Table of Contents

FROM THE PAGES OF LES MISÉRABLESTitle PageCopyright PageVICTOR HUGOTHE WORLD OF VICTOR HUGO AND LES MISÉRABLESIntroductionAcknowledgementsA NOTE ON THE ABRIDGMENTPREFACE FANTINE - BOOK ONE AN UPRIGHT MAN

Chapter 1 - M. MYRIELChapter 2 - M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENUChapter 3 - A DIFFICULT DIOCESE FOR A GOOD BISHOPChapter 4 - GOOD WORKS THAT MATCH THE WORDS5 (7) - CRAVATTE6 (10) - THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT BOOK TWO - THE FALL

Chapter 1 - THE EVENING AFTER A LONG DAY’S WALKChapter 2 - PRUDENCE COMMENDED TO WISDOMChapter 3 - THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE4 (5) - TRANQUILLITY5 (6) - JEAN VALJEAN6 (7) - THE DEPTHS OF DESPAIR7 (9) - GRIEVANCES8 (10) - THE MAN AWAKES9 (11) - WHAT HE DOES10 (12) - THE BISHOP AT WORK11 (13) - PETIT GERVAIS BOOK THREE - IN THE YEAR 1817

Chapter 1 - THE YEAR 1817Chapter 2 - DOUBLE FOURSOME

Chapter 3 - FOUR TO FOURChapter 4 - THOLOMYÈS IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH SONGChapter 5 - AT BOMBARDA’SChapter 6 - A CHAPTER OF SELF-ADMIRATIONChapter 7 - THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYES8 (9) - JOYOUS END OF JOY BOOK FOUR - TO ENTRUST IS SOMETIMES TO ABANDON

Chapter 1 - ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHERChapter 2 - FIRST SKETCH OF TWO SUSPICIOUS-LOOKING FACESChapter 3 - THE LARK BOOK FIVE - THE DESCENT

Chapter 1 - THE STORY OF AN IMPROVEMENT IN JET-WORKChapter 2 - MADELEINEChapter 3 - MONEYS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTEChapter 4 - MONSIEUR MADELEINE IN MOURNINGChapter 5 - FAINT LIGHTNING FLASHES ON THE HORIZONChapter 6 - OLD FAUCHELEVENTChapter 7 - FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER AT PARISChapter 8 - MADAME VICTURNIEN SPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITYChapter 9 - SUCCESS OF MADAME VICTURNIENChapter 10 - FURTHER SUCCESS OF THE GOSSIPS11 (12) - THE IDLENESS OF MONSIEUR BAMATABOIS12 (13) - THE SOLUTION TO SOME MUNICIPAL POLICE ISSUES BOOK SIX - JAVERT

Chapter 1 - THE BEGINNING OF REPOSEChapter 2 - HOW JEAN CAN BECOME CHAMP BOOK SEVEN - THE CHAMPMATHIEU CASE

Chapter 1 - SISTER SIMPLICEChapter 2 - THE SHREWDNESS OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE3 (4) - FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP4 (5) - OBSTACLES

5 (6) - SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE TEST6 (7) - THE TRAVELLER ARRIVES AND PROVIDES FOR HIS RETURN7 (8) - ADMISSION BY FAVOUR8 (9) - A PLACE FOR ARRIVING AT CONVICTIONS9 (10) - THE ACCUSED10 (11) - CHAMPMATHIEU MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED BOOK EIGHT - COUNTER-STROKE

Chapter 1 - IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE LOOKS AT HIS HAIRChapter 2 - FANTINE HAPPYChapter 3 - JAVERT SATISFIEDChapter 4 - AUTHORITY RESUMES ITS SWAYChapter 5 - A FITTING TOMB COSETTE - BOOK ONE WATERLOO

Chapter 1 - WHAT YOU MEET IN COMING FROM NIVELLES2 (19) - THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT NIGHT BOOK Two - THE CONVICT SHIP ORION

Chapter 1 - NUMBER 24601 BECOMES NUMBER 94302 (3) - SHOWING THAT THE CHAIN OF THE SHACKLE MUST NEEDS HAVE UNDERGONEA ... BOOK THREE - KEEPING THE PROMISE TO THE DEAD WOMAN

Chapter 1 - THE WATER PROBLEM AT MONTFERMEILChapter 2 - TWO PORTRAITS COMPLETEDChapter 3 - MEN MUST HAVE WINE AND HORSES WATERChapter 4 - A DOLL COMES ONSTAGEChapter 5 - THE LITTLE GIRL ALL ALONEChapter 6 - WHICH PERHAPS PROVES THE INTELLIGENCE OF BOULATRUELLEChapter 7 - COSETTE SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE UNKNOWN, IN THE DARKNESSChapter 8 - INCONVENIENCE OF ENTERTAINING A POOR MAN WHO IS PERHAPS RICHChapter 9 - THENARDIER MANŒUVRINGChapter 10 - WHO SEEKS THE BEST MAY FIND THE WORSTChapter 11 - NUMBER 9430 COMES UP AGAIN, AND COSETTE DRAWS IT

BOOK FOUR - THE OLD GORBEAU HOUSE

Chapter 1 - MASTER GORBEAUChapter 2 - A NEST FOR OWL AND WRENChapter 3 - TWO MISFORTUNES MINGLED MAKE HAPPINESSChapter 4 - WHAT THE LANDLADY DISCOVEREDChapter 5 - A FIVE-FRANC COIN FALLING ON THE FLOOR MAKES A NOISE BOOK FIVE - A SINISTER HUNT REQUIRES A SILENT PACK

Chapter 1 - STRATEGIC ZIGZAGSChapter 2 - IT IS FORTUNATE THAT VEHICLES CAN CROSS THE BRIDGE OF AUSTERLITZChapter 3 - SEE THE MAP OF PARIS IN 1727Chapter 4 - GROPING FOR ESCAPEChapter 5 - WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WERE THE STREETS LIGHTED WITH GASChapter 6 - A MYSTERY BEGINSChapter 7 - THE MYSTERY CONTINUEDChapter 8 - THE MYSTERY REDOUBLESChapter 9 - THE MAN WITH THE BELLChapter 10 - IN WHICH IS EXPLAINED HOW JAVERT LOST HIS PREY BOOK EIGHT - CEMETERIES TAKE WHAT IS GIVEN THEM

Chapter 1 - WHICH TELLS HOW TO ENTER THE CONVENTChapter 2 - FAUCHELEVENT FACING THE DIFFICULTYChapter 3 - MOTHER INNOCENTChapter 4 - IN WHICH JEAN VALJEAN HAS QUITE THE APPEARANCE OF HAVING READ ...Chapter 5 - IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO BE A DRUNKARD TO BE IMMORTALChapter 6 - DEAD AND BURIEDChapter 7 - THE MISSING CARDChapter 8 - SUCCESSFUL EXAMINATIONChapter 9 - THE CLOSE MARIUS - BOOK ONE PARIS STUDIED THROUGH ITSMICROCOSM

Chapter 1 - PARVULUSChapter 2 - SOME OF HIS PRIVATE MARKS

Chapter 3 - HE IS AGREEABLEChapter 4 - HE MAY BE USEFUL5 (13) - LITTLE GAVROCHE BOOK THREE - THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON

1 (2) - ONE OF THE RED SPECTRES OF THAT TIME2 (3) - REQUIESCANT3 (4) - END OF THE BRIGAND4 (5) - THE USEFULNESS OF GOING TO MASS TO BECOME A REVOLUTIONARY5 (6) - WHAT IT IS TO HAVE MET A CHURCHWARDEN BOOK FOUR - THE FRIENDS OF THEABC

Chapter 1 - A GROUP WHICH ALMOST BECAME HISTORICChapter 2 - FUNERAL ORATION UPON BLONDEAU, BY BOSSUETChapter 3 - THE ASTONISHMENTS OF MARIUSChapter 4 - THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAFÉ MUSAINChapter 5 - ENLARGEMENT OF THE HORIZONChapter 6 - ANGUISH BOOK FIVE - THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE

Chapter 1 - MARIUS INDIGENTChapter 2 - MARIUS POORChapter 3 - MARIUS GROWN BOOK SIX - THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS

Chapter 1 - THE NICKNAME: MODE OF FORMATION OF FAMILY NAMESChapter 2 - A LIGHT DAWNSChapter 3 - AN EFFECT OF SPRINGChapter 4 - COMMENCEMENT OF A SERIOUS ILLNESSChapter 5 - SUNDRY THUNDERBOLTS FALL UPON MA‘AM BOUGONChapter 6 - TAKEN PRISONERChapter 7 - ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U ABANDONED TO CONJECTUREChapter 8 - EVEN DISABLED VETERANS MAY BE LUCKYChapter 9 - AN ECLIPSE

BOOK SEVEN - PATRON-MINETTE

Chapter 1 - THE MINES AND THE MINERSChapter 2 - THE LOWEST DEPTHChapter 3 - BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSEChapter 4 - COMPOSITION OF THE BAND BOOK EIGHT - THE CRIMINAL POOR

1 (2) - A FIND2 (3) - THE MAN WITH FOUR FACES3 (4) - A ROSE IN DIRE POVERTY4 (5) - THE PROVIDENTIAL SPYHOLE5 (6) - THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR6 (7) - STRATEGY AND TACTICS7 (8) - THE SUNBEAM IN THE HOLE8 (9) - JONDRETTE WEEPS ALMOST9 (10) - PRICE OF CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR10 (11) - OFFERS OF SERVICE BY POVERTY TO GRIEF11 (12) - THE USE OF M. LEBLANC’S FIVE-FRANC COIN12 (13) - SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABANTUR ORARE PATERNOSTER13 (14) - IN WHICH A POLICE OFFICER GIVES A LAWYER TWO COUPS DE POIGN14 (15) - JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASE15 (16) - IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE SONG SET TO AN ENGLISH AIR IN FASHION IN183216 (17) - USE OF MARIUS’ FIVE-FRANC COIN17 (18) - MARIUS’ TWO CHAIRS FACE EACH OTHER18 (19) - THE DISTRACTIONS OF DARK CORNERS19 (20) - THE AMBUSH20 (21) - THE VICTIMS SHOULD ALWAYS BE ARRESTED FIRST THE EPIC ON THE RUE SAINT-DENIS AND THE IDYLL OF THERUE PLUMET - BOOK ONE A ...

