Les Misérables

Summary

Les Misérables follows the convict Jean Valjean from his release in 1815 to his death in 1833, and through him a whole society of the poor, the lawful and the rebellious in Restoration and July Monarchy France. Valjean has served nineteen years in the galleys at Toulon, five for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's hungry children and the rest for attempts to escape. Turned away by every inn in Digne, he is received by Bishop Myriel, a humble priest who lives on almost nothing and gives to the poor. Valjean steals the bishop's silver; when gendarmes bring him back, the bishop declares the silver a gift, adds two silver candlesticks, and tells him he has bought his soul for God. After one more theft, from a small Savoyard boy, Valjean breaks down and resolves to change. Under the name Monsieur Madeleine he grows rich making jet beads at Montreuil-sur-Mer, becomes its mayor and spends his fortune on the town. Fantine, a young woman abandoned by her lover, leaves her daughter Cosette with the innkeepers Thénardier at Montfermeil and works in his factory until she is dismissed; she sells her hair and teeth and sinks into misery and illness. Inspector Javert, a policeman who reveres the law, suspects Madeleine. When another man, Champmathieu, is about to be condemned as Valjean, Madeleine spends a sleepless night of conscience, goes to the court at Arras and reveals himself. Fantine dies; Valjean escapes, rescues Cosette from the Thénardiers at Christmas 1823, and hides with her in Paris and then in the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Years later the student Marius Pontmercy, estranged from his royalist grandfather, falls in love with Cosette. The Thénardiers, now Paris criminals, set an ambush for Valjean; their daughter Éponine, who loves Marius, helps him and later dies shielding him. In June 1832 Marius joins Enjolras and the Friends of the ABC at a barricade; the street boy Gavroche is shot gathering cartridges. Valjean comes to the barricade, frees the captured Javert, and carries the wounded Marius through the sewers of Paris. Javert, unable to reconcile mercy with his idea of duty, lets him go and drowns himself in the Seine. Marius marries Cosette; Valjean confesses his past and withdraws, and only too late does Marius learn who saved him. The young couple reach Valjean as he dies, blessing them beside the bishop's candlesticks. Hugo began the novel in the 1840s, completed it in exile on Guernsey, and published it in five parts in 1862.

Plot or Argument

• Fantine: the bishop and the convict (Volume I, Books 1-2)

  A long portrait of Bishop Myriel of Digne, his charity and his visit to a dying member of the Revolutionary Convention, followed by Jean Valjean's arrival, the theft of the silver, the gift of the candlesticks, and the episode of Little Gervais.

• Fantine: Monsieur Madeleine and the Champmathieu affair (Volume I, Books 3-8)

  Fantine's abandonment in Paris in 1817, Cosette left at Montfermeil, Madeleine's prosperous town and his rescue of old Fauchelevent from under a cart, Javert's suspicion, Fantine's ruin and illness, the sleepless night called a tempest in a skull, the confession at Arras, and Fantine's death.

• Cosette: Waterloo, the Thénardiers and the convent (Volume II)

  Hugo's account of Waterloo and of Thénardier stripping the wounded Colonel Pontmercy; Valjean's apparent drowning from the ship Orion, the rescue of Cosette on Christmas Eve, the Gorbeau tenement, the chase by Javert, and refuge with Fauchelevent at the Petit-Picpus convent.

• Marius (Volume III)

  The Paris gamin, Marius's royalist grandfather Gillenormand, the discovery of his dead father's devotion, the Friends of the ABC around Enjolras, love at first sight in the Luxembourg Gardens, and the Jondrette ambush in which Thénardier tries to trap Valjean.

• Saint-Denis: the Rue Plumet and the barricade (Volume IV)

  Cosette and Marius meet secretly in the garden of the Rue Plumet; Éponine protects and betrays by turns; Gavroche shelters two small boys in the elephant of the Bastille; the funeral of General Lamarque on June 5, 1832 sparks the rising, and Marius joins the barricade at the Corinthe wine-shop, where Éponine dies.

• Jean Valjean: the barricade and the sewer (Volume V, Books 1-3)

  Gavroche's death, the fall of the barricade and the death of Enjolras, Valjean's release of Javert, and the long journey through the sewers of Paris with the wounded Marius on his back, ending at a grating where Thénardier holds the key and Javert waits.

• Jean Valjean: Javert derailed (Volume V, Book 4)

  Javert, having let Valjean go, walks to the Seine and finds that the mercy he has received and given has broken the rule by which he lived.

