Systemic Denials: revised

this is a revised edition of my archived essay on Les Misérables. 

this revision was more difficult than I expected! It’s been a while since I read the book and I had to brush up on a lot of things I forgot. It’s also difficult to describe abstract concepts. I also think that my thesis is too spread out and I could have split it up into about 2-3 more concise theses. but I didn’t want to do that because I wanted to include the whole point in my original paper in one post.

I mostly focused on organization of my thesis and the flow of ideas. That was my main critique of my original paper. though I actually think I prefer my original version even though it’s messier. 

I had fun revising this. It was a good challenge. There are still a lot of things I’d want to improve, but I want to write about something other than Les Misérables now. I’ve revised as much as I want to.

A common misconception about Les Misérables is that it takes place at the beginning of the French Revolution. I was also under this impression until I read the book. It’s actually set across a few decades in and around Paris a few decades after the Revolution, from the early 1800’s until the (failed) June Rebellion of 1832. In the novel, Victor Hugo follows vulnerable people doing their best to survive in a harsh world. 

Despite the egalitarian promises of the French Revolution a few decades before, many of the characters suffer constant economic and social injustice. He takes special interest in society’s most marginalized and even despised members: people in abject poverty and criminals. Hugo inverses narratives about societal archetypes. A convict is the hero of the novel but is treated as a villain by society. The villain is a police sergeant who is treated the hero by society. That irony is the origin of much of the novel’s tragedy. 

Les Misérables is an explicitly political book, and many of the characters and injustices they face represent Hugo’s criticism of his contemporary society. 

Hugo is interested in the idea that economic and social injustice is largely systemic in nature. Hugo’s characters are stuck in cycles of crime and poverty that they are indirectly forced into by factors outside of their control. Hugo is especially focused on the conditions that push people into the criminal justice system. If Hugo was around today, he would probably resonate with Western Progressive ideas of mass incarceration, the prison-industrial complex, and systemic oppression. 

To Hugo, the tragedy of the criminal justice system is that it treats people as inherently evil. To Hugo, people are inherently good, but once treated as inherently bad, and denied opportunity because of it, act as they are expected to. It is a self-fulfilling cycle with spiritual, political, and economic consequences for the individuals trapped in it as well as the societies that perpetuate it.

Hugo’s messaging is moral as much as its political. Hugo advises that the most meaningful act of political resistance is to regard others with kindness and humanity rather than by social status.

Hugo defines his progressive politics by illustrating how government reform and social services could prevent suffering. Hugo envisions a utopia within the novel in the town of Montreuil-Sur-Mer, a town government that implements Hugo’s ideal policies.

When we first meet Jean Valjean in Vol I, he is a convict on parole. He wears only rags and has no possessions other than a yellow convicts’ passport. Years later, he develops a new technique for producing a popular style of German black glass beads at a fraction of the usual cost. He opens a bead factory that launches his wealth. He becomes a highly respected gentleman known only as Pere “father” Madeleine. He is mayor of the town of Montreuil-Sur-Mer, which is now a new economic hub in the region. 

Montreuil-Sur-Mer is perfect, a utopia and a fantasy. Poverty, unemployment, and crime are non-existent, “Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it”. Montreuil-Sur-Mer is a simulation of what society would look like if it followed Hugo’s political values. The factory provides safe and comfortable working conditions and livable wages. Pere Madeleine guarantees a job at the factory to anyone who asks for one, regardless of their past or status. 

This is antithetical to the yellow passport marking Valjean as a convict on parole after his release from prison. The passport bars Valjean from any legitimate jobs. In Montreuil-Sur-Mer, Pere Madeleine decrees that citizens are to be valued by their personal character, not their legal status. He has one requirement for his constituents: “Be honest men! Be honest women!” 

There is a free childcare center, a free hospital, and quality schools with well-paid teachers. There is no mention of a jail. In Montreuil-Sur-Mer, people have their needs met, so they do not feel the desperation that causes people to commit crime. 

Economic desperation, not personal evil, is the source for criminal action as described in the novel. Valjean enters the criminal justice system when he steals a loaf of bread for his starving younger sister. Hugo is quick to defend Valjean, noting that “According to one statistic, the primary cause of four out of five thefts in London is hunger”. Social services rely on the assumption by government that its constituents are inherently good. Given the opportunity to prosper in Montreuil-Sur-Mer, people do. 

It’s jarring to leave Montreuil-Sur-Mer back to the rest of the Parisian countryside. There, we follow people who have the desire to be good but find themselves in desperate situations that lead them to commit crime and other perceived sins. These sins usually land them in the criminal justice system and shuns them from their communities. 

Legal or personal redemption and forgiveness for crime does not exist. Once someone enters the criminal justice system in Les Misérables, they are sentenced to it for life, despite personal character or the severity of the crime. It is a closed-loop cycle, and systemic marginalization of society’s poorest people. Hugo even names one of the chapters “Systemic Denials” during a sham trial of an innocent former convict falsely accused of being the real Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean experiences this cycle until it is broken by Bishop Myriel (more on that later). The cycle is as follows:

• He commits a crime (stealing bread) out of economic desperation (his sister is starving)
• Valjean is removed from society (prison) 
• Valjean is not not allowed to re-enter society through legitimate work (the yellow passport)
• Valjean commits a crime again, out of economic desperation again, repeating the cycle (Valjean steals Bishop Myriel’s expensive silver candlesticks) 
• Valjean is arrested by the police and is set to be sent back to prison (until the Bishop saves him, breaking the cycle)

Valjean achieves complete moral redemption, builds economic wealth, gains respect in society, and still never truly breaks free from his status as a convict. His time as Pere Madeleine in Montreuil-Sur-Mer was only momentary relief. Once his identity is revealed, he lives in hiding from society for the rest of his life. He loses all status he gained as Madeleine. The policeman Javert relentlessly hunts him down, devoting his career to sending Valjean back to prison.

