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Les Misérables

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Les Misérables is an 1862 novel by the famous French novelist Victor Hugo, set in the Parisian underworld. Many people know of it through the musical of the same name.

Plot

Overview

Les Misérables contains multitudes of plots, but the thread that binds them together is the story of the ex-convict Jean Valjean, who becomes a force for good in the world, but cannot escape his past.

Within the borders of this Romantic plot, the author Victor Hugo filled many pages with his thoughts on religion, politics, and society. It has been considered inspirational to many who felt oppressed since then.

Structurally, the novel is divided into five volumes:

  1. Fantine
  2. Cosette
  3. Marius
  4. The Idyll of the Rue Plumet and the Epic of the Rue Saint Denis
  5. Jean Valjean

Each volume consists of eight or more "books" divided into some number of chapters.

Template:Spoiler

Synopsis

Jean Valjean is sentenced to hard labor in the galleys in Toulon for five years for breaking into a bakery and stealing a loaf of bread in order to feed his starving sister and her seven children. He ultimately serves nineteen years, having received additional time for four escape attempts.

After his release, in October 1815, Jean Valjean discovers that his ex-convict's passport makes him an outsider; he is able to find neither decent work nor accommodation. He slowly becomes more and more inhuman, losing his kindness and goodwill. In Digne, he is offered a meal and a room for the night by the bishop, a humble and compassionate man who donates almost all of his large salary to the poor. The bishop's only luxuries are a set of silverware, which Jean Valjean steals during the night. The next morning, he is caught by the police, yet the bishop gives him two silver candlesticks, telling the policemen that the silver was a gift, not a theft. The bishop tells Jean 'I have bought your soul for God' and asks Jean to become an honest man henceforth. Jean Valjean starts anew in a town in Montreuil-sur-Mer, under the name of M. Madeleine. He invests in the local industry, setting up a factory for black glass trinkets, and his innovations bring wealth to the region and to himself; in recognition of his contributions to the region, he is appointed mayor. The town's police inspector Javert, who was once stationed at the prison that held Jean Valjean, suspects the mayor's identity, but is unable to gather proof that will stand against a man of M. Madeleine's reputation. Javert is described as a man who follows the written law almost to the letter, without emotion or pleasure.

Among those who come to work in M. Madeleine's factory is a young woman named Fantine, who returns to her home town from a sojourn in Paris. While in Paris, Fantine was seduced and then abandoned by a university student, with whom she bore a daughter, Cosette. To keep her illegitimate child a secret, Fantine has left her in the care of a couple who run an inn in Montfermeil. This couple, the Thénardiers, continually invent new expenses and excuses for requesting money, which they keep themselves while they feed and clothe Cosette with their own daughters' leftovers and make her do all the housework.

Fantine's secret is discovered, and she is fired from the factory. Unable to pay off her debts and keep up with the Thénardiers' demands, she slides into desperate poverty, and eventually resorts to prostitution. One day, Inspector Javert finds her attacking a respectable citizen, and arrests her. Jean Valjean, having discovered that the citizen provoked the incident, pulls rank on Javert to get the charges dropped; and, on learning of Fantine's plight, promises her that he will pay her debts and see to her future and that of Cosette. Fantine, weakened by privation, enters what the doctor says will be a final illness.

For Javert, the mayor's intervention on behalf of a streetwalker is the final straw. He denounces M. Madeleine to the Prefect of Police; in reply, he is told that M. Madeleine can not be Jean Valjean, as Jean Valjean has recently been recaptured. The real Jean Valjean is now faced with a dilemma. Should he remain M. Madeleine and let an innocent man go to prison, or should he save an innocent man and denounce himself? It is his conscience that makes him at least go to Arras, where the trial is to be held. Finally, when sitting in the court room and seeing the trial, he makes his decision and admits that he is Jean Valjean. The shocked court allows Jean Valjean to leave.