Chapter 1 - WELL CUTChapter 2 - BADLY SEWED TOGETHER3 (4) - CRACKS UNDER THE FOUNDATION

BOOK Two - EPONINE

1(2) - EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS2 (4) - AN APPARITION TO MARIUS BOOK THREE - THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET

v - THE SECRET HOUSE2 (5) - THE ROSE DISCOVERS THAT SHE IS AN ENGINE OF WAR3 (6) - THE BATTLE COMMENCES4 (7) - FOR SADNESS, SADNESS REDOUBLED BOOK FOUR - AID FROM BELOW MAY BE AID FROM ABOVE

Chapter 1 - WOUND WITHOUT, CURE WITHIN BOOK FIVE - THE END OF WHICH IS UNLIKE THE BEGINNING

1(2) - FEARS OF COSETTE2 (3) - ENRICHED BY THE COMMENTARIES OF TOUSSAINT3 (4) - A HEART UNDER A STONE4 (5) - COSETTE AFTER THE LETTER5 (6) - THE OLD ARE MADE TO GO OUT WHEN CONVENIENT BOOK SIX - LITTLE GAVROCHE

Chapter 1 - A MALEVOLENT TRICK OF THE WINDChapter 2 - IN WHICH LITTLE GAVROCHE TAKES ADVANTAGE OF NAPOLEON THEGREATChapter 3 - THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF ESCAPE BOOK EIGHT - ENCHANTMENT AND DESPAIR

Chapter 1 - SUNSHINEChapter 2 - THE STUPEFACTION OF COMPLETE HAPPINESSChapter 3 - THE SHADOW GROWSChapter 4 - CAB ROLLS IN ENGLISH AND YELPS IN ARGOT

5 (6) - MARIUS BECOMES SO REAL AS TO GIVE COSETTE HIS ADDRESS6 (7) - THE OLD HEART AND YOUNG HEART IN PRESENCE BOOK NINE - WHERE ARE THEY GOING?

Chapter 1 - JEAN VALJEANChapter 2 - MARIUS BOOK ELEVEN - THE ATOM FRATERNISES WITH THEHURRICANE

1 (6) - RECRUITS BOOK TWELVE - CORINTH

Chapter 1 - HISTORY OF CORINTH FROM ITS FOUNDATION2 (3) - NIGHT BEGINS TO GATHER OVER GRANTAIRE3 (4) - ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP4 (5) - THE PREPARATIONS5 (7) - THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES BOOK THIRTEEN - MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW

Chapter 1 - FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS2 (3) - THE EXTREME LIMIT BOOK FOURTEEN - THE GRANDEUR OF DESPAIR

Chapter 1 - THE FLAG: FIRST ACT2 (4) - THE KEG OF POWDER3 (5) - END OF JEAN PROUVAIRE’S RHYME4 (6) - THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE5 (7) - GAVROCHE A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES BOOK FIFTEEN - THE RUE DE L’HOMME ARMÉ

Chapter 1 - BLOTTER,BLABBER

Chapter 2 - THE GAMIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHTChapter 3 - WHILE COSSETE AND TOUSSAINT SLEEP JEAN VALJEAN - BOOK ONE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS

1(2) - WHAT CAN BE DONE IN THE ABYSS BUT TO TALK2 (3) - LIGHT DAWNS AND DARKENS3 (4) - FIVE LESS, ONE MORE4 (5) - WHAT HORIZON IS VISIBLE FROM THE TOP OF THE BARRICADE5 (6) - MARIUS HAGGARD, JAVERT LACONIC6 (7) - THE SITUATION GROWS SERIOUS7 (8) - THE GUNNERS PRODUCE A SERIOUS IMPRESSION8 (9) - USE OF THAT OLD POACHER’S SKILL, AND THAT INFALLIBLE AIM WHICH ...9 (10) - DAWN10 (11 ) - THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NOBODY11 (13) - PASSING GLEAMS12 (14) - IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE NAME OF ENJOLRAS’ MISTRESS13 (15) - GAVROCHE OUTSIDE14 (16) - HOW BROTHER BECOMES FATHER15 (17) - MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT16 (19) - JEAN VALJEAN TAKES HIS REVENGE17 (20) - THE DEAD ARE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT WRONG18 (21) - THE HEROES19 (22) - FOOT TO FOOT20 (23) - ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK21 (24) - PRISONER BOOK THREE - MIRE, BUT SOUL

Chapter 1 - THE CLOACA AND ITS SURPRISESChapter 2 - EXPLANATIONChapter 3 - THE MAN TAILEDChapter 4 - HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSSChapter 5 - FOR SAND AS WELL AS WOMAN THERE IS A FINESSE WHICH IS PERFIDYChapter 6 - THE FONTISChapter 7 - EXTREMITIESChapter 8 - THE TORN COAT-TAILChapter 9 - MARIUS SEEMS TO BE DEAD TO ONE WHO IS A GOOD JUDGEChapter 10 - RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON—OF HIS LIFEChapter 11 - COMMOTION IN THE ABSOLUTEChapter 12 - THE ANCESTOR

BOOK FOUR - JAVERT DERAILED

Chapter 1 - JAVERT DERAILED BOOK FIVE - THE GRANDSON AND THE GRANDFATHER

1 (2) - MARIUS, ESCAPING FROM CIVIL WAR, PREPARES FOR DOMESTIC WAR2 (3) - MARIUS ATTACKS3 (4) - MADEMOISELLE GILLENORMAND AT LAST THINKS IT NOT IMPROPER THATMONSIEUR ...4 (5) - DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY RATHER IN SOME FOREST THAN WITH SOME LAWYER5 (6) - THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH IN HIS OWN WAY, THAT COSETTEMAY BE HAPPY6 (7) - THE EFFECTS OF DREAM MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS7 (8) - TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND BOOK SIX - THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT

1 (2) - JEAN VALJEAN STILL HAS HIS ARM IN A SLING2 (3) - THE INSEPARABLE3 (4) - UNDYING FAITH BOOK SEVEN - THE LAST DROP IN THE CHALICE

Chapter 1 - THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVENChapter 2 - THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION MAY CONTAIN BOOK EIGHT - THE FINAL TWILIGHT

Chapter 1 - THE BASEMENT ROOMChapter 2 - OTHER STEPS BACKWARDChapter 3 - THEY REMEMBER THE GARDEN IN THE RUE PLUMETChapter 4 - ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION BOOK NINE - THE LAST NIGHT YIELDS TO THE LAST DAWN

Chapter 1 - PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPYChapter 2 - THE LAST FLICKERINGS OF THE EXHAUSTED LAMPChapter 3 - A PEN IS HEAVY TO HIM WHO LIFTED FAUCHELEVENT’S CARTChapter 4 - A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH SERVES ONLY TO WHITENChapter 5 - NIGHT BEHIND WHICH IS DAWN ENDNOTESINSPIRED BY LES MISÉRABLESCOMMENTS & QUESTIONSFOR FURTHER READING

FROM THE PAGES OF LES MISÉRABLES

What is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon theirdestinies, as what they do. (page 11)

Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched. (page 122)

“In the winter, it is so cold that you thresh your arms to warm them; but the bosses won’t allow that;they say it is a waste of time. It is tough work to handle iron when there is ice on the pavements. Itwears a man out quick. You get old when you are young at this trade. A man is used up by forty. I wasfifty-three.” (page 175)

No one ever keeps a secret so well as a child. (page 329)

The jostlings of young minds against each other have this wonderful attribute, that one can neverforesee the spark, nor predict the flash. What may spring up in a moment? Nobody knows. (page 379)

All the problems which the socialists propounded, aside from the cos mogonic visions, dreams, andmysticism, may be reduced to two principal problems. First problem: To produce wealth. Secondproblem: To distribute it. (page 505)

Social prosperity means, man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.(page 505)

He did not even know at night what he had done in the morning, nor where he had breakfasted, norwho had spoken to him; he had songs in his ear which rendered him deaf to every other thought; heexisted only during the hours in which he saw Cosette. Then, as he was in Heaven, it was quitenatural that he should forget the earth. (page 581)

Marius felt Cosette living within him. To have Cosette, to possess Cosette, this to him was notseparable from breathing. (page 590)

The book which the reader has now before his eyes is, from one end to the other, in its whole and inits details, whatever may be the intermissions, the exceptions, or the defaults, the march from evil to

good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite toconscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness toGod. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end. (page 698)

Without cartridges, without a sword, he had now in his hand only the barrel of his carbine, the stockof which he had broken over the heads of those who were entering. He had put the billiard tablebetween the assailants and himself; he had retreated to the comer of the room, and there, with proudeye, haughty head, and that stump of a weapon in his grasp, he was still so formidable that a largespace was left about him.(page 703)

Published by Barnes & Noble Books 122 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10011

www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

Les Miserables was published in French in 1862. Charles E. Wilbour’s English

translation was revised and edited by Frederick Mynon Cooper and published later that same year.

Published in 2003 with new Introduction, Notes, Biography, Chronology,

Inspired By, Questions, and For Further Reading.

Introduction, Notes, and For Further Reading

Copyright © 2003 by Laurence Porter.

Note on Victor Hugo, The World of Victor Hugo and Les Miserables,

Inspired by Les Miserables, and Comments & Questions Copyright @ 2003 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Barnes & Noble Classics and the Barnes & Noble Classics

colophon are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Les Miserables

ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-066-2 ISBN-10: 1-59308-066-2eISBN : 978-1-411-43255-0

LC Control Number 2003108030

Produced and published in conjunction with:

Fine Creative Media, Inc. 322 Eighth Avenue

New York, NY 10001

Michael J. Fine, President and Publisher

Printed in the United States of America

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/classics

QM

5 7 9 10 8 6

VICTOR HUGO

Novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, idealist politician, and leader of the French Romantic movementfrom 1830 on, Victor-Marie Hugo was born the youngest of three sons in Besançon, France, onFebruary 26,1802. Victor’s early childhood was turbulent: His father, Joseph-Léopold, traveledfrequently as a general in Napoleon Bonaparte’s army, forcing the family to move throughout France,Italy, and Spain. Weary of this upheaval, Hugo’s wife, Sophie, separated from her husband andsettled with her three sons in Paris. Victor’s brilliance declared itself early in the form ofillustrations, plays, and nationally recognized verse. Against his mother’s wishes, the passionateyoung man fell in love and secretly became engaged to his neighbor, Adèle Foucher. Following thedeath of Sophie Hogo, and self-supporting thanks to a royal pension granted for his first book of odes,Hugo wed Adèle in 1822.

