History Literature / LesMiserables

''Les Misérables'' (1862) is a sprawling epic by Creator/VictorHugo, the seeds of which can be found in some of his earlier, shorter works, such as his novel(la) ''[[Literature/TheLastDayOfACondemnedMan Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamné]]'', which also treats upon the subject of the penal system in France and includes a character that resembles what could later be called an AU-style Valjean. It has been adapted to the small and big screen numerous times, and was made into a very well-known [[Theatre/LesMiserables musical play]] that has run for nearly thirty years.

%%* BreakTheCutie:
%%** Fantine.

%%* BrokenBird:
%%** Fantine.

* CriminalDoppelganger: Champmathieu gets arrested in Jean Valjean's place because he just happens to look exactly like him.

* UnexpectedKindness: Former convict Jean Valjean is abused and untrusted even after serving all his sentence, so he becomes distrustful of anyone else. When a Bishop provides him food and shelter at his church, Jean steals the church?s silverware and flees but is caught by the police. He is brought back and expects to be turned in by the Bishop, but instead the priest claims he gave the silverware to Jean and gifts him a pair of silver candlesticks for good measure. Jean is so moved by the Bishop covering for his theft that he resolves to become a better man from then on.

* TwoRoadsBeforeYou: Any other person would have to choose between ToBeLawfulOrGood. Javert's MoralDilemma is pretty different:

* BoomerangBigot: Javert, at least a little. His parents were crooks, and this is why he's so hard on criminals now (in fact, why he joined the police in the first place): he wants to prove that it's not InTheBlood, as relentlessly as he can.

* GoOutWithASmile: [[spoiler:Enjolras gives one to Grantaire]] before they are both shot.

[[caption-width-right:287:[[GratuitousFrench La Woubette]]]]

* LivingEmotionalCrutch: Cosette to Jean Valjean.

%%** Valjean to the bishop, although it took two attempts.
%%** Georges Pontmercy and his son Marius to Thénardier. (If context is added, fix indentation and delete this message.

* {{Adorkable}}: Marius. He's so shy that he can't muster up the courage to even speak to a pretty girl.

For that, he was condemned to five years hard labor in a brutal, dehumanizing penal system that was par for the course at the time. Before his imprisonment, he was kind, of an even personality, and, in his own words, dull like a block of wood. Nineteen years in the galleys -- nineteen instead of five, for all of his escape attempts -- changed him completely, making him bitter, harsh, and incapable of relating to other human beings as friendly agents. The system at the time made it virtually impossible to be re-integrated into society; the only real way out was death, and the provisions of the law facilitated that: on one's [[RuleOfThree third offense]], the death penalty was automatically imposed. However, it was [[JaywalkingWillRuinYourLife impossible for convicts to make an honest living]], because no one would give them work. It was a dreadful double bind. This is the situation Valjean finds himself in when he is finally released. He is set on the fastlane to being sent back again when a meeting with an unconditionally kind man, who happens to be a bishop, changes him forever, for a second time, just as profoundly as his experiences in the bagne changed him.

** Les Amis de l'ABC allegedly named themselves that way because they're a society for furthering literacy among the poorer classes; it's a mere coincidence, of course, that in French "l'ABC" sounds exactly like "l'abaisé", "the oppressed". [[HiddenInPlainSight No revolutionary inclinations whatsoever]].

[[caption-width-right:287:[[BilingualBonus La Woubette]]]]

* * DisappearedDad: Fantine's boyfriend Félix Tholomyès abandoned her when her daughter Cosette was two years old. Cosette doesn't remember him, and for most of the book, she thinks that Jean Valjean is her father.

* * DisappearedDad: Fantine's boyfriend Félix Tholomyès abandoned her when her daughter Cosette was two years' old. Cosette doesn't remember him, and for most of the book, she thinks that Jean Valjean is her father.

* DisappearedDad: Fantine's boyfriend Félix Tholomyès abandoned her when she was pregnant with their daughter Cosette. His three friends are paired up with Fantine's three friends, and the men abandon their women as a joke of sorts; Fantine either doesn't have a chance to tell him or finds out just afterwards that she's pregnant.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: Hugo frequently refers to the characters as real people and the research he did in assembling their stories. Some of the characters also know of Hugo: At one point, M. Gillenormand criticizes ''Hernani'', a play written by him.

* DisappearedDad: Cosette's father left her mother when Cosette was little. She doesn't remember him, and for most of the book, she thinks that Jean Valjean is her father.

* LongHairIsFeminine: But when Fantine sells hers, she hides her shorn head under a cap so she still looks pretty.

* LostInTranslation: Hugo makes use of untranslatable puns and argot/slang. An example of a pun is the name of a bagnard named Chenildieu, who's nicknamed je-nie-Dieu, "I deny God"; another is a character admiring the "glaces" (mirrors) in a restaurant, and another replying that she'd rather have "glacés" (ice cream) on her plate.

* EmbarassingLastName: There's an amusing tangent discussing the origins of the name of the Gorbeau House, where Valjean and Cosette end up living, and how it related to a twofold example of this. It was originally the site of a law practice run by guys named Renard (Fox) and Corbeau (Crow), who were widely mocked for their last names due to the combination of [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast those names, especially in combination forbiddingly suggesting]] that they were [[AmoralAttorney amoral attorneys]], and because it suggests [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Crow_(Aesop) the fable of the Fox and the Crow]], whose verse telling by Creator/JeanDeLaFontaine is almost universally known in France. Eventually, the two petitioned the king for permission to change their names, and he agreed, decreeing new surnames for them. Corbeau was luckily renamed Gorbeau, but Renard was less luckily renamed Prenard ("taker"), a name suggesting someone greedy and/or a thief.

* JustInTime: When Valjean and Cosette escape from Javert and his squad by climbing over the convent wall, the narration mentions that they hear them arriving just as they reach safety at the top of the wall. In the 2018 ''Series/{{Masterpiece}} MiniSeries, the camera angle shows Cosette being pulled to safety just as Javert and company come around the corner.

* MissedHimByThatMuch: When Valjean and Cosette escape from Javert and his squad by climbing over the convent wall, the narration mentions that they hear them arriving just as they reach safety at the top of the wall. In the 2018 ''Series/{{Masterpiece}} MiniSeries, the camera angle shows Cosette being pulled to safety just as Javert and company come around the corner--if he'd looked up, he would have seen her.

But that niceness may be put to a different test entirely, because by 1830, as Cosette comes of age, a great many ''other'' people in France have had just about enough of the very same system that so traumatized Valjean all those years ago, and the crusade of change may be about to sweep over all our dramatis personae...

* ATasteOfTheLash: More a taste of the stick, but when Valjean thinks or talks about prison, stick blows will come up sooner or later as inevitable as the tides.

** Éponine. Heavy focus on the word "stalker." Trying to kill him so that they can both die together is more creepy than romantic.