Victor Hugo
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Victor Hugo
French writer
in full Victor-Marie Hugo
born Feb. 26, 1802, Besançon, Fr.
died May 22, 1885, Paris
Main
poet, novelist, and dramatist who was the most important of the French
Romantic writers. Though regarded in France as one of that country’s
greatest poets, he is better known abroad for such novels as Notre-Dame
de Paris (1831) and Les Misérables (1862).
Early years (1802–30)
Victor was the third son of Joseph-Léopold-Sigisbert Hugo, a major and,
later, general in Napoleon’s army. His childhood was coloured by his
father’s constant traveling with the imperial army and by the
disagreements that soon alienated his parents from one another. His
mother’s royalism and his father’s loyalty to successive governments—the
Convention, the Empire, the Restoration—reflected their deeper
incompatibility. It was a chaotic time for Victor, continually uprooted
from Paris to set out for Elba or Naples or Madrid, yet always returning
to Paris with his mother, whose royalist opinions he initially adopted.
The fall of the empire gave him, from 1815 to 1818, a time of
uninterrupted study at the Pension Cordier and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand,
after which he graduated from the law faculty at Paris, where his
studies seem to have been purposeless and irregular. Memories of his
life as a poor student later inspired the figure of Marius in his novel
Les Misérables.
From 1816, at least, Hugo had conceived ambitions other than the law.
He was already filling notebooks with verses, translations—particularly
from Virgil—two tragedies, a play, and elegies. Encouraged by his
mother, Hugo founded a review, the Conservateur Littéraire (1819–21), in
which his own articles on the poets Alphonse de Lamartine and André de
Chénier stand out. His mother died in 1821, and a year later Victor
married a childhood friend, Adèle Foucher, with whom he had five
children. In that same year he published his first book of poems, Odes
et poésies diverses, whose royalist sentiments earned him a pension from
Louis XVIII. Behind Hugo’s concern for classical form and his political
inspiration, it is possible to recognize in these poems a personal voice
and his own particular vein of fantasy.
In 1823 he published his first novel, Han d’Islande, which in 1825
appeared in an English translation as Hans of Iceland. The journalist
Charles Nodier was enthusiastic about it and drew Hugo into the group of
friends, all devotees of Romanticism, who met regularly at the
Bibliothèque de L’Arsenal. While frequenting this literary circle, which
was called the Cénacle, Hugo shared in launching a new review of
moderate tendencies, the Muse Française (1823–24). In 1824 he published
a new verse collection, Nouvelles Odes, and followed it two years later
with an exotic romance, Bug-Jargal (Eng. trans. The Slave King). In 1826
he also published Odes et ballades, an enlarged edition of his
previously printed verse, the latest of these poems being brilliant
variations on the fashionable Romantic modes of mirth and terror. The
youthful vigour of these poems was also characteristic of another
collection, Les Orientales (1829), which appealed to the Romantic taste
for Oriental local colour. In these poems Hugo, while skillfully
employing a great variety of metres in his verse and using ardent and
brilliant imagery, was also gradually shedding the legitimist royalism
of his youth. It may be noted, too, that “Le Feu du ciel,” a visionary
poem, forecast those he was to write 25 years later. The fusion of the
contemporary with the apocalyptic was always a particular mark of Hugo’s
genius.
Hugo emerged as a true Romantic, however, with the publication in
1827 of his verse drama Cromwell. The subject of this play, with its
near-contemporary overtones, is that of a national leader risen from the
people who seeks to be crowned king. But the play’s reputation rested
largely on the long, elaborate preface, in which Hugo proposed a
doctrine of Romanticism that for all its intellectual moderation was
extremely provocative. He demanded a verse drama in which the
contradictions of human existence—good and evil, beauty and ugliness,
tears and laughter—would be resolved by the inclusion of both tragic and
comic elements in a single play. Such a type of drama would abandon the
formal rules of classical tragedy for the freedom and truth to be found
in the plays of William Shakespeare. Cromwell itself, though immensely
long and almost impossible to stage, was written in verse of great force
and originality. In fact, the preface to Cromwell, as an important
statement of the tenets of Romanticism, has proved far more important
than the play itself.
Success (1830–51)
The defense of freedom and the cult of an idealized Napoleon in such
poems as the ode “À la Colonne” and “Lui” brought Hugo into touch with
the liberal group of writers on the newspaper Le Globe, and his move
toward liberalism was strengthened by the French king Charles X’s
restrictions on the liberty of the press as well as by the censor’s
prohibiting the stage performance of his play Marion de Lorme (1829),
which portrays the character of Louis XIII unfavourably. Hugo
immediately retorted with Hernani, the first performance of which, on
Feb. 25, 1830, gained victory for the young Romantics over the
Classicists in what came to be known as the battle of Hernani. In this
play Hugo extolled the Romantic hero in the form of a noble outlaw at
war with society, dedicated to a passionate love and driven on by
inexorable fate. The actual impact of the play owed less to the plot
than to the sound and beat of the verse, which was softened only in the
elegiac passages spoken by Hernani and Doña Sol.
While Hugo had derived his early renown from his plays, he gained
wider fame in 1831 with his historical novel Notre-Dame de Paris (Eng.
trans. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), an evocation of life in medieval
Paris during the reign of Louis XI. The novel condemns a society that,
in the persons of Frollo the archdeacon and Phoebus the soldier, heaps
misery on the hunchback Quasimodo and the gypsy girl Esmeralda. The
theme touched the public consciousness more deeply than had that of his
previous novel, Le Dernier Jour d’un condamné (1829; The Last Days of a
Condemned), the story of a condemned man’s last day, in which Hugo
launched a humanitarian protest against the death penalty. While
Notre-Dame was being written, Louis-Philippe, a constitutional king, had
been brought to power by the July Revolution. Hugo composed a poem in
honour of this event, Dicté aprés juillet 1830. It was a forerunner of
much of his political verse.
Four books of poems came from Hugo in the period of the July
Monarchy: Les Feuilles d’automne (1831; “Autumn Leaves”), intimate and
personal in inspiration; Les Chants du crépuscule (1835; Songs of
Twilight), overtly political; Les Voix intérieures (1837; “Inner
Voices”), both personal and philosophical; and Les Rayons et les ombres
(1840; “Sunlight and Shadows”), in which the poet, renewing these
different themes, indulges his gift for colour and picturesque detail.
But Hugo was not content merely to express personal emotions; he wanted
to be what he called the “sonorous echo” of his time. In his verse
political and philosophical problems were integrated with the religious
and social disquiet of the period; one poem evoked the misery of the
workers, another praised the efficacy of prayer. He addressed many poems
to the glory of Napoleon, though he shared with his contemporaries the
reversion to republican ideals. Hugo restated the problems of his
century and the great and eternal human questions, and he spoke with a
warmhearted eloquence and reasonableness that moved people’s souls.
So intense was Hugo’s creative activity during these years that he
also continued to pour out plays. There were two motives for this:
first, he needed a platform for his political and social ideas, and,
second, he wished to write parts for a young and beautiful actress,
Juliette Drouet, with whom he had begun a liaison in 1833. Juliette had
little talent and soon renounced the stage in order to devote herself
exclusively to him, becoming the discreet and faithful companion she was
to remain until her death in 1883. The first of these plays was another
verse drama, Le Roi s’amuse (1832; Eng. trans. The King’s Fool), set in
Renaissance France and depicting the frivolous love affairs of Francis I
while revealing the noble character of his court jester. This play was
at first banned but was later used by Giuseppe Verdi as the libretto of
his opera Rigoletto. Three prose plays followed: Lucrèce Borgia and
Marie Tudor in 1833 and Angelo, tyran de Padoue (“Angelo, Tyrant of
Padua”) in 1835. Ruy Blas, a play in verse, appeared in 1838 and was
followed by Les Burgraves in 1843.
