Characterization help?

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

Hey all!

I'm writing a NaNoWriMo novel that takes place from approximately 1788- 1799 and being the crazed fangirl that I am, I'm including as many Jacobins as I can get away with. I think I've got a good handle on Robespierre, since he's the main object of my obsession, but I do confess that I have nooooooooo idea at all how to characterize Saint- Just and Desmoulins. Aside from physical descriptions, I'm not quite sure what to do personality- wise to keep them as close to life as possible.

I would look at other historical fiction books as a guide, but then we get blood-thirsty-psycopathic-murderer!Saint- Just and dumb-as-a-rock!Desmoulins and I would rather avoid those since I've figured out that they're pretty much complete fabrications.

Thank you so much to anyone who can shed some light on the subject!

Comments

[jesta-ariadne.livejournal.com]

Quotes and letters and stuff? I mean, it might more give you ideas for interesting directions to take rather than giving you a wonderfully clear picture of actual personality... but... still! It's some more information. And fun.

I can't help you much on Saint-Just but I, um, seem to remember typing up a bunch of Camille Desmoulins ones..... A BIG bunch. (http://jesta-ariadne.livejournal.com/134242.html)
(...Please excuse/ignore all the spazzy fangirlish narration interspersed XDD I was trying to explain to people who didn't know much about it.... plus, I am a spazzy fangirl.)

Go you with NaNoWriMo!!

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I can help you for Saint-Just (which, at the same time, disqualifies me for helping you for Desmoulins -- since I know pratically nothing on him and am biased): I wrote a 12-page dissertation on Saint-Just last year for my university course on the French Revolution -- the only problem is that it's in French. -_-; I was planning to translate it and post it somewhere, but I didn't have time yet.... I could write for you a little summary to describe, but that would need to get down my list of "All The Things I Have To Do For University And Am Already Lacking Time For". >_____>

The first problem with Saint-Just is that, for people who are used to "simple" personalities, he seems "complex" but since I'm complex myself, I don't find him too complex. The best sources to understand him are, for his youth, his literary texts (and by this, I mean, reading Organt in a critical way, not in a hysterical, victorian-like OMG!NUN!RAPE!DONKEY!SEX!SO!AWFUL!AND!DEBAUCHED -- in all, Organt tells you about young!Saint-Just's cynicism (as in Ancient-inspired Diogenes cynicism)), for his early years into the Revolution, when he was too young to be elected, there are his many letters, which reflect how impatient to take action he is, for his Convention years, there are a few passages from his speeches and from the Institutions républicaines which give clues on his personality.

The things to be avoided are:

1) To think he was constantly extremist and "madder than Robespierre" -- the thing is that it's possible to interpret is personality as a lot more pragmatic, rational and calm than Robespierre, who was anxious bordering on nevrotic (and for reason's sake: it's not dramatic to be slightly nevrotic, as many historians since to believe it is -- come on, now, how many human beings are? and they are not living in the same circumstances at all!);

2) To think he was like the Ebil Eve who gave Maximilien!Adam the Ebil Apple of the Revolution and turned him into an Ebil man -- no, but you laugh here, but more than a half of the characterisations (especially the dantoniste ones) of Saint-Just present him as the one who's responsible for everything, and that if he hadn't been there, Robespierre wouldn't have gotten so "bad" (ex. the film La Révolution française: les années terribles -- for plain!evil!Lucifer-like!Saint-Just, there's A Place of Greater Safety, but you must know about this already).

3) The feminisation -- this is bloody getting on my nerves. "He was pretty like a girl." "He looked like a girl." "He was so pretty omg." Etc. Someday, I'll write an article about this. And will probably include it in my master degree. This is just far too irritating. And, on top of it, this constant feminisation of Saint-Just, following the classical reference to his "lyrical" and "admiring" letter to Robespierre just shows the latent homophoby of plenty of historians -- whether they are homosexuals or not is not the issue here, the problem is that historians pretend it (but never honestly write it) and use this to bash them, because they are OBVIOUSLY "abnormal" which explains why their socio-political ideas are also "abnormal".

Hm, yeah, so that's all I can think of for now.


P.S. What's a "NaNoWriMo" novel?

[vulpea-rea.livejournal.com]

one month: November.

you writing a novel: 50,000 words or more.

GO. i did it last year but i'm way too busy to do it this year, though it was a whole lot of fun and mad writing. seeing the crack of dawn and such.

