Hugo, Merajver and the Manifestation of Angst

I return to my tattered copy of  Les Misérables and begin again with Monseigneur Bienvenu and the travails of Jean Valjean. The verb 'to read' seems a wholly inadequate description of my interaction with this narrative:
implying a superficial, restrained skimming of the surface of printed ink....with Hugo, however, one descends beneath the membrane to the throbbing pulse of things, embroiled and immersed in the emotional and social turbulence of nineteenth-century France.

I have been thinking about the manifestation of character angst - and the degree to which it is conveyed via internal monologue or through outwardly observed action. The scene that lingers in my mind from a previous reading of Les Misérables is that in which Valjean paces his candelit room beset with mental agonies: to reveal himself as 24601 and exchange his honorable life as Mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer for the ignominious despair of prison: "the chain gang and the convict-smock, the plank bed and the cell, all the horrors that he knew;" a confession that would entail abandonment of the multitude that depended upon his business and charity; or alternatively by remaining silent he consigned an innocent to the darkness of a living hell in his place. Through the course of this chapter (entitled 'A Tempest in a Human Skull') Valjean is possessed by a furious tumult of fear, despair and agonized indecision.

 His character (sombre, silent and brooding, fused and defined by the interminable years of imprisonment) proceeds through the novel, gently but firmly rebuffing Cosette in her bid to understand the taciturn man that had become her father: his enigmatic travels, his intermittent melancholy, and their resolute isolation. Jean Valjean is, necessarily, an intensely private individual and the reader is provided a privileged insight into his innermost feelings only when he examines them himself in the quietness of solitude. The ebb and flow of his meditations exist as darkly-swift undercurrents; emotional riptides on which the reader is a half-drowned companion; an essential inclusion, for as we have already noted Valjean is a master of countenance-control, his turbulence of mind scarcely perceptible in the icy exterior.

Several nights ago I also completed Just Toss the Ashes by Marta Merajver; an intensely brilliant psychological novel that investigates suicide and its aftermath. It details the angst of a woman who has endured an abusive childhood at the hands of an egocentric mother - and the impact that traumatizes the next generation. This novel serves, predominately through the perspective of the embittered son, to illustrate the complexity of privacy, of the individual ways in which one compartmentalizes family issues and the insecurities that accompany abuse.

Obviously these books are utterly disparate in every respect, separated by a thematic, geographic and chronological divide; Victor Hugo, a French Romantic whose hefty tome details the plight of the poor in nineteenth century Paris, and Marta Merajver, an Argentinian writer whose slim contemporary novel examines suicide and the hidden depths of self; however it seems in recent reading of both of these works, an element that I find intriguing is the manner in which these two authors treat character angst. Jean Valjean's afflictions are privately revealed, the reader comprises an audience of one, often an exclusive witness to the extent and nature of his sufferings; we gain unprecedented access to his internal monologue, are intimately intertwined with his emotional state, and a fierce adherent to his cause. This insinuation into the tortured monologue of a private man, one who has been unjustly served by the overzealous application of the law, serves as a brilliant mechanism to secure the attention and advocacy of reader.

Merajver's primary character is already deceased at the opening pages of her novel, however Sylvia Meyer proceeds to enthrall and engage through the subsequent narrative despite the pointed lack of internal monologue that characterized Valjean (albeit there is a brief European interlude where her youthful voice is heard); the intriguing point here is that this character is initially depicted in all her strident venom and strife, full of sound and fury, and it is not until later in the novel that one begins to understand the complicated composite that is Sylvia. This growing awareness of cause and motivation is provided not by the primary character herself, but through the various perspectives of friend, husband, son and occasionally via letter through the deceased herself. While Sylvia is undoubtedly the dynamic force within the narrative, her angst, her ferocity of emotional turmoil and despair is brilliantly chronicled through the slant of third-party perspective. So the reader, as well as the son (whose journey we accompany in search for the 'truth') is left with a multitude of filtered still-shots with which to resurrect the essence that was Sylvia.

Character angst and the degree and manner in which it is utilized within the narrative remains a literary element of profound interest to me. Perhaps because internal strife, stress and self-reflection seem inextricably a part of thinking man (and woman), and an aspect of novels which facilitates an almost immediate empathetic connection with its readership. Reading these two novels in close proximity, I was struck by the disparate manner in which each author conveyed character angst - both effective in their own distinct way, viscerally engaging the reader within the turbulent mindset of their primary characters.