Hugo’s literary achievement was recognized in 1841 by his election,
after three unsuccessful attempts, to the French Academy and by his
nomination in 1845 to the Chamber of Peers. From this time he almost
ceased to publish, partly because of the demands of society and
political life but also as a result of personal loss: his daughter
Léopoldine, recently married, was accidentally drowned with her husband
in September 1843. Hugo’s intense grief found some mitigation in poems
that later appeared in Les Contemplations, a volume that he divided into
“Autrefois” and “Aujourd’hui,” the moment of his daughter’s death being
the mark between yesterday and today. He found relief above all in
working on a new novel, which became Les Misérables, published in 1862
after work on it had been set aside for a time and then resumed.
With the Revolution of 1848, Hugo was elected a deputy for Paris in
the Constituent Assembly and later in the Legislative Assembly. He
supported the successful candidacy of Prince Louis-Napoléon for the
presidency that year. The more the president evolved toward an
authoritarianism of the right, however, the more Hugo moved toward the
assembly’s left. When in December 1851 a coup d’état took place, which
eventually resulted in the Second Empire under Napoleon III, Hugo made
one attempt at resistance and then fled to Brussels.
Exile (1851–70)
Hugo’s exile lasted until the return of liberty and the reconstitution
of the republic in 1870. Enforced at the beginning, exile later became a
voluntary gesture and, after the amnesty of 1859, an act of pride. He
remained in Brussels for a year until, foreseeing expulsion, he took
refuge on British territory. He first established himself on the island
of Jersey, in the English Channel, where he remained from 1852 to 1855.
When he was expelled from there, he moved to the neighbouring island of
Guernsey. During this exile of nearly 20 years he produced the most
extensive part of all his writings and the most original.
Immersed in politics as he was, Hugo devoted the first writings of
his exile to satire and recent history: Napoléon le Petit (1852), an
indictment of Napoleon III, and Histoire d’un crime, a day-by-day
account of Louis Bonaparte’s coup. Hugo’s return to poetry was an
explosion of wrath: Les Châtiments (1853; “The Punishments”). This
collection of poems unleashed his anger against the new emperor and, on
a technical level, freed him from his remaining classical prejudices and
enabled him to achieve the full mastery of his poetic powers. Les
Châtiments ranks among the most powerful satirical poems in the French
language. All Hugo’s future verse profited from this release of his
imagination: the tone of this collection of poems is sometimes lyrical,
sometimes epic, sometimes moving, but most often virulent, containing an
undertone of national and personal frustration.
Despite the satisfaction he derived from his political poetry, Hugo
wearied of its limitations and, turning back to the unpublished poems of
1840–50, set to work on the volume of poetry entitled Les Contemplations
(1856). This work contains the purest of his poetry—the most moving
because the memory of his dead daughter is at the centre of the book,
the most disquieting, also, because it transmits the haunted world of a
thinker. In poems such as “Pleurs dans la nuit” and “La Bouche d’ombre,”
he reveals a tormented mind that struggles between doubt and faith in
its lonely search for meaning and significance.
Hugo’s apocalyptic approach to reality was the source of two epic or
metaphysical poems, La Fin de Satan (“The End of Satan”) and Dieu
(“God”), both of them confrontations of the problem of evil. Written
between 1854 and 1860, they were not published until after his death
because his publisher preferred the little epics based on history and
legend contained in the first installment (1859) of the gigantic epic
poem La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Centuries), whose second
and third installments appeared in 1877 and 1883, respectively. The many
poems that make up this epic display all his spiritual power without
sacrificing his exuberant capacity to tell a story. Hugo’s personal
mythology of the human struggle between good and evil lies behind each
of the legends: Eve’s motherhood is exalted in “Le Sacre de la femme”;
mankind liberating itself from all religions in order to attain divine
truth is the theme of “Le Satyre”; and “Plein Ciel” proclaims, through
utopian prediction of men’s conquest of the air, the poet’s conviction
of indefinite progress toward the final unity of science with moral
awareness.
After the publication of three long books of poetry, Hugo returned to
prose and took up his abandoned novel, Les Misérables. Its extraordinary
success with readers of every type when it was published in 1862 brought
him instant popularity in his own country, and its speedy translation
into many languages won him fame abroad. The novel’s name means “the
wretched,” or “the outcasts,” but English translations generally carry
the French title. The story centres on the convict Jean Valjean, a
victim of society who has been imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a
loaf of bread. A hardened and astute criminal upon his release, he
eventually softens and reforms, becoming a successful industrialist and
mayor of a northern town. Yet he is stalked obsessively by the detective
Javert for an impulsive, regretted former crime, and Jean Valjean
eventually sacrifices himself for the sake of his adopted daughter,
Cosette, and her husband, Marius. Les Misérables is a vast panorama of
Parisian society and its underworld, and it contains many famous
episodes and passages, among them a chapter on the Battle of Waterloo
and the description of Jean Valjean’s rescue of Marius by means of a
flight through the sewers of Paris. The story line of Les Misérables is
basically that of a detective story, but by virtue of its characters,
who are sometimes a little larger than life yet always vital and
engaging, and by its re-creation of the swarming Parisian underworld,
the main theme of humankind’s ceaseless combat with evil clearly
emerges.
The remaining works Hugo completed in exile include the essay William
Shakespeare (1864) and two novels: Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866; The
Toilers of the Sea), dedicated to the island of Guernsey and its
sailors; and L’Homme qui rit (1869; The Man Who Laughs), a curious
baroque novel about the English people’s fight against feudalism in the
17th century, which takes its title from the perpetual grin of its
disfigured hero. Hugo’s last novel, Quatre-vingt-treize (1874;
Ninety-three), centred on the tumultuous year 1793 in France and
portrayed human justice and charity against the background of the French
Revolution.
Last years (1870–85)
The defeat of France in the Franco-German War and the proclamation of
the Third Republic in 1871 brought Hugo back to Paris. He became a
deputy in the National Assembly (1871) but resigned the following month.
Though he still fought for his old ideals, he no longer possessed the
same energies. The trials of recent years had aged him, and there were
more to come: in 1868 he had lost his wife, Adèle, a profound sadness to
him; in 1871 one son died, as did another in 1873. Though increasingly
detached from life around him, the poet of L’Année terrible (1872), in
which he recounted the siege of Paris during the “terrible year” of
1870, had become a national hero and a living symbol of republicanism in
France. In 1878 Hugo was stricken by cerebral congestion, but he lived
on for some years in the Avenue d’Eylau, renamed Avenue Victor-Hugo on
his 80th birthday. In 1885, two years after the death of his faithful
companion Juliette, Hugo died and was given a national funeral. His body
lay in state under the Arc de Triomphe and was buried in the Panthéon.
Reputation
Hugo’s enormous output is unique in French literature; it is said that
he wrote each morning 100 lines of verse or 20 pages of prose. “The most
powerful mind of the Romantic movement,” as he was described in 1830,
laureate and peer of France in 1845, he went on to assume the role of an
outlawed sage who, with the easy consciousness of authority, put down
his insights and prophetic visions in prose and verse, becoming at last
the genial grandfather of popular literary portraiture and the national
poet who gave his name to a street in every town in France.
