166
NOT BEING HEARD
IS NO REASON
FOR SILENCE
LES MISÉRABLES (1862), VICTOR HUGO
A
n immense novel, Les
Misérables is comprised
of five volumes, each of
which is subdivided into books
of several chapters. Victor Hugo’s
motivation was also vast—namely,
to write a novel that protested the
social conditions existing in France
at that time. For him, as long as
there was “social condemnation,
which ... creates hells on earth, ...
books like this cannot be useless.”
Hugo was not the only writer to
highlight injustice in an attempt
to bring about social change. In
England, his contemporary Charles
Dickens was doing the same, while
Elizabeth Gaskell’s portrait of the
poor in the industrialized northof the country, Mary Barton (1848),
contributed to England’s mood of
social reform. Meanwhile, in the
US, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (1852) helped mobilize
public opinion against slavery.
Hugo’s book features a huge
cast of characters and a vast
historical sweep, spanning as it
does the era from 1815 to the June
1832 uprising in Paris. It is a
panoramic novel that embraces
themes of hardship, poverty, greed,
bitterness, politics, compassion,
love, and redemption.Hell in need of humanity
The main story in Les Misérables
focuses on Jean Valjean, released
after spending 19 years in prison
for the theft of some bread. Now
a social outcast, he steals from a
bishop, who covers for him and
whose kindness sets him on a path
toward redemption. Under a false
name, Valjean starts a business,
becomes wealthy, and adopts a
young girl, Cosette, whose mother,
Fantine—forced into prostitution
by poverty—has died. Despite his
efforts, Valjean is haunted by his
criminal past, and he is relentlessly
pursued by an implacable police
inspector, Javert.IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Social protest novelBEFORE
1794 English radical writer
William Godwin deplores an
unjust social system in The
Adventures of Caleb Williams.1845 English politician
Benjamin Disraeli writes Sybil,
or The Two Nations, which
shows that England has two
worlds: the rich and the poor.1852–65 English novelist
Charles Dickens criticizes the
poverty and greed of Victorian
society in Bleak House, Little
Dorrit, and Our Mutual Friend.AFTER
1870s–80s French writer
Émile Zola attacks urban
poverty and the social system
in novels such as L’A s s o m m o i r
(1877) and Germinal (1885).1906 The Jungle, a novel by
American Upton Sinclair about
Chicago’s meatpacking
industry, shocks readers.Social prosperity means man
happy, the citizen free, the
nation great.
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