In the 1820s and 30s, Hugo came into his own as a writer and figure-head of the new Romanticism,a movement that sought to liberate literature from its stultifying classical influences. His preface tothe play Cromwell, in 1827, proclaimed a new aesthetics inspired by Shakespeare and Velázquez,based on the shock effects of juxtaposing the grotesque with the sublime (for example, the deformedhunchback inhabiting the magnificent cathedral of Notre-Dame). The play Hernani incited violentpublic disturbances among scandalized audiences in 1830. The next year, the great success of NotreDame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) confirmed Hugo’s primacy among the Romantics.

By 1830 the Hugos had four children. Exhausted from her pregnancies and Hugo’s insatiable sexualdemands, Adèle began to sleep alone, and soon fell in love with Hugo’s best friend, the criticCharles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve. They began an affair. The Hugos stayed together as friends, and in1833 Hugo met the actress Juliette Drouet, who would remain his primary mistress until her deathfifty years later.

Personal tragedy pursued Hugo relentlessly. His jealous brother Eugène went permanently insane atVictor’s wedding to Adèle. Three of Victor’s children died before him. His favorite, Léopoldine,together with her unborn child and her devoted husband, died at nineteen in a boating accident on theSeine. The one survivor, Adèle (named after her mother), would be institutionalized for more thanthirty years.

Hugo’s early royalist sympathies shifted toward liberalism during the late 1820s under theinfluences of the fiery liberal priest Félicité de Lamennais; of his close friend Charles Nodier, anardent opponent of capital punishment; and of his father, a general under Napoleon I. He first heldpolitical office in 1843, and as he became more engaged in France’s social troubles, he was electedto the Constitutional Assembly following the Revolution of 1848. A lifetime advocate of freedom andjustice, often at his own peril, Hugo spearheaded the Romantic movement that linked artists to thepolitical realm. After Napoleon III’s coup d‘état in 1851, Hugo’s open opposition created hostilitiesthat ended in his flight abroad from the new government.

Hugo’s exile took him first to Belgium, and then to the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey.Declining at least two offers of amnesty—which would have meant curtailing his opposition to theEmpire—Hugo remained abroad for nineteen years, until Napoléon’s fall in 1870. Meanwhile, theseclusion of the islands enabled Hugo to write some of his most famous verse and his masterpiece,

the novel Les Misérables. When he returned to Paris, the country hailed him as a hero. Hugo thenweathered, within a brief period, the siege of Paris, the institutionalization of his daughter forinsanity, and the death of his two sons. Despite this personal anguish, the aging author remainedcommitted to political change. He became an internationally revered figure who helped to preserveand shape the Third Republic and democracy in France. Hugo’s death on May 22,1885, generatedintense national mourning; more than two million people joined his funeral procession in Paris fromthe Arc de Triomphe to the Panthéon where he was buried.

THE WORLD OF VICTOR HUGO AND LES MISÉRABLES

1797 Hugo’s parents, Joseph-Léopold Hugo and Sophie Trébuchet, marry. They will have three sons:Abel (1798), Eugène (1800), and Victor-Marie (1802), who is born in Besançon on February 26. Anofficer in the army of Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoléon I), Léopold must travel constantly duringVictor’s youth.1803—Marital problems occur as Sophie cannot tolerate the transience1812 of army life; finally, she settles in Paris with her three children. Both parents start extramaritalaffairs. The family travels to Corsica and Elba, where Léopold is stationed. He later commands thetroops that will suppress freedom fighters in occupied Italy and Spain, sometimes nailing theirsevered heads above church doors.1804 Napoleon proclaims himself Emperor of the French. Literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve is born.1807 Léopold Hugo receives a post in Naples, where his family soon joins him.1808 Léopold Hugo follows a cortege of Napoléon’s brother, Joseph, to Spain. Weary of travel,Sophie returns with her young sons to Paris, where she begins an affair with General Victor Lahorie,a conspirator against Napoleon.1809 Napoleon promotes Major Hugo to general, and honors him with the title of count.1810 The police arrest Lahorie in Mme Hugo’s house on December 30.1811 Sophie journeys to Spain to save her marriage, but problems in the relationship persist.Leopold, knowing of his wife’s infidelity, asks for a divorce. Sophie and her sons return to Paris.1812 General Lahorie is executed for plotting against Napoleon.1814 Napoleon abdicates and is banished to the island of Elba.1815 Napoléon is defeated at Waterloo, after “The Hundred Days” of his renewed reign followinghis secret return from exile. Louis XVIII returns to power, reinstating France’s monarchy.1816 A marvelously gifted and precocious writer, Victor Hugo proclaims his ambition to rivalFrançois-René de Chateaubriand, the most famous Romantic author of his generation. Estranged fromhis father and influenced by his mother, a royalist by expediency, he skillfully curries favor with theconservative literary establishment and the King, whom he praises in odes.1817 Hugo wins honorable mention in the national poetry contest sponsored by the l‘Académiefrançaise (the French Academy).1818 Sophie and Léopold are legally separated (divorce was illegal in France between 1814 and1886). Victor composes a first, brief version of his novel Bug-Jargal, an account of a slave revolt inthe Caribbean after the French Revolution; this version will appear in 1820.1819 Despite his mother’s wishes for a more ambitious union, Victor falls in love with—and secretlyasks the hand of—his neighbor, Adèle Foucher. But as a minor, he cannot marry her without hismother’s consent, which is denied. The three Hugo brothers found a literary journal called LeConservateur litteraire.

1820—Hugo writes over one hundred essays and more than twenty1821 poems for Le Conservateur.1821 Victor becomes friends with the famous priest Félicité de Lamennais, who preaches a sociallycommitted Christianity. Victor’s mother dies on June 27. In July his father marries his mistress,Catherine Thomas. Victor becomes reconciled with his father, who does not oppose Victor’smarriage to Adèle.1822 Granted a small pension by Louis XVIII for his first volume of Odes praising the monarchy,Victor marries Adèle Foucher on October 12. Eugène Hugo, who also loves her, has a psychoticbreakdown at the wedding; he will never recover.1823 Hugo publishes a pioneering historical novel, Han d‘Islande (sometimes translated as TheDemon Dwarf), a bloodthirsty melodrama. He helps found the periodical La Muse française andattends weekly gatherings hosted by the then leader of the French Romantic movement, CharlesNodier (1780—1844).1824 Hugo publishes the Nouvelles Odes. His first child, a daughter Léopoldine is born. Charles Xassumes the throne, and Victor serves as the historian of the coronation.1826 Odes et Ballades is published, as is the full version of Bug-Jargal, noteworthy for its altruisticblack hero. Adèle gives birth to Hugo’s second child, Charles-Victor.1827 Hugo becomes best friends with the critic Sainte-Beuve. The play Cromwell is published: itsfamous preface proposes a Romantic aesthetic that contrasts the sublime with the grotesque, inemulation of Shakespeare. Hugo declares his independence from the conservative, divine-rightroyalists.1828 General Léopold Hugo dies unexpectedly on January 29. Hugo’s third child, François-Victor, isborn.1829 Hugo’s prodigious literary output includes the picturesque verse collection Les Orientales, thetale Le Dernier Jour d‘un condamné d mort (The Last Day of a Condemned Man), opposing capitalpunishment, and the historical play Marion de Lorme, censored by the French monarchy because itportrays the sixteenth-century ruler François I as a degenerate.1830 Hugo’s fourth child, a daughter named Adèle, named after her mother, is born. Mme Hugo wantsno more children, and from then on sleeps alone. Sainte-Beuve betrays his best friend, Victor, bytelling Adèle he loves her. Hugo’s play Hernani, defiantly Romantic in its use of informal languageand its violation of the classical “three unities” of time, place, and action, causes riots in the theaterwhere it is performed.1831 Notre-Dame de Paris: 1482 (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), a tale of the era of the cruel,crafty Charles XI, is published and becomes a bestseller. The visionary poetry collection LesFeuilles d‘automne is published. In it Hugo displays a profundity and a mastery of the art of versethat rival the greatest European poets of the era, Goethe and Shelley.1832 Hugo’s play Le Roi s‘amuse (The King’s Fool), which will inspire Giuseppi Verdi’s greatopera Rigoletto (1851), is banned after opening night owing to its disrespectful portrayal of a king.Hugo occupies an apartment in what is today called la place des Vosges, where he will remain until1848.