The recognition of Hugo as a great poet at the time of his death was
followed by a period of critical neglect. A few of his poems were
remembered, and Les Misérables continued to be widely read. The
generosity of his ideas and the warmth of their expression still moved
the public mind, for Hugo was a poet of the common man and knew how to
write with simplicity and power of common joys and sorrows. But there
was another side to him—what Paul Claudel called his “panic
contemplation” of the universe, the numinous fear that penetrates his
sombre poems La Fin de Satan and Dieu. Hugo’s knowledge of the resources
of French verse and his technical virtuosity in metre and rhyme,
moreover, rescued French poetry from the sterility of the 18th century.
Hugo is one of those rare writers who excites both popular and academic
audiences alike.
Jean-Bertrand Barrère
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The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
1802-1885
Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de
Paris \s a historical novel in the tradition of Sir Walter
Scott's Ivanhoe. It presents a vivid tableau of life in
fifteenth century Paris, a city teeming with noble festivities,
grotesque revelries, mob uprisings, and public executions, all
of which take place around Notre-Dame de Paris. Hugo devotes two
chapters to the description of the gothic church, bringing the
reader into the very soul of Notre-Dame. From the dizzying
heights of its stony gaze, he offers the reader a subjective
view of Paris.The word anankhe {"fate"), etched on one of the
walls, reveals the driving force of the gothic plot.
Quasimodo's fate is sealed when he is abandoned at birth by his
mother on the steps of Notre-Dame. Adopted by the Archdeacon
Claude Frollo, Quasimodo becomes bellringerof the tower, hiding
his grotesque, hunchbacked figure away from prying Parisian
eyes. Frollo is consumed by forbidden lust for the beautiful
gypsy Esmeralda, who dances on the square below the cathedral.
He convinces Quasimodo to kidnap her, but his attempts are
foiled by the captain of the King's Archers, Phoebus, who also
falls for Esmeralda. Quasimodo is imprisoned for the crime, and
is abused and humiliated by his captors. After a particularly
brutal flogging, he is tended to by Esmeralda who gives him
water. From this point on, Quasimodo is hopelessly devoted to
her. With all three characters under her spell, a dramatic tale
of love and deceit ensues. The love obsessed Frollo spies on
Phoebus and Esmeralda, stabbing the former in a jealous rage.
Esmeralda is arrested and condemned to death for his murder, and
despite a brave rescue attempt by Quasimodo is later hanged.
Quasimodo, seeing Esmeralda hanging lifeless from the gallows,
cries out, "There is all I loved." The theme of redemption
through love struck a universal chord.
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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Type of plot: Historical romance
Time of plot: Fifteenth century
Locale: France
First published: Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (English translation,
1833)
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In this masterpiece of romantic writing, Hugo tells of the love of
a grotesquely ugly, hunchbacked deaf-mute for a mysteriously beautiful
gypsy dancer. The compelling theme of the novel is that God has created
in man an imperfect image of Himself, an image fettered with numerous
handicaps, but one which has the potential to transcend its limitations
and achieve spiritual greatness.
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Principal Characters
Quasimodo (ka-ze-mo'do), a bellringer abandoned in infancy at Notre Dame
Cathedral on Quasimodo Sunday, and now deaf from the din of the bells he
rings. He is also unspeakably ugly, with tusk-like teeth and a wen over
one eye, bristling red hair and eyebrows, and a snoutlike nose. Because
of his horrible appearance, the Paris crowd selects him King of Fools
for the Epiphany celebrations of 1482. During the carnival he sees
Esmer-alda, the gypsy who dances before him. When he is later pilloried
and beaten, she brings him a drink. From then on he is her devoted slave
and on several occasions saves her from Archdeacon Frollo, his
benefactor. When she is hanged, through Frollo's scheming, he hurls the
priest from the bell tower, then weeps at the death of the only two
people he has ever loved. Years later, when the vault of Montfaucon,
burial place of criminals, is opened, a skeleton of a woman in white is
found in the arms of a misshapen man with a crooked spine. The bones
disintegrate into dust when touched.
Esmeralda (ez-ma-ral'da), a lovely and kindhearted gypsy who possesses
an amulet by which she hopes to find her family. She and her goat Djali
dance to earn their living. Attracted to Captain Phoebus after he saves
her from kidnapping, she agrees to a rendezvous in a house on the Pont
St. Michel. There the officer is stabbed by Frollo, but Esmeralda is
accused of the crime. Under torture, she confesses to everything and is
sentenced to be hanged. With Quasimodo's help, however, she escapes
while confessing to Frollo and takes sanctuary in the church. Gringoire
deceives her into leaving when the mob attacks Notre Dame. For a time
she hides in the cell of a madwoman, in reality her mother from whom the
gypsies had stolen her. Soldiers of Captain Phoebus' company find her
there. Clothed in white, she is hanged at dawn.
Pierre Gringoire (pyar' grarrgwar'), a penniless and stupid Parisian
poet who falls in love with Esmeralda. He writes a play to entertain the
Flemish ambassadors at the Palace of Justice. Captured later by thugs
and threatened with hanging, he is freed when Esmeralda promises to
marry him, but the marriage is never consummated. At Frollo's bidding,
Gringoire tempts the girl from her sanctuary and she is captured.
Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers (fa-bus' ds sha-to-pers'), loved by
Esmeralda. He reveals to Frollo his rendezvous with her and is stabbed
by the jealous priest. When Esmeralda is accused of the crime, Phoebus
allows her be tried for his attempted murder because he is fearful for
his reputation if he appears. Soon he forgets the gypsy and marries his
cousin, Fleur-de-Lys.
Claude Frollo (klod fro-yo'), the archdeacon of Notre Dame, once an
upright priest but now a student of alchemy and necromancy as well as a
pursuer of women. Determined to possess Esmeralda, he sends Quasimodo in
disguise to seize her. Her rescue by Captain Phoebus makes him try to
kill the officer. When Esmeralda is accused of the crime, he offers to
save her if she will give herself to him. Failing to possess her, he
shakes with evil laughter as he looks down from Notre Dame at her
hanging in the Place de Greve. Here he is found by Quasimodo and hurled
to his death on the pavement below.
The Dauphin Charles (do fan' sharl), of France, whose marriage to
Margaret of Flanders occasions the celebration at the beginning of the
novel.
Charles, Cardinal de Bourbon (sharl', kar-de-nal' da boorbon'), who
provides the dramatic entertainment for the visiting Flemish guests.
Tristan (tres-tan'), who directs Captain Phoebus' soldiers in search of
Esmeralda.
Jacques Charmolue (zhak shar-mo-lii'), the king's attorney in the
Ecclesiastical Court that tries Esmeralda for witchcraft.
Philippe Lheulier (fe-lep' lfl-lya'), the king's Advocate Extraordinary,
who accuses her.
Gudule (gu-dul'), an ex-prostitute whose daughter Agnes had been stolen
by gypsies. She has gone mad and for fifteen years has lived in a cell.
She fondles constantly a shoe that her baby had worn. When Esmer-alda
takes refuge there, she produces its companion, and mother and daughter
are briefly reunited.
