Let's talk about Eponine

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

(Cross-posted to Abaissé because more discussion makes for more fun.)

I'm going to assume all participants are on the same page on the following points:

1. Éponine is not a selfless virtuous romantic heroine who totally deserves Marius because of her Twu Wuv or whatever. If you think this, please lurk moar before posting. Also, Cosette-bashing is not cool, especially when it's done to prop up Éponine.
2. Nobody who's posting here actually thinks the selfless-romantic-heroine thing is true, and the existence of Eppie-boppers doesn't mean we all have to portray her as a psychotic ugly unwashed vengeful bitch in retaliation.
3. Éponine is not, as some Eppie-boppers claim, the most important character in Les Mis. She is fairly minor as these things go. However, this is the fandom with a forty-odd-page "Enjolras: top or bottom?" thread and lots of shameless fangirling of characters who get about three lines in the book. There is room to talk about Éponine without fifty bazillion "but she's not that important" disclaimers.

Everyone got it? Nobody trying to shut down the conversation or drag it back into the old, tired rut of Eppie-boppers vs. Eppie-bashers? Good, let's go.

( Eponine as a complex character )

( Misery Sues )

( Marius )

I don't think fandom always does Éponine justice. She's a teenager who's been horribly marked and twisted by the position she's in, who by all rights should be just as nasty as her parents, and yet there's an irrepressible fount of spiritual and physical beauty in her, struggling desperately to get out. The degradation doesn't erase her intrinsic goodness, and yet her intrinsic goodness doesn't magically make the degradation go away or become unimportant: she's groping blindly in the dark for something better than what she's got, and her screwed-upness sometimes twists her desperate struggling into something ugly and harmful. No wonder she appears mentally unstable and Hugo compares her to Ophelia: she's drowning and doesn't know which way to the surface.