A Very Brief Insight into Victor Hugo's Les Miserables

Article by Hannah Lyons. Edited by Ciara West. Additional Research by Emma Carmichael.

Upon completion of my degree from the University of Sheffield I wished to continue my studies with a Masters degree. I decided it was time to stretch my wings and explore a new city. Not wanting to be too far from the Steel City (or more specifically, too far from Bar One) I found myself forty miles north, at the University of York. Somehow, along the way, I managed to land myself an interview at the book shop Waterstones.

Arriving in my finest, with the recent top-ten book titles swirling around in my head, I felt quietly confident. This was short lived. After getting through the formalities (I managed to throw in that I never shop at Waterstones and that I always buy my books from second hand booksellers) the interviewer led me to the shop floor and set me a task; “I want you pretend I am a customer. I want to buy a book – any book – and I want you to suggest one and sell it to me.” Oh dear. Panicking, I looked around frantically. A few desperate moments later I was sighing with relief. I realised that I was in the ‘Classics’ section; all was not lost.

I have since wondered what mental process my brain was taking when I chose this specific book, and I cannot think of any answer save the fact that in my panic I had searched for a familiar title. Nevertheless, I instinctively snatched Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables from the shelf in front of me.

The manager looked at me like I was completely crazy. “You are going to sell me – a customer looking for a casual read – Les Mis?” I was suddenly aware that the one thousand, two hundred page Penguin edition that sat in my hand was the size of a small brick. However, this wasn’t going to hinder me. So, with no other option, I sank into a detailed defence of one of my favourite novels.

So, with this issue’s theme of ‘revolution’ in mind, I find myself opening a very small window for you to gaze into Victor Hugo’s gripping nineteenth-century masterpiece. (This attempt, I hope, will be a little more concise, a little more articulate, and a little less desperate than the ramble that I provided in my interview...)

My insight can do no justice to the monumental tale that Hugo depicts, however, to crudely give a brief account, Les Miserables traces the life of ex-convict Jean Valjean, a man who has served nineteen years hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread. The reader follows Jean Valjean as he attempts to escape his reputation and become an honest man. A spectrum of characters, such as the desperate prostitute Fantine, the compassionate and love struck student Marius, and the corrupt street rogue Thenardier, all become entangled in Jean Valjean’s quest for redemption. It is through the rich descriptions of the lives of these memorable figures that Hugo paints a vivid picture of an agitated, revolutionary, French society.

However, not only is Les Miserables a sweeping tale of France’s ‘miserable ones’, it is also a novel rooted in historical truths. (Indeed, it is one of the only literary works to deal with the June 1832 anti-monarchist rebellion.) A significant proportion of the text is dedicated to mammoth descriptions of historical events, people and places. Whilst these ‘asides,’ if we can call them as such, sometimes stray a little far from the main narrative, one cannot argue that their purpose is to serve as an intense social critique. Thus, the reader can witness another layer to the novel, Hugo’s own exploration of the long term effects that events such as the Revolution had on French society.

For instance, the novel chronicles the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte, with Hugo’s account including a climatic report of the Battle of Waterloo. The author’s own republican sympathies can be identified in these lengthy descriptions, and whilst Hugo has often been hailed as being ‘unquestionable biased towards the revolutionaries’, one may see that infact he is questioning whether the revolutionary activity of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was at all effective in dealing with France’s wider problems. Napoleon and his men in 1815, and Marius and his fellow students in the 1832 June rebellion, are all helping France move towards eradicating the injustices that Les Mis identifies. Yet as the author proves, violence is not the means by which they will get there. Hugo’s revolution is one without war; it is a moral one.

For me, Hugo’s own poignant reflections on human suffering, ignorance, heroism, poverty, love and injustice make the novel the masterpiece that it is. He is the champion of crafting characters who are very much alive, who are vehicles swamped in social symbolism. True, the huge scale of Hugo’s novel is a little off-putting, yet it is necessary for the means of his huge feat. Les Miserables is truly an inspirational novel that will stay with the reader for a very long time. 

So, thank you Monsieur Hugo, not only for contributing one of the greatest pieces of work to the canon of Western literature, but for also helping me get a job at Waterstones. (Yes, after all that, I did get the job!)

*****

‘The years 1831 and 1832, the two years immediately connected with the Revolution of July, are one of the most peculiar and most striking periods in history. These two years, among those which precede and those which follow them, are like two mountains. They have the revolutionary grandeur. In them we discern precipices. In them the social masses, the very strata of civilisation, the consolidated group of superimposed and cohering interests, the venerable profile of the old French formation, appear and disappear at every instant through the stormy clouds of systems, passions, and theories. These appearances and disappearances have been named resistance and movement. At intervals we see truth gleaming forth, that daylight of the human soul.’ Part Four: Book I.

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