How Does Hugo Show Misery

Title
When a novel by Victor Hugo is titled Les Misérables, flags must go up in the reader’s mind that this is not going to be a happy and fluffy story, it is called The Misérables/Wretched/ Victims after all. This is not just a story about the human condition and its relation to misery, but also provides models on how to deal with said situation, both good and bad. Hugo expresses misery not simply by saying “Life is hard,” but by showing misery through the experiences of men, women, and children. This is effective due to how the reader sees and reads for himself or herself the misery in the world Hugo has created.
The first way Hugo shows misery is through the men of his story, and more specifically, the misery in Jean Valjean, and Thénardier.
Eponine, like Valjean, has every reason to be miserable; she was raised by possibly the worst two parents, and her social standing is nothing to take a second glance at. She once said “What do I care if my body's picked up in the street tomorrow morning, beaten to death by my own father – or found in a year's time in the ditches round Saint-Cloud or the Île des Cygnes, along with the garbage and the dead dogs?” (828). Eponine has lost every sense of self-worth due to the realization of her parents, who they are, and her current situation. She has lost her will to live and is consumed by the misery thrown at her. But she does not stay in this state of self-pity forever, as she comes to the understanding that even if she cannot have Marius as a lover, she can at least have him as her last thoughts. “‘Promise to kiss me on the forehead when I’m dead. I’ll feel it.’ She let her head fall back on Marius’s knees and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had gone. Eponine lay motionless, but just when Marius supposed her forever asleep, she slowly opened her eyes, revealing the somber depths of death, and said to him in an accent whose sweetness already seemed to come from another world, ‘And then, do you know, Monsieur Marius, I believe I was a little in love with you.’ She essayed to smile again and expired” (901). Eponine was in love but nearly invisible to Marius and because of this she had a lot of self-pity. But when the grim reaper came knocking at her door, she was forced to wake up and make the best of her current life. Eponine serves as a good example of how a person, if faced with misery, should handle it. Similarly, Cosette does not have a good upbringing and the misery she is faced with has a physical effect on her body as shown when Hugo states, “Injustice had made her sullen and misery had made her ugly. Her fine eyes only remained to her, and