Les Miserables Novel / Tropes A to D

This page is for tropes which have appeared in the novel Les Misérables.

For the rest:

• Tropes E to N
• Tropes O to Z

---

• Abridged for Children: Les Misérables is called (affectionately?) by its readers "the Brick", resulting in multiple attempts to shorten it—however, this is not an easy text to abridge. Cut versions always leave the revolution subplot in the dust. Fantine's story is castrated, and all character development not centered on Valjean and Javert is pretty much obliterated. Hugo's tableau of France invariably turns into a good and evil story (Valjean and Javert) with a romance subplot (Marius and Cosette) thrown in.
• Accidental Hero: Thénardier. First, when he accidentally saves Georges Pontmercy's life, and then again, in his attempt to blackmail Marius.
• Adopt-a-Servant: the Thenardiers take in Cosette so they can make her work for them - that, and being able to extort money out of her mother Fantine by telling her it's needed for good treatment they never actually give her.
• Adopting the Abused: Feeling guilty that his actions indirectly led to the death of Fantine, one of his former employees, Valjean visits the Thenardiers, the innkeepers who had been caring for Fantine's daughter Cosette, to take the little girl off their hands. He finds that unlike what they were telling Fantine, they were abusing Cosette and treating her as a servant. Under the care of the adoring Valjean, Cosette grows into a sweet and lovely young woman, and even marries a rich and handsome young man.
• Affluent Ascetic: Bishop Myriel's position comes with a large salary and a palatial official residence. He allows the local hospital to occupy the palace while he lives in a small adjoining building, and donates nearly all his salary to charity. The only touch of luxury he permits himself is his silverware, which he values for its sentimental associations more than its monetary value.
• Animal Stereotypes: The narrator states that each person's soul corresponds to a particular animal.
  The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.
  Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Javert.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Valjean is a Woobie Anti-Villain before his Heel–Face Turn.
  • Javert is found on the overlap between a Well-Intentioned Anti-Villain and a Pragmatic Hero. He's frequently nasty but he desperately believes that utter inflexibility is the only way to maintain order.
• Appetite Equals Health: When the gravely ill Fantine thinks she's about to be reunited with her daughter Cosette, her condition improves, and her feeling hungry is one of the signs of it. Unfortunately, she isn't reunited with Cosette, and succumbs to Death by Despair.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • Javert's struggle with himself toward the end of the book:
    All sorts of interrogation points flashed before his eyes. He put questions to himself, and made replies to himself, and his replies frightened him. He asked himself: "What has that convict done, that desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has had me under his foot, and who could have avenged himself, and who owed it both to his rancor and to his safety, in leaving me my life, in showing mercy upon me? His duty? No. Something more. And I in showing mercy upon him in my turn—what have I done? My duty? No. Something more. So there is something beyond duty?" Here he took fright;
  • Valjean/Madeleine accepted his post as mayor because he was asked “Are you afraid of the good you might do?”.
• The Artful Dodger:
  • Gavroche. Hugo even mentions that once kids like Gavroche grow up, the world beats them down, but he assures us that as long as he's young, Gavroche is thriving.
  • Montparnasse was one of these until he grew up to be a stylish and ruthless teenage thug.
• Author Filibuster: Almost half of the book is Hugo exposing directly his thoughts about the ills of society, history (mostly the first half of the 19th century), the struggle for democracy, and many other subjects. Sometimes, there are no mentions of the main characters of the novel for a hundred pages. It is fortunate for the reader that Victor Hugo's thoughts are extremely interesting, well-written, and ahead of their time. "The Intestine of the Leviathan" = "HEY KIDS, ISN'T THE SEWER SYSTEM OF PARIS INTERESTING?" To which the answer is, of course, "Yes. Yes it is." Even more obvious towards the end of the book, when he spends multiple chapters justifying the use of "argot" (i.e., popular or vulgar speech). Hugo's previous works had been criticized precisely for relying on this type of language, which was deemed too vulgar for "real" literature.
• Author Stand-In:
  • Hugo admitted that Marius is a portrait of the author as a young man.
  • Valjean's rescue of Fantine was loosely inspired by something that Hugo did shortly after the success of Notre-Dame de Paris.
  • Valjean not shooting anyone at the barricade, but always tending to the wounded reflects Hugo's behaviour in the riots against Napoléon III.
• Author Tract: This is Victor Hugo, who probably never wrote a single book which doesn't fit this. All Hugo's opinions on social justice, the French justice system, death penalty, politics, and many more are found in Les Misérables.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Javert does this repeatedly. His initial suspicion of the mayor is based on a Sherlock Scan that ultimately proves right. When Valjean is recaptured, he's able to figure out that he was going after Cosette. Then he's able to deduce that Valjean may have faked his death, retrieved Cosette, and reestablished himself in Paris, all from a very limited amount of information.

