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The Perfect Smile

Thoughts on Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

Of course I was enchanted. Maybe that was unavoidable given the way I came to know the story: listening to the musical from the back seat during so many family road trips. Still, I had my doubts. Victor Hugo’s 1862 classic is long and foreign and old and infamously riddled with digressions. I knew I would finish Les Misérables, but I was honestly afraid the venture would become one of attrition. Afraid! Of a book!

You can imagine my delight as the 1,500 pages started to fly by, sped along by both satisfaction in the execution of familiar beats and excitement to uncover new depth.

The novel explores the themes that a theater-going fan would expect: forgiveness, retribution, and the many forms of devotion (to family, to a lover, to the law, and to God). That said, it goes harder and deeper than the musical and in so doing gets pretty progressive by nineteenth-century standards. Hugo argues for convicts’ rights1, criticizes the church, and bemoans gender inequality. (He does contradict himself on that last topic, though, being somewhat preoccupied by physical beauty2 and unable to resist a sexist comment here3 and there4.)

Although Hugo indulges in plenty of navel-gazing on these themes (more on that below), the novel is at its best when expressing its message through conflict.

In Jean Valjean, we have a protagonist who is both physically and emotionally strong enough to carry the entire story. His moral compass is unassailable even though he often struggles to read it. Critically, Valjean’s suffering never seems pitiful or whiny, thanks largely to Hugo’s empathetic treatment. At one of the novel’s most tense moments, Hugo bleakly observes how, “to know how to be stifled without dying–that was one of Jean Valjean’s saddest talents,” and it just floored me.

Actually, for an odyssey of these proportions, the hero is surprisingly static. Following his early revelation about self-pity and service, Valjean’s internal dialog remains mired in doubt about his dedication to others. Whether this is due to trauma from multiple incarcerations, the guilt frequently associated with the Catholic church, or some darker aspect of the man’s past, Hugo doesn’t say. Whatever the explanation, it only makes Valjean more tragic: a person who knew such intense emotion and who achieved such great heights yet who never really beat his demons.

Both Fantine and Cosette are unfortunately not only static but also one-dimensional. Fantine’s perspective is entirely wrapped up in her tragedy, and although this commands sympathy, it isn’t particularly nuanced. Cosette escapes her mother’s fate but not her neglectedness. Her initial role as Valjean’s ward transitions into one as Marius’ darling, and neither leaves much room for agency. It’s a suspicious coincidence that this should be the weakness of both of the novel’s female leads, but I can’t decide whether this is a critique of the times or a product of them.

For his part, Marius is a little uneven. One the one hand, his infatuation with a beautiful stranger is undeniably superficial. Hugo has his reasons5, but he relishes the romance a bit too much, rendering Marius more vacuous than naïve (even to me, reading at an embarrassingly-lovesick moment in my own life). Fortunately, Marius’ relationships with his father, grandfather, and country (not to mention his own moral code) demonstrate growth and invite empathy.

As for Javert… I saved Javert for last.

A Parisian bridge featuring gilded accents Image: Robert CROSNIER, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The inspector represents the prototypical lawful neutral nemesis. His insistence on order, rendered in almost gleeful opposition to every other value, has long fascinated me for reasons so personal I don’t dare relate them here. Plenty of other works have played in this space, but for my money, no character has quite reached the manic self-denial of inspector Javert. Through his thoughts, actions (particularly in the scenes which were tragically excised for the stage show6), and ghoulish ability to appear at all the worst possible moments, he cuts a grimly sublime figure.

In addition to presenting compelling character studies of the human condition, Les Misérables also tells an exciting story in its own right–and far simpler than its length suggests. The drama unfolds through interactions between a tiny7 cast of characters, and these crossings feel increasingly improbable as the novel marches on8. The simplicity might irk realists, but if you’re ready for a fairytale, then it’s simply satisfying. Rather than skimming many connections superficially, Hugo lovingly explores the relationships of his small cast, and the texture is delicious.

Les Misérables is not without its indulgences, though. It includes plenty of historical and political references, much of it ultimately inconsequential. That irrelevance is probably for the best because a lot of Hugo’s commentary is inscrutably topical for modern readers. As for the much-maligned digressions, I was surprised by how tolerable they are. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t exactly rapt by Hugo’s treatises on Bishop Myriel’s early life, or on the history and architecture of the Petit-Picpus convent, or on the argot language, or on the Battle of Waterloo. Far be it from me to offer improvements on a great novel, but I think I’m on firm ground in saying that Les Misérables would at least be more accessible without the tangents.

…but while I’ve heard plenty of derision from readers about these asides, and I certainly understand their frustrations, I personally felt only mildly annoyed9. Maybe that’s why when Hugo subtly acknowledges their superfluity10, I was more amused than anything.

