This blog post explores the literary, philosophical, and religious significance of Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables’.
‘Les Misérables’ is an undisputed masterpiece. The fact that it has been adapted into films over 30 times clearly demonstrates how beloved this work is by countless people. But that’s not all. ‘Les Misérables’ has also been adapted into musicals numerous times and performed worldwide, becoming a staple in musical repertoires across countries. It is therefore extremely familiar to people. The name ‘Jean Valjean’ has become so famous that even those who haven’t read the novel or seen the musical know it. If asked to name just one representative global bestseller and steady seller spanning the 19th and 20th centuries, it would likely be ‘Les Misérables’. In France, it’s said to be the second most read book after the Bible, truly a classic among classics.
Yet there’s a curious paradox. Victor Hugo, the author of ‘Les Misérables’, was absolutely not a classicist. He began his literary career by rebelling against classicism. What is classicism? It’s a 17th-century French literary movement rooted in the belief that certain truths remain unchanging regardless of time or circumstance. It was a movement that believed in an ideal human model transcending eras. Classical writers insisted that great works must feature such perfected individuals as protagonists. They argued that art, too, has laws, and that adhering well to these laws is the path to becoming a good writer.
Yet in France, the life of this classical tradition was remarkably long. Even by the 19th century, classical principles still held sway. It was then that a new literary movement arose to challenge that Classicism: the Romantic movement. Romanticism can be seen, in a word, as a new artistic movement opposing the absolute truth asserted by Classicism. Romantics countered the ‘absolutism’ of the Classicists with ‘relativism’. However, this ‘relativism’ manifested in two directions.
One was the assertion of temporal relativity. Writers representing this position, led by Stendhal, argued that people’s beliefs and tastes also change with the times. They contended that the great writers of the classical era were great because they wrote works that suited the tastes of their own people, not because they wrote works that would eternally suit everyone’s tastes. What they valued was not eternal absolute truth, but contemporaneity. Nineteenth-century French writers, they argued, should write works that suit the tastes of nineteenth-century French people. As you may have noticed, the writers who made such claims later walked the path of realism. Stendhal’s statement, “The novelist is a man who carries a mirror,” stems precisely from this idea. Thus, the Romanticism championed by Stendhal is, in fact, closer to realism.
The other direction emphasized individual originality. This camp argued that all artistic rules must be shattered, and artists must draw inspiration directly from nature. Victor Hugo was the quintessential figure of this approach. Hugo firmly declared that if one models their work after the masters, they inevitably become nothing more than a mushroom or lichen parasitizing a great tree. He asked, how could the sap of even the mightiest tree possibly nourish another great tree?
This movement prioritizes individual sensibility over steadfast human will, and values ever-changing, diverse originality over eternal, unchanging universality. This is the true Romantic movement. Victor Hugo, who led this movement, put forward his famous ‘Grotesque Theory’. ‘Grotesque’ is a French word meaning ‘bizarre, grotesque’. The ‘Grotesque Theory’ essentially asks: How could this world be populated solely by desirable human beings?
More actively stated, it questions: Even the most desirable person—how could they have been born that way? Where are humans who never experience countless conflicts and uncertainties? Isn’t it precisely through such conflicts and uncertainties that humans can become truly great? Shouldn’t good art simply show this human condition as it is? This is the core argument of the ‘Grotesque Theory’.
This Romantic movement dominated French literary circles from 1820 to 1850. That is, French Romanticism exerted its influence for only about 30 years before ceding dominance to Realism and Naturalism. Yet even after that, there remained one eternal Romantic. There was one man who never abandoned his Romanticism and remained a Romantic until his death. That man was Victor Hugo.
Let me say it again. Victor Hugo is France’s quintessential Romantic. Yet unlike other Romantics, he was a Romantic of profound conviction. What conviction? A conviction in progress.
But let there be no misunderstanding. He was not a political progressive. If such a term is possible, he was a progressive of the soul. And all his works are the fruit of his desperate struggle to demonstrate his belief in precisely that progress of the soul.
