Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Read Online Free Page A
Author: Victor Hugo
conspiring against the Emperor Napoleon.
Hugo opposed the death penalty (the uncompromising solution par excellence for crime), not only because of the influence of his older friend Charles Nodier, but also because, as a small child, he had seen the severed heads of freedom fighters in Spain and Italy nailed to church doors by the troops commanded by his father, General Hugo, charged with suppressing independence movements in those countries. The violent insanity of his older brother, Eugène, which first became obvious at Victor’s wedding with Adèle, the woman Eugène also loved, inflicted survivor guilt on Hugo, as did the premature death of his beloved younger daughter Léopoldine, who drowned with her husband and her unborn child in a boating accident shortly after her marriage, and the insanity of his older daughter Adèle, to say nothing of the early death of his two sons before him. Under the circumstances, the possibility of finding Léopoldine again after death was a comforting thought, and Les Contemplations is framed with hopes for their reunion.
His enforced sojourn on an island left a strong imprint on that work. First of all, it reflects a powerful nostalgia for Paris, where he had lived—all the more so because Napoleon III’s assistant for urban renewal, Baron Haussmann, tore up many old neighborhoods to open wide avenues down which it was easy to fire grapeshot from cannons to disperse rebellious crowds. The constant presence of the sea makes itself felt continually in the visionary poetry, but it probably also inspired several scenes in Les Misérables, such as the galleys at Toulon, and metaphors such as the depiction of Jean Valjean, released from prison but abandoned and cursed by society, as a man overboard who slowly, agonizingly despairs and drowns. Unable to exercise his keen visual sensitivity on medieval monuments, as he had done in Paris (in several poems and essays as well as in Notre-Dame de Paris), Hugo turned to botany, gardening, and agriculture. Signs of this new interest pervade Les Misérables, but it culminates only in the rich, lovingly detailed descriptions of the flora in the introductory section of the great regional novel Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866). Surrounded by the poor, who had to make their living from the sea, Hugo found many occasions—like Monseigneur Myriel and Jean Valjean in his novel—to exercise charity. For a time, he hosted and paid for a weekly meal for fifty people. Finally, Parisian nightlife was replaced, between 1853 and 1855, by evening seances during which Hugo believed that he and his family and friends could communicate with the spirits of both the living and the dead. He summoned the soul of the sleeping Napoleon III, to harangue and intimidate him; he advised Shakespeare on how to correct errors in his prosody; and he dia logued with Jesus Christ as well as dozens of other notables.
The Story
Hugo already had composed a version of his masterpiece, first entitled Les Misères, between 1845 and 1848, during the height of his activity in the House of Peers. During fourteen months of intense activity between 1860 and 1862, Hugo expanded this original version by 60 percent. Les Misérables embeds the story of a poor workman in a vast mythic-historical context. It tells of the fall and redemption of Jean Valjean, a young tree pruner in the region of Paris, the sole support of his widowed sister and her seven children. One winter, unemployed and desperate to feed his dependents, he breaks a bakery window at night to steal a loaf of bread. He is arrested and sentenced to five years’ hard labor in the galleys of Toulon. Four escapes, attempted instinctively and unreasoningly, lead only to additional sentences, which finally total nineteen years. The harsh punishment embitters him against society, and after his release this attitude is reinforced by the scorn and rejection he experiences whenever he must show his convict’s yellow passport. But a
Hugo opposed the death penalty (the uncompromising solution par excellence for crime), not only because of the influence of his older friend Charles Nodier, but also because, as a small child, he had seen the severed heads of freedom fighters in Spain and Italy nailed to church doors by the troops commanded by his father, General Hugo, charged with suppressing independence movements in those countries. The violent insanity of his older brother, Eugène, which first became obvious at Victor’s wedding with Adèle, the woman Eugène also loved, inflicted survivor guilt on Hugo, as did the premature death of his beloved younger daughter Léopoldine, who drowned with her husband and her unborn child in a boating accident shortly after her marriage, and the insanity of his older daughter Adèle, to say nothing of the early death of his two sons before him. Under the circumstances, the possibility of finding Léopoldine again after death was a comforting thought, and Les Contemplations is framed with hopes for their reunion.
His enforced sojourn on an island left a strong imprint on that work. First of all, it reflects a powerful nostalgia for Paris, where he had lived—all the more so because Napoleon III’s assistant for urban renewal, Baron Haussmann, tore up many old neighborhoods to open wide avenues down which it was easy to fire grapeshot from cannons to disperse rebellious crowds. The constant presence of the sea makes itself felt continually in the visionary poetry, but it probably also inspired several scenes in Les Misérables, such as the galleys at Toulon, and metaphors such as the depiction of Jean Valjean, released from prison but abandoned and cursed by society, as a man overboard who slowly, agonizingly despairs and drowns. Unable to exercise his keen visual sensitivity on medieval monuments, as he had done in Paris (in several poems and essays as well as in Notre-Dame de Paris), Hugo turned to botany, gardening, and agriculture. Signs of this new interest pervade Les Misérables, but it culminates only in the rich, lovingly detailed descriptions of the flora in the introductory section of the great regional novel Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866). Surrounded by the poor, who had to make their living from the sea, Hugo found many occasions—like Monseigneur Myriel and Jean Valjean in his novel—to exercise charity. For a time, he hosted and paid for a weekly meal for fifty people. Finally, Parisian nightlife was replaced, between 1853 and 1855, by evening seances during which Hugo believed that he and his family and friends could communicate with the spirits of both the living and the dead. He summoned the soul of the sleeping Napoleon III, to harangue and intimidate him; he advised Shakespeare on how to correct errors in his prosody; and he dia logued with Jesus Christ as well as dozens of other notables.
The Story
Hugo already had composed a version of his masterpiece, first entitled Les Misères, between 1845 and 1848, during the height of his activity in the House of Peers. During fourteen months of intense activity between 1860 and 1862, Hugo expanded this original version by 60 percent. Les Misérables embeds the story of a poor workman in a vast mythic-historical context. It tells of the fall and redemption of Jean Valjean, a young tree pruner in the region of Paris, the sole support of his widowed sister and her seven children. One winter, unemployed and desperate to feed his dependents, he breaks a bakery window at night to steal a loaf of bread. He is arrested and sentenced to five years’ hard labor in the galleys of Toulon. Four escapes, attempted instinctively and unreasoningly, lead only to additional sentences, which finally total nineteen years. The harsh punishment embitters him against society, and after his release this attitude is reinforced by the scorn and rejection he experiences whenever he must show his convict’s yellow passport. But a
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