A Heart Full of Love

A brief defense of love at first sight with Les Miserables's most-teased lovers

A version of this essay first appeared on my old blog, roadstainedfeet.wordpress.com.

Marius and Cosette.

Romeo and Juliet.

Jack and Rose.

All three couples are emblems of love at first sight, and all have become targets of some truly funny jokes over the past few decades. But while I love a good laugh, especially over fictional bad decisions, I think that cynicism can drive a lot of our ridicule. It’s easier to make fun of teenage fools falling in love than to ask ourselves when we stopped believing in love in that way.We should not think of love as something that just happens to us. Like all feelings, love should be disciplined and driven by higher values than one’s own pleasure. I am not free to fall in and out of love with whomever I please, especially after I have committed myself for life. I think people should know that they can choose not to indulge romantic feelings where a relationship would be inadvisable (learning the difference between admiring someone and being attracted to them is a start).

But at the same time…doesn’t love kind of just happen to us? No five-year-plan can provide the perfect person at the perfect time. Many people were not even thinking of love when they met their best friend and dearest love. Finding love can feel bigger, stronger, and scarier than what we bargained for. While it’s so much more than just having a magical, love-at-first-sight encounter, the realization that you love someone – whether it comes during your third conversation or your three hundredth – does feel magical and unexpected. I didn’t know I was able to love like this. I didn’t know I was this lovable.

I would much rather talk about Les Mis than about Romeo and Juliet or Titanic, to be honest, so let me defend Marius and Cosette, the young couple who fall in love just before a revolution. In the sweeping epic that is Les Mis, their romance can seem trifling and shallow, but I think this misses the point.¹

There are many angles you can take with Les Mis – it is a rich story full of justice and injustice, poverty and wealth, honesty and lies – but I think that it’s about mankind’s need for grace and unconditional love. Seen this way, Cosette becomes a focal point, rather than a passive side-character. It is her storyline, almost as much as Valjean’s, that ties the story together. Loving Cosette is the main motivation of first Fantine, then Valjean, and finally Marius. She is “not theirs to keep,” but she acts as a vessel of love and grace. To appreciate Cosette and Marius, you need to appreciate the people who loved her first.

Cosette and Fantine

Becoming a mother gave me a breakthrough with this character. Picture Fantine on her deathbed, racked with pain, singing a lullaby to the daughter she never got to hold.

Come to me, Cosette, the light is fading.
Don’t you see the evening star appearing?
Come to me, and rest against my shoulder –
How fast the minutes fly away and every minute colder.

And then – amazingly – a hero steps into her song and promises he will care for that precious girl. All that Fantine wants is for her daughter to live in safety and comfort.

Tell Cosette I love her, and I’ll see her when I wake.

A few minutes later we go to the poor, little waif singing about her “castle on a cloud,” with its,

lady all in white,
who holds me and sings a lullaby.
She’s nice to see and she’s soft to touch.
She says, ‘Cosette, I love you very much.'

It kills me that being loved and cherished is a daydream, especially since there are kids living like that in real life.

The little child who believes she is unloved has actually been loved desperately by a mother who can’t be with her. Fantine gave up her money, her body, and her life to care for her darling girl.

Cosette and Valjean

Valjean may have reformed years ago, but it’s not until he adopts Cosette that he imitates the bishop who saved him from prison years before. You see, when the bishop forgave Valjean for stealing the silver, he still could have privately requested it back. Instead, he made a gift of it without hesitation. It is a challenging boldness. Many Christians say “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed”; few sacrifice their own clothes and food to make it happen.

The bishop exhorts Valjean to “use this precious silver to become an honest man,” and Valjean interprets this as a command to be respectable. To do this, he must lie about his identity and break parole, but at least he goes on to run an honest factory providing work to hundreds of people. He gives to the poor. He prays. But he does not give up himself.

At Fantine’s deathbed, Valjean promises more than to pay Cosette’s bills or check in on her occasionally. He swears that she will “live in my protection” and “want for nothing.” “None will ever harm Cosette as long as I am living” can be rephrased, “I will give my life for Cosette.” And he does.

In fact, at this time he finally declares his identity as Jean Valjean, former convict, instead of letting the authorities imprison a look-alike. Though unwilling to return to prison, or to tell Cosette the truth about himself, Valjean stops thinking of his own survival and begins truly putting others before himself. I could say so much more about him, but I should return to my theme.