• Badass Boast:
  • Javert when arresting the Thénardier gang: "Shoot! Your gun will misfire!" It does.
  • Éponine delivers a truly epic one when she decides to defend Cosette, Marius and Jean Valjean from the Patron-Mignette. Consider that she stands up against six hardass brutes, including her own father.
    Éponine: You are not getting inside. I am not a pup, I am a wolf cub. You are six. What do I care about that? You cannot scare me. You will not go inside this house, because I do not wish it. If you get closer, I will bark. I said there was a dog there. That dog is me. So get away all of you. If you use the knife, I will use my legs. By God I am not afraid of you. In the summer, I starve, in the winter I freeze, and such stupid men believe they can scare me? Scare! What? That's too funny. It's because you have some petty women who hide under their beds when you roar. I am not afraid. Not even for you (towards her father).

• Barefoot Poverty:
  • Little Cosette's bare feet are specifically mentioned many times in the descriptions of her time with the Thénardiers.
  • Several illustrations, including the most famous one centering on Cosette (see above), depict poor children wearing no shoes.
• Badass Preacher: Bishop Bienvenu Myriel. He dared to pass a mountain packed with robbers, and the robbers dared not assail him. And he went alone, to spare the life of the gendarmes. At the age of 70! Later on, he of course saves Valjean's soul, going up against his entire society and gets away with it - to the benefit of Jean Valjean, Cosette, Marius, and several others.
• The Bad Guy Wins: In a sense—the only character who has everything he wants by the end of the story is Thenardier.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Cosette is unambiguously beautiful to complement her genuinely kind and caring personality. Enjolras is described as having an "angelic beauty" that reflects his love for France and his genuine desire for social change. In contrast, the Thénardiers are unattractive besides being cowardly, abusive, selfish con people.
  • Subverted with Eponine. She's described to be homely, and although she's not as kind and caring as Cosette is or as passionate as Enjolras, she's not a conniving, manipulative Jerkass like her parents either.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: The man trapped by the fallen cart, Fauchelevent, later saves Valjean (and Cosette) when he allows them into the convent, in repayment.
  • Valjean to the bishop, although it took two attempts on the bishop's part to make Valjean's redemption stick.
  • Georges Pontmercy and his son Marius to Thénardier, on the mistaken belief that Thénardier had saved the colonel's life when he was actually robbing him. It is then deconstructed, as Marius feels indebted to Thénardier beyond reason even knowing what a monster he is.
• Big Damn Heroes: Javert of all people pulls one of these during his arrest of the Thénardiers.
• Big Fancy House: M. Myriel receives a palace to live in when he became the Bishop of Digne. He has it turned into a hospital.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Thénardiers. The giant Mme Thénardier behaves like a dog to M Thénardier; they idolise their daughters, mistreat their foster child, abandon their oldest son in the streets, and give away their two younger sons for money to a woman who has lost hers.
• Bittersweet Ending: Almost every character dies, but Cosette and Marius live Happily Ever After and Valjean's death comes peacefully, with Cosette by his side. The June Rebellion failed, but the revolutionaries didn't die in vain: Louis Philippe was overthrown in 1848, Napoleon III in 1870, and the French Third Republic was established that same year. In other words, the world they died for did come true eventually. Additionally, the only character who gets an unambiguously happy ending is Thenardier, the villain.