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

You try to write a 50,000 word novel in month. Mine's going to be terrible becaue I realized that I haven't done nearly as much research as I need to. 0.o

Thanks very much! I shall have to set aside a weekend for research now. ^^

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Does that mean you're supposed to be done in two weeks? O.o;

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

.. yeah. Which is why mine, alas, will not be finished. Or, if it is, it will be terrible and in substantial need of editing.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Eeep. And I thought I was giving myself crazy objectives. XD; I'd help you faster, but, unfortunately, november is my big month of university evaluations -- and on top of this, a conference I have to prepare for next week, as I just discovered a few hours ago that I wasn't done translating it in French (I have to do it in English and French, already wrote it in English so it's then easier to translate in my mother tongue). I hope what I wrote above is a good introduction thought. XD; I could check in my livejournal if there's anything, but most of the stuff I post is in French...

[toi-marguerite.livejournal.com]

Don't worry about it! ^^ Get your university stuff done; that's much more important.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

Yes. ^^

I have posted this a few months ago thought: my (bad) translation of Saint-Just's early short text "La Raison à la morne". (http://community.livejournal.com/revolution_fr/21912.html) I like it a lot, mostly because the social critique is still actual -- you'd just have to change a few references and it's still the same. -_-; /socio-political editorial.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I concede that Saint-Just is pretty, but I've yet to figure out how that makes him look like a girl. He may be pretty, but it's in no way a feminine sort of pretty. And even if it were, I fail to see how that would make him automatically evil. It seems to me that in addition to the homophobia, there must be some misogyny going on here too, since it's not the fact that he's pretty that they seem threatened by, but the fact that they perceive him as a girl... and this makes him evil (somehow). And they accuse the Revolutionaries of demonizing femininity! It's absolutely ridiculous. They can't have it both ways. /rant

[bettylabamba.livejournal.com]

I concede that Saint-Just is pretty, but I've yet to figure out how that makes him look like a girl. He may be pretty, but it's in no way a feminine sort of pretty. And even if it were, I fail to see how that would make him automatically evil.

He is gorgeous, but I don't get how that makes him "look like a girl" either. Maybe because he's not cowboy-rugged-marlboro man type handsome? So that makes him feminine? Or maybe it's just a case of convenient stereotyping--why think when you can regurgitate?

I've always thought of S-J as very masculine--not meathead masculine, but more like that thin but sinewy type.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I think you're right on both counts, but the lack of cowboyishness is probably the reason that American (and those who have bought into American stereotypes on the matter) historians especially see him as feminine.

But I know exactly what you mean. Saint-Just strikes me as one of the least feminine men of the 18th century. (Considering what the popular styles and mannerisms of the era, that's not saying much, but I think you get my point.)

[eleonored.livejournal.com]

off top...
I never seen a colored photo of the Greuze's portrait on your userpic! Couldn't I ask you, where did you find it?

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say I had found a colored version of that portrait, but actually, I colored it myself... so it's natural state, as far as I've ever seen it, is also black and white.

[eleonored.livejournal.com]

Ah! C'est dommage!... And I had hope...

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

Sorry about that. >__>

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I wish I could really help, but my area of expertise also happens to be Robespierre--though I would advise you to take care where he's concerned, since (fantastically untrue, Thermidorian-esque characterizations aside) the difference between a good and bad characterization of Robespierre is more subtle than at first apparent. I don't mean to imply necessarily that you don't, as you say, have "a good handle" on him, just that it's always good to examine one's assumptions, even when one has gotten past the point of indifferently accepting propaganda.

As for Saint-Just, I'll second maelicia's suggestions, and add that it's gotten to be something of a cliché even in the best of novels to refer to Saint-Just as "icy" or some variant thereof. It's best to avoid any descriptors that make Saint-Just sound like the human-ice-cube-machine.

As far as Desmoulins goes, don't make him some sort of Glorious Martyr to Free Speech, because he wasn't that. Nor would I recommend making him incredibly innocent or unbelievably debauched. Don't try combining the two extremes either, because that never works. The best advice I can give where he's concerned is: forget, though it may be difficult, everything you've ever read about him coming from any fictional source. Also, avoid the cliché of making him Robespierre's Best Friend. There isn't really any evidence for that in the historical record, and it's far too overdone in fiction. (But then, I suppose this goes with my previous point.)

