After ReadingEarly October 1815, in the southern French town of Digne. A stranger—bald, bearded, carrying a worn sack and rough stick—knocked on Bishop Myriel’s door. He had walked twelve leagues that day, enduring insults and threats along the way. The Alpine night wind cut through the holes in his clothes, attacking him from all sides. He carried a yellow passport (the identifying document given to convicts on parole), 109 francs in savings, and a soul writhing in pain and hatred.
Bishop Myriel welcomed the stranger. “You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not ask those who enter whether they have a name, but whether they have suffering. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty—make yourself at home. And you should not thank me or say that I am sheltering you in my house. You are a traveler, and I tell you, this is less my home than it is yours. Everything here is yours. Why should I need to know your name? Before you told me your name, you already had one that I knew… Your name is ‘my brother.'”
Thus began the redemption of Jean Valjean, the convict.
Discovering the Epic Within
What kind of work is Les Misérables? As a child, I thought it was a story about a villain chasing a good man. As a teenager, I saw it as a novel promoting class struggle. Only now do I understand: this is an epic about love, grace, and redemption. A true epic encompasses not just an era, but the human soul. The grandeur of the soul rivals the most turbulent of times. This is why Les Misérables opens with extensive passages describing Bishop Myriel’s life of faith—it is the key that unlocks the entire work. Hugo called this million-word masterpiece, conceived over forty years and completed in his later life, “a religious work.”
The earliest inspiration came from a peasant named Pierre Maurin. In 1801 France, Pierre was sentenced to five years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread out of hunger. After his release, he struggled to survive. That yellow passport, following him like a shadow, became a permanent mark of Cain, isolating him from society.
If Hugo’s thinking had stopped there—if he had merely condemned judicial injustice and criticized the social reality that drives people to crime—Les Misérables would have been a work obsessed with anger, describing only the external world. Writing about suffering solely to accuse and hate—how could that do justice to the depth of suffering? A greater novel requires a more transcendent force.
In 1828, Hugo began collecting materials about Bishop Miollis and his family. He wanted the real-life Pierre to meet the real-life Bishop Miollis in his fictional world. This became the seed of Les Misérables—a work that would begin with suffering and end with redemption.
The Craft of Authenticity
Hugo’s preparation was extraordinarily thorough. He drew on his friend Vidocq’s experiences as a young fugitive, collected extensive materials on black glass manufacturing, visited the convict prisons of Toulon and Brest, and witnessed scenes on the streets similar to Fantine’s humiliation.
This thoroughness shows in the details. Reading the novel, I was constantly struck by how Hugo describes each segment of society with journalistic precision and ethnographic detail. Consider the “big sou” that convicts use to escape (a one-sou coin split lengthwise, hollowed out, carved with interlocking threads, and fitted with a spring). Or the thieves’ argot—its schools, variations, accent characteristics, and the personalities of its speakers—all narrated methodically yet vividly.
Les Misérables depicts remote provincial towns and emerging coastal industrial cities, but the city that receives the most attention is Paris. It is practically an encyclopedia of Paris. Here we witness prisons, barricades, slums, and sewers. We encounter rough but kind street urchins, holy but rigid convents, cunning and ruthless criminal gangs, and convicts who live like maggots and labor like oxen. We follow Hugo through the streets, wind through alleyways, breathe in the atmosphere of every brick, and touch the secrets behind every shutter.
Just as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame contains an entire chapter titled “A Bird’s-Eye View of Paris,” Les Misérables is filled with tireless descriptions of Parisian streets. These passages read like love letters: Paris in panorama, Paris in detail, Paris by day, Paris by night, Paris’s buildings, Paris’s street lamps, Paris’s taverns, Paris’s invisible underground world. In this abundance of feeling, Paris comes alive—she is a middle-aged woman with world-weary eyes and worn clothes, giving off a dark yet warm scent. She is Hugo’s Paris, and she is Jean Valjean’s Paris.
Hugo’s writing is both grand and delicate, withstanding microscopic examination. History, era, character, detail—no matter what magnification we use, Les Misérables remains a work approaching perfection.
The Long Gestation
By 1832, Hugo had completed his research and the novel’s conception was clear. But actual writing would not begin for another twenty years. During this period, he completed several other novels, as well as poetry and plays. What made him repeatedly postpone this project? Had he already realized this would be a great work, one that required more time, deeper contemplation, even suffering, to mature and enrich?
In November 1845, Hugo began writing, initially titling it Les Misères (The Miseries). After completing nearly four-fifths of the manuscript, he was swept into political turmoil and forced into exile. The novel was set aside in February 1848—for another twelve years. On the island of Guernsey in the Atlantic, the exiled Hugo endured hardship and returned to his manuscript. After substantial revision and addition, he completed it on June 30, 1861, formally retitling it Les Misérables.
History and Humanity
Les Misérables spans nearly half a century, from the revolutionary climax of 1793 to the Paris uprising of 1832. The Battle of Waterloo and the 1832 Paris uprising are described in exhaustive detail. The massive Waterloo section, in particular, diverges considerably from the main narrative and creates a jarring interruption in plot momentum. Yet Hugo was willing to sacrifice fluidity to fulfill his ambition of expounding on history.