Valjean returns to the bedside of the dying Fantine. In order to comfort Fantine, Valjean lies that Cosette is with him, but that Fantine is too weak to see her. However, Javert catches up to him and orders his arrest. In the excitement of the arrest, Fantine learns that Cosette is still with the Thenardiers, and dies of shock. Ignoring Valjean's accusation of murder, Javert arrests him. He escapes the same day from Montreuil's prison, manages to reach Paris and hide his fortune of 630,000 francs in a wood near Montfermeil, but is recaptured four days later. He is first sentenced to death, but later his sentence is changed to hard labour for life.

Jean Valjean escapes from the galleys, retrieves M. Madeleine's fortune, and rescues Cosette from the Thenardiers. He travels with her to Paris, where they hide in the Gorbeau tenement, before they must take refuge in a convent from Javert. When Cosette is fourteen, they move to an isolated house in the Rue Plumet. Having learned from the close run-in with Inspector Javert, who is now stationed in Paris, Jean Valjean also rents a number of other properties around the city, so as to always have a safe place nearby. Two more years pass; Cosette grows up, and becomes beautiful.

On a visit to the Luxembourg Garden with her "father", Cosette attracts the notice of Marius Pontmercy, an impoverished law student. Over the course of subsequent visits, the two fall in love, albeit through glances only, as both are too shy to speak to each other. Marius inadvertently draws Valjean's attention, and Jean Valjean, wary of notice and selfishly afraid of losing Cosette, stops taking her to the Luxembourg.

In January 1832, Jean Valjean, who has been active in doing good work among the poor, encounters the Thenardiers, who are living in the Gorbeau tenement, since the failure of their inn, and have fallen to poverty and crime. Jean Valjean doesn't seem to recognise them, and, seeing that they are genuinely poor, promises to bring them money. M. Thenardier recognises Jean Valjean, and arranges with his criminal associates to ambush Jean Valjean on his return in the hope of extorting still more money from him. Jean Valjean calmly bluffs his way through the situation, and has almost maneuvered himself into a position from which he can escape when the police arrive, having been tipped off by Marius, who lives in the same tenement and overheard Thenardier plotting the ambush. Seeing Inspector Javert at the head of the police, Jean Valjean makes good his escape before more recognition occurs.

Thenardier's eldest daughter, Eponine, has fallen for Marius, although she soon realises that he is interested only in Cosette. She agrees to try to discover Cosette's address for him, and succeeds in locating the house in the Rue Plumet. Marius approaches Cosette one evening while she is walking in the garden of the house. Cosette and Marius declare their love for one another, and continue to meet in the garden each evening, without Jean Valjean knowing.

Jean Valjean sees Thenardier prowling the neighbourhood, and, taking this into consideration with the increasing unrest in the city, begins to consider moving away. On the 3rd of June, 1832, Jean Valjean tells Cosette to begin preparing to leave Paris, and when Marius comes for his evening visit, Cosette breaks the news to him that they are to be parted. Marius, who has no money with which to travel after Cosette and her father, tells Cosette not to expect him on the following evening, as he will be calling on somebody who might help.

Eponine, who has once already foiled her father's designs on the Rue Plumet for Marius' sake, slips Jean Valjean an anonymous message warning him to move away before he tries again. This, on top of the various signs he has noticed that someone has been surreptitiously entering the garden, prompts Jean Valjean to move up the planned date of departure. He informs Cosette that they will be spending their last few days in Paris at his house in the Rue de l'Homme Arme. Cosette gives Eponine a message for Marius, but Eponine does not pass it on.

Marius goes to his closest living relative, his grandfather, M. Gillenormand, with whom he has had no contact since they quarrelled four years ago. M. Gillenormand raised Marius after his mother died giving birth to him, allowing Marius's father (of whom M. Gillenormand had always disapproved because he was a bonapartist and Gillenorman a royalist) no contact with the family. After his father's death, Marius discovered his father was devoted to him, and changed his political oppinions and started calling himself "baron", a title given to his father by Napoleon. M. Gillenormand is delighted by the chance to reconcile with his beloved grandson, but mocks Marius' feelings for Cosette; Marius angrily departs, declaring his intention never to return.

