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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Volume 2, Book 3: Accomplishment of the Promise Made to the Dead Woman
Explanation and Analysis—Cosette as a Creature:
As the Thenardiers strive to squeeze as much money as possible from their guests, they force young and innocent Cosette to do all of their physical labor. With a simile, the narrator emphasizes Cosette's constant sense of dread:
Such were these two beings. Cosette was between them, subjected to their double pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being ground up in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. [...]
Cosette ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran, fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and weak as she was, did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress and venomous master. The Thénardier hostelry was like a spider’s web, in which Cosette had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal of oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was something like the fly serving the spiders.
The narrator compares Cosette to a creature, something inhuman that the Thenardiers keep captive and to which they do not show care or mercy. Between the ferocity of Madame Thenardier and the venom of Thenardier, Cosette is being “ground up in a mill” and "pulled to pieces with pincers." Cosette is helpless and fragile, a girl who knows nothing beyond her life of misery. She has neither the strength to stop their rough treatment nor the heart to disobey their orders. Cosette is a spider caught in Thenardiers' web: all she can do is lie there and accept her circumstances.
Explanation and Analysis—Feminine Childhood:
As Eponine, Azelma, and Cosette play, they dress things up as dolls. While Eponine and Azelma treat the cat as a doll, though, Cosette dresses up a sword. The narrative uses a simile to compare this kind of play to birds making nests:
As birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of anything that comes to hand. While Eponine and Azelma were bundling up the cat, Cosette, on her side, had dressed up her sword. That done, she laid it in her arms, and sang to it softly, to lull it to sleep.
The doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. […] While dreaming and chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing little gowns, and corsages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child is the continuation of the last doll.
In this scene, the story compares the three little girls to birds, matching their tendency to “make dolls out of anything” to a bird’s tendency to “make nests out of everything.” Though it seems adorable for children to play make-believe and use their surroundings to entertain themselves, the narrator interprets their tendencies as the beginnings of motherhood. Taking care of a doll is a little girl's introduction to raising a child of her own, according to this perspective.
Cosette's life, and particularly this scene, is a mirror image of the Cinderella folk tale. Therefore, it is fitting that Eponine and Azelma use a cat while Cosette is left to play with a sword. Such a stark contrast aptly represents her rough childhood and proves how little the Thenardiers care for her safety. Cosette treats her doll-sword as she wishes to be treated herself. Even being the Thenardiers' abused servant does not harden Cosette's soul.
Volume 4, Book 2: Eponine
Explanation and Analysis—Dreaming as a Drug:
As Marius roams the Latin Quarter, aimless and poor, he dreams of Cosette. The narrator uses a simile to describe the bliss of dreaming:
A certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labor, which are sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain worker who allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie! He thinks that he can reascend with equal ease, and he tells himself that, after all, it is the same thing. Error!
The story compares dreaming to taking narcotic drugs, which one can do in “discreet doses” but should not do in excess. A little bit of dreaming can round off one's sharp edges. Too much dreaming causes one to sink, from being overwhelmed by what could be and from simultaneously never being satisfied.
Marius is drowning in his yearning for Cosette. He is tormented by his love for this mystery woman, yet it is also the prospect of meeting her that keeps him breathing and living to see the next day. His dreams of Cosette serve as a narcotic and ease his troubled mind. Had Marius stayed in this idle state, dreaming of Cosette, he would have wasted away and succumbed to the narcotics.
Volume 4, Book 3: The House in the Rue Plumet
Explanation and Analysis—The Advent of Beauty:
Once a wretched and mistreated servant of the Thenardiers, Cosette has much changed in the loving care of Jean Valjean. Cosette grows up to become a beautiful young lady, to which she expresses her surprise with imagery and a simile:
She was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like the sudden advent of daylight;[…] she descended to the garden again, thinking herself a queen, imagining that she heard the birds singing, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun among the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible delight.
Cosette is struck by her beauty, from her pale skin to her lit-from-within blue eyes. She feels as though her beauty came suddenly like the sun peeking over the horizon and bringing a powerful light. This simile expresses the magnificence but also natural inevitability of Cosette's beauty. Having endured such a rough childhood, Cosette was never taught to have respect for herself or even consider her own appearance. With Jean Valjean, she begins to grow into herself and heal from her childhood trauma. Her beauty was dormant within her, waiting for someone like Jean Valjean to give her hope and happiness.
The winter of Cosette's life has faded, and all she can see is the “sky gilded” and the “flowers in the thickets.” This visual imagery of both herself and the garden are parallels. Cosette has reached the spring of her life, both in terms of appearance and opportunity—everything is growing and on the verge of blossoming. She will fall in love with Marius not too long after this change within her.