Cosette and Marius

When Cosette next appears, she is a lovely young woman giving alms to the poor with her father. But we don’t just see her with our own eyes. We see Marius’s wonder – his plans to change the world freeze before this quiet beauty.

In my life, she has burst like the music of angels,
the light of the sun. And my life
seems to stop as if something is over
and something has scarcely begun.

Oh, you can mock it, but I think that many people feel that way when they fall in love.

Some people dislike Cosette because she is marked by how many people have loved and sacrificed for her, whereas she has done so little. I don’t disagree, but this just reminds me that I have been more loved than I have loved. No matter how much I have loved and served, I have known far greater love than this, and it has transformed me. Sometimes love shines from me, or through me, and touches others. I like to think that that’s part of what touches Marius. It’s not just that Cosette is pretty or sweet. She is worthy of love, and she will love him with all of her heart. Innocence like that shines a mile, for those with eyes to see.

This is what love at first sight captures. Irresistible, transformative purity and sincerity.

I love “In My Life” and “A Heart Full of Love” for their insight into the two characters. Cosette is no longer a child. She knows her father isn’t telling the truth about his past or her past, and she wants to know who she is. She expresses that desire quite poetically:

In my life
there are times when I catch in the silence
the sigh of a far-away song,
and it sings of a world that I long to see,
out of reach, just a whisper away, waiting for me!

Innocence is not idiocy. People tend to assume that young women are silly or ignorant, even if the text suggests otherwise. I could cite many examples, from Bible characters like Esther and the Virgin Mary to fairy tale princesses to modern movie heroines. People act like they’re dumb even when they’re not behaving dumb. I’ve been guilty of this myself, and I don’t like it. There have certainly been many silly, ignorant young women over the millennia, but Cosette’s time on stage indicates that she is not one of them.

In “A Heart Full of Love,” while Marius is flustered, Cosette speaks with self-assured clarity. “No fear, no regret.” When Marius questions, “Do I dream?”, she responds, “I’m awake.” He says, “I am lost,” and she says, “I am found.” He says, “From today,” and she says, “Every day. For it isn’t a dream.”

Of course they’ve only just met, and of course it’s too fast for a romance in real life, but for the time they have had together, we are meant to trust that they truly love each other. That fact is confirmed after the ill-fated revolution ends and they reprise “A Heart Full of Love.” I encourage you to watch the full version, since the 2012 film rendition cuts out important lines.

Marius is haunted by his friends’ deaths and the mystery of who saved him from the barricade, but she assures him, “With all the years ahead of us,
I will never go away, and we will be together every day.”

I’ll include the rest of the song below:

COSETTE:
Every day
We’ll remember that night
And the vow that we made:
A heart full of love,
A night full of you!
The words are old
But always true.
Oh, God, for shame!
You did not even know my name.

MARIUS:
Dear Mademoiselle,
I was lost in your spell.

COSETTE:
A heart full of love
No fear no regret
“My name is Marius Pontmercy.”

MARIUS:
Cosette, Cosette!

COSETTE:
I saw you waiting and I knew.

MARIUS:
Waiting for you
At your feet

COSETTE:
At your call

TOGETHER:
And it wasn’t a dream,
Not a dream
After all.

Once more, for the people in the back:

NOT ALL LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT IS A DREAM.

Here we see a mature couple with gentleness, kindness, and even a little teasing. The illegitimate daughter of a working-class woman has entered into the aristocracy, with the power to give generously and effect gentle change at Marius’s side. Cosette, like Javert and Valjean, came from the gutter, but simple love literally lifted her out of it, and she will bestow that love on others.

Back in the ABC Cafe, when Marius confided his love to his friends, Enjolras rebuked him for letting love get in the way of the cause. “Our little lives don’t count at all.” That line gives me chills. Those young men are laying down their lives, but out of anger, not love. They don’t prize their lives; they prize the glorious end they might achieve.

Fantine, Valjean, Marius, and Cosette present a different way.

Our little lives – even if they stay little – do count. And so does love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Notes

1. I didn’t really talk about Eponine in this. Every teenage girl identifies with Eponine. I know I did. She’s a more relatable, active character than Cosette, and an emotional and vocal powerhouse to boot in the musical. But ladies, aspire to something more than being in love with someone else’s man. It’s not Cosette’s fault that Marius doesn’t want Eponine. I didn’t want to turn this into an Eponine v. Cosette debate. That’s not my point. But I can’t resist adding that in the book, Eponine leads Marius to the battle because she wants him to die. If she can’t have him, nobody can. Just keep that in mind.

Photo by Irina Iriser from Pexels