1.1.1-Doeskin-pantaloons

Club Ninety-Three 1.1: The Woods of La Saudriae
Timezones mean that I am one of the first people to post in this club as an actual reader of a chapter, so I am a little bit scared. Hello friends! I had never heard of this book before a read-through was suggested, so I really have no idea what I am getting into, or any context bar the chapter I just read.

With that in mind, it is reassuring to know that Hugo hasn’t changed at all.

the number of murders committed there made one’s hair stand on end. … Everywhere was abundance of flowers.

Because juxtaposing the beauty of nature and the horror of war is one of Hugo’s favourite things to do, and I feel like I’m back at Waterloo. But I also can’t help but note that the gladiolus is named for the Latin word gladius,which means sword. I wonder, Hugo, if this is coincidental. Either way, we begin this chapter with Hugo reiterating one of his favourite messages (which will become a key theme of the chapter): that no matter who is killing whom, life still goes on. It isn’t - as I recall from Waterloo - that after the war the plans grow back and flowers start to bloom where blood once was. The birds are singing above the bayonets. Even as the war rages, nature takes no notice. (I might add that it takes no notice in that it either survives, or it doesn’t, and then it grows back, and Hugo is undoubtedly drawing us a (slightly awkward?) parallel between nature and the peasantry. So on to Michelle.)

My favourite thing about this chapter is - probably unsurprisingly - the two women. They seem - at the moment - to be more archetypes than characters. We have Houzarde, the savvy, urban women, raised in Paris, travelling (alone?) with the military, and characterising herself as ‘a brave man’ and ‘a good Blue’. And then we have Michelle, the country woman, whose greatest concern is caring for her children, and who has no understanding of the political situation.

And yet despite the obvious differences between the two woman, they have something very fundamental in common. For Michelle (for the peasantry?), it doesn’t matter who’s in charge. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Blues or Whites. What killed Michelle’s husband? It was a bullet. People are being killed, not political views.

And as for Houzarde:

…I give everybody a drink. The wounded are thirsty. People die without regard for opinions. When people are dying you ought to press their hands.

And the army, too, is surprisingly accepting. And in spite of the fact that they’re fighting a war, in spite of the history of the woods, in spite of the orders of ‘no mercy, no quarter’, they take this woman in - the adopt her. So - despite the horror hinted at throughout the chapter - Hugo is painting me an image of an army with genuine hope and with genuine belief in their ideals. They find a woman who doesn’t understand the war they’re fighting, whose husband fights on the other side, who doesn’t recognise herself as even being from France. And what do they say to her?

"Come, ''citoyenne.”

Commentary
Pilferingapples I mentioned it over on the DW comm, but: it really only occurred to me when writing about the chapter what a huge thing this adoption is for the soldiers. Because yeah, they’ve been given the orders for no quarter, no mercy— SPECIFICALLY, no mercy, they’ve been ordered to renounce that. And while those orders surely aren’t meant to apply to a blatant non-combatant, it says a lot about the kind of mindset they’ve been driven into. And then there’s the question of their own rapidly depleting numbers. It’s been kill or die for them for a while, and they’re backed into that—

and then they get this stray family, and I mean it couldn’t BE less threatening, it’s a starving shoeless woman and her babies, and they get to be absolutely just about caring for life and being kind and all those impulses they’ve been having to clock out on since their campaign began, just to survive. And yeah, it’s all terribly symbolic, Because Hugo but it’s also a thing actual people DO, because people NEED that, they need to be kind as well as to be shown kindness. So yeah. I BET Houzarde breaks down crying, and the soldiers too. They’re stealing one tiny piece of life out of all this death, and affirming their own existence as citizens beyond soldiering, and I’M CRYING TOO, darn it.