’s left,” she stares down an
endless dark tunnel and chooses to answer it anyway. She might not be
able save herself, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t save her
daughter.
Courage, compassion, dignity. You’d be lucky to know her. But you wouldn’t.
Jean
Valjean did, though. He notices her – too late for Fantine, but in time
for Cosette. And make no mistake, this is Fantine’s victory. She saves
her daughter through Jean Valjean. The Bishop is the source of virtue in
this novel; Fantine is the source of love. She completes Jean Valjean’s
salvation. She does not die with a resolution to her agony in the
garden. She dies in misery and fear – as, I think, she always knew she
might, once she decided to sacrifice everything she could. “All right!
I’ll sell what’s left.” I will give up my hope if it allows me to hope
for you.
Hers is the bleeding, burning heart of
an unsaved savior. She is buried in a pauper’s plot. You wouldn’t notice
her there any more than you would have noticed her when she lived. But
her legacy is love. The people she brought to a state of love – Jean
Valjean, Cosette – amplify and spread her gift. Her love lasts and
lasts and lasts. That you might notice. You wouldn’t know it was from
her. But in her short time, Fantine made the world better.
You have a yellow bike and you call it your “yellow ray of sunshine” and you can play the pennywhistle and and you describe jetlag as being hit by a bus full of cheesecake and you told someone that skittles will get them through exams and you smile like a child and I don’t think you understand just how adorable you are.
