Les Miserables 72: Aid From Below or From Above

When last we saw Jean Valjean, he had just had the harrowing experience of watching a prison procession pass by while he was out for a morning walk with Cosette.  This experience brought to the surface memories of Valjean’s past and the monster that he had been before his encounter with Monseigneur Bienvenu, and showed [...]

Les Miserables 71: The Chain (cont’d)

When we left off last time, Valjean and Cosette were out for an early morning walk, and they had just come face-to-face with a fearsome procession of prisoners on their way to prison. The sight of this procession had a fearsome effect on Jean Valjean, because it stirred up memories from his own past.  For [...]

Les Miserables 70: The Chain

We have just seen what Marius’s falling in love with Cosette looked like from Cosette’s point of view, and we have also seen how it landed in Jean Valjean’s life.  Valjean had hoped that Cosette would stay with him and love him forever as she did when she was a little girl.  All of this [...]

Les Miserables 69: To Sadness, Sadness And a Half

Last time we looked at the part where Marius falls in love with Cosette.  We had already seen what it was like from Marius’s point of view, and we saw the same event from Cosette’s point of view.  But what was it like from Jean Valjean’s point of view? We have already seen that Valjean [...]

Les Miserables 68: The Battle Commences

The change in Cosette’s life that we read about last time happened between the time Marius first saw her at the Luxembourg and the time he saw her again six months later. Recall that when Marius first saw Cosette at the Luxembourg, he was relatively unimpressed with her.  Here is Victor Hugo’s description of what [...]

Les Miserables 67: The Rose Discovers She Is an Instrument of War

After Valjean and Cosette left the convent, they settled in to the house on the Rue Plumet and lived there quietly.  Cosette lived in the main house while Valjean lived in the guesthouse in the back.  She loved Valjean and spent almost all of her time with him. One of the tensions that Valjean felt [...]

Les Miserables 66: Change of Grating

It is something of a fashion for those of us who grew up going to Catholic schools to speak critically of the whole Catholic school experience, i. e. to tell horror stories about nuns with rulers and that sort of thing.  Well, there is nothing new under the sun.  Even Victor Hugo has critical words [...]

Les Miserables 65: Foliis Ac Frondibus

After describing the house on the Rue Plumet where Valjean and Cosette landed, Victor Hugo takes some time to describe the garden out in the front.  This garden was carefully cultivated while the judge who originally owned this house lived there, but it since fell into disuse and reverted back to its natural state. It [...]

Les Miserables 64: The Secret House

Earlier in the story we saw Marius meet Cosette for the first time, fall in love with her, and get punked by Jean Valjean when he tried to pursue her. In this section we will begin to see what all of that looked like from the other side. Victor Hugo leads off by introducing us [...]

Les Miserables 63: Eponine

We now ease back in to the action of the story.  We catch up with Marius on the back side of the tumultous events at Gorbeau House.  Immediately afterward, he disappeared and went to move in with his friend Courfeyrac.  Why?  He hated the spectacle of the evil poor that he had seen on full [...]