Les Miserables
Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood
amazon.com e-book for Kindle. Translated version first published 1887. Original first published 1862.
A very big book, in many ways. It runs into 959 pages in the printed edition, but that's not the only way it is 'big'. It is also big in scope, in ideas and in emotion. In a sense it is an epic, comparable to 'War and Peace', 'Moby Dick' and similar books. It keeps going from the microcosmic story centred on Jean Valjean to the macrocosm of the social and political history of France between the Napoleon and the 'June revolution' of 1832, which tried to re-establish a republic. The great French Revolution of 1789 established the First Republic. It soon degenerated into anarchy, creating a power vacuum filled by the dictatorship of Napoleon. The royalty of Europe, in reaction, overthrew Bonaparte and restored the Bourbons. This royal family however had 'learned nothing and forgotten nothing' (in the words of Voltaire) leading to many attempts to re-establish the Republic. Among these attempts were the barricades and rebellions in Paris in 1832, which were crushed by the Royal forces in just a couple of tumultuous days. The narrative of the book is backgrounded by these events.
The main plot of the book is available in great detail on the Internet and elsewhere, including in a recent movie. A Google search produced more than 46 million hits for 'Les Miserables', most of which, I guess, were for the movie - because a search for 'Les Miserables Victor Hugo' produced 'only' about six and a quarter million hits. For completeness, and for my own satisfaction, I will give a summary here.
The young and destitute Jean Valjean is convicted for stealing a loaf of bread and sentenced to many years in the galleys, i.e. rowing ships. Brutalized by the hard labour and the terrible conditions, he escapes, is recaptured and escapes again. He comes now into contact with a truly good man, a Bishop whom he tries to rob. Valjean is caught, but the Bishop forgives him and largeheartedly asks him to take away whatever he wants. This induces a complete change of character in Valjean, and evading pursuit by the policeman Javert, he establishes himself anonymously in another small French town. Here he invents a new process to create 'black-glass' trinkets, which not only makes him personally rich, but lifts the economy of the town and all those in the neighbourhood. Valjean, now known as Madeline, becomes the general do-gooder in the town, helping all those in need, establishing hospices and hospitals and schools. He is elected Mayor. He is a fair employer, treating his many employees as family. One of his employees is a poor lady called Fantine, whose back story goes as follows. She was a middle class teen from the village where Valjean/Madeline is now the Mayor, who went to Paris, there enjoying herself with outings and parties in the company of many friends. One young man in particular shows special interest in her, which affection she returns. He makes her pregnant and then abandons her. Like Tess of D'Ubervilles she can't go back to her family, and so tries to make a living for herself and her child by taking up increasingly demeaning jobs until she slides into prostitution, not making a very good job of even that. She decides to go back to her native village, and on the way gives her young daughter Cosette into the safe keeping of one Thenardier, an innkeeper, who turns out to be the villain of the book. Fantine then goes to her village and takes up a job in the now booming mini-economy. As soon as she is gone, Thenardier and his wife begin to ill-treat Cosette, making her the servant of the family and abstracting for their own lavish expenses all the money that her mother sends for her upkeep. Fantine falls fatally ill, and dies. Valjean/Madeline promises to look after Cosette. He escapes Javert who has traced him to that village, buys off Thenardier and takes Cosette to Paris. Both Thenardier and Javert follow and trace the fugitives, but the two hide in a convent, where Costte goes to school. She grows up and, about ten years later, attracts the attention of Marius Pontmercy, an idealistic young man who runs away from his rich grandfather because the latter threw out his son-in-law, the senior Pontmercy, who was an officer at Waterloo, and who was inadvertently rescued by Thenardier. Marius is therefore grateful to Thenardier, but when he realizes that the inn-keeper is an enemy of Cosette, he turns against him. Now events move fast, and get mixed up in the June revolution. In a long passage, Valjean rescues a wounded Marius from the barricades and carries him underground through the Parisian sewers, evading both Javert and Thenardier, to finally meet and marry Cosette. He reveals that he had saved up and hidden more than half a million francs, which he now hands over to Marius as a wedding present. But Marius cannot think well of Valjean, and treats him coldly, at which Valjean goes away to his old house near the convent. In the meantime, Javert has traced Valjean, but realizes that he has wronged him terribly, and in remorse, drowns himself. Thenardier exposes Valjean to Marius and the former convicts complete story comes out. At which Marius and Cosette rush to Valjean, who is now very ill. He dies. Thenardier gets his just deserts, but I forget for the moment what and how. (I must mention that the above narration only approximates the actual story - I am sure there are many mistakes, for example anachronisms, but I just want to give the general idea.)