Of course, Hugo’s ambition extended beyond history. He repeatedly sets Jean Valjean aside to analyze different currents of thought and explore various issues. He discusses revolution, war, Napoleon, insurrection versus riot. He admires people with ideals and a sense of mission but does not advocate violence. He writes: “The people, how they love the powder which the cannoneer provides.” He sees ignorance and evil as two sides of the same coin, yet maintains compassion: “Those who are ignorant should be taught as much as possible. Society is guilty of not providing universal education; it bears responsibility for creating darkness. When a person’s heart is filled with darkness, sin grows there. The guilty party is not the one who commits the crime, but the one who creates the darkness.”
Hugo was a compassionate humanitarian and a devout Christian. His will begins: “The three concepts of God, soul, and duty are sufficient for a person, and they are sufficient for me. The essence of religion lies therein. I lived with this faith, and I shall die with it. Truth, light, justice, conscience—this is God. God is like daylight. I leave 40,000 francs to the poor.” (He left only 12,000 francs to his mother.)
Is there a contradiction between humanism and Christian faith? Not at all. Humanism opposes the shackles of ecclesiastical institutions and religious persecution. But faith and religion are different things. Faith is a direct relationship between person and God; religion is a human organization, and wherever there are people, there is sin.
The Complexity of Human Nature
In Les Misérables, discussing monastic life, Hugo offers this brilliant observation: “Whenever we encounter the divine existing in a human heart, regardless of that person’s level of understanding, we always feel a sense of reverence. Temples, mosques, pagodas, shrines—all these places have their ugly side, which we reject, and their sublime side, which we revere. The contemplation and meditation in the human heart are boundless—they are the radiance of God shining on the walls of humanity.”
The human heart contains both goodness illuminated by God and evil bred from sin and darkness. Whether in temples or on streets, in prisons or police stations, human nature remains gray and morally ambiguous.
This is why, in Hugo’s portrayal, the street urchin Gavroche is brave and kind yet foul-mouthed and given to petty theft. Éponine loves Marius with saintly devotion and sacrifices herself for him, yet out of jealousy, she lures him to the barricade to die together. Even Jean Valjean, after his conversion to goodness, experiences jealousy, schadenfreude, and mad possessiveness upon discovering Cosette’s love for Marius. Even that tragic 1832 Paris uprising—while celebrating the courage and nobility of the insurgents—does not omit descriptions of opportunists exploiting chaos, those joining for the spectacle, the violent bloodshed born of resentment, and the collective apathy that ultimately led to failure.
“All these places have their ugly side, which we reject, and their sublime side, which we revere.” This is Hugo’s penetrating vision of human nature.
Javert’s Moral Crisis
This penetrating insight is most concentrated in the character of Javert. Is Javert good or evil? Raised in a prison, surrounded by criminals, he developed a character that hated evil and revered law, believing himself the embodiment of justice. His approach, to use language we are often taught: treat enemies with the ruthlessness of autumn wind sweeping away fallen leaves. At first glance, it is difficult to fault him, for Javert is equally strict with himself. When he accuses Mayor Madeleine of being the convict Jean Valjean, and then believes he was mistaken, he immediately and repeatedly requests to resign in disgrace.
In Javert’s world, he never doubts that he is good and Jean Valjean is evil—until, during the street fighting, the villain saves the good man’s life.
In that first moment, Javert, shocked and confused, cries to his rescuer Jean Valjean: “You really annoy me. You should have killed me.” (This is the first time he unconsciously addresses Jean Valjean with the formal “you.”) Soon after, when Javert has an opportunity to capture his nemesis, he instead helps rescue Marius and ultimately releases Jean Valjean.
In my view, among all the internal monologues in Les Misérables, two are most breathtaking: one is Jean Valjean’s transformation from evil to good after being moved by Bishop Myriel; the other is Javert’s contemplation by the Seine after releasing Jean Valjean.
Javert discovers that he has betrayed society to remain true to his conscience—he is stunned. He realizes that Jean Valjean forgave him, and he forgave Jean Valjean—he is terrified. All his life he has viewed law as supreme, but now something higher than law has appeared: love and forgiveness. He does not know how to view Jean Valjean, much less how to face his inner self and this suddenly unfamiliar world.
Hugo writes: “He had a superior, Monsieur Gisquet. Up until now he had never thought of that other superior: God. This new chief, God, he unexpectedly felt, and was consequently bewildered.” His black-and-white, good-versus-evil worldview has collapsed. “He was moved—what a terrible misfortune.” He feels empty, useless, disconnected… ruined. He jumps into the cold Seine.
Hugo calls Javert’s integrity a “dark integrity.” Why “dark”? Because it lacks light, and that light is love. The Bible says that the fulfillment of all commandments is love; whoever loves fulfills the law, and love covers a multitude of sins. For example, Sister Simplice, who had never lied in her life, lies to Javert to save Jean Valjean. Lying is a sin, but saving someone comes from love. Hugo’s comment: “Oh, saint! You who have transcended the earthly for many years, you who have long since drawn near to your virgin sisters and angel brothers in the light—may this lie of yours ascend to heaven.”
The Greater Epic
In this sense, Les Misérables is an epic of a great era, but more profoundly, it is an epic of Jean Valjean’s individual soul. Bishop Myriel shows him goodness, Cosette teaches him love, his anonymous life in the convent promotes humility, and rescuing Marius allows him to triumph over dark thoughts—ultimately completing the redemption of his soul.
Compared to changing systems, changing souls is more difficult and more fundamental work. May more people in this world come to cherish Les Misérables.
