Ooh yes, there was gonna be Actual Meta about Grantaire vs Tholomyes, wasn’t there?
Well. Everyone probably remembers that the character Tholomyes is directly compared to is Courfeyrac, except I think that’s more to say that while the two seem alike on the surface (Courf does have a slightly careless attitude to women, though) they’re actually very different, basically Courf is a good guy while we all know Tholomyes is a scumbag.
But anyway! By the time we’re in the Amis chapters and we meet Grantaire, seeing Tholomyes’ cruelty has trained the reader to be quite wary of ranting, drunken, unattractive and ironical men. And oh god, they have so much in common, they’re both constantly making references and showing off their cleverness, they both have their ways of drunkenly calling a nearby woman ugly:
[FT] O Josephine, face more than irregular, you would be charming were you not all askew. You have the air of a pretty face upon which some one has sat down by mistake.
[R] Matelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chimaera. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian’s mistress, and she is a good girl.
(Yes, R, you did that very poetically, but it’s not your finest moment.) They also both seem to have this thing about women marrying rich men:
[FT] Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds.
[R] And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Floreal, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits.
(It’s occured to me that R’s concern here seems to be for the woman, and he may well be right there, because the last pretty girl who hooked up with a frightful man was Fantine.)
So anyway, a first-time reader of the Brick might very well think on meeting R, ‘oh bloody hell, another uncaring self-absorbed arsehole.’ But, they’d be wrong! For a start, all Tholomyes’s speeches and sarcasms come from a place of arrogance, while Grantaire’s come from a place of deep depression. Tholomyes is perfectly content with his life of slacking around and using women, Grantaire is…not so, because he can see all the badness happening around him:
[FT] Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I am happy. The birds are astonishing. What a festival everywhere!
[R] I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!
And of course, they differ on some key issues, like that one the whole book pivots around (love):
[FT] Ladies, take the advice of a friend; make a mistake in your neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error is human; I say, error is love.
[R] They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.
And there’s the One Big Difference, which is that Tholomyes doesn’t care one tiny bit about Fantine (or Cosette), while Grantaire loves Enjolras pretty much unconditionally and happily dies for him. Annnnnd I suppose that in there is the point Hugo was trying to make with the Grantaire-Enjolras story: “ARE YOU DRUNK AND CYNICAL AND LOUD? WELL, DON’T WORRY, IF YOU TRULY LOVE SOMEONE AND PLACE THEM ABOVE YOURSELF THEN YOU’RE NOT A THOLOMYES. ROCK ON.”