1833 The minor actress Juliette Drouet enters Hugo’s life. He provides her with an apartment nearhim, forbids her to go out alone, and occupies her with making fair copies of his manuscripts. Thecouple will continue their liaison until her death fifty years later. The first version of George Sand’sfeminist novel Lelia is published.1834 Hugo ends his friendship with Sainte-Beuve.1835 Hugo’s great verse collection Les Chants du crepuscule (Songs of Twilight) appears.1837 Hugo is made an officer of the Legion d‘honneur. Les Voix interieures, the third of fourcollections of visionary poetry during Hugo’s middle lyric period (1831—1840), appears. EugèneHugo dies confined in the Charenton madhouse.1838 Ruy Blas, Hugo’s best play, outrages the monarchists by depicting a queen and a valet in love.1840 Les Rayons et les Ombres (Sunlight and Shadows), the last great poetic collection beforeHugo’s exile, is published.1841 After several failed attempts, Hugo is elected to the French Academy, the body of “FortyImmortals”—the greatest honor a French writer can receive.1843 A tragic year is punctuated by the failure of Hugo’s Les Burgraves and the drowning of hisbeloved elder daughter, Léopoldine, her unborn child, and her husband, a strong swimmer who triedto save her after a boating accident. Hugo will dedicate his poetic masterpiece, Les Contemplations,to her. Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo appears.1845 Hugo is made a pair de France, an appointive position in a body roughly equivalent to theBritish House of Lords. Ten weeks later, his affair with Mme Léonie Biard (from 1844 to 1851)comes to light when they are arrested in their love nest and charged with adultery. She goes to prison.Hugo’s rank saves him from prosecution.1847 Balzac publishes La Cousine Bette.1848 The monarchy is overthrown, and the Second Republic proclaimed. Hugo is elected to itsConstitutional Assembly, with the support of the conservatives. With his son Charles, he founds andedits L’ Événement, a liberal paper that unwisely campaigns to have Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, thenephew of the former Emperor, elected President.1849 Hugo presides over the International Peace Conference in Paris, and delivers the first publicspeech that proposes the creation of a United States of Europe. Eugène Delacroix paints the ceiling ofthe Louvre’s Salon d‘Apollon.1849- Hugo increasingly criticizes the government’s policies, making 1851 fiery speeches onpoverty, liberty, and the church. His positions provoke the ire of the government.1851 The government briefly imprisons Hugo’s two sons in June for having published disloyalarticles in L‘Événement. Soon after Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état (actually, a legal election thatcreates the Second Empire) in early December, Hugo learns that the imperial police have issued awarrant for his arrest. He flees with his family and mistress to Belgium, and then to the Isle of Jersey,a British possession in the English Channel.1852- In 1852 Louis-Napoléon declares himself emperor as 1853 Napoleon III. Hugo writes ascathing satire, Napoléon le petit. From 1853 to 1855 he attends seances at which the spirits of both

the living and the dead (including Shakespeare, Jesus, and a cowering Napoleon III) seem tocommunicate by tapping on the table. They explain that all living beings must expiate their sinsthrough a cycle of punitive reincarnations, but that all, even Satan, will finally be pardoned and mergewith the Godhead. These ideas figure prominently in Hugo’s visionary poetry for the remainder of hislife. Georges Haussmann (1809—1891) begins the urban renewal of Paris.1853 Hugo publishes Les Châtiments (The Punishments), powerful anti-Napoleonic satire.1855 Hugo moves to the Channel island of Guernsey.1856 Hugo’s Les Contemplations, his poetic masterpiece, appears. Profits from its sales allow himto purchase Hauteville House on Guernsey—today a museum.1857 Gustave Flaubert’s novel of adultery, Madame Bovary—the work most influential on Westernnovelists until after World War II—is published in book form, as is the first edition of CharlesBaudelaire’s poetry, Les Fleurs du mal. Both men and their publishers are placed on trial foroffenses to public morals. Baudelaire’s publisher is fined and must remove seven poems treatinglesbianism and sadism.1859 The first volume of Hugo’s poetic history of the world, La Légende des siècles (The Legend ofthe Centuries), appears.1861 The danger of arrest having subsided, Hugo’s wife, Adèle, and her sons begin leaving him tostay in Paris during the winter months. She secretly meets with Sainte-Beuve there.1862 Les Misérables, a 1,200-page epic completed in fourteen months, is published on the heels of afertile period during which Hugo wrote many political speeches and creative works. Hugo’s famousnovel gains an enormous popular audience, although the book is panned by critics and banned by thegovernment. He begins hosting a weekly banquet for fifty poor children.1866 Guernsey provides the setting for Hugo’s regional novel Les Travailleurs de la mer (TheToilers of the Sea). Edgar Degas commences his series of ballet paintings. Works of Cézanne,Renoir, Monet, and other Impressionists appear. The next year Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin ispublished.1868 Hugo’s wife, Adèle, dies unexpectedly in Brussels. She had been living apart from Victor forseveral years, but the two had remained friends.1869 Hugo publishes the historical novel L‘Homme qui rit (sometimes translated By Order of theKing). He declines a second offer of amnesty from Napoleon III. Sainte-Beuve dies.1870 Defeated by the Prussians at Sedan, Napoleon III surrenders to them and is deposed. France’sThird Republic is proclaimed. Hugo returns to Paris in triumph after nineteen years in exile.1871 Hugo is elected to the National Assembly, but resigns due to the opposition of right-wingmembers. His son Charles dies.1872 Consumed by madness, Hugo’s daughter Adèle is institutionalized until her death in 1915. JulesVerne’s Around the World in Eighty Days is published.1873 Hugo’s younger son, Francois-Victor, dies. Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell is published.1874 Hugo publishes Quatrevingt-treize (Ninety-three), a historical novel about the counter-revolutionary rebellion in la Vendee, and events leading to the Reign of Terror in 1793. He provides

nuanced portraits of both sides.1876 Hugo is elected to the Senate.1877 As senator, Hugo plays a leading role in preventing Marshal Marie Edmé MacMahon frombecoming dictator of France. Because the monarchists have split their support among variousclaimants to the throne, the republicans achieve a working majority. The second volume of Hugo’spoetic history of the world, La Légende des siècles, appears.1878 A stroke leaves Hugo incapable of composing additional literary works.1880 After years of efforts, Hugo arranges amnesty for the Com munards, popular-front rebels in theParis of 1871 opposed to surrender to the Prussians. Some 20,000 of them, including women andchildren, had been slaughtered by French government troops—more than the total of those guillotinedduring the Reign of Terror in 1793. Guy de Maupassant’s collected Contes (Stories) are published.1881 On February 26, Hugo’s birthday, a national holiday is proclaimed, and 600,000 marchers passhis windows. The street where he lives is renamed L‘avenue Victor-Hugo.1882 Hugo is reelected to the Senate. His play Torquemada (1869) is performed.1883 Juliette Drouet, Hugo’s mistress since 1833, dies after a prolonged struggle with cancer. Thefinal volume of Hugo’s poetic history of the world, La Légende des siècles, appears.1885 Victor Hugo dies May 22. Two million mourners pass his coffin underneath the Arc deTriomphe. Hugo is entombed in the Panthéon, the first of a series of culture heroes and great leadersto be placed there. June 1 is declared a day of national mourning. Posthumous publications willenhance his reputation for decades—notably, the verse collections La Fin de Satan (The End ofSatan, 1886), Toute la lyre (1888,1893), and Dieu (1891). His experimental plays, eventuallypublished in a Pléïade edition as “Le Theatre en lib erté,” brilliantly anticipate the Theater of theAbsurd in the 1950s.1902 On the centenary of his birth, the French government opens the Maison de Victor Hugo museumin the apartment where he once lived on la place des Vosges.1912- In collaboration with André Antoine, the director of the 1918 naturalistic Théatre-Libre, thefilmmaker Albert Capellani, with the Pathé firm, produces a series of movies based on Hugo’sworks: Les Misérables (1912), Marie Tudor (1912), Quatrevingt-treize (1914), and LesTravailleurs de la mer (1918).1926 The Buddhist sect, Cao Dai, originates in Vietnam. It now has about 2,000 temples and severalmillion followers worldwide. The worshipers venerate Hugo and his two sons, whom they believe,return to earth, reincarnated.1975 François Truffaut’s film Adèle H., retelling the tragedy of Hugo’s second daughter, wins LeGrand Prix du Cinema Français.1980 Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg create a rock-opera version of Les Misérables.Translated into English, the musical has been produced internationally more times than any other—Cats being the previous record holder.1996 Walt Disney issues an animated, freely altered film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame,distinctive in its politically correct treatment of gypsies, women, and persons with disabilities.

INTRODUCTION

BackgroundVictor Hugo (1802—1885) was a child prodigy with a precocious vocation as a creative writer. Hewould excel in the novel, the essay, drama, and poetry. He became an instant celebrity when hereceived honorable mention in a poetry contest sponsored by the Académie Française in 1817.Concerning the construction of varied versification and stanzaic form, he would soon demonstrate avirtuosity that only Goethe and Shelley could rival in Europe. In 1819 and 1820 he received twoannual prizes for odes submitted to the prestigious national contest, the Jeux Floraux in Toulouse. Inthe latter year he and his two older brothers founded a literary magazine, for which he wrote 112articles and twenty-two poems in sixteen months. In 1821 he met the priest Félicité de Lamennais,who greatly influenced Hugo’s views on the importance of the social utility of Christianity, aperspective that was to dominate Les Misérables forty years later. He became the leader of theFrench Romantic movement in 1827. Inspired by Shakespeare, he formulated a romantic estheticbased on the shocking, incongruous juxtaposition of the sublime and the grotesque, which exemplifiedmost of his novels, including Les Misérables, in which the Thénardier couple embody the grotesque.

The visionary bent that is so pronounced in Les Misérables emerges in Les Feuilles d‘automne,one of Hugo’s greatest collections of verse, in 1831. In the early 1830s, Hugo began to elaborate avisionary system of theodicy influenced by the Jewish Kabala that claimed God had had to concealhis grandeur from humans (the sun and stars are his masks), so that they could act independently andearn salvation without being overwhelmed by the unmediated spectacle of God’s glory. Only thuswas free will possible. Regarding Creation itself, Hugo held the organic worldview widespread inEuropean romanticism: as the DNA in a single cell allows modern geneticists to identify the creaturefrom which it came, so the spark of spirituality inherent in every part of Creation allowed thevisionary romantic writers to intuit its divine source. Thus the physical world can guide humans—more accurately, it allows poet-priests to guide their fellows—toward God. Hugo believed that allcreation was ordered by hierarchy as well as affinity; it consisted in an endless gradated array of allconceivable creatures, separated by infinitesimal degrees of spiritual excellence. Humans, he thought,would be rewarded or punished by being reincarnated in “higher” (angels) or “lower” (animals,plants, and objects) forms after death, depending on how meritorious their lives had been. Oncereincarnated in lower forms, they could see God directly, but could only suffer passively frommemories of their sins and from their remoteness from the Creator, as they gradually expiated thosesins. As for the angels, none fell after the fall of Satan and his legions, and the remaining angels plusnew angels evolving from the ranks of saintly humans would gradually evolve toward a closer affinitywith the Godhead—always separated from it, however, by an infinite spiritual distance. At the end oftime, all living things, even Satan, would be saved, and reabsorbed into the bosom of God, fromwhich they had emerged at the Creation. This theological system is close to the Pelagian heresy ofearly Christianity. As Hugo put it in the final lines of his collection of visionary poetry, LesContemplations, at the end of time Jesus will lead his brother Satan by the hand up the stairs ofheaven, and God will no longer be able to tell them apart. Les Misérables explicitly states this view:“The book which the reader has now before his eyes is, from one end to the other, in its whole and in

its details, whatever may be the intermissions, the exceptions, or the defaults, the march from evil togood, ... from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angelat the end (p. 698).” Not only did Hugo sketch and expound this vision throughout the last half-centuryof his career, but also he reserved many visionary poems that he planned to have published at five-year intervals after his death—and thanks to his faithful executors, they were. The posterity of hisreligious ideas, although unexpected, would have gratified him. The cult of Cao Dai Buddhism, whichnumbers several million adherents and several thousand temples throughout the world, believes thatseveral of its priests are reincarnations of Hugo and his sons.