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The Story
Louis XI, king of France, was to marry his oldest son to Margaret of
Flanders, and in early January, 1482, the king was expecting Flemish
ambassadors to his court. The great day arrived, coinciding both with
Epiphany and the secular celebration of the Festival of Fools. All day
long, raucous Parisians had assembled at the great Palace of Justice to
see a morality play and to choose a Prince of Fools. The throng was
supposed to await the arrival of the Flemish guests, but when the
emissaries were late Gringoire, a penniless and oafish poet, ordered the
play to begin. In the middle of the prologue, however, the play came to
a standstill as the royal procession passed into the huge palace. After
the procession passed, the play was forgotten, and the crowd shouted for
the Prince of Fools to be chosen.
The Prince of Fools had to be a man of remarkable physical ugliness. One
by one the candidates, eager for this one glory of their disreputable
lives, showed their faces in front of a glass window, but the crowd
shouted and jeered until a face of such extraordinary hideousness
appeared that the people acclaimed this candidate at once as the Prince
of Fools. It was Quasimodo, the hunchback bellringer of Notre Dame.
Nowhere on earth was there a more grotesque creature. One of his eyes
was buried under an enormous wen. His teeth hung over his protruding
lower lip like tusks. His eyebrows were red bristles, and his gigantic
nose curved over his upper lip like a snout. His long arms protruded
from his shoulders, dangling like an ape's. Though he was deaf from long
years of ringing Notre Dame's thunderous bells, his eyesight was acute.
Quasimodo sensed that he had been chosen by popular acclaim, and he was
at once proud and suspicious of his honor as he allowed the crowd to
dress him in ridiculous robes and hoist him above their heads. From this
vantage point, he maintained a dignified silence while the parade went
through the streets of Paris, stopping only to watch the enchanting
dance of a gypsy girl, La Esmeralda, whose grace and charm held her
audience spellbound. She had a little trained goat with her that danced
to her tambourine. The pair were celebrated throughout Paris, though
there were some who thought the girl a witch, so great was her power in
captivating her audience.
Late that night the poet Gringoire walked the streets of Paris. He had
no shelter, owed money, and was in desperate straits. As the cold night
came on, he saw Esmeralda hurrying ahead of him. Then a black-hooded man
came out of the shadows and seized the gypsy. At the same time,
Gringoire caught sight of the hooded man's partner, Quasimodo, who
struck Gringoire a terrible blow. The following moment a horseman came
riding from the next street. Catching sight of Esmeralda in the arms of
the black-hooded man, the rider demanded that he free the girl or pay
with his life. The attackers fled. Esmeralda asked the name of her
rescuer. It was Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers. From that moment
Esmeralda was hopelessly in love with Phoebus.
Gringoire did not bother to discover the plot behind the frustrated
kidnapping, but had he known the truth he might have been more
frightened than he was. Quasimodo's hooded companion had been Claude
Frollo, archdeacon of Notre Dame, a man who had once been a pillar of
righteousness, but who now, because of loneliness and an insatiable
thirst for knowledge and experience, had succumbed to the temptations of
necromancy and alchemy.
Frollo had befriended Quasimodo when the hunchback had been left at the
gates of Notre Dame as an unwanted baby; Quasimodo was slavishly loyal
to him. He acted without question when Frollo asked his aid in
kidnapping the beautiful gypsy. Frollo, having admired Esmeralda from a
distance, planned to carry her off to his small cell in the cathedral,
where he could enjoy her charms at his leisure.
As Quasimodo and Frollo hurried back to the cathedral, Gringoire
continued on his way and found himself in a disreputable quarter of
Paris. Captured by thugs, he was threatened with death if none of the
women in the thieves' den would marry him. When no one wanted the pale,
thin poet, a noose was lowered about his neck. Suddenly Esmeralda
appeared and volunteered to take him, but Gringoire enjoyed no wedding
night. Esmeralda's heart belonged to Phoebus; she had rescued the poet
only out of pity.
In those days the courts of Paris often picked innocent people from the
streets, tried them, and convicted them with little regard for justice.
Quasimodo had been seen in his role as the Prince of Fools and had been
watched as he stood before the gypsy girl while she danced. There was a
rumor that Esmeralda was a witch, and most of Paris suspected that
Frollo, Quasimodo's only associate, was a sorcerer. Consequently,
Quasimodo was brought into a court, accused of keeping questionable
company, and sentenced to a severe flogging and exposure on the pillory.
Quasimodo endured his disgrace stoically, but after his misshapen back
had been torn by the lash, he was overcome with a terrible thirst. The
crowd jeered and threw stones. They hated and feared Quasimodo because
of his ugliness.
Presently Esmeralda mounted the scaffold and put her flask to
Quasimodo's blackened lips. This act of kindness moved him deeply and he
wept. At that same time Frollo had happened upon the scene, caught sight
of Quasimodo, and departed quickly. Later Quasimodo was to remember this
betrayal.
One day Phoebus was entertaining a lady in a building overlooking the
square where Esmeralda was dancing. The gypsy was so smitten with
Phoebus that she had taught her goat to spell out his name with alphabet
blocks. When she had the animal perform this trick, the lady called her
a witch and a sorceress. Phoebus, however, followed the gypsy and
arranged for a rendezvous with her for the following night.
Meanwhile, Gringoire happened to meet Frollo, who was jealous of the
poet because he was rumored to be Esmeralda's husband. Gringoire,
however, explained that Esmeralda did not love him; she had eyes and
heart only for Phoebus.
Desperate to preserve Esmeralda for himself, Frollo trailed the young
gallant and asked him where he was going. Phoebus said that he had a
rendezvous with Esmeralda. The priest offered him money in exchange for
an opportunity to conceal himself in the room where this rendezvous was
to take place, ostensibly to discover whether Esmeralda was really the
girl whose name Phoebus had mentioned. It was a poor ruse at best, but
Phoebus was not shy at lovemaking and agreed to the bargain. When he
learned that the girl was really Esmeralda, Frollo leaped from
concealment and wounded Phoebus with a dagger. Esmeralda could not see
her lover's assailant in the darkness, and when she fainted, Frollo
escaped. A crowd gathered, murmuring that the sorceress had slain
Phoebus. They took the gypsy off to prison.
Now tales of Esmeralda's sorcery began to circulate. At her trial, she
was convicted of witchcraft, sentenced to do penance on the great porch
of Notre Dame and from there to be taken to a scaffold in the Place de
la Greve and publicly hanged.
Captain Phoebus was not dead, but he had kept silent rather than
implicate himself in a case of witchcraft. When Esmeralda was on her way
to Notre Dame, she caught sight of him riding on his beautiful horse and
called out to him, but he ignored her completely. She then felt that she
was doomed.
When she came before Frollo to do penance, he offered to save her if she
would be his; but she refused. Quasimodo suddenly appeared on the porch,
took the girl in his arms, and carried her to sanctuary within the
church. Esmeralda was now safe as long as she remained within the
cathedral walls.
Quasimodo hid her in his own cell, where there was a mattress and water,
and brought her food. He kept the cell door locked so that if her
pursuers did break into the sanctuary, they could not reach her. Aware
that she would be terrified of him if he stayed with her, he entered her
cell only to bring her his own dinner.
Frollo, knowing that the gypsy was near him in the cathedral, secured a
key to the chamber and stole in to see Esmeralda one night. She
struggled hopelessly, until suddenly Quasimodo entered and dragged the
priest from the cell. With smothered rage, he freed the trembling
archdeacon and allowed him to run away.
One day a mob gathered and demanded that the sorceress be turned from
the cathedral. Frollo was jubilant. Quasimodo, however, barred and
bolted the great doors. When the crowd charged the cathedral with a
battering ram, Quasimodo threw stones from a tower where builders had
been working. When the mob persisted, he poured melted lead upon the
crowd below. Then the mob secured ladders and began to mount the fagade,
but Quasimodo seized the ladders and pushed them from the wall. Hundreds
of dead and wounded lay below him.