Consider ‘Les Misérables’. ‘Les Misérables’ is an immense novel containing everything—society, history, philosophy, religion—yet this vast work has a clear, distinct pillar. That pillar is the soul of the character Jean Valjean. Did Victor Hugo not state in the work, “The first protagonist of this book is not a man, but Infinity; the human being comes second”? The protagonist of this novel is not merely a wretched individual living through the turbulent 19th century. The protagonist of this novel is not ‘Jean Valjean’. The protagonist of this novel is ‘the soul of Jean Valjean’. This novel is the story of Jean Valjean’s soul finding salvation. Victor Hugo defines the process of that soul’s salvation as progress. He clearly states in his work:
“What is progress? It is the stride of the soul towards the light. It is the ascent of the human being from the mud to the divine. From lust to conscience, from corruption to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God.”
In that sense, ‘Les Misérables’ is religious. And the soul of Jean Valjean, who has been saved, carries a transcendent meaning. Through Marius’s thoughts about Jean Valjean, Victor Hugo effectively reveals the core of this work.
“This convict was transforming into Jesus.”
Yet it is this Jean Valjean who moves us and brings us to tears. He transforms into a transcendent being like Jesus, a great figure we dare not easily emulate, precisely because the process is so human. His anguish during this spiritual progression is profoundly human.
After spending 19 years in prison, Jean Valjean truly faces multiple crises. Initially, he burned with hatred toward the society that had imposed excessive punishment upon him. What threw him into turmoil was Bishop Myriel’s forgiveness and mercy.
He is thrown into confusion. Then came the incident where he unconsciously stole coins from the child Petitjervais; the conflict he felt upon learning someone else had taken the blame for him and been arrested, leading him to ultimately turn himself in; the conflict he faced upon learning Cosette and Marius were in love, yet still saving Marius; and finally, revealing his true identity and stepping aside for their happiness—all were great decisions. Yet before each of these great decisions, there was always a bitter struggle. What struggle? The struggle between the sweet path that tempts him and the path where dreadful consequences await.
In the work, Victor Hugo calls it the struggle between selfishness and duty. He says that just when we grow weary of that struggle and are about to yield to selfishness and take a step back, a powerful wall pushes us from behind. He says we feel a sacred shadow blocking our path.
What is it? It is conscience itself, and God. Victor Hugo’s work moves us because it shows God is not merely up above, but dwells deep within us in the name of conscience. It reveals salvation does not come from above, but arises directly from our own conscience.
Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables’ is a religious work. I boldly state this. Saying ‘Les Misérables’ is religious does not mean it displays the essence of Christianity or exemplifies Christian doctrine. It certainly does not mean it definitively shows Victor Hugo was a Christian believer.
It is religious in the sense that it shows the ultimate goal of our lives lies in the salvation of the soul, and that the mirror reflecting our finite lives is found in the unseen. It is religious in the sense that it seeks the ultimate meaning of life not in the visible reality, but in the greater, unseen principles.
That he wrote such a religious work in the 19th century, that he remained a Romantic until his death—that is precisely Victor Hugo’s greatness. It means he never lost his lifelong conviction that ‘a poet must be one who serves humanity.’
What kind of era was 19th-century France? It was a time when humanity was most enthusiastic about human reason and the science achieved by human reason. French philosophers like Auguste Comte, using somewhat difficult terminology, called it ‘the era of positivism’s triumph’. It was an era when faith in human reason and science grew so strong that many believed humanity could build a utopia on earth through its own power.
This is akin to saying it was an era when all heavenly values descended to earth. It was an era when the values governing this world became entirely secularized. In other words, it could also be described as an era when religious values were fading. Paradoxically, this triumphant period when faith in human reason reached its zenith was also a time when one of humanity’s crucial beliefs was lost. Faith in salvation, faith in the unseen, faith in transcendence, faith in the afterlife. In such an era, how could one not call him great for embodying religious values in literary works in the name of humanity, in the name of humanitarianism? How could one not desire to experience the baptism of that greatness?
