This article explores the literary, philosophical, and religious significance of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. This is an in-depth look at why this masterpiece, which depicts the progress of the human soul, is still a beloved masterpiece.
“Les Misérables” is a masterpiece that needs no further explanation. The fact that this work has been made into a movie more than 30 times clearly shows how much it is loved by many people. That’s not all. Les Misérables has been adapted into a musical several times and is a staple of musicals around the world. That’s why it’s so familiar to people. The name of the main character, Jean Valjean, has become so famous that even people who have not read the novel or seen the musical know it. If you had to choose just one representative bestseller and long-seller from the 19th and 20th centuries, it would probably be Les Misérables. It is said to be the second most widely read book in France after the Bible, so it is truly a classic among classics.
However, there is a strange paradox. Victor Hugo, the author of Les Misérables, is by no means a classicist. He began his literary career by rebelling against classicism. What is classicism? It is a French 17th-century literary movement that believes that there are truths that cannot change no matter how times and circumstances change. It is a literary and artistic movement that believed that there is a desirable human image that transcends the ages. The classicists argued that a great work should feature such a perfected human being as the protagonist of the work. He argued that there are rules in art, and that following those rules is the way to become a good artist.
However, in France, the life of that classicism was very long. Even in the 19th century, classicism was still in full force. At that time, a new literary movement arose in opposition to that classicism, and that was the Romanticism movement. In a nutshell, Romanticism can be seen as a new artistic movement that opposed the absolute truths advocated by Classicism. Romanticists put forward “relativity” against the “absoluteness” of classicists. However, that “relativity” appears in two directions.
One of them is the one that claims temporal relativity. Writers in that position, represented by Stendhal, argue that people’s beliefs and preferences change with the times. The great writers of the classical period were great because they wrote works that suited the tastes of the people of that period, not because they wrote works that would always suit the tastes of the people. What they valued was not eternal and absolute truth, but contemporaneity. The 19th-century French writers had to write works that would suit the tastes of the 19th-century French people. As you may have noticed, the writers who made such claims later went the way of realism. Stendhal’s saying, “A novelist is a man who carries a mirror around with him,” originated from that very idea. So, Stendhal’s romanticism is actually closer to realism.
The other direction emphasizes individual creativity. They are the ones who claim that they should break all the rules of art and draw inspiration from nature themselves. Victor Hugo is a prime example of this. Victor Hugo firmly states that if you model your work after the master, you will inevitably become a mushroom or lichen that parasitizes a large tree. They say that no matter how huge a tree is, it cannot grow into a big tree with its own sap.
The movement values individual sensibility rather than strong human will and values changeable and diverse originality rather than eternal and unchanging universality. The Romantic Movement in the true sense of the word was just that. Victor Hugo, who led the movement, put forward the famous “Gothic Theory.” Gothic is a French word meaning “bizarre” or “grotesque.” The ‘Grotesque Theory’ is the idea that there are no ideal people in this world.
To put it more positively, the ‘grotesque theory’ is the question of whether even the most desirable human being was born that way. There is no such thing as a human being who does not experience conflict and waver. Isn’t it the case that conflict and waver can make a person great? Isn’t a good work supposed to show the true nature of such a person? The “Grotesque Theory” is what I argued.
Such a romantic movement led the French literary world from 1820 to 1850. In other words, French romanticism exerted its power for only about 30 years and then ceded the lead to realism and naturalism. But even after that, there was still one eternal romantic. There was only one person who never gave up being a romanticist and remained a romanticist until his death. That’s Victor Hugo.
Let me say it again. Victor Hugo is a representative romanticist of France. Yet, he is a romanticist who had great conviction, unlike other romanticists. What kind of conviction? It is a conviction for progress.
But let’s not get it wrong. He is not a political progressive. If such an expression is possible, then he is a progressive soul. And all of his works are the fruit of his desperate efforts to demonstrate his belief in such progress of the soul.
Let’s watch “Les Misérables.” “Les Misérables” is a vast novel that contains everything from society, history, philosophy, and religion, but there are clear pillars in this vast novel. The pillar is the soul of a character named Jean Valjean. Victor Hugo also wrote in his work, “The first protagonist of this book is not a person, but infinity, and the human being is the second protagonist.” The protagonist of this novel is not a miserable character who lived in 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 being saved. Victor Hugo describes the process by which the soul is saved as progress. He makes this clear 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 is saved, has a transcendent meaning. Through Marius’s thoughts about Jean Valjean, Victor Hugo shows the core of this work.
“This convict was transforming into Jesus.”
But that Jean Valjean moves us and brings tears to our eyes. He transforms into a transcendent being like Jesus, a great figure that we dare not follow, but the process is so human. This is because the anguish he experiences in the process of advancing his soul is so human.
Jean Valjean, who has spent 19 years in prison, really goes through several crises. He was initially consumed by hatred for the society that had imposed an excessive punishment on him. It was Bishop Marcellin’s forgiveness and mercy that threw him into confusion.
He is confused. Then, there is the great decision he made when he unknowingly extorted a child’s coin, when he was conflicted after hearing that someone had been arrested for his crime, and when he finally turned himself in, when he learned that Cosette and Marius were in love and saved Marius from conflict, and when he revealed his identity and stepped down for their happiness. But before that great decision, there was always a fierce battle. What kind of battle? A battle between the sweet path that seduces you and the path with frightening consequences waiting ahead.
In the work, Victor Hugo describes it as a battle between selfishness and duty. When we are tired of the fight and finally succumb to selfishness and want to take a step back, they say that a powerful wall pushes us back from behind. He says he feels that a sacred shadow is blocking his way.
What is it? It is conscience and God. Victor Hugo’s works move us because God is not only up there, but also deep within us in the name of conscience. This is because it shows that salvation does not come from above, but from our conscience.
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is a religious work. I boldly say so. The fact that Les Misérables is religious does not mean that the work shows the essence of Christianity or that it well illustrates Christian doctrine. It is not to say that Victor Hugo clearly shows that he is a Christian.
Religious in the sense that it shows that the ultimate goal of our lives is the salvation of the soul, and that the mirror that reflects our finite lives is in the invisible. It is religious in the sense that the ultimate meaning of life is not found in visible reality but in an invisible, greater principle.
The fact that he wrote such religious works in the 19th century and remained a romanticist until his death is what makes Victor Hugo great. It means that he never lost his belief that a poet should serve humanity throughout his life.
What was the 19th century like in France? It was a period when humans were most enthusiastic about human reason and the science that human reason had achieved. A French philosopher like Auguste Comte said in a little difficult term, ‘the era of the victory of positivism’. It was an era when many people believed that human reason and faith in science had grown stronger, and that it was possible to build a utopia on earth with human power.
That is the same as saying that the celestial values have all come down to earth. It is like saying that the values that rule this world are all secularized. In other words, it was an era in which religious values were fading. Ironically, the period of victory when faith in human reason reached its peak was also the period when one of the important beliefs of humans was lost. Faith in salvation, faith in the unseen, faith in transcendence, faith in the afterlife. In such an era, how can we not say that he is great for embodying religious values in literary works in the name of humanity and humanitarianism? How can we not desire to be baptized by that greatness?