In 1832, there are rumblings of disaffection among the lower classes, who feel that their lot is not much improved by the recent July Revolution. Among those involved are a student group called the Friends of the ABC (in french, ABC is pronounced nearly as abaissé, the abased), led by Enjolras; Marius has friends among the members of the Society. The funeral on the 5th of June, 1832, of General Lamarque, who had been much loved by the people, is the trigger for armed insurrection. Enjolras and the Friends of the ABC head a group of fifty insurrectionists, including a street child called Little Gavroche, the neglected son of the Thenardiers; Eponine, who had been hoping to find Marius; and an undercover Javert.

Enjolras and his group site their barricade near the intersection of the Rue de la Chanvrerie and the Rue Saint Denis - and near a tavern with which the students have a long acquaintance. They occupy the tavern, and set to work building the barricade. Javert is unmasked by Gavroche, and imprisoned.

Marius finds Cosette's house deserted. Having thus lost his grandfather and the woman he loves, Marius is plunged into despair. Eponine arrives with a message inviting him to join Enjolras and his friends at the barricade. A suicidal Marius goes.

Soldiers arrive and attack the barricade. The barricade is penetrated, but Marius forces the attackers to fall back by threatening to blow up the revolutionaries' ammunition store. Eponine, who took a bullet for Marius during the attack, gives Marius the message from Cosette and dies. Marius writes Cosette a message of farewell and, after the soldiers leave off for the night, sends Gavroche to deliver it, hoping to keep Gavroche away from the fight.

Jean Valjean discovers a letter Cosette wrote to Marius, and is devastated to think she is in love. Gavroche, eager to be back at the barricade, lets Jean Valjean take the note instead of insisting on delivering it to Cosette in person. Jean Valjean reads the note himself and goes to the barricades, without really knowing what he wants to do there.

Dawn approaches, and soldiers prepare a renewed attack on the barricade. It has become clear that the Parisian masses are not going to rise up and join the revolution; the revolutionaries resolve to fight on regardless, as an example. The soldiers resume their attack, but the barricade holds. Gavroche is killed. Jean Valjean, thanks to his infallible aim with a rifle, makes himself useful at the barricade, without killing anybody. Around noon, the tide begins to turn in favour of the attackers, and the revolutionaries prepare for the final assault. Enjolras decides that the time has come to execute the police spy; Jean Valjean volunteers for the job, but instead of killing him, releases him, and even tells him his address. During the final onslaught, all the revolutionaries are killed, except for Marius, who is severely wounded, and Jean Valjean, who escapes with the unconscious Marius through the sewers.

Jean Valjean successfully navigates the hazards of the sewer to reach a distant exit, where he encounters first Thenardier (who seems to fail to recognise either Jean Valjean or the unconscious Marius in the poor light) and then Inspector Javert, who promptly arrests him. Jean Valjean submits to Javert's authority, but persuades him first to take Marius home to his grandfather. Javert allows Jean Valjean to enter his house to say his goodbyes, but when Jean Valjean emerges, Javert is gone.

Javert is disturbed: Jean Valjean's noble behaviour challenges Javert's convictions. He struggles. Javert knows that Valjean is not innocent, but knows that he is good and to arrest Valjean would debase the moral authority of the law. Unable to reconcile his duty as an officer of the law - always, until now, his highest duty in his own eyes - with his debt of honour to the man who saved his life at the barricade, he drowns himself in the Seine.

Marius gradually recovers from his injuries, though he has no memory of Jean Valjean saving him, and is reconciled with his grandfather and reunited with Cosette. Cosette and Marius are married on the 16th of February, 1833. Jean Valjean leaves the celebrations early, pleading illness, and spends the night solitarily considering his future.

On the day following the wedding, Jean Valjean tells Marius about his past and his reasons for the revelation. Marius is astonished and horrified - Valjean says nothing in his own favour, save only to assure Marius that his fortune, now Cosette's, was legally come by.