• Jean Valjean: the wedding and the last night (Volume V, Books 5-9)

  Marius recovers and marries Cosette on February 16, 1833; Valjean confesses his past to Marius and fades away in loneliness; Thénardier's attempt at blackmail reveals Valjean's goodness; Marius and Cosette arrive in time for his death, and he is buried under a blank stone.

Characters

• Jean Valjean, protagonist

  A former convict transformed by the bishop's mercy, who lives as Monsieur Madeleine and then as Cosette's guardian, hunted all his life by the law.

• Bishop Myriel (Monseigneur Bienvenu), bishop of Digne

  A humble, charitable bishop whose gift of the silver candlesticks redirects Valjean's life.

• Javert, police inspector

  A rigid, incorruptible officer born in a prison, who serves the law as an absolute and pursues Valjean for decades.

• Fantine, mother

  A young working woman abandoned by her lover, who sacrifices everything for her daughter and dies in poverty and illness.

• Cosette, Fantine's daughter

  Mistreated as a child by the Thénardiers, then raised in love by Valjean; she marries Marius.

• Marius Pontmercy, young lover

  A poor law student, son of a Napoleonic colonel, who loves Cosette and fights at the barricade.

• Thénardier and Madame Thénardier, antagonists

  Grasping innkeepers of Montfermeil who exploit Cosette and later become Paris criminals.

• Éponine, Thénardiers' daughter

  A street-hardened girl who loves Marius and dies at the barricade protecting him.

• Gavroche, street boy

  A cheerful, defiant Paris gamin, another of the Thénardiers' children, killed while collecting cartridges.

• Enjolras, revolutionary leader

  The austere, idealistic leader of the Friends of the ABC, who dies when the barricade falls.

• Monsieur Gillenormand, Marius's grandfather

  A witty, quarrelsome old royalist who loves his grandson in spite of their politics.

• Fauchelevent, gardener

  An old carter whose life Madeleine saves and who later hides Valjean and Cosette in the convent.

Lessons

• The candlesticks: mercy that creates a debt of love

  Bishop Myriel answers theft with a gift and tells Valjean that he has bought his soul for God. The rest of the novel shows Valjean repaying that mercy by showing it to others: to Fantine, Cosette, Fauchelevent, Champmathieu, Javert and Marius. Hugo presents grace as something that obliges without compelling.

  • Why does the bishop add the candlesticks instead of simply declining to accuse Valjean?
  • Why is the theft from Little Gervais, after the bishop's gift, the moment Valjean breaks down?
  • Where in the later books does Valjean act as the bishop acted toward him?

• A tempest in a skull

  When Champmathieu is about to be condemned in his place, Valjean argues with himself through a long night: his town and workers need him, the accused man is no saint, silence would harm no one he can see. Hugo dramatizes conscience as a real struggle, and Valjean chooses truth at the cost of everything he has built.

  • List the reasons Valjean gives himself for keeping silent. Which is the strongest?
  • Why does Hugo call conscience a spectacle greater than sea or sky?
  • Was Valjean right to leave Montreuil-sur-Mer and its workers to save one stranger?

• Javert: law without mercy

  Javert is honest, brave and incorruptible, and he believes the law cannot be wrong. When Valjean spares his life and he lets Valjean go, his whole idea of the world collapses. Hugo makes him a tragic figure rather than a simple villain, a man whose virtue lacks the one thing needed.

  • What does Hugo mean by saying Javert's ideal was to be irreproachable?
  • Why can Javert not accept being shown mercy by a convict?
  • Is Javert admirable in any way? How does Hugo want readers to feel at his death?

• The poor are neighbors, not a category

  Hugo's preface names the degradation of men by poverty, the ruin of women by hunger and the stunting of children by ignorance. Through Fantine, Cosette, Éponine and Gavroche he gives these problems faces and names, and through the bishop and Valjean he shows personal charity at work beside his call for schools and reforms.

  • How do Fantine's misfortunes follow one from another, and who could have stopped them?
  • What does the bishop mean when he says the guilty one is the person who created the shadow?
  • Does Hugo place more hope in personal charity or in changes to society? Find evidence for both.

• Fatherhood chosen

  Valjean, who never married, becomes a father by rescuing Cosette from the Thénardiers and spending his life on her. His last sacrifice is to step aside from her happiness. Hugo sets this chosen fatherhood against Thénardier's neglect of his own children and Gillenormand's prickly, devoted love for Marius.

