Victor Hugo's Les Misérables is a story about inequality in France. Jean Valjean, a well-meaning thief turned factory owner, tries to help the dying Fantine, a young single mother, but is arrested. He finds Cosette, Fantine's daughter out of wedlock, and rescues her from dismal circumstances.
Set in early 19th-century France, Les Misérables is the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant, and his desire for redemption, released in 1815 after serving nineteen years in jail for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child.
After nineteen years as a prisoner on the chain gang, Jean Valjean is released on parole with his yellow ticket-of-leave, which he must always carry with him, always branding him as a thief. Only the Bishop of Digne invites him in and treats him with compassion.
The main theme of Les Miserables is social injustice. Many of the characters in the novel are victims of injustice who are unable to seek recompense through traditional channels. Jean Valjean, as a former convict, is scorned because of his mistakes.
Valjean's character is loosely based on the life of the ex-convict Eugène François Vidocq. Vidocq became the head of an undercover police unit and later founded France's first private detective agency. He was also a businessman and was widely noted for his social engagement and philanthropy.
At the hospital, Fantine is in a delirium and Valjean promises to adopt Cosette as Fatine takes her final breath ("Fantine's Death"). Javert finds Valjean in the hospital, and again shows no mercy despite Valjean trying to explain he must rescue the child.
Answer and Explanation: Fantine represents the downtrodden of France. Her story shows how through no fault of her own, she experiences a series of misfortunes that eventually kill her.
Ultimately, Javert lets Valjean go and throws himself into the river, where he drowns. Marius makes a full recovery and is reconciled with Gillenormand, who consents to Marius and Cosette's marriage. Their wedding is a happy one, marred only when Valjean confesses his criminal past to Marius.
Les Mis is about people who struggle, who succeed, who fail, who love, who want, and the thread that connects them all is the revolutionary fever that surrounds them. Because Les Mis is so expansive and well-written, it affords you a chance to live a life, Jean Valjean's entire adult life, in your imagination.
In English, the novel's title literally translates to "the miserable ones." However, the meaning in French is more specifically about the disenfranchised, which describes most of the main characters.
After he abandons her, she is forced to look after their child, Cosette, on her own. Originally a beautiful and naive girl, Fantine is eventually forced by circumstances to become a prostitute to support her daughter, losing her beauty and health until she finally dies of tuberculosis.
Answer and Explanation: In les Miserables, Jean Valjean is about forty-six years old when the novel begins. Valjean was born in 1769, and he was sentenced to nineteen years in prison for stealing bread in 1795 at the age of twenty-six. At the end of the novel, when he dies, he is sixty-four years old.
In the acclaimed musical and novel Les Miserables, an unmarried woman named Fantine struggles to support her daughter in 19th century France. Fantine resorts to selling her possessions, her hair, her teeth, and eventually herself in order to send more and more money to the family caring for Cosette.
Poor old Jean Valjean, of course, loved Cosette only as a father; but, as we noted earlier, into this fatherly love his lonely single status in life had introduced every other kind of love; he loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either ...
Turned out on the streets, Fantine tried to find other work and sold her few possessions, her hair, and eventually several of her teeth in a desperate attempt to get enough money to support her ill daughter. Fantine became a prostitute as a last resort. The next censure continues Fantine's story.
Adapted from the 1862 novel of the same name by Victor Hugo, Les Misérables is a tragic (it has “miserable” in the name for a reason), yet enthralling story of broken dreams and unrequited love, , sacrifice and redemption – a timeless testament to the survival of the human spirit.
Félix Tholomyès – Fantine's lover and Cosette's biological father. A wealthy, self-centered student in Paris originally from Toulouse, he eventually abandons Fantine when their daughter is two years old.
Jean Valjean, the protagonist of the novel, dies of natural causes at the end of the novel. The denouement of the novel reveals that he does die as an integral man. Valjean transitions under Bishop Myriel's candlesticks.
What happened to Javert at the end of Les Misérables?
When Valjean finally gives Javert irrefutable proof that a man is not necessarily evil just because the law says he is, Javert is incapable of reconciling this new knowledge with his beliefs. He commits suicide, plagued by the thought that he may be living a dishonorable life.
Fantine died of consumption, but that is the same disease we today call tuberculosis. The film you are referring to, and also the musical, are all based on the classic novel written by Victor Hugo. In that novel, it is clear that Fantine dies of the disease known at that time as “consumption.”
