Résumé
Résumé de Les Misérables
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love stories of redemption, tender love, wild chases and revolution, with questions of justice, poverty and mercy at their heart. Students and musical fans will also find much to explore.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
Les Misérables is a novel by Victor Hugo, published in 1862. Hugo was already France's best-known poet and playwright when he wrote it. After Napoleon the Third seized power in 1851, he left France and lived in exile, and he finished much of this book on the island of Guernsey. The title means the wretched, the poor, the outcast, the people whom society crushes and then blames.
The story follows Jean Valjean, a peasant who is freed after nineteen years in prison for stealing bread and for trying to escape. Around him stand a dying young mother named Fantine, her daughter Cosette, a student named Marius, and Javert, a police inspector who believes the law has no room for mercy. The action runs across many years, through the end of Napoleon's empire, the restored monarchy, and the unrest on the streets of Paris.
Hugo wanted readers to ask why poverty makes criminals, what justice owes the guilty, and whether a person can truly change. In the next quarter of an hour you will hear the plot, the people, the ideas, and the way the book is built. It begins on a cold road in 1815, with a man whom no inn will take in.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A freed convict finds every door shutFree
- 2A night of mercy changes a man
- 3A new name builds a good life
- 4Fantine falls as the world looks away
- 5A man must choose between safety and conscience
- 6Cosette is rescued and the chase begins
- 7Marius, the barricade friends and a girl in the garden
- 8Law against mercy is the central quarrel
- 9Poverty, the people and Hugo's great digressions
- 10How the book is built and why it lasts
Point clé 1 sur 10
A freed convict finds every door shut
The novel opens in October 1815 in the small town of Digne, in the south of France. A tired man on foot arrives, carrying a heavy knapsack and a stick. He is Jean Valjean, and he has just been released from the prison galleys at Toulon. He once broke a baker's window and took a loaf to feed his sister's seven children, and his sentence of five years grew to nineteen because of repeated escape attempts.
Valjean carries a yellow passport that marks him as a dangerous ex-convict. Wherever he shows it, people turn him away. The innkeepers refuse him a bed. The tavern keeper will not serve him. Even a dog kennel is denied to him, because the dog attacks. Hugo wants us to feel how a society keeps punishing a man after his sentence has ended.
Valjean is not gentle at this point. Nineteen years of chains, whips and hunger have made him hard and full of hatred. He believes that the world owes him a debt and that he has the right to take it back. Hugo does not excuse this anger, but he shows exactly where it comes from.
A stranger finally directs him to the house of the town's bishop, Monseigneur Myriel, who is known as Bishop Bienvenu, which means welcome. Hugo spends many pages on this man before Valjean even reaches his door. The bishop has given away most of his income to the poor and lives in a small house beside the hospital. He treats every visitor as a guest.
When Valjean knocks, the bishop does not ask who he is. He sets silver on the table, offers supper and a clean bed, and calls him monsieur. Valjean is stunned, because no one has spoken to him as an equal for almost twenty years. That one night of kindness is the first step in everything that follows in the book.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Jean Valjean
- A former convict rejected by society, he encounters Bishop Myriel and struggles to build an honest life.
- Javert
- A stern police inspector, he pursues Valjean with an absolute belief in the authority of law.
- Fantine
- A young mother abandoned by her lover, she struggles desperately to provide for her daughter Cosette.
- Cosette
- Fantine's young daughter lives with the Thénardiers, who mistreat her and make her work.
- Marius Pontmercy
- A young idealist raised by a royalist grandfather, he becomes drawn to Cosette and Parisian political struggles.
- Thénardier
- A grasping innkeeper and Éponine's father, he exploits Fantine's trust while keeping Cosette in his household.
- Éponine
- The Thénardiers' eldest daughter grows up amid hardship and develops a deep attachment to Marius.
- Bishop Myriel
- The generous bishop of Digne welcomes Valjean when others refuse him shelter and offers him mercy.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 575,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 38 h 20 min
- Listening time63 h 50 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 12 other languages
Questions about Les Misérables
What is Les Misérables about?
It follows Jean Valjean, a French convict freed in 1815 who tries to rebuild his life while the police inspector Javert pursues him. It also tells of Fantine, Cosette and Marius, and of poverty, justice and mercy in France.
What does Les Misérables mean?
It is French for the wretched ones, or the miserable. Hugo means the poor, the outcast and the people crushed by an unjust society, not just those who feel sad. The title names a whole class of people.
Is Les Misérables a true story?
No, the main characters are invented. But Hugo set the novel against real events such as Waterloo in 1815 and the Paris unrest of 1832. He published it in 1862 after years in exile.
Is Les Misérables hard to read?
The plot is clear.
What is the main message of Les Misérables?
Hugo argues that mercy can change a person more than punishment can, and that a society which leaves people in poverty helps to make its own criminals. Conscience and love are shown as the strongest forces.