• Blatant Lies: The newspapers attribute Valjean's arrest to "the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor" when the prosecutor in question nearly convicted an innocent man and Valjean confessed his identity.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Contrary to the beliefs of many due to more recent portrayals of the characters in the musical post 2010 and the 2012 movie, Fantine has blonde hair, Cosette has brown, and Éponine's hair is described as auburn (or chestnut, depending on the translation).
• Bodybag Trick: Valjean gets out of the convent in a coffin in which one of the nuns was supposed to be buried.
• Boomerang Bigot: 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 inherited, as relentlessly as he can.
• Brawn Hilda: Madam Thénardier, to the point where she brags of her own strength - she is able to break a walnut with a punch.
• Bread of Survival: The entire story is kicked off by this trope. Jean Valjean is arrested and sent to prison for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister and her children.
• Break the Believer: Javert, who collapses inwardly when he discovers his Black-and-White Insanity is not accurate and commits suicide to escape the psychological pain.
• Break the Cutie: Fantine starts out a poor factory worker, known for her beautiful smile. Her first love abandons her and her friends followed suit; she was convinced to abandon her adored little girl, and was content as a factory worker until word got out of her past, whereupon she was blacklisted in the town and could only get work as a prostitute.

• Broken Bird: Fantine. Originally a sweet girl who only wanted love; her experiences in Montreil-sur-Mer leave her a shattered, embittered, alcoholic wreck. But when she gets proper care and M. Madeleine promises to restore her daughter to her, Fantine's true gentle nature emerges again.

• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: Inverted. Valjean realizes Javert is suspicious of him, but doesn't seem to realize why until the cart rescue, when Javert reveals that he worked at the prison in Toulon. To Valjean, Javert didn't stand out much during his prison time- he was just one of many guards at the prison over the years. Javert, on the other hand, remembers Valjean very well for his immense strength and repeated escape attempts.
• Cardboard Prison: Escapes from Toulon prison were frequent, although successful escapes (with the escapee actually leaving the city) were not. Valjean attempts four times and is successful the fifth.

