Essay on Les Miserables
Les Misérables
Published 1862 I | | INTRODUCTION |
When Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables first came out in 1862, people in Paris and elsewhere lined up to buy it. Although critics were less receptive, the novel was an instant popular success. The French word “misérables” means both poor wretches and scoundrels or villains. The novel offers a huge cast that includes both kinds of “misérables.” A product of France's most prominent Romantic writer, Les Misérables ranges far and wide. It paints a vivid picture of Paris's seamier side, discusses the causes and results of revolution, and includes discourses on topics ranging from the Battle of Waterloo to Parisian street slang. But the two central themes that dominate the novel are the moral redemption of its main character, Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, and the moral redemption of a nation through revolution. The novel is a critical statement against human suffering, poverty, and ignorance. Its purpose is as much political as it is artistic. II | | VICTOR HUGO |
As a novelist, poet, political activist, and painter, Victor Hugo was a central figure in the Romantic movement of 19th-century France. Both his family and his times influenced Hugo's social views and politics, which included a deep concern with human rights, social injustice, and poverty as the root of evil. Born in Besançon, France, in 1802, Hugo grew up in the years of Napoleon Bonaparte's empire. In 1815 the empire collapsed at the battle of Waterloo, which Hugo describes in detail in Les Misérables, and a constitutional monarchy was established. Hugo’s father was a general in the Napoleonic army with republican sympathies while his middle-class mother had royalist leanings. The young Hugo spent a large part of his childhood in Paris with his mother. He also traveled through Europe in his father's wake and glimpsed the Napoleonic campaigns. After attending school in Paris, he married his childhood love, Adèle Foucher, in 1822.
In that same year,
Published 1862 I | | INTRODUCTION |
When Victor Hugo's novel Les Misérables first came out in 1862, people in Paris and elsewhere lined up to buy it. Although critics were less receptive, the novel was an instant popular success. The French word “misérables” means both poor wretches and scoundrels or villains. The novel offers a huge cast that includes both kinds of “misérables.” A product of France's most prominent Romantic writer, Les Misérables ranges far and wide. It paints a vivid picture of Paris's seamier side, discusses the causes and results of revolution, and includes discourses on topics ranging from the Battle of Waterloo to Parisian street slang. But the two central themes that dominate the novel are the moral redemption of its main character, Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, and the moral redemption of a nation through revolution. The novel is a critical statement against human suffering, poverty, and ignorance. Its purpose is as much political as it is artistic. II | | VICTOR HUGO |
As a novelist, poet, political activist, and painter, Victor Hugo was a central figure in the Romantic movement of 19th-century France. Both his family and his times influenced Hugo's social views and politics, which included a deep concern with human rights, social injustice, and poverty as the root of evil. Born in Besançon, France, in 1802, Hugo grew up in the years of Napoleon Bonaparte's empire. In 1815 the empire collapsed at the battle of Waterloo, which Hugo describes in detail in Les Misérables, and a constitutional monarchy was established. Hugo’s father was a general in the Napoleonic army with republican sympathies while his middle-class mother had royalist leanings. The young Hugo spent a large part of his childhood in Paris with his mother. He also traveled through Europe in his father's wake and glimpsed the Napoleonic campaigns. After attending school in Paris, he married his childhood love, Adèle Foucher, in 1822.
In that same year,