The king's guards joined the fray. Looking down, Quasimodo thought that
the soldiers had arrived to protect Esmeralda. He went to her cell, but
to his amazement, he found the door open and Esmeralda gone.
Frollo had given Gringoire the key to her chamber and had led the poet
through the cathedral to her cell. Grin-gorie convinced her that she
must fly, since the church was under siege. She followed him trustingly,
and he led her to a boat where Frollo was already waiting. Frightened by
the violence of the priest, Gringoire fled. Once more, Frollo offered to
save Esmeralda if she would be his, but she refused him. Fleeing, she
sought refuge in a cell belonging to a madwoman. There the soldiers
found her and dragged her away for her execution the next morning at
dawn.
Meanwhile, Quasimodo roamed the cathedral searching for Esmeralda.
Making his way to the tower which looked down upon the bridge of Notre
Dame, Quasimodo came upon Frollo, who stood shaking with laughter as he
watched a scene far below. Following the direction of the priest's gaze,
Quasimodo saw a gibbet erected in the Place de la Greve and on the
platform a woman in white. It was Esmeralda. Quasimodo saw the noose
lowered over the girl's head and the platform released. The body swayed
in the morning breeze. Then Quasimodo picked up Frollo and thrust him
over the wall on which he had been leaning. At that moment, Quasimodo
understood everything that the priest had done to ensure the death of
Esmeralda. He looked at the crushed body at the foot of the tower and
then at the figure in white upon the gallows. He wept.
After the deaths of Esmeralda and Claude Frollo, Quasimodo was not to be
found. Then in the reign of Charles VIII, the vault of Montfaucon, in
which the bodies of criminals were interred, was opened to locate the
remains of a famous prisoner who had been buried there. Among the
skeletons were those of a woman who had been clad in white and of a man
whose bony arms were wrapped tightly around the woman's body. His spine
was crooked, one leg was shorter than the other, and it was evident that
he had not been hanged, for his neck was unbroken. When those who
discovered these singular remains tried to separate the two bodies, they
crumbled into dust.
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Critical Evaluation
Victor Hugo, leader of the French Romantic movement, not only could tell
a gripping story but also could endow his essentially Romantic
characters with a realism so powerful that they have become monumental
literary figures. The Hunchback of Notre Dame has every quality of a
good novel: an exciting story, a magnificent setting, and deep, lasting
characterizations. Perhaps the compelling truth of this novel lies in
the idea that God has created in man an imperfect image of Himself, an
image fettered by society and by man's own body and soul, but one which,
in the last analysis, has the freedom to transcend these limitations and
achieve spiritual greatness.
Hugo was inspired to write The Hunchback of Notre Dame when he
accidentally discovered the Greek word for "fate" carved into an obscure
wall of one of the Notre Dame cathedral's towers. Each personality in
the novel is built around a "fixed idea": Claude Frollo embodies the
consuming, destructive passion of lust; Esmeralda, virgin beauty and
purity; Quasimodo, unshakable devotion and loyalty. Hugo's characters do
not develop but simply play out their given natures to their inevitable
conclusions.
In analyzing the character of archdeacon Claude Frollo, it is helpful to
understand Hugo's theory that the advent of Christianity in Western
Europe marked a new era in literature and art. Because Christianity
viewed man as a creature half animal and half spirit—the link between
beast and angel—writers could present the ugly and lowly as well as the
beautiful and sublime. They could attain a new synthesis —more
meaningful because realistic—not achieved by writers of antiquity, who
only depicted idealized, larger-than-life subjects on the grounds that
"art should correct nature." Claude Frollo excludes all human contact
from his life and locks himself up with his books; when he has mastered
all the legitimate branches of knowledge, he has nowhere to turn in his
obsession but to the realm of alchemy and the occult. He is ultimately
destroyed, along with those around him, because in denying his animal
nature and shutting off all avenues for the release of his natural
drives and affections, he falls into the depths of a lustful passion
that amounts to madness.
As the novel develops, Quasimodo, the hunchback of the novel's title, is
increasingly trapped between his love for the gypsy girl Esmeralda and
his love for the archdeacon, his master and protector. These two
loyalties finally create an irreconcilable conflict; a choice must be
made. When the priest destroys the gypsy, the bell ringer hurls his
master from the heights of Notre Dame: a fitting death for Frollo,
symbolic of his descent in life from the sublime to the bestial. In
Quasimodo, Hugo dramatized his belief that the grotesque and the sublime
must coexist in art and literature, as they do in life; the modern
writer, he says, "will realize that everything in creation is not
humanly beautiful, that the ugly exists beside the beautiful, the
unshapely beside the graceful. . . and [he] will ask ... if a mutilated
nature will be the more beautiful for the mutilation." Esmeralda is the
embodiment of innocence and beauty. She is held in reverence even by the
criminal population of Paris, who vaguely equate her in their minds with
the Virgin Mary. Her beauty, however, is too innocent and pure to exist
amid the brutality and sinfulness of her world. Of all the men in the
book, only one is worthy of Esmeralda: the hunchbacked Quasimodo, who
loves her so totally and unselfishly that he would rather die than go on
living after she is executed. Appropriately, it is Esmeralda and
Quasimodo who are finally "married" in the charnel-house at Montfaucon;
theirs is the perfect union of physical and spiritual beauty.
Almost more than by any of the human characters, the novel is dominated
by the presence of the cathedral itself. The hero, Quasimodo,
understands Notre Dame: He is in tune with her "life." Like her deformed
bell ringer, Notre Dame is both ugly and beautiful, both strong and
vulnerable, both destructive and life-giving. Quasimodo's monstrous face
hides a loving, faithful spirit, while his twisted body conceals a
superhuman strength; Notre Dame's beautiful sanctuary is enclosed by a
rough exterior encrusted with gargoyles, while her vulnerable treasures
are guarded by doors that six thousand maddened vagrants cannot batter
down. The cathedral and the ringer work together, almost as one entity,
to protect Esmeralda in her room hundreds of feet above the city; to
repulse invaders with hurled stones and molten lead; to dash the
blasphemous student Jehan to death against the massive walls; and to
cast off the priest whose lustfulness defiles the purity of the place.
Setting was all-important to Hugo. As the foremost French Romanticist of
the nineteenth century, he was fascinated by the medieval period and
strove to reconstruct it in such a way that it would live again in his
novel. Hugo believed that a description built on exact, localized
details would recapture the mood of a historical period; he also
believed that setting was as crucial as characterization in engraving a
"faithful representation of the facts" on the minds of his readers.
Early in the novel, therefore, Hugo devotes an entire section to a
description of the cathedral and the city of Paris; and throughout the
book, he offers brief passages of historical background which add
verisimilitude to his narrative.
In the preface to his play Cromwell (1827), Hugo wrote, "The place where
this or that catastrophe took place becomes a terrible and inseparable
witness thereof; and the absence of silent characters of this sort would
make the greatest scenes in history incomplete in the drama." Thus, in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, not only does the cathedral live almost as
a personality but so also does the Place de la Greve spread its
influence over the lives of all the characters. The cathedral and the
square are the two focal points not only of the setting but also of the
plot and the theme of the novel; the former embodies the spiritual and
beautiful, the latter the lowly and cruel. It is the cathedral that
enfolds the humble and loyal Quasimodo and the compassionate Esmeralda,
while the square, the scene of poverty, suffering, and grisly death,
with its Rat-Hole and its gibbet, claims Esmeralda's lunatic mother and
Claude Frollo as its victims.