  • What does Valjean learn from loving Cosette that he did not learn from the bishop?
  • Why does Valjean confess his past to Marius, and was Marius just in his response?
  • Compare Thénardier, Gillenormand and Valjean as fathers.

Context

The action runs from 1815, just after Waterloo, to 1833, through the Bourbon Restoration and the early July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Its climax is the republican rising in Paris on June 5-6, 1832, after the funeral of General Lamarque, during a year when cholera had swept the city. Hugo fills the novel with digressions on Waterloo, convents, Paris street children, argot and the history of the sewers, making it a portrait of an era as well as a story.

Composition

Hugo began the book in the mid-1840s under the working title Les Misères, set it aside during the revolution of 1848, and completed it in exile at Hauteville House on Guernsey in 1860-1862. It was published in Brussels by A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie and in Paris from April to June 1862, in five parts: Fantine, Cosette, Marius, Saint-Denis and Jean Valjean. The library text is the English translation by Isabel F. Hapgood, published by Thomas Y. Crowell in New York in 1887.

Reception

The novel was an immense popular success on publication, though some critics objected to its length, its digressions and its politics. It became one of the most widely read novels in the world, was translated almost at once into many languages, and has been adapted for stage and screen many times, most famously as the 1980 musical by Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg. Its bishop and its convict have become lasting figures of mercy and redemption in Christian and secular imagination alike.

Comparisons

• a-tale-of-two-cities

  Dickens's Sydney Carton and Hugo's Valjean both give themselves for others amid revolutionary violence; Dickens looks back to 1789, Hugo to the barricades of 1832, and both end with a death framed by Christian hope.

• crime-and-punishment

  Raskolnikov and Valjean are both criminals redeemed through suffering and love, Raskolnikov through Sonya and the Gospel story of Lazarus, Valjean through a bishop's mercy; Javert and Porfiry make an instructive pair of lawmen.

• the-count-of-monte-cristo

  Dumas's Edmond Dantès and Hugo's Valjean are both unjustly long-imprisoned men who return rich under new names; Dantès chooses vengeance and Valjean chooses mercy.

• oliver-twist

  Hugo's Thénardiers and Paris thieves' gang Patron-Minette echo Dickens's Fagin and the London underworld, and both novelists make a child's survival among criminals a test of their society.

• the-idiot

  Dostoevsky admired Hugo's novel; Bishop Myriel and Prince Myshkin are both attempts to place a Christ-like figure in the modern world, with very different results.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The silver candlesticks: where they first appear, when Valjean receives them, and where they stand at his death.
• Valjean's changes of name (convict number 24,601, then 9,430; Monsieur Madeleine; Ultime Fauchelevent; the Monsieur Leblanc of the Luxembourg Gardens) and what each new identity costs him.
• Javert's appearances: at Fantine's arrest, at the Champmathieu trial, at the Gorbeau tenement, on the barricade and on the parapet over the Seine.
• Hugo's digressions on Waterloo, the convent and the sewers, and how each prepares a turn in the plot.
• Children in danger: Little Gervais, Cosette at the well in Montfermeil, Gavroche and the two small boys in the elephant.

Key terms and names

The galleys (bagne)

The convict prison at Toulon where Valjean served nineteen years in chains; his yellow passport marks him as a released convict and closes every door.

Monseigneur Bienvenu

Welcome, the nickname the people of Digne give Bishop Myriel for his open house and generosity.

Tempest in a skull

Hugo's title for the chapter of Valjean's sleepless night of conscience over Champmathieu.

Petit-Picpus

The enclosed convent in Paris where Valjean and Cosette hide for years with the gardener Fauchelevent.

Friends of the ABC

A circle of republican students led by Enjolras; the name is a French pun on the abaissés, the lowly.

June Rebellion of 1832

The rising in Paris after General Lamarque's funeral on June 5, 1832, crushed within two days; Hugo sets his barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

Gamin

A Paris street child; Hugo devotes a whole book to the type before introducing Gavroche.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why was Jean Valjean sent to the galleys, and why did his sentence last nineteen years?
2. Comprehension What happens when the gendarmes bring Valjean back to the bishop with the stolen silver?
3. Comprehension How does Valjean save Marius after the barricade falls, and who is waiting at the end of the sewer?
4. Interpretation Why does Valjean, after the bishop's mercy, still take the coin from Little Gervais, and why does Hugo include this scene?
5. Interpretation Why does Javert's encounter with mercy lead him to the Seine rather than to a new life like Valjean's?
6. Interpretation Is Marius just or unjust in his treatment of Valjean after the confession, and what does Hugo think?
7. Big Question Can mercy and justice both be fully served at once, or must one always yield to the other?
8. Big Question How much responsibility does a society bear for the crimes of those it leaves in ignorance and want?

