This blog post examines how Victor Hugo’s life—transforming from a royalist poet to a republican writer—infused his literary world, including works like Les Misérables.
Born in 1802 in Besançon, eastern France, he was the third son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Victor Hugo, a soldier under Napoleon. His father’s frequent postings abroad, including Spain and Italy, meant Victor led a highly irregular childhood. His father, a fervent supporter of Napoleon, and his mother, a royalist sympathizer, often lived apart due to their conflicting political views. Primarily raised by his mother, he initially hated both his father and Napoleon. However, after his mother’s death, he came to understand his father and eventually developed respect for Napoleon.
His father wished his son would follow the military path like himself. However, Victor demonstrated literary talent early on, winning prizes at the Toulouse Academy of Letters in 1819 (at age 17). Entering the literary world as a royalist poet, he began his serious literary career by publishing the poetry collection Le Conservateur littéraire with his brothers.
In 1821 (age 19), his mother passed away. The following year, in 1822 (age 20), Victor Hugo married Adèle Foucher, a childhood friend.
Early in his literary career, Victor Hugo wrote many poems supporting the royalist cause, deeply imbued with Catholic themes. A representative work is Odes et Poésies Diverses, published in 1822. For this collection praising the royal house, he received a grant from Louis XVIII and was even invited to the coronation of Charles X in 1824 (age 22). Recognized for his literary achievements, he was awarded the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 1825 (age 23).
However, Victor Hugo gradually began to be influenced by liberalism. While conflicted between conservative and progressive ideas, he became increasingly immersed in Romanticism after his marriage. The work most clearly displaying Romantic characteristics is the preface inserted into his 1827 (age 25) play ‘Cromwell’. Known as the ‘Romantic Manifesto,’ this preface openly criticized Classicism. He subsequently led Romanticism by spearheading gatherings of writers and artists. In 1827, through his association with the critic Sainte-Beuve, he became deeply immersed in liberal ideas. His work The Last Day of a Condemned Man (1829, age 27), which advocated for the abolition of the death penalty, emerged from these convictions.
Emerging as a Romantic leader, he staged his play Hernani at the Théâtre Français in Paris in 1830 (age 28). This production, which directly challenged classical conventions, sparked a fierce battle between classicists and romantics, ultimately elevating Romanticism to the literary mainstream.
The July Revolution of 1830 deposed Charles X and overthrew the Restoration monarchy. This revolution further solidified Victor Hugo’s commitment to liberal ideals.
Around the time of the Hernani premiere, Victor Hugo and his wife faced a crisis. While Hugo was neglecting his family due to his busy schedule, his wife Adèle Foucher fell in love with Sainte-Beuve. This marked the beginning of Hugo’s reckless womanizing. However, Adèle Foucher bore Hugo five children and remained his wife for life. In 1833 (at age 31), Victor Hugo became romantically involved with Juliette Drouet, an actress who appeared in Lucrezia Borgia. Despite Victor Hugo’s notorious womanizing, Juliette never left his side. She even accompanied him into exile, maintaining their relationship until her death. Juliette is said to have written him as many as 18,000 love letters.
In 1831 (at age 29), he published the medieval-themed novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and the poetry collection Autumn Leaves. In the works of this period, Victor Hugo began to sing of human emotions. Subsequent poetry collections—’Songs of Twilight’ (1835), ‘The Inner Voice’ (1837), and ‘Light and Darkness’ (1840)—reflected this trend while also addressing social themes like politics, history, and morality.
Starting with the 1833 staging of his play ‘Lucrezia Borgia’, Victor Hugo developed a deep interest in social issues. Research for ‘Les Misérables’ was also actively conducted during this time, and he wrote the first draft of ‘Les Misérables’, titled ‘Les Misérables’, between 1845 and 1848.
In 1841 (at age 39), he became a member of the Académie Française (France’s most prestigious academic institution, also known as the French Academy). In 1843 (age 41), Victor Hugo staged his play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, but its failure made him sense the decline of Romanticism. He then stopped writing after suffering the misfortune of his eldest daughter, Léopoldine Hugo, and her husband drowning in the Seine River during their honeymoon. Following the example of François de Chateaubriand and Alphonse de Lamartine, who were both writers and political activists, he entered politics and was appointed to the Senate in 1845 (at age 43). At age 14, he wrote in his diary, “If I do not become like Chateaubriand, I will become nothing.”
When the February Revolution of 1848 (at age 48) led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic, Victor Hugo criticized the revolution’s violence and shifted his stance toward democracy. Driven by his humanitarian political views and respect for Napoleon I, he initially supported Napoleon’s nephew, Louis Napoleon (later Napoleon III, elected president after the February Revolution). However, when Louis Napoleon revealed authoritarian ambitions, Hugo resisted him and opposed the December 1851 coup. After this coup, when Louis Napoleon dissolved the parliament, crushed the Republican forces, and crowned himself Emperor, Hugo went into exile in Brussels. He then moved between the British islands of Jersey and Guernsey, living in exile for 19 years.