Cosette is hurt and confused by Jean Valjean's decision to distance himself. However, neither he nor Marius will explain. Gradually, Cosette becomes accustomed to the new situation. Jean Valjean, faced with Marius' continuing disapproval, visits less regularly and finally ceases to visit at all. He goes into a decline, never leaving his lodgings and ceasing to eat.

Meanwhile, Thenardier has been doing some research. He comes to see Marius, hoping to extort money out of him by revealing his father-in-law's past. He succeeds only in removing Marius' suspicions of Valjean: by revealing Valjean's career as M. Madeleine, Valjean's salvation of Javert at the barricade, and - when he thinks he is playing his trump card, the fact that he'd seen Valjean carry a "murdered man" through the sewers - that it was Valjean who saved Marius. Marius and Cosette hasten to Jean Valjean's lodging to bring him home. But they are almost too late; there is time only for a brief joyful reunion, and then Jean Valjean dies.

Other threads

At a number of points in the novel, Hugo pauses to devote a book to detailed consideration of a particular subject that has appeared in the story; in this way are included essays on subjects as diverse as the history and purpose of religious communities, slang, the roots of armed insurrection, and the history and geography of the sewers of Paris.

Other essays, after taking up most of a book, conclude with a chapter tying them into the plot: thus a play-by-play account of the Battle of Waterloo ends in an encounter between Marius Pontmercy's father, and "Sergeant" Thenardier; an essay on the Parisian street child as an idea ends by introducing the specific street child called Little Gavroche; and an essay on the significance and consequences of the July Revolution ends with a chapter showing how Enjolras and his friends are tied in with those consequences.

Similarly, at points in the novel Hugo devotes a book to detailed consideration to a particular character or group of characters who otherwise appear only briefly in the narrative: these include M. Myriel, the bishop of Digne; the nuns of the convent in the Rue Petit-Picpus, in whose school Cosette is educated; Marius' grandfather, M. Gillenormand; the group of revolution-minded students led by Enjolras; the Parisian criminal organisation known as "Patron-Minette".

One character rates an entire volume. The third volume is devoted to the life story of Marius; Jean Valjean and Cosette appear only in the sixth book, which tells the encounters in the Luxembourg Garden from Marius' point of view, and the climactic eighth, which recounts the day in which Jean Valjean's philanthropy brings him once more in contact with the Thenardiers.

Other characters whose lives are woven into the narrative include Pére Fauchelevant, whose life Jean Valjean saves in Montreuil-sur-Mer and who returns the favour in Paris; the various inhabitants of the Gorbeau tenement, where Jean Valjean and Cosette stay when they first come to the city; M. Mabeuf, a retired and impoverished horticulturalist, who befriends Marius' father and then Marius; Little Gavroche, whose role is considerably larger than the above synopsis suggests; and two small children, in fact Gavroche's brothers, neglected by their parents just as Gavroche was, who Little Gavroche takes under his wing after their previous guardian is arrested in a police raid. Interestingly enough, these three children are the third, fourth, and fifth children of the Thenardiers.

Themes

Grace

Les Misérables is, among its many other themes, a discussion and comparison of grace and legalism. This is seen most starkly in the juxtaposition of the two protagonists, Jean Valjean and Javert.

On his release from prison near the start of the book, all Jean Valjean knows about is the judgment of the law. He committed a crime, he suffered the punishment - although he feels that this is somehow unjust. In a way, his view at this point is similar to that of Javert, with the exception that Javert does think the punishment just. Nevertheless, both operate on a basis of deeds and rewards, or legalism: in the musical adaptation of the work, this is expressed very well in the solo "Stars", with the lines:

And so it has been, and so it is written
On the doorway to paradise
That those who falter and those who fall
Must pay the price

It is from the starting-point of legalism that the two worldviews start to separate. Valjean's first encounter with grace occurs after he has found himself rejected because of his status as an ex-convict, and is forced to take refuge with a bishop for the night (see #synopsis). He runs off with the bishop's silver, is caught and returned, but the bishop not only says that the silver was a gift, but famously also gives him the two silver candlesticks from his table. This treatment that does not correspond to what Valjean "deserves" is a powerful image of grace.

