Transcript Les Misérables

Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo: Biography
• Born February 26, 1802
• His father, General Joseph Leopold
Hugo, rose through the ranks of Napoleon’s citizen
army.
• Victor’s mother decided not to subject her sons to
the difficulties of army life, settling in Paris to raise
them.
• Mme. Hugo became the mistress to her husband’s
commanding officer, General Lahorie, who was a
father figure to Hugo and his brothers until Lahorie’s
execution in 1812.
Victor Hugo: Writer
• Hugo won 1st place in a national poetry contest at age
17.
• After living in miserable poverty for a year, Hugo won a
pension of 1,000 francs a year from Louis XVIII for his
first volume of poetry.
• In 1830, Hugo became one of the leaders of a group of
Romantic rebels who were trying to loosen the hold of
classical literature in France.
• During the next 15 years, he wrote 6 plays, 4 volumes of
verse, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Victor Hugo: Family
• Hugo married Adele Foucher in 1822.
• Hugo’s brother Eugene was in love with Adele. Eugene
went insane at their wedding and was never the same
again.
• Victor and Adele’s children include Leopold-Victor,
Charles-Victor, Adele, and Leopoldine.
• In 1831, Adele became romantically involved with a
friend of Victor’s, and Victor became involved with the
actress Juliette Drouet in 1833.
• Drouet became his unpaid secretary and traveling
companion for the next 50 years.
• Leopoldine was drowned in a sailing accident along with
her unborn child and husband.
Victor Hugo: Politics
• Hugo was a moderate republican who was made a
Peer of France in 1845.
• After the Revolution of 1848 and the founding of the
Second Republic, he was elected a deputy of the
Constitutional Assembly.
• In 1851 when Louis Napoleon abolished the
Republic and re-established the Empire, Hugo
risked execution trying to rally workers of Paris
against the new Emperor.
• His efforts failed and he had to escape to Brussels,
staying in exile for the next decade.
Victor Hugo: Exile
• Hugo spent his exile on the islands of Jersey and
Guernsey with his wife and children as well as Mme.
Drouet.
• During these years, he wrote satires about Louis
Napoleon, returned to his poetry, and published
several novels including Les Miserables, which he
had begun years earlier.
• Hugo and his family conducted séances and
contacted people living and dead (including
Shakespeare, whom Hugo revered, and Emperor
Napoleon III, whom he hated).
Victor Hugo: Les Misérables
• When Les Misérables was published in Brussels in
1862, it was an immediate popular success in spite
of negative reaction by critics, who considered it
overly sentimental, and the government, who
banned it.
• The year Les Misérables was published, Hugo
started offering a Tuesday dinner to as many as 50
poor children a week.
Victor Hugo: Death
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Hugo’s sons died in 1871 and 1873.
Mme. Hugo died in 1868.
Mme. Drouet died in 1882.
Hugo died in 1885 at age 83.
Although he left instructions that his funeral be simple,
his funeral in Paris was an impressive display of national
mourning. Over 3 million people attended, following his
cortege to the Pantheon, where he was buried amid
France’s greatest men.
• He held back a quarter of his work from publication to be
released every few years for decades after his death.
Hugo wrote the longest
sentence in literature…
”The son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing
all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the
value of a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the
duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate
displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirable
representative of the “middle class,” but outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he
had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly
the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in
private; reputed, but not proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered, but not very
sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived
statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without
mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones;
unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks;
making France fear Europe and Europe France; Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more
authority than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely
repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes;
minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate
against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to
the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to Utopia, to chimeras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity;
a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling; brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in
the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in
influence, in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very attentive to
minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious
memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of resemblance with Caesar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates,
proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a
word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating
himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the
immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the
founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood
how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe, — Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent
men of his century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the sentiment of what
is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful.”
…and the shortest?
• Victor Hugo almost set the world’s record for short letter
writing. A month or so after the octavo edition of Les
Miserables was published, he wrote to his publisher the
following:
?
Victor Hugo
• Hurst & Blackett, the London publishers, not to be
outdone by the master, produced the world’s shortest
letter when they wrote back to Hugo on the firm’s
letterhead and did not sign it. Nobody could write
anything shorter that would convey any meaning:
!
,
What does Les Misérables mean?
“misérables”
(Fr. noun)
(1) poor wretches
(2) scoundrels
or villains
What’s in a name?
Even the title of this book has symbolic
significance.
In Victor Hugo’s mind, the double meaning
of “Miserables” reflected social reality in
19th century France.
There was often a thin line between
desperate poverty and the life of a
criminal.