During this exile, Victor Hugo withdrew from political and social activities and devoted himself to creative work. Many of the works published after his return to France were written during this period. Notable poetry collections include Les Châtiments (1853, age 51), attacking Napoleon III; the masterpiece of lyric poetry, Les Contemplations (1856, age 54); and the epic poem La Légende des siècles (1859, age 57), singing of human history. His masterpiece Les Misérables (1862, age 60) was also completed and published during this exile period. Other works include Les Travailleurs de la mer (1866, age 64), depicting the struggle between man and nature, and L’Homme qui rit (1869, age 67). During his exile, Victor Hugo’s romanticism deepened. However, in France, romanticism had been in decline since 1850, replaced by the rise of realism. This led to the expression that French romanticism went into exile with Victor Hugo.
During his exile, his resistance to Napoleon III intensified. He refused to return even after the Emperor granted a special pardon to exiles. This series of actions led him to be revered as ‘Father on the Island’ among French youth yearning for freedom and justice. In 1868 (aged 66), his wife Adèle Foucher died in Brussels.
In July 1870 (aged 68), the Franco-Prussian War broke out. When Napoleon III’s French army surrendered in September, the people staged a coup d’état and deposed the emperor (the National Guard’s desperate resistance against the Prussian army continued until January 1871). That same year, as Napoleon III’s empire collapsed, Victor Hugo returned home amid the cheers of the people. In February 1871 (aged 69), he was elected to the National Assembly convened to negotiate a peace treaty with Prussia. However, he soon resigned his seat in protest against the annulment of Garibaldi’s election to the Assembly.
Victor Hugo remained in Paris with the citizens even when Prussia besieged the city. During the Paris Commune period from March to May 1871, led by revolutionaries, he grew disillusioned with the bloody slaughter between government troops and Commune forces and stayed in Brussels. He also crossed to Guernsey with Juliette and wrote the historical novel Ninety-Three (1874, age 72), which dealt with the Vendée rebellion during the French Revolution of 1793.
Although he gradually distanced himself from politics after the Paris Commune, he was elected to the Paris Senate in 1874. However, he retired from politics in 1878 (aged 76) after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. Works published during this period include the poetry collection The Terrible Year (1872, aged 70), which sang of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune; the poetry collection The Attitude of a Grandfather (1877, aged 75); ‘The Story of a Crime’ (Parts 1 & 2) (1877–1878), and the poetry collection ‘The Four Points of the Mind’ (1881, age 79).
Victor Hugo lived to the ripe old age of 83, enduring the sorrow of outliving his children, his wife, and his lifelong lover, Juliette. His youngest daughter Adèle Hugo, who survived him, suffered lifelong misfortune, afflicted with aphasia and mental instability following the shock of a romantic rejection in her twenties.
On May 22, 1885, Victor Hugo, the national poet and champion of the Republic, passed away from pulmonary congestion, with his granddaughter at his side. The funeral of Victor Hugo, the great writer revered by the entire nation alongside Voltaire, was held as a state funeral on June 1. His coffin was placed beneath the Arc de Triomphe before being laid to rest in the Panthéon the next day, followed by two million people.
The monumental work Les Misérables, comprising five volumes, was published simultaneously in Brussels and Paris in 1862. The work received an explosive response immediately upon publication, with the first volume selling out within a week of release. People reportedly lined up outside bookstores to buy it. Since then, for 150 years to this day, Les Misérables has remained a bestseller and a perennial favorite. In France, it is the second most widely read book after the Bible.
The original draft of Les Misérables (Les Misérables, The Wretched Ones), titled Les Misères (The Misery), was structured as ‘The Story of a Saint’, ‘The Story of a Man’, ‘The Story of a Woman’, and ‘The Story of a Doll’. The protagonist’s name was not Jean Valjean but Jean Tréjean.
Begun in 1845, the writing of Les Misérables was interrupted after the February Revolution of 1848. It was resumed on the island of Guernsey in 1860 and completed as Les Misérables in June 1861.
Jean Valjean, a poor pruner raised by his sister, found himself responsible for feeding seven orphaned nieces and nephews after his sister’s husband died when he was twenty-five. That winter, at twenty-six, with food running out in the bitter cold, Jean Valjean broke a bakery window, stole a loaf of bread, and fled, only to be caught. Sentenced to five years for stealing a loaf of bread, his sentence is extended due to four escape attempts, resulting in nineteen years of imprisonment.
After his release, Jean Valjean arrives in Digne, only to be rejected and driven away from every restaurant and inn because of his criminal record. Starving and shivering with cold, he wanders the streets until he knocks on the door of Bishop Myriel’s house, where he receives warm hospitality. Yet, his dark nature still lingering, Jean Valjean steals the silverware while everyone sleeps and flees, only to be caught by the police. Brought before the police to confirm the theft, Bishop Myriel instead hands Jean Valjean a silver candlestick, urging him to use it to become an honest man.
