Characters

A convict transformed by grace into a saint. Valjean is imprisoned for nineteen years — five for stealing a loaf of bread, fourteen for escape attempts. When the Bishop of Digne shows him mercy, Valjean dedicates his life to becoming a good man. He becomes a factory owner under a false name, then the mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. He rescues Cosette from the Thénardiers and raises her as his daughter. His entire life is an attempt to repay the Bishop's unearned gift. He is one of literature's greatest characters — not because he is perfect, but because he is capable of change.

A police inspector born in a prison — his mother was a fortune-teller, his father a convict. His entire identity is built on the absolute distinction between law and crime, order and chaos. He pursues Valjean across decades with an obsessive certainty that makes him one of literature's most memorable villains. When Valjean spares his life at the barricade — an act of mercy that contradicts everything Javert believes — his worldview collapses. He throws himself into the Seine. His suicide is the suicide of certainty.

A working-class woman abandoned by her lover, Fantine is forced into desperation to support her daughter Cosette. She leaves Cosette with the Thénardiers and takes work at Valjean's factory — where she is fired when her illegitimate child is discovered. She sells her hair (the barber's scissors, the long golden locks falling). She sells her front teeth (the extraction, the horror). She becomes a prostitute. She dies of consumption, believing her daughter is safe. Her story is the novel's indictment of a society that drives the poor to destruction.

Fantine's daughter. Rescued from the Thénardiers by Valjean on Christmas Eve — the scene of the water-bucket in the dark forest is one of the novel's most famous passages. Raised in a convent, Cosette becomes the object of Marius's love and the symbol of innocence preserved. She represents what society owes to its children.

A young lawyer and idealist. His father was a Bonapartist colonel whom Marius never knew; his grandfather is a monarchist who disowned his father. Marius discovers the truth about his father and embraces republicanism. He falls in love with Cosette at first sight in the Luxembourg Gardens. His political idealism is genuine; his debts to Valjean — financial and moral — complicate everything.

The daughter of the novel's villains. She grew up alongside Cosette as a child, but while Cosette was rescued, Éponine was left behind. She loves Marius, who does not love her back. She intercepts a letter meant for Cosette, leads Marius to the barricade, and takes the bullet meant for him. Her death is the novel's most tragic moment — a girl who never had a chance, giving everything for a love that never existed.

The spirit of Paris in miniature. Stolen from his parents (who are, in one of Hugo's bitter ironies, the Thénardiers), Gavroche lives on the streets. He bosses the adult revolutionaries, sleeps inside the elephant statue at the Bastille, and dies singing while collecting bullets from the street during the fighting. His death — mid-song, a bullet silencing his voice — is one of the most famous passages in world literature.

Monsieur and Madame Thénardier are the novel's comic villains — opportunists, thieves, sentimental frauds. They run an inn at Montfermeil where they abuse Cosette while spoiling their own daughters. They reappear throughout the novel as criminals in Paris. They survive everything — the barricade, the law, the revolution — and end up as slave traders in America. They are the cockroaches who will inherit the earth: Hugo's bitter joke about the survival of the worst.