He may not look so friendly here… but believe me, “Old Grandpa Hugo” is filled with wonderful knowledge.
Victor Hugo loves a tangent.
Reading Les Miserables is kind of like listening to a wise grandfather tell you a convoluted story— sometimes he'll trail off and go into detail about what seems like nothing, but it's always welcome because you know he has so much to say. So, I sit back and listen, trusting that “Old Grandpa Hugo” is going to help me see life a little differently.
Hugo’s tangents can be about anything. Sometimes it's about the human condition— poetry about the universal experience of falling in love. Other times, it's in-depth summaries of French military battles and political history. But weirdly enough, I think one of my favorite parts of Les Miserables was the tangent about the Paris sewers.
In the climax of the novel, Marius is severely wounded and unable to get out of the barricade. In this moment of extreme peril, Jean Valjean heroically saves his life by carrying his body through the Paris sewers. It's this epic, biblical-Esque moment where against all odds, Jean Valjean navigates a maze of disgust to emerge at the other side a new man.
During this epic moment, Hugo goes on tangents galore. He spends a good chunk of pages just describing the history of the Paris sewers; going into deep detail about their construction and how they have changed over time. Suprisingly to me, this tangent wasn’t just bearable— it was genuinely enthralling.
So, prior to leaving for this trip, when I received the syllabus, I was thrilled to see we were going to the Musée des Égouts de Paris: The Paris Museum of Sewers. When people asked me what I was most excited to see in Paris, I liked telling them “the sewer museum” just to see how they’d react. I found it fun to be excited about something so odd— and I really was thrilled to see the “underbelly of Paris” that Hugo so eloquently described.
“There were in Paris at that time two thousand two hundred streets. Imagine, underneath them, that forest of shadowy branches called the sewer.”
As we descended down the stairs, I first noticed the smell. It was distinctly sulfurous, only increasing in disgusting intensity as we ventured further through the sewers. The sewers were a maze of dark twists and turns, just as Hugo described them. Certain turns were blocked off, and through the bars, you could see dark tunnels oozing with dirt and grime and rats scampering about.
The museum began with an overview of the history of the sewers, providing us with a moving map that showed how the sewers grew over time. It was very rewarding to see Hugo’s information backed up by the museum, and the visual helped greatly.
Looking below me, through the grates I could see a rushing stream of sewer water, bubbling its way along the floor. It was so difficult to look at (and smell), but it was also fascinating.
As we made our way through, this thrilling portion of Les Miserables came to life. I imagined Jean Valjean in these same sewers, tiredly laboring his way through with no end in sight. Marius on his back, with sweat and blood dripping down his face; I saw his boots, heavy with the waters that had infiltrated them, and I saw his clothes soaking wet.
Throughout the section, there’s an emphasis on rebirth as Jean Valjean goes to the lowest of places both literally and figuratively to emerge in the light. Visiting the sewers helped me understand the urgency and perilousness of this section of Les Miserables, as I understood the depth of just how low Jean Valjean had to go in order to emerge as a new man.
A sewer-rat-monster-creature. Beware!
The sewers may have not been the most glamorous thing to see in Paris, but for the purposes of this class, they ended up being one of the most memorable. Walking the same vile pathways that Hugo wrote about in the 19th century was deeply impactful, and experiencing it all first-hand made it all the more fun. Through Bookpacking, as we experience our novels, we’re flexing our empathy skills. There’s a sense of understanding that comes from experiencing exactly what our characters are experiencing— taking in the sights and smells as they do in the novels. I’ve loved using my imagination to see the characters all around me, inhabiting each space as they would have in their time. It makes even spaces as bleak and stinky as the Paris sewers a marvel to experience.