Lover of Liberty

Please stop.

Les Miserables is at its core, a love story. And I don't mean the whole love triangle between Cosette, Marius, and Eponine.

I mean that the novel explores human love. M. Myriel, Bishop of Digne demonstrates true love for God. Fantine demonstrates love for her daughter. Javert demonstrates a love for order. The Thenardiers demonstrate a love for money and material possessions. The students at the barricade show us brotherly love. There is of course, the issue of romantic love. There is love for inanimate objects, love for isolation, puppy love. 

Enjolras demonstrates a love for justice. True justice. He was distracted by nothing else. 

And that's why it makes me really, really, really angry when some of the first results that pop up for Enjolras are fan fiction websites that all have romances between Enjolras and Eponine, Enjolras and Grantaire, and Enjolras and Marius. 

Aaron Tveit in the 2012 screen adaptation of Les Miserables.

Part of what makes Enjolras so compelling is the fact that he is as committed to democracy as the Bishop of Digne is to God, or Javert for order. 

In regard to Enjolras:

"His twenty-two years appeared as seventeen; he was serious, he did not seem to know that there was a being on earth called woman. He had one passion only, justice; one thought only, to remove all obstacles."