Whatever your experience of these faults (or others), I think Les Misérables' beauty and feeling will overcome them all. Or, as Hugo puts it in an (unintentionally?) metatextual moment: “the greatest must display these contradictions. Our joys have shadows. The perfect smile belongs to God alone.”

  1. I can’t resist including a couple choice quotes, if only here in the footnotes. First, in Monseigneur Bienvenu’s words to Jean Valjean:

    “Yes,” answered the bishop, “you have left a place of suffering. But listen, there will be more joy in heaven over the tears of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you are leaving that sad place with hatred and anger against men, you deserve compassion; if you leave it with goodwill, gentleness, and peace, you are better than any of us.”

    And later, in Hugo’s own voice:

    Liberation is not deliverance. A convict may leave prison behind but not his sentence.

     ↩︎

  2. The tragedy of Fantine represents one of the novel’s biggest emotional blows. It’s critical that readers care about her, and Hugo spends pages trying to elicit that empathy–conspicuously before telling us what she’s like as a person:

    A brilliant face, delicate profile, eyes of a deep blue, heavy eyelashes, small, arching feet, wrists and ankles neatly turned, the white skin here and there showing the azure aborescence of veins; a cheek small and fresh, a neck robust as that of Aegean Juno; the nape firm and supple, shoulders modeled as if by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the center, just visible through the muslin; a gaiety tempered with dreaminess; sculptured and exquisite–this was Fantine, and you could imagine underneath this dress and these ribbons a statue, and inside this statue a soul.

    Fantine was beautiful, without really being conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, the mysterious priests of the beautiful, who silently compare all things with perfection, would have dimly perceived in this working girl, through the transparency of Parisian grace, an ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of obscurity had breeding. She possessed both types of beauty–style and rhythm. Style is the force of the ideal, rhythm is the movement.

    We have said that Fantine was joy; she was also modesty.

    An observer who has studied her attentively would have found through all this intoxication of her age, of the season, and of love, an unconquerable expression of reserve and modesty. She remained a bit wide-eyed. This chaste wonder is the nuance that separates Psyche from Venus. Fantine had those long white slender fingers of the vestals who are the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden rod. Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyès, as could all too clearly be seen, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a kind of serious, almost austere dignity suddenly possessed it at times, and nothing could be stranger or more disquieting than to see gaiety vanish and reflection instantly succeed delight. This sudden seriousness, sometimes quite pronounced, resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her forehead, nose, and chin presented that equilibrium of line, quite distinct from the equilibrium of proportion, which produces harmony of features; in the characteristic interval separating the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that almost imperceptible but charming fold, the mysterious sign of chastity, which caused Barbarossa to fall in love with a Diana found in the excavations of Iconium.

    Love is a fault; be is so. Fantine was innocence floating upon the surface of this fault.

     ↩︎

  3. In describing young Cosette’s sorry upbringing, Hugo opines:

    A little girl without a doll is almost as unfortunate and just as impossible as a woman without children.

     ↩︎

  4. In the foibles of “Friend of the ABC” Bossuet:

    He had considerable knowledge and wit, but he always miscarried. Everything failed him, everything deceived him; whatever he built up collapsed on him. If he split wood, he cut his finger. If he had a mistress, he soon discovered that he had also a friend.

     ↩︎

  5. Hugo spends many pages describing the aching attraction Marius feels for Cosette. That these emotions are predicated entirely on physical appearance is not lost on Hugo:

    The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories that it has come to be disbelieved. Few people dare say nowadays that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet that is the way love begins, and only that way. The rest is only the rest, and comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than the great shocks that two souls give each other in exchanging this spark.

     ↩︎

  6. My favorites exceed any reasonable definition of “scene”, though: Marius’s cohabitation with (and conspiracy against) the Thénardiers, and the saga of Jean Valjean and Cosette’s life at Petit-Picpus. Novellas in their own right, it’s no wonder they couldn’t be squeezed into the musical. ↩︎

  7. Despite spending a fair amount of time introducing each of the Friends of the ABC, Hugo doesn’t give them enough individual attention to be differentiable. ↩︎

  8. Fans of the music will be surprised to learn that Thénardier meets Marius’ father in his final moments, that Thénardier is Gavroche’s father (!), that Fauchelevent and Valjean meet up years after Valjean’s iconic feat of strength, and even that Marius and Javert are briefly in cahoots. ↩︎

  9. Especially with Hugo’s investigation of the Parisian sewer system, which seems to be the most common target of readers’ ire. It’s one of the least substantial lectures and, if you ask me, really more notable for its many imaginative applications of the term “cloaca.” ↩︎

  10. “It’s not indulgent,” Hugo argues, “it’s my right!”

    Let us go back, for such is the storyteller’s right, and place ourselves in the year 1815, a little before the beginning of the action narrated in the first part of this book.

    Or here, sounding apologetic (if not outright defensive) before continuing to describe Waterloo:

    We return, for the requirements of this book, to the deadly battlefield.

     ↩︎