(1862)
Character List |
|
| Jean Valjean | The protagonist of the novel. Hugo depicts the character's 19-year-long struggle to lead a normal life after serving a prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister's children during a time of economic depression and various attempts to escape from prison. Valjean is also known in the novel as Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, Monsieur Leblanc, and Urbain Fabre. |
| Cosette | (formally Euphrasie, also known as "the Lark", Mademoiselle Lanoire, Ursula) The illegitimate daughter of Fantine and Tholomyes. From approximately the age of three to the age of eight, she is beaten and forced to work as a drudge for the Thenardiers. After her mother Fantine dies, Valjean ransoms Cosette from the Thenardiers and cares for her as if she were his daughter. Nuns in a Paris convent educate her. She grows up to become very beautiful. She falls in love with Marius Pontmercy. |
| Marius Pontmercy | A young law student loosely associated with the Friends of the ABC. He shares the political principles of his father and has a tempestuous relationship with his royalist grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand. He falls in love with Cosette and fights on the barricades in the 1832 June Rebellion. |
| Javert | A fanatic police inspector in pursuit to recapture Valjean. Born in the prisons to a convict father and a fortune teller mother, he renounces both of them and starts working as a guard in the prison, including one stint as the overseer for the chain gang of which Valjean is part (and here witnesses firsthand Valjean's enormous strength and just what he looks like). Eventually he joins the police force in the small town identified only as M----- sur-M---. His character is defined by his legalist tendencies and lack of empathy for criminals of all forms. |
| Monsieur Thenardier & Madame Thenardier |
Ordinary working-class people who blame society for their sufferings. Early in the novel, they own an inn and cheat their customers. As innkeepers, they abuse Cosette as a child and extort payment from Fantine for her support, until Valjean takes Cosette away. After they lose the inn in bank- ruptcy, they change their name to "Jondrette" and live by begging and petty thievery. They serve, alongside Javert, as one of the two arch-nemeses of the story's protagonist, Jean Valjean. While Javert represents the justice system that would punish Valjean, the Thenardiers represent the lawless subculture of society that would blackmail him. The novel portrays them as brutal and abusive figures |
| Eponine | The Thenardiers' elder daughter. As a child, she is pampered and spoiled by her parents, but ends up a street urchin when she reaches adolescence. She
participates in her father's crimes and begging schemes to obtain money. She is blindly in love with Marius. After disguising herself as a boy, she manipulates Marius into going to the barricades, hoping that she and Marius will die there together. |
| Gavroche | The unloved middle child and eldest son of the Thénardiers. He lives on his own as a street urchin and sleeps inside an elephant statue outside the Bastille. He briefly takes care of his two younger brothers, unaware they are related to him. He takes part in the barricades. |
| Fantine | A beautiful Parisian grisette abandoned with a small child by her lover
Felix Tholomyes. Fantine leaves her daughter Cosette in the care of the
Then- ardiers, innkeepers in the village of Montfermeil. Mme. Thenardier
spoils her own daughters and abuses Cosette. Fantine finds work at Monsieur
Madeleine's factory. Illiterate, she has others write letters to the Thenardiers
on her behalf. A female supervisor discovers that she is an unwed mother
and dismisses her. To meet the Thenardiers' repeated demands for money,
she sells her hair and two front teeth, and turns to prostitution. |
| Bishop Myriel | The Bishop of Digne (also called Monseigneur Bienvenu) A kindly old priest promoted to bishop after a chance encounter with Napoleon. After Valjean steals some silver from him, he saves Valjean from being arrested and inspires Valjean to change his ways. The Bishop is a heroic figure who personifies compassion and mercy. |
| Monsieur Gillenormand | Marius' 90-year-old grandfather. A monarchist, he disagrees sharply with Marius on political issues, and they have several arguments. He attempts to keep Marius from being influenced by his father, Colonel Georges Pontmercy. While in perpetual conflict over ideas, he does demonstrate his love for his grandson. |
| Enjolras | The leader of Les Amis de l'ABC (Friends of the ABC) in the Paris uprising. A resolute and charismatic youth, he is passionately committed to republican principles and the idea of progress and fights for a France with more rights for the poor and oppressed masses. |
| Grantaire | A student revolutionary with little interest in the cause. He reveres Enjolras, and his admiration is the main reason that Grantaire spends time with Les Amis de l'ABC (Friends of the ABC), despite Enjolras's occasional scorn for him. Grantaire is often drunk and is unconscious for the majority of the June Rebellion. Despite his pessimism, he eventually declares himself a believer in the Republic. |
| Patron-Minette | A quartet of bandits who assist in the Thenardiers' ambush of Valjean at Gorbeau House and the attempted robbery at the Rue Plumet. The gang consists of Montparnasse, Claquesous, Babet, and Gueulemer. Claquesous, who escaped from the carriage transporting him to prison after the Gorbeau Robbery, joins the revolution under the guise of "Le Cabuc."Hugo explains that the name "Patron-Minette" is an old-fashioned slang expression for the early dawn, "the hour at which their work ended, the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the separation of ruffians". |
| Mabeuf | An elderly churchwarden, friend of Colonel Pontmercy, who after the Colonel's death befriends his son Marius and helps Marius realize his father loved him. Mabeuf loves plants and books, but sells his books and prints in order to pay for a friend's medical care. When Mabeuf finds a purse in his yard, he takes it to the police. After selling his last book, he joins the students in the insurrection. |