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Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
1802-1885
Les Miserables is one of only a few novels that have taken on a
vivid afterlife long after their initial publication. There have
been (horribly) abridged versions, rewritings, movies, and, of
course, the world-famous musical,yet in order to understand the
true scale of Victor Hugo's achievement, one must return to the
text itself.
Like Tolstoy's War and Peace, this novel is concerned with the
way in which individual lives are played out in the context of
epoch-defining historical events. What is "History"? Hugo asks
us. Who creates "History"? To whom does it happen? What role
does the individual play in such events? The character of Jean
Valjean is thus the key to Les Miserables, an escaped convict
whose desperate need to redeem himself through his adopted
daughter, Cosette, lies at the heart of the novel. Valjean Is
pursued throughout by the extraordinary Inspector Javert, with
whose life his becomes irrevocably entwined, and who is
relentless in his determination to uphold the law and to
apprehend him.This personal drama of hunter and prey is then
cast into the cauldron of revolutionary Paris as Cosette falls
in love with the radical idealist Marius and Valjean grapples
with the possibility of losing all that he has ever loved. The
novel draws the reader into the politics and geography of Paris
with a vividness that is unparalleled, and then leads on,
incorporating Hugo's characteristic meditations upon the
universe, to the battle of Waterloo, and the final, astonishing
denouement. There are not many texts that can be termed national
classics, but Les Miserables is one, and is a landmark in the
development of the historical novel that stands alongside the
greatest works of Dickens and Tolstoy. It is also a deeply
compelling read.
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LES MISERABLES
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Type of plot: Social chronicle
Time of plot: с 1815-1835
Locale: France
First published: 1862 (English translation, 1862)
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In this ultimate "pursuit" novel, Jean Valjean, an essentially
innocent man, is tracked relentlessly for most of his lifetime by an
implacable, abstract "justice" in the person of the fanatical Inspector
Javert. With this action as the spine, Hugo then ranges widely to
describe early nineteenth century France with a sweep, power, and
concreteness that give the novel epic stature.
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Principal Characters
Jean Valjean (zhan' vaTzhan'), a convict of unusual strength, originally
sentenced to five years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for his
sister's starving family. Attempts to escape have kept him in the
galleys for nineteen years before he is released in 1815. Police
Inspector Javert is sure he will be back for his passport, proclaiming
him an ex-convict and preventing him from getting work. He stops at the
home of the Bishop of Digne, who treats him well despite Jean's attempts
to rob him of some silverware. Eventually, calling himself Father
Madeleine, a man with no previous history, he appears in the town of M.
sur M. His discovery of a method for making jet for jewelry brings
prosperity to the whole village, and the people elect him mayor. Then
his conscience forces him to confess his former identity to save a
prisoner unjustly arrested. Again he escapes from the galleys and from
Inspector Javert, until he is betrayed by a blackmailer. In the end he
dies peacefully, surrounded by those he loves and with his entangled
past revealed. His final act is to bequeath to Cosette the Bishop's
silver candlesticks, which he had kept for years while trying to deserve
the Bishop's confidence.
Fantine (fan-ten'), a beautiful girl of Paris whose attempts to find a
home for her illegitimate daughter Cosette have put her into the power
of money-mad M. The-nardier. Unable to meet his demands for more money
after the foreman of Father Madeleine's factory fires her upon learning
of her earlier history, she turns prostitute, only to have M. Javert
arrest her. By this time she is dying of tuberculosis. Father Madeleine
promises to look after eight-year-old Cosette.
Cosette (кб-zeV), Fantine's daughter, who grows up believing herself the
daughter of Father Madeleine. She is seen and loved by a young lawyer,
Marius Pontmercy; but Valjean, fearing he will be compelled to reveal
her story and his own if she marries, plans to take her away. Cosette
hears from Pontmercy again as she is about to leave for England with her
supposed father. She sends him a note which brings his answer that he is
going to seek death at the barricades.
Felix Tholomyes (fa-leks' to-16-туёУ), a carefree, faithless student,
Fantine's lover and Cosette's father.
M. Javert (zha-veV), a police inspector with a strong sense of duty that
impels him to track down the man whom he considers a depraved criminal.
Finally, after Valjean saves his life at the barricades, where the crowd
wants to kill him as a police spy, he struggles between his sense of
duty and his reluctance to take back to prison a man who could have
saved himself by letting the policeman die. His solution is to drown
himself in the Seine River.
Marius Pontmercy (ma-ryus' pon'-mer-se'), a young lawyer of good blood,
estranged from his aristocratic family because of his liberal views. His
father, an army officer under Napoleon, had expressed a deathbed wish
that his son try to repay his debt to Sergeant Thenardier, who had saved
his life at Waterloo. Marius' struggle between obligations to a rascal
and his desire to protect the father of the girl he loves sets M. Javert
on Jean Valjean's tracks. A farewell letter from Cosette sends him to
die at the barricade during a street revolt. After he has been wounded,
Valjean saves him by carrying him underground through the sewers of
Paris. Eventually Marius marries Cosette and learns, when the old man is
dying, the truth about Jean Valjean.
M. Thenardier (ta-nar-dya'), an unscrupulous, avaricious innkeeper, a
veteran of Waterloo, who bleeds Fan-tine of money to pay for the care of
Cosette. Later he changes his name to Jondrette and begins a career of
begging and blackmail while living in the Gorbeau tenement in Paris.
Jean Valjean becomes one of his victims. He even demands money to let
Valjean out of the sewers beneath Paris while Valjean is carrying
wounded Marius Pontmercy to a place of safety.
Mme. Thenardier, a virago as cruel and ruthless as her husband.
Eponine Thenardier (a-po-nen'), their older daughter, a good-hearted but
pathetic girl. Marius Pontmercy first meets her when she delivers one of
her father's begging, whining letters. In love with Marius, she saves
his life by interposing herself between him and an aimed musket during
the fighting at the barricade. Before she dies she gives him a letter
telling where Cosette can be found.
Azelma (a-zel-ma'), their younger daughter.
Little Gavroche (ga-vrosh'), the Thenardiers' son, a street gamin. He is
killed while assisting the insurgents in the fighting at the barricade.
Charles Francois Bienvenu Myriel (sharl fraii-swa' byaii-vsnu' тётуёТ),
Bishop of Digne, a good-hearted, devout churchman who gives hospitality
to Jean Valjean after the ex-convict's release from the galleys. When
Valjean repays him by stealing some of the Bishop's silverware, the old
man tells the police that he had given the valuables to his guest and
gives him in addition a pair of silver candlesticks. His saintliness
turns Valjean to a life of honesty and sacrifice.
Father Fauchelevent (fosh-b-van'), a bankrupt notary, turned carter,
jealous of Father Madeleine's success in M. sur M. One day his horse
falls and the old man is pinned beneath his cart. The accident might
have proved fatal if Father Madeleine, a man of tremendous strength, had
not lifted the vehicle to free the trapped carter. This feat of
strength, witnessed by M. Javert, causes the policeman to comment
significantly that he had known only one man, a galley slave, capable of
doing such a deed. Father Madeleine's act changes Father Fauchelevent
from an enemy to an admiring friend. After his accident the old man
becomes a gardener at the convent of the Little Picpus in Paris. Jean
Valjean and Cosette, fleeing from the police, take refuge in the convent
garden. Old Fauchelevent gives them shelter and arranges to have Valjean
smuggled out of the convent grounds in the coffin of a dead nun. Later
he helps Valjean to get work as a workman at the convent.