Les Miserables Introduction
This classic French epic was written and
published by Victor Hugo in 1862.
The novel paints a vivid picture of Paris after
the French Revolution and the controversial
rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Hugo presents the city as a microcosm of the
world.
He explores the challenges faced at every level
of society during this time, especially the
injustices endured by the poor.
Victor Hugo – Author’s Purpose
In explaining his epic
novel, Les Miserables,
Victor Hugo famously said:
“I condemn slavery, I banish
poverty, I teach ignorance,
I treat disease, I lighten the
night, and I hate hatred
That is what I am, and that
is why I have written Les
Miserables.”
Politics in Les Miserables
Les Misérables is set in the time period
between 1789 and 1848 and explains the
era in which France’s political structures
shifted multiple times.
Throughout the struggle between those in
power, Hugo makes the point that the
plight of the poor improved very little.
Les Misérables
Historical Background
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French Revolution
Reign of Terror
Rule of Napoleon Bonaparte
Restoration of the Monarch (Bourbons)
French Revolution
• The French Revolution (1789–1799) was a
period of political and social upheaval and
radical change in the history of France, during
which the French government, previously an
absolute monarchy with privileges for the
aristocracy and Catholic Church, underwent
radical change based on Enlightenment
principles of citizenship and inalienable rights.
• These changes were accompanied by violent
turmoil, which included the execution of Louis
XVI and Marie Antoinette. Hugo supported
these revolutionary ideals.
Reign of Terror
• A period of violence that occurred fifty months
after the onset of the French Revolution, incited
by rival political factions within the new French
Republic.
• It was marked by mass executions of "enemies
of the revolution." Estimates vary widely as to
how many were killed, with numbers ranging
from 20,000 to 40,000. Most “enemies” were
royalty, aristocrats, or loyal bourgeois.
• The guillotine ("National Razor") became the
symbol of a string of executions.
Napoleonic Era
Several short-lived
governments follow the
revolution, including the
Directory, which was
intended as a representative government.
However, Napoleon
Bonaparte overthrew
appointed leaders
through a coup d'état in
1800. (Hugo born 1802.)
Napoleonic Wars
• Most historians agree that the Napoleonic wars
were a continuation of the wars sparked by the
French Revolution. They refer to the conflict
between Napoleon’s French empire and various
European alliances.
• French power conquered most of Europe but
collapsed rapidly after the disastrous invasion of
Russia in 1812. Napoleon goes into exile.
• Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete
military defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
(This is when Les Miserables begins!)
Second Restoration/
Bourbon Dynasty
• From 1816 to 1830, the rule of France
returned to the heir monarch – King Louis
XVIII and then Charles X.
• During this time, the French established a
constitutional monarchy where the king
governed alongside an elected parliament.
Revolution Continues
• By 1830, the July Revolution occurred, pushing
Charles X from the throne and replacing him
with Louis Phillipe the “citizen king.”
• When Louis Phillipe dissatisfied the poor and
working class, they staged an uprising in 1832
(referred to as the Liberals’ Rebellion or the
Barricades in the novel).
• Revolts continue to disrupt politics in France for
several more decades. The country struggles to
establish a government that truly ensures
everyone’s right to “liberty and equality.” Hugo’s
writing focuses on the workers and individuals
who made great sacrifices to reform the country
and build a democracy.
Les Misérables: The Story
Hugo divided his story into five parts. He named
each part after a major character.
The storyline of each major character develops
separately but eventually intersects with the
other characters.
Together, these characters represent the society
of Paris in the early 1800s. Each character takes
on a different social role or represents a social
issue from this time period.
Les Misérables and Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement of
the late 18th and early 19th century that put the individual at
the center of the world and of art. Romanticism valued
emotional and imaginative response to reality. It evolved
partly as a reaction to the Enlightenment’s emphasis on
restraint and logic.
Traits of Romanticism
Les Miserables is a characteristic Romantic
work in both theme and form.
• In theme, the novel glorifies freedom of thought and
spirit and makes a hero of the average individual.
• In form, the novel offers a descriptive, passionate
writing style rather than classical restraint. Attention
to detail and “flowery” language are traits of
Romantic literature.
Les Misérables: The Setting
The story begins in several villages on the outskirts of
Paris. Eventually, most of the actions and the characters
revolve around the center of Paris itself.
Hugo explores the life of aristocrats, revolutionaries, and
criminals in Paris. He explores the social hierarchy of the
city by dissecting the physical space of the city. We find
the aristocrats high above in palaces and mansions
while the sewers and catacombs of Paris become the
stage for escaped convicts and revolutionaries.
The city itself is a symbol of society!!