I am definitely up for the female version of the Amis fighting for women's suffrage and singing about pretty boys, lmao forever. Such a cute image!
Miss m will have her own thoughts on this, but I wasn't entirely sure whether in stonecarapace's fic Madame Madeleine had always presented as a woman, or whether she first started off with the crossdressing and then became open? Both posed some difficulty for me, although the writing in that story is so beautiful and the femme!Javert's perspective is so IC and gorgeously wrought that I was totally drawn in regardless.
I hear you on the desire for a woman to be as strong as a man (it comes from your id! But you don't have to be physically strong to be powerful!). On your story, the Valjean crossdressing works for me - as you mention in that century women crossdressed as men to see battle, and you have Eponine at the barricades.
Still, I really like your ideas for them, and agree that openly female Javert affords more narrative opportunity for gender power play and is less problematic (for me, because that irrepressible servant of the law wouldn't lie to her superiors about this). If you wanted to keep this then I think you could make Third Republic milieu or early 1900s setting without straying to much from the canon period - it seems that at the turn of the century women's rights were at the cusp of change and you could conceivably have M. Gisquet as a progressive commander who was keen to use all law enforcement resources at his disposal regardless of gender.
I am actually also intrigued by your het!JVJ ideas, though that must be equally hard to make (and the man-discovers-disturbingly-sexy-other-man-is-realy-a-woman overtones needs to be handled very carefully). Maybe for another story! I thought you'd go for a female Valjean, male Javert dynamic (where she'd top, and could really squish him physically!).
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Miss m will have her own thoughts on this, but I wasn't entirely sure whether in stonecarapace's fic Madame Madeleine had always presented as a woman, or whether she first started off with the crossdressing and then became open? Both posed some difficulty for me, although the writing in that story is so beautiful and the femme!Javert's perspective is so IC and gorgeously wrought that I was totally drawn in regardless.
I hear you on the desire for a woman to be as strong as a man (it comes from your id! But you don't have to be physically strong to be powerful!). On your story, the Valjean crossdressing works for me - as you mention in that century women crossdressed as men to see battle, and you have Eponine at the barricades.
But I am not sure openly female Javert would work in the early 1800s - France didn't see female suffrage until the next century, I fear (some quick research turned up this http://www.iub.edu/~paris10/ParisOSS/D11_Sex_and_Gender/d7_Offen.html).
Still, I really like your ideas for them, and agree that openly female Javert affords more narrative opportunity for gender power play and is less problematic (for me, because that irrepressible servant of the law wouldn't lie to her superiors about this). If you wanted to keep this then I think you could make Third Republic milieu or early 1900s setting without straying to much from the canon period - it seems that at the turn of the century women's rights were at the cusp of change and you could conceivably have M. Gisquet as a progressive commander who was keen to use all law enforcement resources at his disposal regardless of gender.
I am actually also intrigued by your het!JVJ ideas, though that must be equally hard to make (and the man-discovers-disturbingly-sexy-other-man-is-realy-a-woman overtones needs to be handled very carefully). Maybe for another story! I thought you'd go for a female Valjean, male Javert dynamic (where she'd top, and could really squish him physically!).