The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was of hatred of human law,
that hatred, which, if not be checked in its growth by some providential event,
becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race and
then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure
some living being, it matters not who. (23)
Additionally, “ he questioned himself if human society could have the right alike to crush its members, in one case by its unreasonable carelessness, and in the other by its pitiless care”(21). After being released from prison, Valjean went to all the inns, but everyone, knowing that he was an ex-convict, refused him, except the bishop. The bishop represents charity and love. When Valjean first met the bishop, the bishop said,
You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name, but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; be welcome. And do not thank me; do not tell me that I take you into my house. This is the home of no man, except him who needs asylum. I tell you, who are a traveler, that you re more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. (15-16)
The bishop didn’t look at him as a convict, but rather called him “My Brother”(16). Later, when the bishop found out that Valjean stole his silver, he wasn’t upset, but rather offered all of his silver to Valjean and told him, “ Forget not, never forget that you have promised me to use this silver to become an honest man”(30). As a result, the bishop gave Valjean hope, and instilled in him the ability to love, care, and help others. Ultimately, Valjean couldn’t have changed without the help of the bishop, and it is society that causes man to either be good or evil.
Victor Hugo, through Javert, conveys the notion that in European society there is a disregard for the livelihood of the people in order to uphold the letter of the law. Javert, a police inspector, “was a compound of two sentiments, very simple and very good in themselves, but he almost made them evil by his exaggeration of them: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; in his eyes theft, murder, all crimes, were all forms of rebellion. In his strong and implicit faith he included all who held any function in the state”(47). Javert lived “ a life of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity; never any amusement”(48). His life had no meaning rather then to uphold the law and prosecute any perpetrators. Also, "his hatred for the gypsy race to which he belonged"(47), at points blurred and distorted the truth. One such example of this distortion of truth was in the situation where "he had seen, there in the street, society represented by a property holder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was an outlaw and an outcast. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen"(61). Truthfully, the perpetrator was the “citizen”, but unfortunately Fantine, the prostitute, was accountable. Moreover,
Javert personifies justice, light, and truth, in their celestial function as destroyers of evil. He was surrounded and supported by infinite depths of authority, reason, precedent, legal conscience, the vengeance of the law, all the stars in the firmament; he protected order, he hurled forth the thunder of the law, he avenged society, he lent aid to the absolute; he stood erect in a halo of glory; there was in his victory a reminder of defiance and of combat; standing haughty, resplendent, he displayed in full glory the superhuman beastliness of a ferocious archangel. (113)
Hugo exposes Javert’s belief of Moral Absolutism; furthermore, Javert’s psyche, which personifies him as the “evil of good”(113), exposes the negative affects that society imposes on the human nature. When he was going to arrest Valjean, “Javert felt something horrible was penetrating his soul, admiration for a convict. Respect for a galley slave, can that be possible?”(464). Through Javert’s whole life he believed in nothing “besides tribunals, sentences, police, and authority”(464), but now he realized that “there was always a certain amount of internal rebellion” in him, and therefore everything that had meaning to him, all his “ideas [,] were overturned”(464). Hugo reveals the unfortunate problem in European society where there is more of a concern for the letter of the law than for morality of the people.
In Les Miserables, Victor Hugo reveals the romantic sensibility in which romantic writers seek to expose through the debasement and dehumanization of lower-class women in society, and through “the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night”. In European society the degradation and dehumanization of lower-class women was as accepted and normal as “the holy law of Jesus Christ”(58). Everybody in European society believed “that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This was a mistake. It still exists, but it weighs now only upon the women, and it is called prostitution”(58). The immature young men of the higher class in European society, as well as the adult men of the higher class “despise women” and live a life of a purely materialistic essence. Similarly to woman, children in European society were also faced with many problems. Marius believes that “he who has seen the misery of man only, has seen nothing, he must see the misery of woman; he who has seen the misery of woman only, has seen nothing, he must see the misery of childhood”(253). The harsh treatment of children in European society is depicted through Cosette. When Cosette lived with Thenardier, she was deprived of her childhood. Thinking that she was a slave child, Cosette had low self-esteem and thought of herself as displeasing and ugly. Therefore, she felt as if the entire world was against her. When she was in the dark forest, “the immensity of night confronted this little creature. On one side, the infinite shadow on the other an atom”(135). Furthermore, “Forests are apocalypses; the beating of the wings of a little soul makes an agonizing sound under their monstrous vault”(136). Cosette feels entrapped in an environment of “ spiritual darkness” and feels overwhelmed by the “immensity of night”. She is surrounded by coldness as “ she looked with despair into the darkness where nobody was”(135). She was deprived of a loving and nurturing environment and instead “the nocturnal tremulousness of the forest wrapped her about completely”(135). Hugo suggests “darkness makes the brain giddy. Man needs light; whoever plunges into the opposite of day feels his heart chilled. When the eye sees blackness, the mind sees trouble. In an eclipse, in night, in the sooty darkness, there is anxiety even to the strongest. Nobody walk at night in the forest without trembling. You feel something hideous, as if the soul were amalgamating with the shadow. This penetration of the darkness is inexpressibly dismal for a child”(137). Hugo successfully depicts the harsh and horrifying reality of women and children in European society.