...Wow, it seems I had more to say on the subject than I thought. I hope it's helpful.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

I had forgotten the ice-cube-machine part. Before I go on a vendetta against the "feminisation" characterisation, I was on a vendetta against the "ice-cube-machine" characterisation. XD;

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

And let us not forget the vendetta against the "Lucifer" characterization. Speaking of which, I found a book in which the protagonist constantly refers to Saint-Just as Lucifer. But then again, he is an aristo--and it's one of the more bizarre novels I've ever seen on the Revolution, as it has Scarlet Pimpernel-ish aspects, but the Pimpernel, in this case, is... Maxime. -___-;

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

It's the latest one. XD .......um?!? Maxime takes himself for an English Superhero for Aristocrats? He was hit on the head? Or rather, since that last question just introduces a head pun, someone tried to guillotine him and failed (!) and when he was sewed back, he had a little mental disorder? No, but anything's possible...

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

And they're all perfectly laudable. ^__^ They don't use that explanation, but I can't think of any other one for a Maxime who helps his aristo friends (who are able to come and go from France as they please because they've managed to procure American passports) smuggle other aristos out of prison--to the Perfious Albion, of course--and has an affair with the "Queen of Marienwald"... Can you? >__>

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

...where in Reason's name is the "Marienwald"?

I think I do have an explanation for it though: some novelist took the revolutionary rhetoric on SAID POLITICAL ENEMY WAS CONSPIRING WITH THE ENGLISH OMG a little too seriously? Though it's sort of hard to believe for Maxime... the English particularly hate him, maybe more than all the others.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I haven't the slightest. I have a feeling she made it up. The point is, the last person on earth Maxime would have an affair with is a queen. Of anything.

Perhaps. >__> The thing is, these are *French* (ci-devant, though none of them seems to be aware of it) aristos... It's all very strange.

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

It sort of looks like Marineland when you squint. Is the queen a mermaid too? Coz it would make sense, as far ase it is.

...French aristos? Why on Earth would they speak to Maxime? O.o;

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

It would be amusing, but no. She is a horrible person though. >__>

According to the novel, he was their lawyer before the Revolution, and for some reason he's still friends with the bratty aristo narrator. *sighs*

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

And he... sleeps.... with.... her.

It just makes no sense. I just give up. It can't be reasoned.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

It's pretty heavily implied, although since the narrator is her brother, he's not exactly an eye-witness. But as he says, is there really likely to be any other reason for them to be having spending entire nights in her room alone? ... *headdesk*

It really can't--you'll see when I get the excerpts typed though. >__>

[emma1794.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately I don't have as much knowledge of saint-just and camille as I would like; all my time has been taken up with Robespierre, just cos, obviously XDD

But have a flick through/read some of the chapters of Hilary mantel's A place of greater safety (it's a fantastically written book although I know maelicia doesn't approve XDD - I haven't yet got to any saint-just bits, so I don't know how incorrect her interpretation of him will be). It's great for characterisation of camille. Have fun, good luck. :P

[jesta-ariadne.livejournal.com]

Yay, I like that book too :) Specially the Camille bits. Saint-Just though doesn't appear for aaaages and is... maybe less developed as a character and more as a(n extremely effective) plot device ^^; (It all gets gloriously and depressingly dramatic towards the end-- just you wait!)

[kurotoshi.livejournal.com]

If you include Marat/and/or Simonne in the story PLEASE contact me for information regarding him, PLEASE, too many people, INCLUDING experts, have no clue whatsoever of his personality while I more or less concentrated on that aspect for 3 years, :C So PLEASE, I'll easily approachable!

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

You know, Marat really interests me because his personally gets totally ignored when dealing with the French Revolution. I confess I know very little about him personally, though I've always retained a fondness for Marat/Sade for giving him a deeper analysis. I feel he's treated a lot like Saint-Just in that they're both figures that historians seem to have a hard time understanding, so they just become personifications of the Terror and the "bloodthirsty rabble" respectively. Anyway, I'm interested in Marat, what should I look into? Or is there a good cliff notes version out there for a busy college student? ;-)

[kurotoshi.livejournal.com]

Haha, hmm, most of the good books on Marat (the OH-SO rare good books) on him are big and hefty - so, I'll give you the cliff notes - 1, he's not bloodthirsty, he was just very theatrical, so he exaggerated, when he screamed for 10 thousand heads, he didn't ACTUALLY want 10 thousands head! He's also kinda of a glory whore, haha! But he's a BIG workaholic and really does all he can to help people, his house was open to ANYBODY who wanted to go see him - but you had to go through Simonne first - hence why Corday had so much trouble - not because Simonne was jealous or something of Corday - but she had a bad feeling about her. Keep in mind, Marat was generally VERY well liked by people, the ones who had trouble with him are the people who couldn't deal with how high-strung he was - but overall, if you need anything more, let me know! I'm easy to approach, send me a message, comment in my journal, I'll gladly get back to you ASAP! But generally, he was a more or less calm person unless iritated :)