Hugo’s election to the Académie Française in 1841 consecrated the militant romantic movement. In1845 he was appointed as a pair de France, equivalent to a member of the British House of Lords.Becoming increasingly liberal in politics, he became a member of the Constitutional Convention(Assemblée Constituante) of the Second French Republic in 1848. He presided over the InternationalPeace Conference in Paris in 1849, and there gave the first known speech advocating the creation of a“United States of Europe,” a vision partially anticipated by Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, andMadame de Staël, but fully realized only recently with the formation of the European Union, followedby the adoption of a common currency, the Euro.

Starting in 1848, Hugo and his son Charles founded and coedited the liberal newspaper L’Événement, which strongly supported the return from exile, and the candidacy for President of theRepublic, of Louis Napoleon, Emperor Napoléon I’s nephew, who had established his credentials asa liberal with a term in prison. Hugo proved to have been “a useful idiot,” for Louis Napoleon cravedabsolute power, and eventually managed a combination of elections and a coup d‘état to becomeEmperor for Life on December 2,1851. Hugo had already broken with the Right and formallydeclared himself a Republican on July 18,1851. Hunted by the police, with his sons already jailed, hefled France to take refuge on the English Channel Islands of Jersey (1852—1855) and Guernsey(1855—1870). Unlike all his prominent contemporaries, he refused amnesty, and published vehementsatires of the new regime, Napoléon le petit (1852) and Les Châtiments (1853). When he had ventedhis rage against the ruler who betrayed him, he turned inward to meditate on Providence and humanspiritual destiny in the great poem cycles Les Contemplations (1856, mainly composed 1853—1855), La Légende des Siècles (1859, with sequels published in 1877 and 1883), La Fin de Satan(composed 1854, published 1886), and Dieu (composed 1855, published 1891). Only then, afternearly a decade in exile, did he synthesize the individual, the historical, and the cosmic in LesMisérables.

Motivated is not determined: many people have experienced family situations similar to Hugo‘s, butthere is only one author of Les Misérables. Nevertheless, numerous factors in Hugo’s life convergedto reinforce his proclivity to become a savior, particularly by advocating compromise. His parentsbecame estranged, lived apart, and each took a lover when he was only one year old. In response, helater elaborated the myth that his mother was a monarchist and his father a republican; thecompromise of a constitutional monarchy such as Louis Philippe’s (1830—1848) was thereforeattractive to him, and under it he began his political career, symbolically finding a middle groundbetween his two parents’ supposed positions. In fact, however, his mother’s family was closelyassociated with the Jacobins (rabid egalitarians), who massacred rebellious monarchists in theVendee region. She later became a monarchist of convenience, while her lover was conspiring

against the Emperor Napoleon.Hugo opposed the death penalty (the uncompromising solution par excellence for crime), not only

because of the influence of his older friend Charles Nodier, but also because, as a small child, he hadseen the severed heads of freedom fighters in Spain and Italy nailed to church doors by the troopscommanded by his father, General Hugo, charged with suppressing independence movements in thosecountries. The violent insanity of his older brother, Eugène, which first became obvious at Victor’swedding with Adèle, the woman Eugène also loved, inflicted survivor guilt on Hugo, as did thepremature death of his beloved younger daughter Léopoldine, who drowned with her husband and herunborn child in a boating accident shortly after her marriage, and the insanity of his older daughterAdèle, to say nothing of the early death of his two sons before him. Under the circumstances, thepossibility of finding Léopoldine again after death was a comforting thought, and Les Contemplationsis framed with hopes for their reunion.

His enforced sojourn on an island left a strong imprint on that work. First of all, it reflects apowerful nostalgia for Paris, where he had lived—all the more so because Napoleon III’s assistantfor urban renewal, Baron Haussmann, tore up many old neighborhoods to open wide avenues downwhich it was easy to fire grapeshot from cannons to disperse rebellious crowds. The constantpresence of the sea makes itself felt continually in the visionary poetry, but it probably also inspiredseveral scenes in Les Misérables, such as the galleys at Toulon, and metaphors such as the depictionof Jean Valjean, released from prison but abandoned and cursed by society, as a man overboard whoslowly, agonizingly despairs and drowns. Unable to exercise his keen visual sensitivity on medievalmonuments, as he had done in Paris (in several poems and essays as well as in Notre-Dame deParis), Hugo turned to botany, gardening, and agriculture. Signs of this new interest pervade LesMisérables, but it culminates only in the rich, lovingly detailed descriptions of the flora in theintroductory section of the great regional novel Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866). Surrounded by thepoor, who had to make their living from the sea, Hugo found many occasions—like MonseigneurMyriel and Jean Valjean in his novel—to exercise charity. For a time, he hosted and paid for aweekly meal for fifty people. Finally, Parisian nightlife was replaced, between 1853 and 1855, byevening seances during which Hugo believed that he and his family and friends could communicatewith the spirits of both the living and the dead. He summoned the soul of the sleeping Napoleon III, toharangue and intimidate him; he advised Shakespeare on how to correct errors in his prosody; and hedia logued with Jesus Christ as well as dozens of other notables.

The StoryHugo already had composed a version of his masterpiece, first entitled Les Misères, between 1845and 1848, during the height of his activity in the House of Peers. During fourteen months of intenseactivity between 1860 and 1862, Hugo expanded this original version by 60 percent. Les Misérablesembeds the story of a poor workman in a vast mythic-historical context. It tells of the fall andredemption of Jean Valjean, a young tree pruner in the region of Paris, the sole support of hiswidowed sister and her seven children. One winter, unemployed and desperate to feed hisdependents, he breaks a bakery window at night to steal a loaf of bread. He is arrested and sentencedto five years’ hard labor in the galleys of Toulon. Four escapes, attempted instinctively and

unreasoningly, lead only to additional sentences, which finally total nineteen years. The harshpunishment embitters him against society, and after his release this attitude is reinforced by the scornand rejection he experiences whenever he must show his convict’s yellow passport. But a saintlyCatholic Bishop, Monseigneur Myriel, treats Jean Valjean respectfully, feeds him, and gives himlodging for the night. Despite this kindness, Valjean cannot resist stealing the bishop’s last remainingluxuries—for the cleric has given everything else to the poor—his silver place settings. When thegendarmes bring Valjean back, the bishop saves him from further imprisonment by saying he hadgiven the place settings to Valjean. And the bishop adds the two silver candlesticks that his guest had“forgotten.” As Valjean sets off again, the bishop whispers that he has purchased the ex-convict’ssoul with his gifts, that Valjean has promised him to live a virtuous life henceforth.

On the road north, a last flicker of brute instinct takes over: the convict cannot resist the temptationto steal a coin dropped by a little itinerant chimney sweep. Then he repents and resolves to lead avirtuous life, guided by an inner voice inspired by the bishop’s kindness to him. (Hugo identifies ourconscience with God.) He manages to conceal his identity, educate himself, and transform himselfinto the benevolent “Monsieur Madeleine” (an allusion to the penitent prostitute Mary Magdalene inthe Gospels). By inventing a superior method for making glassware, he ensures the prosperity of anentire village enriched through the “trickle-down” theory of economics. The grateful townspeopleelect him mayor in a town where the rigid, self-righteous Javert, overcompensating for having beenborn in prison as the illegitimate son of a fortune-teller, serves as chief of police.

Meanwhile, Fantine, a young working woman in Paris, has been seduced, impregnated, andcynically abandoned by her lover. Once her baby, Cosette, is born, she innocently leaves her in thecare of the evil Thénardier couple, dishonest innkeepers, and goes to her native village, where JeanValjean has settled. She finds work there in the glassware factory, but is fired by a self-righteousfemale foreman who discovers that she has an illegitimate child. The Thénardiers have been starvingCosette, dressing her in rags, and forcing her to do hard labor, while sending Fantine exorbitant,fraudulent medical bills. She must turn to prostitution to support her daughter. At the same time, theThénardier daughters Eponine and Azelma are pampered, creating a Cinderella-like situation.

“Monsieur Madeleine” finally learns of this situation when Fantine has been unjustly accused ofassault against a wealthy idler who had assaulted her first. He overrules Javert, who is blinded bysocial prejudice, and orders her release. He promises to care for her and to reunite her with her baby.But his defense of a social outcast alienates Javert and intensifies his suspicions, which derive fromhis preconscious memories of having seen Jean Valjean as a galley slave at Toulon twenty yearsearlier, when he served as assistant warden there. His suspicions intensify when the mayordemonstrates enormous strength by lifting a heavily loaded cart to free a man being crushed beneathit. Only the former convict Jean Valjean, nicknamed “Jean le Cric” (Jack the jack), still sought forhaving robbed the chimney sweep, would have been capable of this feat, Javert believes. Events soonconfirm the policeman’s intuition. An innocent, inarticulate vagrant, Champmathieu, has been falselyaccused of stealing apples (a third offense, leading to life imprisonment). Former convicts haveidentified him as Jean Valjean. After intense struggles with his conscience, M. Madeleine feelsmorally obligated to step forward and denounce himself. He has had time to bury in the woods thefortune he made legally from glassware, but the rigid Javert will not allow him to take Cosette to visitFantine before Fantine dies. Then Jean Valjean is sent back to the galleys.

He escapes by feigning a drowning accident, rescues Cosette from the Thénardiers, and takes refugewith her in Paris. Javert, however, has been reassigned there, and recognizes him in the street.Fleeing the police, Valjean climbs a high wall with Cosette and finds himself in a convent gardentended by the grateful man he had saved from underneath the cart. A false burial in an empty coffinallows him to reenter the convent from the outside as an assistant gardener. In this shelter, he raisesCosette as his beloved daughter, and the nuns educate her. Comparing the voluntary austerities andself-sacrifice of the nuns for the good of humanity with his own past sufferings as a convict, JeanValjean overcomes his resentment toward society and learns humility. Cosette’s dependency giveshim reasons to live; her weakness keeps him strong.