• Celibate Hero:
  • Enjolras, who channels all his energy into politics. He even calls "Patria" — the abstract concept of France as motherland — his mistress, to drive the point home.
  • Javert, who is very dedicated to his job and doesn't seem very fond of women.
• Character Tics: Javert has a very strange laugh/smile, which contorts his face in a frighteningly feral way. Also, his penchant for snuff.
• Chaste Hero: Valjean, who because of circumstances beyond his control, never had a love interest.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Éponine's note "The cops are here." She originally wrote it in front of Marius to show him her literacy. He would later use the note to save Valjean's life.
  • Valjean's National Guard uniform he later uses to sneak into the barricade.
  • A literal example with the two pistols Javert gives Marius.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Valjean himself, due to the different names he has throughout the novel.
  • The Jondrettes are the Thénardiers.
  • The "young (working) man" who wears a grey blouse and cotton-velvet pantaloons is Éponine dressed as a boy. Her true identity is revealed after her Taking the Bullet for Marius at the barricades.^note Hugo does hint once that "he" sounded like Éponine, but doesn't confirm it yet.
  • Early in the novel, Valjean rescues a man named Fauchelevent from under a cart. Much later, when Valjean and Cosette are avoiding Javert, Valjean would unexpectedly meet Fauchelevent once again at a convent. Fauchelevent, who is still grateful to Valjean for everything he had done for him, would return the favour and let Valjean and Cosette stay at the convent.
• Children as Pawns: Georges Pontmercy agreed to never see his son Marius again, in order to ensure he lives a good life, free of poverty.
• Cliffhanger: Attempted. Many work better in the original edition, where the book was published in five separate parts with a few weeks between the publications.
  • Part one ends with Fantine dead and Valjean on the run.
  • At the end of Part three, Marius has managed to save Valjean from Thénardier, but gotten Thénardier arrested (Marius' father owes his life to Thénardier — or at least he thought so) and is no nearer finding Cosette.
  • Part four finishes with all main characters minus Cosette in the barricade or on their way there.
  • Valjean's faked death at the end of part 2, book 2, chapter 3. He reappears fairly quickly, but his name is not revealed. Should be easy for the reader to catch on quickly, though.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Éponine.
• Color Motif:
  • The yellow convict's passport, Valjean's yellow shirt after his release, his yellow coat after his escape... Let's say, yellow is not a good colour to have around you.
  • The color white is used multiple times to denote good or saintly behavior; most notably, Valjean's hair turns white after he saves Champmathieu at the price of his own comfort.
  • Red is meaningful as both the colour of revolts and revolutions and the colour of prison uniforms.
  • A man in uniform (Javert) is tailing another man (Thénardier) with (according to the narrator) the plan to put the latter also into a uniform. But with a different colour...
• Come to Gawk:
  • Gavroche seems to have a habit of watching public executions.
  • The crowd in the scene where the convict chain passes.
  • When Valjean is trying to decide whether to keep silent or denounce himself, he imagines life in prison. Since his past (being a town's mayor under a false identity for three years) makes for a good story, he dreads being pointed out to tourists (who were indeed frequent in the shore prison of Toulon).
• Coming of Age Story: Marius in part three.
• Con Man: Thénardier starts out as this and just gets worse from there.
• Contrived Coincidence: Too many to count; a good one is the minor thread involving Marius' grandfather's illegitimate children. Or the fact that all important characters always happen to be in the same place at the same time.
• Conveniently Cellmates: When Thénardier and the Patron-Minette gang get arrested, only Thénardier is put into a different cell from the others, who of course quickly devise a plan together and even manage to communicate the plan to Thénardier.
• Consummate Liar: Valjean manages to become the most respected person in a town and even that town's mayor under a false identity, which holds up for eight years. And then he lives with Cosette for nine years without her ever even suspecting something might be up.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: When Valjean is recaptured and brought to trial, the prosecutor falsely states that he was part of a gang of robbers from the south. This is a factor in Valjean receiving a death sentence (which is commuted to life).
• Crapsack World: The title does roughly translate to "The Miserable Ones." It's a world where good and decent people go through hell, the people responsible get off scot-free, and La Résistance is slaughtered almost to a man without having accomplished anything.
• Creator Cameo: Hugo asserts that when the 1832 riots broke out, the hail of bullets made a young man, a "dreamer, the author of this book", seek shelter in a doorway.
• Criminal Doppelgänger: Champmathieu gets arrested in Jean Valjean's place because he just happens to look exactly like him. Valjean comes forward and proves his identity with details only the real Valjean would know.
• Crucified Hero Shot: The death of Enjolras.
• The Cynic: Grantaire.
• Daddy's Girl: Cosette to Valjean. As long as he allows her to.
• The Dandy:
  • Montparnasse.
  • Felix Tholomyès.
  • Courfeyrac and Bahorel.
  • Theodule wears a corset, which was at the height of fashion for dandies at this period.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • Javert, in the scene where he arrests the Thénardiers ("Would you like my hat?"), and to Les Amis, as he's led away by Valjean and believes he's about to be executed ("See you all immediately!").
