Stone walls do not a prison make

Still plowing through Les Miserables. This evening there was a passage where the narrator seemed to heap scorn on Catholic monastics  and "religious" (for whom I have a usually silent but quite strong admiration). He talked about how anachronistic it was to have nuns and monks, convents and monasteries, still existing in the 19th Century, how hard it was to eradicate superstition, what a burial, what a living death, what a tragic waste of humanity. I was annoyed. Then he turned around and said, well, so why can't people get together and form a community if they want? That's freedom of association. And if they all call each other brother and sister, and people from all ranks of life are treated equally there, and they devote themselves to doing good, isn't that admirable? And he argues cogently against atheism. If I read him correctly, Victor Hugo believes in God but probably not in the divinity of Christ. I think that he respects Christ as a great teacher and one who willingly gave his life for others, but not as savior. He doesn't explicitly spell it out, though. I imagine that would have been too controversial. However, Victor Hugo does embrace the Christian values of self-sacrifice, humility, and service of others.

An interesting development in the plot and the character of Jean Valjean is this. Valjean is hiding in a strict convent, working as a gardener. He escaped into the convent garden when he was surrounded by his nemesis, Javert, and his henchman in the nearby streets. Now he lives entirely inside the convent walls and never goes out, for fear of being seen. (Fun plotting about how he gets established as the gardener.) He compares the life of himself and his fellow convicts when he was in the galleys--enclosure in prison, locks and bars, poor food, hard beds, uncomfortable clothing--with the life of the nuns in the convent--enclosure, locks, poor food, hard beds, uncomfortable clothing. Both groups of people suffer: the convicts paying for their own sins and the nuns, who are a penitential order (with such harsh rules that they sometimes go mad), for the sins of others. The convicts' language is full of cursing, while the nuns speak few words and those of prayer and blessing. The lifestyles are similar but one place brutalizes and the other elevates and purifies. Jean Valjean ponders these things.