Les Misérables, Volume 1 of 2 (1862)

Hugo’s gigantic novel is the great bugbear of French literature, lying like a Massif Central across the cultural landscape of 19th century France. Hugo himself is the central peak of French literature, at least in his own estimation. Napoleon is supposed to have said, echoing Louis XIV: La France, c’est moi, and if he didn’t, Hugo certainly would have, and he might have added: La literature, c ‘est moi.

Hugo’s egoism and certitude of his own greatness is legendary. At the heart of his 1866 epic, The Toilers of the Sea, for example, is a huge monogram of Hugo’s initial: the wrecked ship wedged between the two vertical pillars of rock, stranded high and dry by the receding sea: The huge capital H formed by the two Douvres linked by the crossbar of the Durande stood out against the horizon in a kind of crepuscular majesty. Hugo associated himself with majesty, with size. Les Miserables, huge, sprawling, prolix, is Hugo at his most majestic.

In the debates about the purpose of art which were such a feature of 19th century culture, Hugo was on the side of those who believed that art should have a purpose beyond itself. Art for Hugo should subordinate itself to political necessity, which he saw as moral enlightenment, the betterment of humanity, Progress. Art should morally uplift. Art should teach. This view of art is everywhere evident in Les Miserables, with its book length rants on the evils of capital punishment and religious incarceration, the moral depravity of the ancient regime, the evils of poverty, the role of women, the injustices of the penal system, the nature of history, the sociological study of argot, the legitimacy or otherwise of insurrection.

Part of the reason for Shakespeare’s greatness, for Dostoevsky’s also, is that nowhere in their work can you point to a view and say: “This is what the author believes, this is what he wants us to believe.” Shakespeare the man is entirely absent from his plays; Dostoevsky took care to keep his own views out of his novels and never to privilege one view over another. With Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, the reader is always given the role of interpreter and final arbiter between the great dialogues of the plays and novels.

Hugo’s strategy is the opposite. In other writers, it is necessary to always hold in mind the gap between the narrator and the author, who, theoretically, are quite different. In Hugo, the opposite is true. The narrator is always Hugo, and we always know exactly what he intends, what he thinks, and what he means, because he tells us, unambiguously, at length. In the narrative voice, in the same way that Hugo the man positioned himself in the society of his time, Hugo the narrator positions himself as the Great Teacher, the Great Reformer, the Seer of Society, the High Priest of Progress, the Almighty Father. The reader is given the role of student, of disciple, of child, and any movement on the part of the reader towards independent thought, towards personal interpretation, is strictly prohibited by the narrative voice. This takes place on the level of content and on the level of language, as we can see if we look in more detail at his style....

Read the full review on The Lectern. ( )

The question that kept coming up as I read this was, why is this a classic? Is it its length? Certainly, it's quite as long as War and Peace and Middlemarch. Longer, in fact. Wow. Impressive.

The truth is, I didn't finish this book, but abandoned it halfway through. Everything started to just be more of the same, and still more of the same, and yet more of the same still. I usually roll my eyes when people indignantly say that a book could have been written at half its length and lose nothing - usually I think this opinion belongs to someone who reads for plot alone, and I pity them from my Higher-Art-Than-Thou viewpoint for missing all the many other glorious reasons one reads a book. But this is one exception.

On reading Les Miserables, I felt as if I was stuck in a room with Victor Hugo. He was sitting well back in his chair with his hands on his head and one ankle resting on the other knee, and he was holding forth at great and unecessary length on all his opinions, prejudices and advice-to-the-less-learned. This book is not so much a book, as Hugo pinning you down and telling you all the deep thoughts he had while sitting alone in the pub the night before. And the pity of it is, Hugo is not George Eliot, or E.M Forster, or any of the many other writers I understand use the novel to present their insightful ideas and philosophies. The sad fact is, Hugo is simply a prejudiced and strong-minded old man.

At first I enjoyed it. I liked his digressions (still do prefer them to the actual story) and liked arguing with his opinions in my head. Meeting his type of person in real life can be entertaining, even endearing, in small doses. If Les Miserable had been half its length, I would be prepared to accept its place as a classic. As it is... again I ask: why?

As a P.S. I will add - I am sure reading it in English is at least half the reason I didn't love it as so many people do. I believe the original French is full of subtle word-play and beauty that can't be transferred to English. If I ever become fluent in French, I shall revisit Friend Hugo and see what I think of him then.

A stunning read, given that it is a doorstop-sized nineteenth-century novel with a cast of thousands. Dickens would make this story long-winded and turgid, with the sort of word-count padding you expect from hack writers of a later era; Hugo gives you exactly the information you need to portray the places, the people and the times.

The characters are not in any way idealised; Valjean is tragic, Javert is obsessed, Fantine drifts into prostitution as the victim of a rich kid and really remains a victim for the rest of her life, and Thénardier is an utter bastard. (If the well-known musical has a fault, it's that it sets out to make Thénardier and his wife lovable rogues, and they are anything but.)

All this is set against the background of major events, all of which are depicted with an almost journalistic immediacy. In the end, the major characters get what they deserve; Valjean gets absolution of a sort, Javert's obsession drives him to suicide when the truth of Valjean's goodness is no longer avoidable, and Thénardier gets a comfortable living on a plantation in the West Indies but dies a (hopefully) nasty death years down the line from a tropical disease.

Yes, I hate Thénardier; and that says something about the characterisation, because I don't normally do hate. And he isn't even a real person! ( )