After seven years, however, he leaves the convent with her to prevent her from pursuing a religiousvocation by default. They live in seclusion. Nevertheless, Cosette’s growing beauty attracts theattention of a poor young man, Marius, who has been alienated from his royalist grandfather, his onlyliving relative, because of his loyalty to his deceased father, who was a heroic colonel underNapoleon. Fearful of losing the only person who gives meaning to his life, and fearing detection,Valjean evades Marius by moving across Paris. But there his generous almsgiving attracts theattention of the Thénardiers and their criminal gang, although the innkeeper does not recognize him.Failures in business, Thénardier and his monstrous wife have come to join the Parisian underworld.

Thénardier’s moral decline criss-crosses Jean Valjean’s progressive moral redemption. Potentiallylaw-abiding in prosperity, in poverty Thénardier becomes increasingly vicious. He plans to kidnapand torture Jean Valjean, force him to reveal where Cosette is staying, and then kidnap her to forceValjean to pay a huge ransom. Meanwhile, he becomes increasingly indifferent toward his ownchildren. He uses Eponine as a spy and lookout for his burglaries and callously risks her life. Hemakes no effort to find his son Gavroche when the little boy becomes separated from his family, andhe deliberately abandons Gavroche’s two younger brothers.

By yet another coincidence of many in the novel, Marius has moved into a cheap room next door tothe Thénardiers. Listening and watching through a hole in the wall, he learns of their plans to kidnapCosette. Marius denounces them to Javert, but then learns that Thénardier had “saved his father’s life”(had inadvertently revived him by rifling though his clothes after he had fallen at the Battle ofWaterloo). His father’s dying wish had been that his son find and reward Thénardier.

Eponine has fallen in love with Marius. Now her former relationship with Cosette is reversed.Cosette is wealthy, privileged, and beloved, while Eponine, formerly coddled, must choose betweenher father’s beatings and sleeping in ditches. The two girls do not recognize each other. Hopelesslydevoted, Eponine helps Marius find Cosette again: Marius and Cosette fall in love, meeting inCosette’s garden at night for a chaste but passionate romance. When Thénardier’s gang has staked outValjean’s isolated new residence for a burglary, without realizing that it belongs to their formerintended extortion victim, Eponine drives them away with false warnings about the police, andanonymously advises Valjean to move. He plans to flee to England. By accident, Cosette is preventedfrom communicating with Marius.

Knowing that Marius cares only for Cosette, Eponine despairs and writes an anonymous notesummoning him to join his friends fighting on the barricades of the worker-student insurrection of1832. She hopes he will die there; but she wants to die first, by his side. In despair at not findingCosette at home, Marius seeks death on the barricades. There, a sudden political illumination makes

his commitment to his friends’ republican cause authentic. Eponine, disguised as a young worker,saves Marius by throwing herself in front of a bullet aimed at him.

Meanwhile, Valjean has discovered the imprint of Cosette’s desperate note to Marius on herblotter. Her adoptive father is taking her away; she does not know where. Valjean hates Marius forthreatening to deprive him of the only person he has ever loved. He struggles to overcome hispossessiveness, and despite his rage, he goes to the barricades to protect Marius. Behind thebarricade, Javert has been unmasked as a police spy. Valjean asks permission to execute him, butsecretly sets him free. As the barricade falls to the government troops, Marius collapses, woundedand unconscious. Valjean escapes through the sewers, carrying the young man through the foul muckon his shoulders for four miles.

At the locked exit by the Seine, Valjean meets Thénardier, who has hidden there from Javert.Thénardier does not recognize Valjean. He thinks Valjean has killed Marius for his money, anddemands all Valjean’s cash in exchange for opening the gate with his skeleton key so that Valjean canescape. He hopes to divert the waiting Javert by offering him a substitute fugitive. Javert does indeedarrest Valjean, but feels morally obligated to release him, because he owes the convict his life. Then,torn by an insoluble conflict between religious and legal duty, Javert drowns himself. Marius’srepentant grandfather nurses Marius back to health and marries him to Cosette. Valjean has given herall his fortune. The novel reaches its moral climax on the wedding night. Should Valjean confess thathe is an escaped convict, and renounce all contact with Cosette to spare the young couple the shameof his possible denunciation and arrest? “He had reached the last crossing of good and evil.... tworoads opened before him; the one tempting, the other terrible. Which should he take? The one whichterrified him was advised by the mysterious indicating finger which we all perceive whenever we fixour eyes upon the shadow.... We are never done with conscience.... It is bottomless, being God” (pp.769—770). Human love alone cannot bring us closer to God. Sacrifice is required.

The next day, Valjean secretly confesses to Marius that he is an escaped convict, and not Cosette’sfather. Marius, believing that Valjean’s fortune was stolen, does not touch it. Thinking that Valjeankilled Javert at the barricade, Marius only reluctantly allows him to see Cosette in the anteroom to hisgrandfather’s house. Persona non grata to Marius, Valjean stops coming, stops eating, and wastesaway. But Thénardier unwittingly serves as the instrument of Providence. He comes to extort moneyfrom Marius by threatening to reveal the “secret” that his father-in-law is an escaped convict who hasrecently killed a man (he unwittingly refers to Marius himself). As he speaks, he accidentally revealsthat Valjean made his fortune legally, that he did not kill Javert, and that he saved Marius. The latterpays his debt of honor to Thénardier by giving him enough money to travel to America, where hebecomes a slave owner (an even further degradation, in Hugo’s eyes). Marius and Cosette, repentant,rush to Valjean’s bedside. They arrive too late to save him, but he dies happy in one of the mostpathetic scenes in literature. In the shadows, an enormous, invisible angel awaits his soul.

The PlotTraditional analyses of fiction distinguish between “story,” meaning what happens, and “plot,”meaning how the things that happen are arranged (straight-line temporal sequence or flashbacks andflash-forwards, a single story line or several story lines, parallel or embedded stories, and so forth).

Parallel stories (while A is doing X, B is doing Y, etc.) characterize television situation comediesand melodramas, or epistolary novels; embedded stories (A tells B a story about C, who in turn tellsD a story about E, etc.) characterize the fantastic tale, memoirs and autobiography, and many otherlong novels.

Plot also explains why things happen: are they “events” (“acts of God,” to which the charactersmust react) or “acts” (initiated by the characters)? In either case, is the agent unconscious (a floor ora fire), blind (a mistaken or compulsive act), or lucid? Is the act premeditated or impulsive?

At first glance, chance encounters among the characters seem to motivate most of the action. Javerthappens to be assigned to the galleys, then to the town of M—sur M—, and finally to Paris when JeanValjean arrives at each of those places. In Paris their paths cross decisively several times. At M—surM—, Valjean happens by just when Fantine and then Fauchelevant need to be rescued. Thénardier’swife happens to be sitting on her doorstep as Fantine is passing, in need of a place to board her child;after Thénardier releases Cosette to Jean Valjean for extortionate sums, he moves to Paris andencounters Valjean in three different places there, at critical moments, without recognizing him.Thénardier just happens to loot Marius’s unconscious father’s body on the battlefield, incurring amistaken debt of honor for Marius, who then happens to rent a room next to Thénardier’s in Paris.Th6nardier’s elder daughter, Eponine, and Cosette, both fall in love with Marius after thehappenstance of running into him. The coincidental resemblance between the vagrant Champmathieuand Valjean moves the plot by forcing the latter to denounce himself and leave M—sur M—for asecond trip to the galleys. Only because the former enemy whom Valjean saved from being crushedbeneath his cart has become the gardener in the convent into whose garden Valjean and Cosetteescape when fleeing from Javert, do they find a safe refuge and does Cosette receive a goodeducation. Only because Thénardier tries to blackmail Marius by threatening to reveal that his father-in-law is an escaped convict, does Marius accidentally learn that Jean Valjean has committed nocrimes, and has saved his life, all of which prepares the final, climactic reconciliation between theson-in-law and Cosette’s former guardian. These many coincidences attempt indirectly to persuade usthat God intervenes in human affairs, while preserving the imperatives of human commitment andresponsibility in the overt rhetoric of the narrator.

As in Stendhal’s Le Rouge et le Noir, but in both upward and downward directions, a departurefrom the horizontal sometimes symbolizes independent choice: Jean Valjean plunging off the prisonship into the sea to feign drowning, so that he can escape to rescue Cosette; his climbing over the wallof the convent with her; and his descent into the depths of the sewers to save Marius. Hugo,moreover, refuses to let us hold God, rather than ourselves, responsible for political events.Suffering, violence, and injustice will be eliminated by philia, by a community of active mutualconcern. Hugo, nevertheless, offers a realistic image of political change: one finds only a few fullycommitted militants on either side; others are drawn in through love, despair, affection, anxiety,greed, or hatred.

The Major Subjects of the NovelHow can we make sense of this sprawling, complex story? To a superficial reader, the numerouscoincidences that bind the characters’ lives together seem like mere melodramatic contrivances. But

for Hugo, multiple coincidences reflect his belief in an unseen, overarching Providence thatinterrelates and governs human destiny. The preface to Les Travailleurs de la mer (The Toilers ofthe Sea) identifies three “fatalities” in the fallen, material order: nature, religious dogma, and socialinequities. By “fatalities” Hugo means obstacles to progress, which tempt us to despair and torenounce effort. How can we exercise our free will when we are caught between a spiritualProvidence and a material/institutional fatality?

Considered in isolation, the generalizations and aphorisms with which Hugo characterizes themoral dynamics of his story might seem to rule out the possibility of enlightened choice: “Be it true orfalse, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon theirdestinies, as what they do” (p. 11); “it seems as if it were necessary that a woman should be a motherto be venerable [instead of merely respectable]” (p.12); “there is always more misery among thelower classes than there is humanity in the higher” (p. 15). Such generalizations appear to reflect atraditional belief in a “human nature” that remains invariable. But this impression is misleading. First,Hugo always grounds his maxims solidly in a social context, and in the social, financial, andbiological contingencies of one’s individual existence. He is not La Rochefoucauld, the classicistwhose aphorisms describe unvarying relationships among abstract nouns, as if wealth, health, gender,or ethnicity made no difference: “Hypocrisy is a form of respect that vice pays to virtue.” Second,throughout the novel he dramatizes the titanic inner struggles of Jean Valjean with his conscience; andhe richly analyzes the moral evolution of many other characters such as Bishop Myriel, Fantine,Thénardier, Marius, Gillenormand, Eponine, and Javert.