Hugo uses this tale to hang a whole lot of descriptions, opinions and arguments, pertaining to French society and concerns of that time. Some these excursions are specific descriptions of institutions or practices that may no longer exist and therefore may now be irrelevant. For example there is a detailed essay, spread over many chapters, on the doings of the sisters in the 'convent in Rue Petit-Picus... a community of Bernadines of the obedience of Martin Verga'. This essay is followed immediately by another essay, this time an abstract one about the general idea of convents and fasting and auterities and the like, again spread over many chapters. There is another essay on the sewer system in Paris. Other essays are descriptions of historical events, with Hugo allowing himself much freedom of interpretation. Thus, for example, he analyses the battle of Waterloo in minute detail and at great length. He is not very impressed with the idea that the military genius of Wellington was responsible for Napoleon's defeat. He appears to put down the results of that very important battle almost entirely to the rain on the previous night which made the field too muddy for Napoloen's General to speedily and effectively deploy the artillery. Such essays by Hugo do not serve to push the story along very much. For example the battle of Waterloo is only relevant in that it casts the crooked Thenardier in a role misunderstood by Pontmercy to be that of a saviour. I skipped much of this. I felt especially justified in doing so, since the book, presumably, was written for the entertainment and upliftment of a generation a century and a half ago.
One particular aspect of the book that made me really think and sort of opened a new door for me, is Hugo's opinion of Napoleon. Of course the General/Consul/Emperor does not have a direct role in the book, but his presence dominates its historical background. Hugo appears to think of him as a protector and saviour, who only did good for France by suppressing the old aristocracy and encouraging the devolution of power to the people. While this may well be true that the ordinary French people were much benefited by the rule of Bonaparte, the people of the other nations of Europe, and not just the feudal lords in those countries, must have had reason to curse his ambitions. I would really like to know how Napoleon is treated in present day France, say in school textbooks - favourably or is he consigned to same fate as Mussolini or Hitler?
Les Miserables is not only about the miserable people, but mainly about them. In form, in treatment, and in substance it is closest to Tolstoy and to Dickens (of the authors I know). But not as interesting as these authors, especially not Dickens.
There are many quotable sentences in the book. Here are some of them.
Page 50: Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy.
Page 406: Mademoiselle Vaubois, perfect in her style, was the ermine of stupidity without a single spot of intelligence.
Page 425: Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections.
Page 439: Laigle de Meaux was seen to be leaning in a sensual manner against the door post of the Cafe Musain. He had the air of caryatid (a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support) on a vacation.
Page 458: He took good care not to become useless; having books did not prevent his reading, being a botanist did not prevent his being a gardener.
Page 510: ...he had the kindliness of a brahmin, and the severity of a judge; he took pity on a toad, but he crushed a viper.
Page 557...: First problem: To produce wealth. Second Problem: to share it. [Capitalism apparently solves the first problem, not the second.] Communism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labour. It is a partition made by the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same as dividing it.
Page 674: When one is at the end of one's life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.
Page 687: Suspicions are nothing else than wrinkles. Early youth has none of them.
Page 689: The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is, of all distresses, the coldest.
Page 750: ...nothing is more imminent than the impossible, and that what is always necessary to foresee is the unforeseen.
Page 818: [Describing a battle at one of barricades of Paris, June 1932]...this (is) that hell of Brahminism, the most redoubtable of the seventeen abysses, which the Veda calls the Forest of Swords.
Page 904: To love, or to have loved - this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfillment.
Page 934:.. the ingratitude of children is not always a thing so deserving of reproach as it is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature...'looks before her'. Nature divides living beings into those who are arriving and those who are departing. Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who are arriving towards the light.
A final note: Hugo was apparently a great reader and perhaps admirer of Hindu philosophical and religious texts - apparent from his many references to it in this book. Maybe he was introduced to them by the works of Max Mueller, who was translating the Hindu texts and writing about them at about the same time.
