* Les Misérables synopsis:

* Ex-convict Jean Valjean is the main character in Victor Hugo’s novel about the injustices of French society, Les Misérables (1862, trans. 1862).

* At the time of the novel’s writing, Hugo was living in exile on the island of Guernsey—his home since 1855 when Napoleon III banished him from France. Napoleon censored the press and banished many writers and their works.

* In the following excerpt from the novel, Valjean is tending to the dying Fantine, a prostitute and single mother.

* Fantine is frantic about the welfare of her only child, Cosette, and Valjean tries to comfort her. Javert—a dogmatic police officer who spends most of the novel tracking Valjean--enters Fantine’s room and frightens her, with tragic consequences.

* My feedbacks:

* From the bare abstract, the story does not seem to promise much pleasure to novel-readers, yet it is all alive with the fiery genius of Victor Hugo, and the whole representation is so intense and vivid that it is impossible to escape from the fascination it exerts over the mind.

* Its tendency is to weaken that abhorrence of crime which is the great shield of most of the virtue which society of today possesses, and it does this by attempting to prove that society itself is responsible for crimes it cannot prevent, but can only punish.

* I learned that the bigotries of virtue are better than the charities of vice.

* On the whole, therefore, I think that Victor Hugo, when he stood out twenty-five years for his price, did a service to the human race – and that is novelizing the Les Misérables.

Submitted by: Torres, Reichelle B. | IX Temperance | Christian Living