Throughout most of Les Misérables, cosmic motifs are muted and implicit. They often appear subtlyin descriptions of looming darkness and unexpected radiance. Nature seems hostile to the outcast JeanValjean; as he contemplates the sleeping bishop, that man’s face seems to glow with an inner light;Eponine, hating her life as an outlaw and pursued by a larval form of conscience, describes thehallucinations of starvation to Marius by saying that the stars seem like floodlights, and the trees likegallows—her crimes are known to God, and she is doomed to hang, she feels. Hugo adopts the motifof the Transfiguration from the Bible: filled with the Holy Spirit, the faces of Moses or of Jesus shine.

CharactersHugo integrates this worldview with his character depiction and plot development through theimplied religious doctrine of supererogation (in French, réversibilité): exceptional individuals mayaccrue sufficient merit, through their loyal faith and virtuous acts, not only to ensure their ownsalvation but also to aid in the salvation of others, to whom some of their extra merit may betransferred. Supererogation is the dynamic and positive mode of the archetype of Inversion: whatseemed bad (Christ’s betrayal by his friends, humiliation, torture, and agonizing death on the cross)proves good (mankind will be redeemed). It allows the concept of free will to be synthesized with theconcept of Providence. Hugo represents this force not mystically, but quite realistically, through theinfluence of conversation and example, which often occurs partially, gradually, and belatedly. Goodinfluences, in his view, are not compulsions, but invitations to which their objects must choose torespond. But they can create a chain reaction.

The first example appears in the figure of the conventionist G—(a representative of the assembly

that dissolved the monarchy, and of which a majority excluding G—condemned Louis XVI to death).He humbles the initially scornful Bishop Myriel, who comes to recognize the moral excellence of hisdevotion to humanity and kneels before him to ask his blessing. “No one could say that the passage ofthat soul before [Myriel‘s] own, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his own had not hadits effect upon [the Bishop’s] approach to perfection” (p. 34). This blessing is later transferred, so tospeak, from Myriel to Valjean, thus saving the ex-convict from further hatred and crime: “JeanValjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you.I am withdrawing it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God!” (p.63). In turn, Valjean later symbolically transfers his own superabundance of merit to the dyingFantine, assuring her that since her motivation for prostituting herself was her pure wish to providefor her daughter, she remained innocent in the eyes of God. And in the final scene the repentantMarius, kneeling at the dying Valjean’s bedside to ask his blessing, recalls the initial scene betweenthe conventionist and Myriel.

Hugo broadly signals the presence of supererogatory merit in his characters. He compares theparables of Bishop Myriel to Christ’s (p. 17). He suggests that the origin of Jean Valjean’s name is“Voila Jean”—there’s John (p. 48). That phrase recalls Pontius Pilate’s ecce homo (there is the man),spoken when he shows Christ, wearing the crown of thorns, to the Jewish priests who have accusedhim; see the Bible, John 19:5). A person condemned according to one law, and destined for suffering,will be vindicated according to a higher law. Years later in the plot, Hugo associates Valjean clearlywith Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, when the mayor hesitates over whether to denounce himselfin order to exculpate the pruner Champmathieu (pp. 148-149). Hugo reintroduces the image of thebitter chalice in the title of part V, book seven, “The Last Drop in the Chalice.” Marius’s point ofview affirms Valjean’s absolute, self-sacrificial goodness and his total transformation unequivocally:“The convict was transfigured into Christ” (p. 821).

But although Bishop Myriel demonstrates for Jean Valjean the power of absolute trust in God, andactive benevolence, this influence cannot be definitive. Through practicing virtue, he riskssuccumbing to pride. His “accidental” discovery of a refuge in the convent helps save him frompride: he must compare his involuntary suffering from social inequities and vindictiveness to thevoluntary, altruistic suffering of the nuns (pp. 334—335). Their example foreshadows his voluntaryself-sacrifice at the end. Through Cosette, he has learned of human love; but this love remains selfish(pp. 267—270). Cosette becomes indispensable to him. The illusion that she will grow up ugly, andthus stay with him always, consoles him. The narrator speculates that Jean Valjean might have neededCosette’s filial love to persevere in the virtue that Myriel first inspired in him. As mayor, he hadlearned much more than before about social injustice; he had been sent back to prison for doing good;he needed the support of Cosette’s dependency to keep him morally strong (p. 70; see also pp. 523—524). And finally, he must accept his need to let her become independent of him as she matures. Hisdesire to kill his “rival” Marius, or at least to let him die on the insurrectionists’ barricade, is sopowerful that Hugo does not describe Jean Valjean’s next-to-last struggle with his conscience. Thefinal struggle, ending in his decision to confess to Marius that he is an escaped convict, finally killshim.

Hugo does not consider redemption automatic. Some characters deteriorate morally: the criminalanti-father Thénardier becomes indifferent to not only the sufferings of his victims, but even to the

survival of his own children. When his two youngest boys disappear, he makes no effort to locatethem. And he does not care whether his older daughter Eponine will be killed by other members oftheir gang for interfering in a burglary. Others such as the police detective Javert, born to a prostitutein prison and lacking any family himself, react toward the accused with merciless moral brutality.

Gavroche, Eponine, Javert, Jean Valjean—the first two risk their lives and perish to save others,Javert commits suicide so that he will not have to denounce the man who saved him, and Jean Valjeanwastes away to consummate his renunciation of Cosette. The motif of self-sacrifice shades intomelancholy (anger against others turned back against the self) and even masochism. Virtuous suicideassociated with renunciation recurs throughout Hugo’s career, from Bug-Jargal (1818 and 1826) toNotre-Dame de Paris (1831), Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866), and Quatrevingt-treize (1874), notto mention the hero’s suicide in order to join his beloved in the afterlife, in L‘Homme qui rit (1869).One could interpret this obsessive plot element variously: as a symptom of the weakness of theidealistic romantic hero who cannot bear to live in an imperfect world; as inspiring examples of thetemporal sublime, of the choice to sacrifice one’s life to a transcendent value; or as a means by whichthe historical Hugo purged himself of any lingering traces of a desire to sacrifice himself for others—as opposed to treating them with benevolence. But his texts provide no clear answers.

When wisely used in critical discourse, all categories represent not ways of establishing Truth, butof raising questions. On the borderline between the conventional critical categories of literaryCharacter and Theme we find what could be called “moral themes”: generalizations about humannature that are illustrated by the characters’ discourse (by representations of their thoughts, writings,and words) and dramatized by their actions. Hugo’s central “moral theme” is that even the best of usis tempted—if not by rebellion against human laws, then by pride and complacency—and that suchtemptations are spiritual ordeals that test and strengthen us in the way of virtue. Unlike Milton,Goethe, Flaubert, or Thomas Mann, Hugo does not create personified seductive devils, but depictscharacters at risk of being seduced by their own selfish desires and hypocrisy. Mistaken for JeanValjean, alias the venerated mayor M. Madeleine, the obscure old tree pruner Champmathieu seemsto Valjean expendable, whereas M. Madeleine’s arrest and imprisonment would end the prosperity ofthe village that depends on him, and doom Cosette to the streets. The accidental delays Valjeanencounters while rushing to Champmathieu’s trial at Arras further tempt the ex-convict to abandon theattempt to exonerate his unfortunate substitute. (To heighten the urgency of this melodramaticsituation, Hugo never raises the possibility that Valjean could still denounce himself afterChampmathieu had been sentenced. Even idealistic love can deteriorate into possessiveness.Eventually, it must be refined into altruistic self-sacrifice—a theme also prominent in the novels ofHugo’s contemporaries Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

ThemesSo far we have discussed the prominent topics of self-sacrifice and supererogation in Les Misérablesand throughout Hugo’s career, but we have not identified any themes. As the pun in Hugo’s titlesuggests, the theme he foregrounds in this novel is that we should not judge a book by its cover, or aperson by appearances and social condition. Les Misérables can refer either to the underclass,people who are wretchedly poor, or to people who are morally depraved, or both. At one point, Jean

Valjean calls himself un misérable in the second, moral sense. Hugo not only distinguishes betweenwealth and virtue, but also between premeditation and impulse (Jean Valjean acts impulsively whenhe steals the loaf of bread, or the chimneysweep’s coin), and between acts (Fantine’s prostitution)and their motives (her altruistic desire to support her daughter).

The initial inspiration for the creation of Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Les Misérables, probablycame from Hugo’s work on Le Dernier Jour d‘un condamné a mort (The Last Day of a CondemnedMan, 1829). He was a lifelong opponent of the death penalty, much in the spirit of the recentAmerican films The Green Mile and Dead Man Walking. He dramatized the plight of prisoners in thegalleys at Toulon, especially one who, like Jean Valjean, had initially been sentenced to five years athard labor for stealing a loaf of bread. “There but for the grace of God go I” is his message. Heemphasizes the brutalization of the poor by society. Like his contemporary Charles Dickens in OliverTwist or Our Mutual Friend, he deconstructs the simplistic opposition of innocence and crime thatallows us to evade social responsibility. Jean Valjean’s only actual crimes are two acts of pettylarceny, plus a third of which he is falsely accused (stealing a loaf of bread, a coin, and someapples). Hugo’s attribution of near-Satanic resentment to him seems overblown, but Hugo is makingthe point he had made in Claude Gueux (Claude the Beggar): harsh law enforcement breeds themonsters it claims to want to eliminate (Grant, The Perilous Quest, pp.157—158; see “For FurtherReading”).

But Hugo’s dominant theme, which pervades his novels, poems, and essays (less so his plays) onevery level, and which guided his life for decades, is that individuals, the world, and the cosmos allneed rescuers. In his personal life, from 1833 until her death decades later, Hugo felt that he was“redeeming” the “fallen woman” Juliette Drouet, his mistress, through his love—although he neverseemed to worry about the moral import of his own extraordinary promiscuity. In society, throughpaternalistic charitable acts and strategies of enlightened self-interest that allow wealth to trickledown to the poor, the wealthy and privileged must act to alleviate suffering and improve the materialconditions of humanity, increasing productivity and eliminating crime.