Little Gervaise (zher-ves'), a young Savoyard from whom Jean Valjean
steals two francs. The deed arouses his conscience, and he weeps because
he cannot find the boy to return his money. This is the crime of which
Champmathieu is later accused.
Champmathieu (chan-ma-tyoe'), an old man arrested for stealing apples.
When he is taken to the departmental prison at Arras a convict there
identifies him as Jean Valjean, a former convict, and he is put on trial
for the theft of two francs stolen from a Savoyard lad eight years
before. After a struggle with his conscience, Jean Valjean appears at
the trial and confesses his identity. Champmathieu, convinced that all
the world is mad if Father Madeleine is Jean Valjean, is acquitted.
Javert arrests Valjean as the real culprit, but his prisoner escapes a
few hours later after pulling out a bar of his cell window.
M. Gillenormand (zheTnor-man'), the stern grandfather of Marius
Pontmercy. A royalist, the old man never became reconciled with his
Bonapartist son-in-law. He and his grandson quarrel because of the young
man's political views and reverence for his dead father. Turned out of
his grandfather's house, Marius goes to live in the Gorbeau tenement.
Theodule Gillenormand (ta-6-dul'), M. Gillenormand's great-grandnephew,
a lieutenant in the lancers. He spies on Marius Pontmercy and learns
that his kinsman is a regular visitor at his father's tomb.
Courfeyrac (koor-fa-rak') and Enjolas (iuvzho-la'), friends of Marius
Pontmercy and members of the friends of the A.B.C., a society supposed
to be interested in the education of children but in reality a
revolutionary group. Both are killed in the uprising of the citizens in
June, 1832, Courfeyrac at the barricades; Enjolas is in the house where
the insurgents make their last stand.
M. Maboef (ma-bcef), an aged churchwarden who had known Marius
Pontmercy's father. A lover of mankind and a hater of tyranny, he
marches unarmed to the barricades with the young friends of the A.B.C.
He is killed during the fighting.
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The Story
In 1815. in France, a man named Jean Valjean was released after nineteen
years in prison. He had been sentenced to a term of five years because
he stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving sister and her family, but
the sentence was later increased because of his attempts to escape.
During his imprisonment he astonished others by his exhibitions of
unusual physical strength.
Freed at last, he started out on foot for a distant part of the country.
Innkeepers refused him food and lodging because his yellow passport
revealed that he was a former convict. Finally he came to the house of
the Bishop of Digne, a saintly man who treated him graciously, fed him,
and gave him a bed. During the night Jean stole the bishop's silverware
and fled. He was immediately captured by the police, who returned him
and the stolen goods to the bishop. Without any censure, the priest not
only gave him what he had stolen but also added his silver candlesticks
to the gift. The astonished gendarmes released his silver candlesticks
to the gift. The astonished gendarmes released the prisoner. Alone with
the bishop, Jean was confounded by the churchman's attitude, for the
bishop asked only that he use the silver as a means of living an honest
life.
In 1817, a beautiful girl named Fantine lived in Paris. She gave birth
to an illegitimate child, Cosette, whom she left with Monsieur and
Madame Thenardier to rear with their own children. As time went on, the
Thenar-diers demanded more and more money for Cosette's support yet
treated the child cruelly and deprived her even of necessities.
Meanwhile, Famine had gone to the town
of M------and obtained a job in a glass factory operated
by Father Madeleine, a kind and generous man whose history was known to
no one, but whose good deeds and generosity to the poor were public
information. He had arrived in M------a poor laborer, and by a lucky
invention he was able to start a business of his own. Soon he built a
factory and employed many workers. After five years in the city, he was
named mayor and was beloved by all the citizens. He was reported to have
prodigious strength. Only one man, Javert, a police inspector, seemed to
watch him with an air of suspicion. Javert was born in prison. His whole
life was influenced by that fact, and his fanatical attitude toward duty
made him a man to be feared. He was determined to discover the facts of
Father Madeleine's previous life. One day he found a clue while watching
Father Madeleine lift a heavy cart to save an old man who had fallen
under it. Javert realized that he had known only one man of such
prodigious strength, a former convict named Valjean.
Fantine had told no one of Cosette, but knowledge of her illegitimate
child spread and caused Fantine to be discharged from the factory
without the knowledge of Father Madeleine. Finally Fantine became a
prostitute in an effort to pay the increasing demands of the
Thenar-diers for Cosette's support. One night Javert arrested her while
she was walking the streets. When Father Madeleine heard the details of
her plight and learned that she had tuberculosis, he sent Fantine to a
hospital and promised to bring Cosette to her. Just before the mayor
left to get Cosette, Javert confessed that he had mistakenly reported to
the Paris police that he suspected Father Madeleine of being the former
convict, Jean Valjean. He said that the real Jean Valjean had been
arrested at Arras under an assumed name. The arrested man was to be
tried two days later.
That night Father Madeleine struggled with his own conscience, for he
was the real Jean Valjean. Unwilling to let an innocent man suffer, he
went to Arras for the trial and identified himself as Jean Valjean.
After telling the authorities where he could be found, he went to
Fantine. Javert came there to arrest him. Fantine was so terrified that
she died. After a day in prison, Jean Valjean escaped.
Valjean, some time later, was again imprisoned by Javert. Once more he
made his escape. Shortly afterward he was able to take Cosette, a girl
of eight, away from the Thenardiers. He grew to love the child greatly,
and they lived together happily in the Gorbeau tenement on the outskirts
of Paris. When Javert once more tracked them down, Valjean escaped with
the child into a convent garden, where they were rescued by Fauchelevant,
whose life Valjean had saved when the old peasant fell beneath the cart.
Fauchelevant was now the convent gardener. Valjean became his helper,
and Cosette was put into the convent school.
Years passed. Valjean left the convent and took Cosette, her schooling
finished, to live in a modest house on a side street in Paris. The old
man and the young girl were little noticed by their neighbors. Meanwhile
the blackguard Thenardier had brought his family to live in the Gorbeau
tenement. He now called himself Jondrette. In the next room lived Marius
Pontmercy, a young lawyer estranged from his aristocratic grandfather
because of his liberal views. Marius was the son of an officer whose
life Thenardier had saved at the battle of Waterloo. The father, now
dead, had asked his son to repay Thenardier for his deed. Marius never
suspected that Jondrette was really his father's benefactor. When the
Jondrettes were being evicted from their quarters, however, he paid
their rent from his meager resources.
During one of his evening walks, Marius met Cosette and Valjean. He fell
in love with the girl as he continued to see her in the company of her
white-haired companion. At last he followed her to her home. Valjean,
noticing Marius, took Cosette to live in another house.
One morning Marius received an urgent letter delivered by Eponine
Jondrette. His neighbors were again asking for help, and he began to
wonder about them. Peeping through a hole in the wall, he heard
Jondrette speak of a benefactor who would soon arrive. When the man
came, Marius recognized him as Cosette's companion. He later learned
Cosette's address from Eponine, but before he saw Cosette again he
overheard the Jondrettes plotting against the man whom he believed to be
Cosette's father. Alarmed, he told the details of the plot to Inspector
Javert.