  • Gavroche, most hilariously in this exchange with a sergeant of the National Guard:
    Sergeant: Will you tell me where you are going, you wretch?
    Gavroche: General, I'm on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labor.
  • Hugo himself often snarks in his narration, often at the Thénardiers' expense.
• Death by Despair:
  • Fantine, when Javert confronts Valjean, and she realizes she'll never see Cosette again.
  • Jean Valjean — almost! — after being separated from Cosette.
• Decomposite Character: Valjean and Javert had the same real life prototype: Eugène François Vidocq.
• Defiled Forever: Fantine, who never had any parents to guide her, or friends who cared enough about her to warn her, ended up abandoned by her very first love and left to take care of their child. When word breaks out, people treat her like a prostitute until finally that's the only job she can take to save her daughter's life. The novel is harshly critical of society's treatment of unmarried, non-virginal women (including prostitutes).
• Delusions of Eloquence:
  • Thénardier is a frequent example of this, speaking and writing in a flowery manner that gives him the air of a philosopher/intellectual, but his writing is filled with misspellings, and Hugo comments to the effect that his obsession with Big Words shows a stupid person's understanding of what a smart person sounds like. Thénardier also frequently defends arguments by fraudulent citations of famous people, but has no actual knowledge of those authorities, except that they are famous (e.g. he will cite to the novels of someone who only wrote poetry). His wife also demonstrates this through the odd names she gave to her daughters, taken from romantic novels and popular history. This choice is very similar to the idea underlying a Ghetto Name.
  • Count *** cites a number of philosophers while clearly not understanding what they were talking about.
• Description Porn: Hugo loves this, to the point of Purple Prose.
• Determinator: Valjean definitely shows shades of this, especially in the sewer escape and the journey to Arras, even though he knows that it would be better for him if he just gave up.
• Devious Daggers: Jean Valjean has asked for, and received, permission to deal with Javert, who has been captured as a spy at the barricades. Javert, expecting to be executed, remarks when Valjean draws a knife that the choice of weapon suits him. Valjean is actually preparing to cut the ropes Javert is bound with before letting him go; the ex-convict's unexpected mercy is such a blow to Javert's worldview that he's ultimately Driven to Suicide.
• Deus ex Machina: Ironically provided by Thénardier, although he does so unwittingly and for purely greedy reasons. Near the end of the novel, he reveals to Marius that Jean Valjean is innocent of the more serious crimes he was suspected of. He also brings proof that Valjean was the mysterious man who risked his life to save Marius. All this just in time for Cosette to see her adoptive father one last time before his death.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: Éponine in Marius'.
• Direct Line to the Author: Hugo frequently refers to the characters as real people and also the research which he did in assembling their stories. Some of the characters also know of Hugo: at one point, M. Gillenormand even criticizes Hernani, a play written by him.
• Dirty Old Man: Marius' grandfather, Monsieur Gillenormand, was a rake in his youth many decades ago, and still maintains an interest in skirt-chasing. He's no longer an active rake, due to lack of finances, not (supposedly) because of lack of physical capability.
• Disco Dan: Monsieur Gillenormand is close to 90, and was a young man during the end of the Ancient Regime, and hasn't changed his attitudes, dress, etc., even though the world has changed around him. The result is that without changing anything, he's gone from a well-dressed man of the Enlightenment to a ridiculously unfashionable reactionary.
• Disappeared Dad: 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.
• Distinction Without a Difference: On the subject of "Dungeons", as opposed to "chambers of punishment":
  In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the prison delivers the convict into his own hands, were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a flagged pavement, a camp bed, a grated window, and a door lined with iron, and were called dungeons; but the dungeon was judged to be too terrible; nowadays they are composed of an iron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone walls, and a stone ceiling, and are called chambers of punishment. A little light penetrates towards midday. The inconvenient point about these chambers which, as the reader sees, are not dungeons, is that they allow the persons who should be at work to think.
• Divided for Publication: The French edition has frequently been published as two (or more) volumes; many translations follow suit.
• Doomed Moral Victor: Les Amis.
• Doorstop Baby: Fantine.
• Doorstopper: Up to 1900 pages in small type.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: Valjean cocks his gun unsubtly after he claims Javert as his to kill.
• Dressing as the Enemy:
  • Javert disguises himself as an insurgent and lies low in order to spy.
  • Valjean wears a French National Guard uniform so he can cross the barricade.
• Driven to Suicide: Javert, because of the cognitive dissonance caused by having his life saved by Valjean.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Grantaire, often.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Enjolras is often described as looking like a woman.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Éponine to Marius.
  "You know, Monsieur Marius, I think I was a little bit in love with you."

---