Throughout the work, right up until the end, Valjean is haunted by his past, most notably in the form of Javert. It is therefore fitting that the greatest triumph of grace in the book is between Valjean and Javert. After Javert is captured going undercover with the revolutionaries, Jean Valjean volunteers to execute him. However, instead of taking vengeance as Javert expects, he sets the policeman free. This can be seen as the ultimate triumph of grace in Valjean's life, however the author also makes the point that legalism can become entrenched: Javert is unable to reconcile his black-and-white view with the apparent high morals of this ex-criminal and with the grace extended to him, and commits suicide.

Grace is seen as a positive moral force in Valjean's life. Whereas prison has hardened him to the point of stealing from a poor and charitable bishop, grace frees him to himself be charitable to others - as in the case of Fantine, accused of prostitution, and of the falsely accused "Jean Valjean" (who is in fact an innocent man - see the #synopsis). It also teaches him to react differently to his mistakes: having ducked responsibility when Fantine is fired by his foreman, Valjean proceeds to try to right the wrong. Despite his selfishness in guarding Cosette and keeping her from Marius, when he reads Marius's last note to her he goes to the barricades to save Marius. The reforming nature of grace as opposed to the embittering nature of legalism is a major theme in Les Misérables.

Translations

English translations

At least four English translations of the novel exist, by:

  • Isabel F. Hapgood (Whose translation is public domain [See the Project Gutenburg link below])
  • Charles E. Wilbour (first published in 1862, only months after the French edition of the novel was released)
  • Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee (first published ?, based on Wilbour)
  • Norman Denny (first published 1976)

Adaptations

The story has been filmed numerous times:

In 1937, Orson Welles wrote, produced and directed a seven-part series for radio. Welles himself narrated the story and played the part of Valjean. The series co-starred Martin Gabel as Inspector Javert, and featured his then wife Virginia Nicholson Welles as the older Cosette, with Gwen Davies (young Cosette), Alice Frost (Fantine), William Johnstone (Marius), and in other roles, Frank Readick, Ray Collins, Agnes Moorehead, and Everett Sloane, many of whom would perform for The Mercury Theatre on the Air.

In 1980, a musical (see Les Misérables (musical)) opened in Paris, written by the composer Claude-Michel Schönberg and the librettist Alain Boublil, which has gone on to become one of the most successful musicals in history.

In 2001, BBC Radio 4 produced a 25-part radio dramatisation, with a cast of 27 featuring Joss Ackland narrating, Roger Allam as Valjean, and David Schofield as Javert. (Allam, ironically, originated the role of Javert in the English language version of the Boublil/Schönberg musical.)

In May 2001, Francois Ceresa published Cosette, or the Time of Illusions, a sequel to Les Misérables. Victor Hugo's descendants attempted to have the book banned, condemning it as a money-seeking enterprise and an attack on Hugo's work (more subjective offences aside, it is undeniable that Ceresa retconned a key scene in Hugo's novel to avoid the death of a character he wanted to use in his novel). Victor Hugo's heirs and the Société des gens de lettres lost the first trial [1] but won in appeal [2].

The plotline of Terry Pratchett's 28th Discworld novel, Night Watch, is a direct satire of Les Misérables.

In 2004, a fighting game based on the novel called ArmJoe (a pun on the Japanese title, ああ無情 Aa Mujou) was released as freeware. [3]

Trivia

In an episode of The Simpsons, Sideshow Bob shares Jean Valjean's prisoner number of 24601.

In a different episode, [9F21] Homer's Barbershop Quartet, Prinicpal Skinner also had that number. I also recollect that Marge had the number while in prison, but can't find the episode.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Les Misérables.
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