| Colonel Georges Pontmercy | Marius's father and an officer in Napoleon's army. Wounded at Waterloo, Pontmercy erroneously believes M. Thenardier saved his life. He tells Marius of this great debt. He loves Marius and although M. Gillenormand does not allow him to visit, he continually hid behind a pillar in the church on Sunday so that he could at least look at Marius from a distance. Napoleon made him a baron, but the next regime refused to recognize his barony or his status as a colonel, instead referring to him only as a commandant. |
| Fauchelevent | A failed businessman whom Valjean (as M. Mad- eleine) saves from being crushed under a carriage. Valjean gets him a position as gardener at a Paris convent, where Fauchelevent later provides sanctuary for Valjean and Cosette and allows Valjean to pose as his brother. |
| Sister Simplice | A famously truthful nun who cares for Fantine on her sickbed and lies to Javert to protect Valjean. |
| Mother Innocente | The prioress of the Petit-Picpus convent. |
| Felix Tholomyes | Fantine's lover and Cosette's biological father. A wealthy, self-centered student in Paris originally from Toulouse, he eventually abandons Fantine when their daughter is two years old. |
| Favourite | A young grisette in Paris and leader of Fantine's group of seamstress friends (including Zephine and Dahlia). She is independent and well versed in the ways of the world and had previously been in England. Although she cannot stand Felix Tholomyes' friend Blachevelle and is in love with some- one else, she endures a relationship with him so she can enjoy the perks of courting a wealthy man. |
| Champmathieu | A vagabond who is misidentified as Valjean after being caught stealing apples. |
| Courfeyrac | A law student who is described as the centre of the group of Friends. He is honorable and warm and is Marius' closest companion. |
| Combeferre | A medical student who is described as representing the philosophy of the revolution. |
| Jean Prouvaire | (also Jehan) A Romantic with knowledge of Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and an interest in the
Middle Ages. |
| Azelma | The younger daughter of the Thenardiers. Like her sister Eponine, she is spoiled as a child, impov- erished when older. She abets her father's failed robbery of Valjean. On Marius and Cosette's wedding day, she tails Valjean on her father's orders. She travels to America with her father at the end of the novel. |
| Mademoiselle Gillenormand | Daughter of M. Gillenormand, with whom she lives. Her late half-sister (M. Gillenormand's daughter from another marriage), was Marius' mother. |
| Toussaint | Valjean and Cosette's servant in Paris. She has a slight stutter. |
| Petit Gervais | A travelling Savoyard boy who drops a coin. Valjean, still a man of criminal mind, places his foot on the coin and refuses to return it. |
| Bamatabois | An idler who harasses Fantine. Later a juror at Champmathieu's trial. |
| Two little boys | The two unnamed youngest sons of the Thenar- diers, whom they send to Magnon to replace her two dead sons. Living on the streets, they encounter Gavroche, who is unaware they are his siblings but treats them like they are his brothers. After Gavroche's death, they retrieve bread tossed by a bourgeois man to geese in a fountain at the Luxembourg Garden. |
| Magnon | Former servant of M. Gillenormand and friend of the Thenardiers. She had been receiving child support
payments from M. Gillenormand for her two illegitimate sons, who she claimed were fathered by him. When her sons died in an epidemic, she had them replaced with the Thenardiers' two youngest sons so that she could protect her income. The Thenardiers get a portion of the payments. |
| Brevet | An ex-convict from Toulon who knew Valjean there; released one year after Valjean. In 1823, he is serving time in the prison in Arras for an unknown crime. He is the first to claim that Champmathieu is really Valjean. |
| The narrator |
Hugo does not give the narrator a name and allows the reader to identify the narrator with the novel's author. The narrator occasionally injects himself into the narrative or reports facts outside the time of the narrative to emphasize that he is recount- ing historical events, not entirely fiction. He introduces his recounting of Waterloo with several paragraphs describing the narrator's recent approach to the battlefield. |
CONTENTS
FANTINE
I. AN UPRIGHT MAN
II. THE FALL
III. THE YEAR 1817
IV. TO ENTRUST IS SOMETIMES TO ABANDON
V. THE DESCENT
VI. JAVERT
VII. THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
VIII. COUNTER-STROKE
COSETTE
I. WATERLOO
II. THE SHIP ORION
III. FULFILMENT OF THE PROMISE TO THE DEPARTED
IV. THE OLD GORBEAU HOUSE
V. A DARK CHASE NEEDS A SILENT HOUND
VI. PETIT PICPUS
VII. A PARENTHESIS
VIII. CEMETARIES TAKE WHAT IS GIVEN THEM
MARIUS
I. PARIS ATOMISED
II. THE GRAND BOURGEOIS
III. THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON
IV. THE FRIENDS OF THE ABC
V. THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE
VI. THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS
VII. PATRON MINETTE
VIII. THE NOXIOUS POOR
ST. DENIS
I. A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY
II. EPONINE
Ill. THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET
IV. AID FROM BELOW MAY BE AID FROM ABOVE
V. THE END OF WHICH IS UNLIKE THE BEGINNING
VI. LITTLE GAVROCHE
VII. ARGOT
VIII. ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS
IX. WHERE ARE THEY GOING?
X. JUNE 5TH, 1832
XI. THE ATOM FRATERNISES WITH THE HURRICANE
XII. CORINTH
XIII. MARIUS ENTERS THE SHADOW
X1V. THE GRANDFURS OF DESPAIR
XV. THE RUE DE L'HOMME ARME
JEAN VALJEAN
I. WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS
II. THE INTESTINE OF LEVIATHAN
III. MIRE, BUT SOUL
IV. JAVERT OFF THE TRACK
V. THE GRANDSON AND THE GRANDFATHER .
VI. THE WHITE NIGHT
VII. THE LAST DROP IN THE CHALICE
VIII. THE TWILIGHT WANE
IX. SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN
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