Faith Connections

• Romans 12:20-21 (Scripture)

  Overcoming evil with good is the bishop's whole answer to the theft of his silver, and Valjean later repays Javert's pursuit with the same gift of his life.

• Luke 15:11-32 (Scripture)

  Like the father in the parable, the bishop welcomes the wrongdoer before he has repented; Valjean's tears on the road after Little Gervais are his coming to himself.

• Galatians 3:10-13 (Scripture)

  Paul's contrast between the curse of the law and the freedom of grace gives words to Javert's crisis: the law he serves has no place for a convict who acts with mercy.

• Augustine, Confessions VIII (Great Conversation)

  Augustine's account of his divided will in the garden at Milan parallels Valjean's night of conscience, in which two wills argue until one gives way.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: A man treated only as his crime becomes his crime; a man shown undeserved mercy may become good; therefore law alone cannot redeem, and grace, received and passed on, is what changes souls and should shape a society's care for its poor.

Rhetorical device: antithesis. The Tempest in a Skull chapter sets sea against sky against the soul, and the whole novel is built on pairs: the bishop and Javert, Valjean and Thénardier, Cosette and Éponine.

Debate: Resolved: that Javert was right, by the law he served, to pursue Jean Valjean.

Memory Work

Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.

There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Compare Bishop Myriel and Javert as two answers to the question of what a wrongdoer deserves, using the candlesticks scene and Javert Derailed.

Comparison with Crime and Punishment: Compare the paths to redemption of Jean Valjean and Raskolnikov: what part do confession, suffering and another person's love play in each?

Medical Lens

Hugo's novel touches several strands of 19th-century medicine. Fantine's decline (a persistent dry cough, night sweats, fever and wasting) follows the period's literary picture of consumption, though the text never gives a formal diagnosis; she is nursed by the Sisters of Charity in Madeleine's infirmary. The digression on the Paris sewers in Volume V, Book 2 is an early literary essay on urban sanitation, with Hugo arguing that the sewage poured into the Seine should be returned to the fields as manure, and noting that the cholera of 1832 spurred the city to rebuild its drains. Marius's gunshot and sabre wounds and his long convalescence under a surgeon show care of the wounded after street fighting. Valjean's final decline is attributed by the attending doctor to the loss of someone dear; this is a classic literary case of death from grief, to be read in the period's understanding of the passions rather than as a modern diagnosis.

• Volume I, Book 5

  Fantine's dry cough, sweats and wasting as she sells her hair and teeth to pay the Thénardiers.

  Tuberculosis Consumption
• Volume I, Books 6-8

  Fantine in the infirmary under Sister Simplice, waiting for Cosette, and her death when Javert arrests Madeleine.

  Nursing Caregiving Death Dying
• Volume V, Book 2, The Intestine of the Leviathan

  Hugo's history of the Paris sewers, the engineer Bruneseau's survey, the cholera of 1832, and the argument for using sewage as fertilizer.

  Public Health Sanitation Plague Epidemic
• Volume V, Book 5

  Marius's wounds, fever and months of recovery at his grandfather's house.

  WAR Wounds
• Volume V, Book 9, Chapter II

  The doctor's judgment that Valjean is dying of the loss of someone dear to him.

  Grief

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Bishop Myriel and Javert about whether mercy undermines the law.

• Fiction

  Retell the night of the tempest in a skull from the point of view of the candlesticks on Valjean's mantel.

• Essay

  Why does Hugo spend so many pages on Waterloo, the convent and the sewers? Choose one digression and argue for its place in the novel.

• Classroom

  Build a timeline from 1815 to 1833 showing Valjean's names, homes and the people he saves at each stage.

Further Reading

• Notre-Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), Victor Hugo

  Hugo's earlier novel of medieval Paris, the outcast Quasimodo and the cathedral.

• Victor Hugo, Graham Robb

  Full modern biography covering the long composition of Les Misérables.

• The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables, David Bellos

  An account of the novel's writing, publication, money, language and afterlife.

• The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination, Alain Corbin

  History of smell, filth and public hygiene in 18th- and 19th-century France, useful context for Hugo's sewers.