Marius was at the wall watching when Valjean came to give Jondrette
money. While they talked, numerous heavily armed men appeared in the
room. Jondrette then revealed himself as Thenardier. Horrified, Marius
did not know whom to protect, the man his father had requested him to
befriend or the father of Cosette. Threatened by Thenardier, Valjean
agreed to send to his daughter for more money, but he gave a false
address. When this ruse was discovered, the robbers threatened to kill
Valjean. Marius threw a note of warning through the hole in the wall as
Javert appeared and arrested all but Valjean, who made his escape
through a window.
Marius finally located Cosette. One night she told him that she and her
father were leaving for England. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get his
grandfather's permission to marry Cosette. In despair, he returned to
Cosette and found the house where she had lived empty. Eponine met him
there and told him that his revolutionary friends had begun a revolt and
were waiting for him at the barricades. Because Cosette had disappeared,
he gladly followed Eponine to the barricades, where Javert had been
seized as a spy and bound. During the fighting Eponine gave her life to
save Marius. As she died, she gave him a note which Cosette had given
her to deliver. In the note, Co-sette told him where she could be found.
In answer to her note, Marius wrote that his grandfather would not
permit his marriage, that he had no money, and that he would be killed
at the barricade. Valjean discovered the notes and set out for the
barricades. Finding Javert tied up by the revolutionists, he freed the
inspector. The barricades fell. In the confusion Valjean came upon the
wounded Marius and carried him into the Paris sewers.
After hours of wandering, he reached a locked outlet. There Thenardier,
unrecognized in the dark, met him and agreed to open the grating in
exchange for money. Outside Valjean met Javert, who took him into
custody. Valjean asked only that he be allowed to take Marius to his
grandfather's house. Javert agreed to wait at the door, but suddenly he
turned and ran toward the river. Tormented by his conscientious regard
for duty and his reluctance to return to prison the man who had saved
his life, he drowned himself in the Seine.
When Marius recovered, he and Cosette were married. Valjean gave Cosette
a generous dowry; and for the first time Cosette learned that Valjean
was not her real father. Valjean told Marius only that he was an escaped
convict, believed dead, and he begged to be allowed to see Cosette
occasionally. Gradually Marius banished him from the house. Then Marius
learned from Thenardier that it was Valjean who had rescued Marius at
the barricade. Marius and Cosette hurried to Valjean's lodgings, to find
him on his deathbed. He died knowing that his children loved him and
that all his entangling past was now clear. He bequeathed the bishop's
silver candlesticks to Cosette, with his last breath saying that he had
spent his life in trying to be worthy of the faith of the Bishop of
Digne. He was buried in a grave with no name on the stone.
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Critical Evaluation
Essentially a detective story in plot, Les Miserables is a unique
combination of melodrama and morality. It is filled with unlikely
coincidences, with larger-than-life emotions and giantlike human beings,
yet it all manages to ring true and move the reader. An epic of the
people of Paris, with a vital and fascinating re-creation of the
swarming Parisian underground, the novel suggests the crowded, absorbing
novels of Charles Dickens and Fyodor Dostoevski. The main theme of man's
ceaseless combat with evil clearly emerges from the suspenseful plot,
while the book as a whole gives a dramatic picture of the ebb and flow
of life.
Victor Hugo claimed that the huge book was a "religious" work, and
certainly religion does play an important part in the story. From the
very beginning, the struggle between good and evil is foremost in the
tale. Another theme which is of equal importance is that of fate or
"destiny." However one attempts to chisel the "mysterious block" of
which his life is made, Hugo writes, the "black vein of destiny"
reappears continually. One can never be certain what fate has in store
until the last breath of life disappears. Mortals never are safe from
the tricks of destiny, from the seemingly endless struggle.
The breathless pace of the novel probably has accounted for his
tremendous popularity. The story is filled with dramatic and surprising
action, many of the scenes ending with suspenseful episodes in the
tradition of the melodramatic nineteenth century stage for which Hugo
also wrote. Despite its digressions, the story moves quickly and
excitingly, as the characters race across the countryside and through
the narrow streets and alleys of Paris.
The characterizations, while on a grand—even epic— scale, are lifelike
and believable. Many of the novel's characters seem possessed by strange
obsessions or hatreds, but Hugo makes it clear that they have been
warped by society and their earlier lives. Although a Romantic novel,
Les Miserables has much in common with the naturalistic school which was
to come into being a few decades later.
Perhaps the most terrifying and fascinating of all the characters who
flood through the book's pages is Inspector Javert. Javert is clever but
not intelligent. He is consumed by the malice that often dwells within
the narrow, ignorant individual. He can conceive of no point of view
other than his own. Sympathy, mercy, and understanding require an
insight that he does not possess. For him there is no such thing as an
extenuating circumstance. He clings with mindless, insane tenacity to
his belief in "duty." At his hands, justice is warped beyond
recognition.
The casual reader can still be moved by the author's search for justice
in Les Miserables, and the more sophisticated can admire the novel's
complex structure. Like so many of the greatest literary works, Les
Miserables can be enjoyed many times by different kinds of readers and
on many different levels.
An important, if implied, theme of Les Miserables is the attainment of
salvation through good works. Many of the characters of the novel give
charity to those less fortunate. The dramatic opening scenes in which
the convict Jean Valjean learns of goodness through the charity of the
priest establish the importance of this theme. Later, Jean Valjean and
Cosette give anonymous charity to others. Marius, in his goodness, gives
charity to the disreputable Thenardier family.
Other biblical virtues are dramatized in the novel, but none so
effectively as that of love. By love, Hugo means not only romantic love
but also love of humanity, the love of a kindhearted human being for
another human being, the love that must be connected with genuine
charity. Jean Valjean learns what love is during the course of the
novel. Hugo makes it clear that a man cannot exist without love, for if
he tries, he becomes warped and less than a man. Jean Valjean grows as a
person, becomes a good and honorable man after he has found the love of
the helpless little girl. By devoting his life to her, he finds the
necessity of a meaning outside of his own life. Jean Valjean comes to
value his own existence more because the girl is dependent upon him and
loves him.
Victor Hugo knew how to write effectively and with simplicity of the
joys and sorrows of the average man and woman. His poetry and fiction
have always been popular with the common people, although they have at
times been out of critical favor. The public mind was much moved by the
generosity of his ideas and the warmth of their expression; more than a
century after its publication, Les Miserables is still a favorite book
with many people around the world. Much of Hugo's poetry and drama is no
longer read or produced, but Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre
Dame (1831) will endure as long as people read.
The novel covers a time span of more than twenty years—from the fall of
the first Napoleon to the revolts of a generation later. The most
exciting scenes, described with breathless precision and dramatic flair,
are those at the barricades. The characters are swept up in an action
bigger than they are. Skillfully, Hugo weaves Marius and Javert, Eponine
and the others, into the battles along the streets of Paris. Always
Hugo's eye catches the details of the passing spectacle, from the old
woman who props up a mattress in front of her window to stop the stray
bullets to the dynamic flood of humanity coursing down the boulevards.
It is here that Hugo's skill as a master of narrative is fully
displayed. Never, however, does he lose sight of the pathos of the
individuals' struggles; the reader never forgets the principal
characters and their plight amid the chaotic scenes. Perfectly, Hugo
balances between the two elements which compose his masterpiece. The
final scenes of the novel move relentlessly and excitingly to their
inevitable conclusion. Perhaps Dostoevski probed deeper or Dickens
caught the humor of life more fully, but Hugo was their equal in his
ability to portray the human struggle of those caught up in the forces
of history.
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