Critics have often spoken of Hugo’s keen visual sensitivity, manifested in the dramatic oppositionof light and darkness in many scenes and in his striking visionary drawings, but they have not paidmuch attention to his use of color. It is important to recognize it, in order to understand the fullprofundity of his vision. In Les Misérables, bright colors and light accompany scenes of oblivious,shallow happiness. See, for instance, the color notations starting in paragraph five of “Four to Four,”chapter 3 of part I, book three: “long white strings,” “thick blond tresses,” “rosy lips,” “a dress ofmauve barege, little reddish-brown buskins,” “sea-green eyes.” The sensuous iridescence of thematerial world gives way elsewhere to stark contrasts of good and evil, rendered in black and white;but the duality of these two non-colors is itself an illusion, as Hugo underlines in the chapter “Blackand White,” in which Javert cannot endure the breakdown of his simplistic, polarized moral vision.Like colors, black and white are mere deceptive manifestations of a world based on a single groundof reality: God. The chapter explaining Napoléon’s defeat at Waterloo (and anticipating GeneralKutusov’s Providentialist meditations in Tolstoy’s War and Peace) explains this vision clearly inanother way, through causality rather than through color.

As this discussion of the symbolism of color versus black and white just above suggests, Hugo oftenimplies themes rather than stating them, by relating two passages of which the second nevertheless

invites a new interpretation of the pair through its manifest contrasts with the first: he achieves adialectical movement of thesis—antithesis—synthesis. In this way he particularly exploits thearchetype of Inversion, and pairs of digressions. Inversion refers to a transvaluation of values,whereby that which had seemed bad proves good, or vice versa. Hugo invokes negative inversion tocharacterize the police agent Javert when the latter learns that M. Madeleine, who had humiliated himearlier, is really the convict Jean Valjean: “A monstrous Saint Michael,” Javert seems both imposingand hideous. “The pitiless, sincere joy of a fanatic in an act of atrocity preserves an indescribablymournful radiance.... Nothing could be more poignant and terrible than this face, which revealed whatwe may call all the evil of good” (p. 194). The sinister, deformed grandeur of Thénardier’s visionaryengraving of Napoléon may also exemplify this archetype, like a spider’s ambition to rival the sun (p.437; compare the poem in Les Contemplations, “Puissance égale bonté”). Thénardier, by trying tocapture the emperor’s image, seems to aspire to appropriate for himself the soul of N apoléon’sgenius.

The positive form of Inversion reveals that what seemed bad, proves good. Outstanding examplesare the Beatitudes in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:2—12), and the Passion andResurrection (Matthew 27—28, Mark 15—16, Luke 23—24, John 19—20). Appropriatelyexpressing his tidy sense of structure, Hugo frames his epic novel with nesting layers of inversions.At the beginning and the end, we learn that humility can exalt the soul (in Bishop Myriel, whose lastname is a near-anagram of “lumière” or light, and in Jean Valjean). In the middle, Javert’s bad excessof goodness yields to his shocked awareness of the possible goodness of badness, as he learns ofJean Valjean’s moral sublimity.

Near the end, Jean Valjean thematizes Inversion as he wins his final spiritual battle by confessinghis past to Marius. Speaking for the author, who unlike all his contemporaries accepted two decadesof exile rather than make any compromise with Napoleon III, he explains, “In order that I may respectmyself, I must be despised. Then I hold myself erect. I am a galley slave who obeys his conscience. Iknow well that is improbable [ressemblant]. But what would you have me do? it is so” (p. 779). Theword ressemblant echoes Hugo’s pirouette at the beginning of the novel, as he concludes hisidealized moral portrait of Bishop Myriel—“We do not claim that the portrait which we present hereis plausible [ressemblant]; we say only that it resembles him” (p. 15). This subtle, nearly subliminalassociation of the two men reminds us of Myriel’s enduring moral influence on Valjean. Switchingfrom the narrator’s voice to the hero’s voice in the second of these mirroring scenes makes thenovel’s moral impact more immediate at the climax.

Hugo’s historical and cultural digressions set the stage for the characters, explain the limits of theirpossibilities, and often hint at, foreshadow, or symbolize what he sees as an overarching spiritualodyssey of Fall and Redemption. Unless we sin in thought or deed, we cannot benefit from grace andascend nearer God. William Blake’s scandalous slogan “Damn braces; bless relaxes,” like JohannWolfgang von Goethe’s concept of Faustian striving with its inevitable errors as essential to spiritualprogress, are earlier, condensed versions of Hugo’s theme that godliness requires us to rejectsociety’s image of a God who demands self-righteousness and conformity.

Hugo’s five main pairs of digressions are:1) “The Year 1817” (p. 73) and ”The Story of an Improvement in Jet-Work” (p. 99), which contrast

social irresponsibility and responsibility; 2) ”Waterloo“ (p. 205) and the Convent of the Perpetual

Adoration (described in part II, books six and seven, which do not appear in this unabridged edition),which contrast self-aggrandizement and material pomp with self-effacing service and spiritualgrandeur; 3) the street urchin (p. 341) and the underworld (part III, book seven, chapters 1 and 2),contrasting social dysfunction in the idealistic child and the corrupt adult; 4) King Louis Philippe(part IV, book one) and slang (part IV, book six, chapter 3), contrasting the summit and the undersideof society; and 5) the origins of the insurrection of June 5—6,1832, (see the unabridged edition) andthe sewers of Paris (part V, book two), offering political and metaphorical analyses of socialcorruption. The brutal treatment of the workers who provide the foundations of prosperity causesrebellion; similarly, unless the sewers are studied, rebuilt, and cleaned out, he argues, they willoverflow onto the streets above as they have done before. Flushing fecal matter into rivers poisonsour environment and wastes a precious potential resource, Hugo argues, as does locking the poor intoprisons. Hugo skewers the euphemistic pseudo-progress that claims to be making humanitarianadvances while merely changing the words or their order, which refer to our instruments of control.”Formerly these grim cells, in which prison discipline delivers the condemned to himself, werecomposed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a floor of paving stones, a camp bed, a grated air-hole,a door reinforced with iron, and were called dungeons; but the dungeon came to be thought toohorrible: today it is composed of an iron door, a grated air-hole, a camp bed, a floor of paving stones,a stone ceiling, four stone walls, and it is called a punitive detention cell” (p. 566).

The Writer’s RoleHugo believed that the culture hero must also enter politics to ensure social justice, as he did beforeand after his exile, during the 1840s and 1870s. There he preached international understanding,imagining (like Thomas Paine, Immanuel Kant, and Madame de Staël before him) a united Europe ledby France together with the German states. The genius must reveal God’s purposes to humans. Whenunable to act directly—Hugo’s situation during his two decades of exile on the Channel Islands ofJersey and Guernsey—he can write; and writing always supplements personal contacts. Thus, LesMisérables.

Les Misérables focuses on the work of class reconciliation. The title, a syllepsis (a supersegmentalpun, a word used with two different meanings depending on its context), seems to confuse materialpoverty (la misère; les misérables are the impoverished underclass) with moral degradation (unmisérable can mean a wretch or morally reprehensible person), but Hugo’s plot of fall andredemption works precisely to dissociate the two notions through the protagonist Jean Valjean’sprogressive regeneration. Poverty dehumanizes the poor, Hugo demonstrates, leading to prostitution,child abuse, and other crimes that subject the underclass to a purely punitive prison system that offersno hope of rehabilitation. Hugo wants us not to prejudge the poor, but to separate their unsavoryreputation from their varying reality and its extenuating circumstances.

Historical and Political DimensionsIn part I, the chapter entitled “The Year 1817,” Hugo characterizes the immoral frivolity of the earlyRestoration period (1814—1830). In so doing, he dissociates himself from the Royalism of his early

career: at twenty-two, he had even managed to wangle an appointment as the Poet Laureate tocommemorate the coronation of the arch-conservative Comte d‘Artois, who became Charles X. Theremainder of the first part details the horrific consequences of such immorality for the unwed,abandoned single mother Fantine. Hugo shows as much as he tells his opposition to the sexual doublestandard that treats prostitutes as criminals while their clients go free. The wealthy young men of1817 who abandon their impoverished mistresses are respected; their victims are blamed. Fantine, asa streetwalker working to pay for her baby’s room and board after having been fired from her factoryjob for being an unwed mother, is despised; M. Batambois, who assaults her by shoving snow downher dress, seems exempt from the law; later, indeed, we find him serving on a jury. Jean Valjean, as aconvict evading a warrant for robbery, is considered a menace to society; but, disguised as M.Madeleine (whose name, evoking Mary Magdalene, evokes repentance), he alone can ensure theprosperity of his entire community through his responsible, enlightened capitalism in establishing themanufacture of glassware in the town where he has come to serve as mayor.

Hugo wants to excite our compassion. But his benevolence remains paternalistic, and his modestproposals for the partial, voluntary redistribution of wealth—as in Charles Dickens’s A ChristmasCarol—could not threaten wealthy readers. Regarding social progress in general, Hugo wasoptimistic. He shows Jean Valjean, alias M. Madeleine, reading at every meal. Hugo once declaredthat twenty years of good free mandatory education for all would be the last word and bring the dawn.Having become a utopian socialist, as was his creation M. Madeleine, Hugo believed that salarieswould increase naturally along with profits, and that the dynamism of capital expansion wouldnaturally resolve the problems of working conditions for the better. In fairness to Hugo, one mustrecognize that in 1862 an organized proletariat had not yet formed, although it was foreshadowed by aworkers’ uprising in Lyons in 1832 and by the medieval guilds, an institution to which he pays hisrespects in the novel Notre-Dame de Paris (see Porter, Victor Hugo, pp. 20—23). Labor unionmovements as such had not yet developed. Hugo still thinks that guidance and enlightenment mustdescend on the people from “above,” from intellectuals. Nevertheless, at times his trenchant politicalanalyses reveal the irresolvable contradictions one encounters by adopting either of two opposingpositions—which, as it happens, are those of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans in theUnited States today:All the problems which the socialists propounded, aside from the cos mogonic visions, dreams, andmysticism, may be reduced to two principal problems.

First problem:To produce wealth.Second problem:To distribute it....England solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth wonder