The Original: Les Misérables
Author: Victor Hugo
Original Time of Plot: 1815-1835
The Plot:
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 D-, 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 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 Thenardiers demanded more and more money for Cosette's support yet treated the child cruelly and deprived her even of necessities. Meanwhile, Fantine 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 Father Fauchelevant 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 Thenardiers 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 was sick, 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 under an assumed name. The arrested man, Champmathieu, 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 the court 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.
Valjean was able to escape from Javert. 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 house 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 Thenardier had brought his family to live in the Gorbeau house and he now called himself Jondrette. In the next room lived Marius Pontmercy, a young lawyer estranged from his grandfather because of his political 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 identified as a spy by Little Gavroche 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, Cosette 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 was given the chance to kill him. Valjean instead freed the inspector. The barricade fell to the army. 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 jumped into the river.
When Marius recovered, he and Cosette were married.
Valjean gave Cosette a generous present, 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 gave 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 D-. He was buried in a grave with no name on the stone.
Jean Valjean - 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 D-, 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 clasps 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 who was unjustly arrested as Valjean. 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 give Cosette the Bishop's silver candlesticks, which he had kept for years while trying to deserve the Bishop's confidence.
Fantine, 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. Thenardier. 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 Inspector Javert arrest her. By this time she is sick and dying. Father Madeleine promises to go get Cosette and look after her.
Cosette, 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.
Inspector Javert, 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, estranged from his 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 Thenardier and his desire to protect the father of the girl he loves sets Inspector Javert on Jean Valjean's tracks. A farewell letter from Cosette sends him to die at the barricade during a street revolt. After Marius 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, an unfair innkeeper, a veteran of Waterloo, who bleeds Fantine 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 house 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 the wounded Marius Pontmercy to a place of safety.
Mme. Thenardier, a virago as cruel and ruthless as her husband.
Eponine Thenardier, 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 putting herself between him and a bullet fired during the fighting at the barricade. Before she dies she gives him a letter telling where Cosette can be found.
Little Gavroche, the Thenardiers' son, a street gamin. He is killed while assisting the revolutionaries in the fighting at the barricade. He also uncovered Javert as a spy at the barricade.
Bishop of D-, Father Bienvenu, 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 Fauchelevant, 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 Inspector 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 a convent in Paris. Later, 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. He then helps Valjean to get work as a workman at the convent.
Champmathieu, an old man arrested for stealing apples. When he is taken to prison 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 later escapes.
M. Gillenormand, the stern grandfather of Marius Pontmercy. A royalist, the old man never became reconciled with his 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 house.
Theodule Gillenormand, 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 and Enjolras, 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.
Graintaire - One of the ABCs
Combeferre - One of the ABCs