Feeling a mercy and love he had never known before from the bishop, Jean Valjean is transformed into a completely new person from that day forward. He drifts through several cities before settling in Montreuil-sur-Mer under the name Madeleine. There, he runs a factory, bringing immense wealth to the region through innovative inventions. He establishes schools, clinics, and orphanages, practicing charity, and becomes a prominent figure, even rising to become mayor.
Meanwhile, Fantine, a female worker at his factory, is expelled when it becomes known she is an unwed mother. Forced to leave her young daughter with others and send monthly child support, she sells her blonde hair and teeth to raise money for her child’s upkeep, eventually resorting to selling her body.
Mayor Madeleine, who belatedly learns of the poor woman Fantine’s plight, takes her daughter Cosette in and vows to take responsibility for both of them. However, it is revealed that he is the ex-convict Jean Valjean. Immediately after witnessing Fantine’s death at the infirmary, he is captured by Javert and sent back to prison.
While performing hard labor aboard a ship, Jean Valjean escapes after a chance incident. To fulfill his promise to Fantine before her death, he takes her daughter Cosette. Jean Valjean, who had never known love or been loved in his life, feels a sublime love for Cosette as he raises her, becoming both her father and mother.
Meanwhile, Javert’s pursuit continues, forcing Jean Valjean to move Cosette from place to place, living in hiding. One day, Cosette and a young man named Marius meet in the park and fall in love.
In 1832, students and citizens demanding a republican government rise in the June Rebellion, erecting barricades against government troops. Marius joins the revolution. Jean Valjean, who had poured out a blind, sublime, almost instinctive love focused solely on Cosette, is plunged into immense loss by Cosette and Marius’s love. Yet he eventually comes to understand their true love. To help Cosette and Marius be together, he enters the barricade, carries the wounded Marius on his back, and escapes through the sewers of Paris. Before this, Jean Valjean also rescues Javert, who had been captured by the revolutionary forces. After escaping the barricade, Jean Valjean is recaptured by Javert, but Javert, who owes him a debt of gratitude, releases him. Javert, who had lived his entire life worshipping law and order, feels the mercy of God, which is stronger than his own principles. After a period of inner conflict, he commits suicide. With his death, Jean Valjean is finally freed from the burden that had weighed him down his entire life.
When Marius and Cosette marry, Jean Valjean decides to free himself from the guilt that has tormented him for so long. He confesses his past to Marius and prepares to leave Cosette’s side. But Jean Valjean, whose sole purpose in life had been Cosette, slowly withers away without her. Only then does Marius realize that Jean Valjean is the man who saved his life and lived a saintly existence. Together with Cosette, Marius finds Jean Valjean, who passes away peacefully as they watch over him.
Les Misérables is the story of a criminal cast out by society who, moved by a bishop’s mercy, transforms into a saintly figure. Within this grand narrative, the miserable lives of 19th-century French peasants, their descent into crime, and the harsh laws and institutions that treat the poor even more coldly are depicted through the stories of various characters. The journey of Fantine, an unwed mother who entrusts her young daughter to others and descends into increasingly wretched circumstances until her death, epitomizes the ‘miserable people’ at society’s very bottom. The cold-hearted Javert, who takes pleasure in catching criminals, represents a state and society that, far from rescuing the poor from their inevitable descent into crime, instead pushes them deeper into the abyss. Here, the thoroughly evil Thénardier lays bare the shameless life of the lowest depths. Unlike those in the shadows of darkness, Cosette and Marius are figures who illuminate people’s hearts with bright light. Cosette awakens Jean Valjean to what it means to love another human being, while Marius extends mercy to the villain Thénardier to the very end.
This work embodies Victor Hugo’s idealistic belief that by eliminating all societal elements that drive people into terrible situations, and by enveloping the unfortunate and wicked in mercy and reforming them, a happy society for all could be created. It also reflects his humanitarian values, which never withdraw affection and compassion from the poor and fallen, the optimistic worldview that ‘there is no absolute evil in this world,’ and the Christian love that seeks to bestow absolute goodness. Here, the turbulent history and social landscape of 19th-century France—including the Battle of Waterloo that sparked the Restoration, the June Uprising of 1832 as one of the continuous revolutions following the French Revolution, and the harsh lives of the impoverished masses—unfolds in a whirlwind, intertwined with countless characters and events. For this reason, the work is described as “a vast world unto itself.”
With its superhuman protagonist and recitative-like narration, this work, rich in epic elements, was treated as poetry rather than a novel at the time of its publication. These poetic elements were also noted. Despite not being universally regarded as the ultimate masterpiece due to its constant digressions—such as the Battle of Waterloo, the origins of the inn’s name and owner, the history of the convent setting, and the Paris sewers—and its sparse psychological portrayal, Jean Valjean’s story continues to captivate audiences across generations with its storm-like emotional impact. This is because deep within the human heart lies an ingrained nature that ceaselessly seeks goodness.