Despite his unlikely financial success, gifts to his community, excellent moral character, and fatherhood to his adopted daughter, Cosette, his newspaper obituary at the end of his life only describes him as “a convict.” 

If even Jean Valjean is unable to escape the social limitations of the yellow passport, nobody can. The system is impossible to break away from.

Cosette’s mother, Fantine, is also condemned as a criminal despite her pure moral character. Fantine is stuck in the cycle of crime and poverty for most of her short life. When we meet Fantine as a teenager, she is a village girl whose beautiful long blond hair and charming personality give her an in her with upper-class Parisians. Any status and comfort she had is removed as soon as she becomes pregnant with Cosette. Cosette’s gentleman father abandons Fantine immediately. 

Fantine has no means to support her child. She finds a position at the factory in Montreuil-Sur-Mer, and is a good worker. She sends money to Cosette, who is being raised by the abusive Thernardier family in another town. Before long, her coworkers band together to fire her once they discover that she has a child born out of wedlock. 

This is the only footnote to Montreuil-Sur-Mer’s perfection. Madeleine’s government provided systems for opportunity that could have helped her. Social persecution from her community overrode those policies and denied her access. 

Wages at other factories aren’t enough to keep Fantine alive and support Cosette. Fantine exhausts every avenue possible, including selling her trademark long blond hair. The only option left after that is prostitution. Once a known prostitute, she is never allowed a legitimate job again and is entirely shunned by her community. 

Just as Jean Valjean is a hero treated as a villain, Fantine is a damsel in distress treated like a villain. Fantine is arrested for defending herself against an assaulter on the streets of Paris. Begging Javert for forgiveness, Fantine shows that she is aware of the system she’s stuck in, “I had my little Cosette, I was forced to become a bad woman.” We know she is not “bad.” This defense of herself suggests she knows that about herself too. She feels “forced” towards her crimes by factors outside of her control. But Javert addresses her only as a “wretch”, whereas Javert calls her attacker by name, “Monsieur Bamatabois,” an “‘enfranchised owner of real estate” (Hugo 181). 

Social action against Fantine in Montreuil-Sur-Mer overrode positive government policies. But social action can also override overwhelming forces of oppression.

To Hugo, the strongest act of political resistance is kindness. As much as Hugo emphasizes the overwhelming power of the forces in play against Fantine, Valjean, and the rest of France’s lower class that they represent, he also shows how easily that power is weakened by simple acts of compassion. 

Jean Valjean’s escape from incarceration and poverty was not possible without help. The catalyst for his economic success and moral reform was a chance encounter with Bishop Myriel. At the beginning of the novel, Valjean believes “life is a war” and as a result he is selfish and harsh. This worldview makes sense considering that “never since childhood, since his mother, his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word, a look of kindness,”. As a result, Valjean closes off to the world. He is unfriendly and untrusting. 

After his release from prison, Valjean wanders the French countryside towards Paris. He stops at Bishop Myriel’s parish to take shelter for a night. The Bishop is unexpectedly kind. He invites Valjean to dine with him, and is not intimidated by Valjean’s yellow passport or rough mannerisms. Despite the Bishop’s generosity, Valjean steals the Bishop’s silver candlesticks and silverware on the way out. He is quickly caught by the police and about to be returned to prison. But the Bishop intervenes to insist that he gave Valjean the silver as a gift.

From this moment on, Valjean is reborn. He achieves complete moral redemption when he decides not to steal money from an innocent boy, something he would have done without a second thought just before. After meeting the Bishop, Valjean is “no longer capable” of harming another person. For the rest of his life, Valjean is a pure and almost Christ-like figure, reborn as a paragon of virtue and strength. Valjean uses the silver as an initial investment into the factory that would build his wealth in Montreuil-Sur-Mer. It was the Bishop’s forgiveness– not the cruel punishment of the criminal justice system– that reformed Valjean from criminal to saint. 

Valjean pays this kindness forward later on in life to Fantine. Upon meeting Fantine and learning her story, Valjean promises to take care of Cosette and cares for Fantine until her death a few days later. At this point in Fantine’s life, she is entirely miserable. From Valjean’s kindness “... she felt the dissolution and dispersal inside her of the frightful shades of hatred,” (Hugo 182). As Valjean did after meeting the Bishop, Fantine experiences spiritual salvation, “the birth in her heart of something beyond an expression, and indefinable warmth that was joy, trust, love.”. The moment gives her dignity that she is not usually allowed to receive because of designation as a criminal. It is an act of political resistance to treat someone with humanity who society has dehumanized.

Cosette’s husband, Marius, achieves political independence and moral salvation by rejecting society’s persecution of Jean Valjean. Marius is a gentleman and supposed revolutionary. Although never a leader in the movement, he enjoys hanging out with the radical ABC group who would initiate the June Rebellion at a Latin Quarter café in Paris. But when Marius discovers that his beloved father-in-law is a former convict, he shuns him completely. Marius initially acts as expected of his social class. He disregards Valjean’s humanity and adopts a government-imposed label. But at Valjean’s deathbed, Marius embraces Valjean as “an angel.” Marius’ treatment of Valjean would not be considered a sin by his society, Marius rejects his society’s values by asking Valjean for forgiveness, acknowledging that he is the one who committed the sin of prejudice. 

The violent June Rebellion depicted at the end Les Misérables that turn the streets of Les Halles in Paris into a battlefield failed as a political revolution. Little to no political change results from it, and all of its participants die. The most successful revolutions in the novel happen on an individual scale. Simple acts of kindness and humanity can make an entire system seem weak, even if just for one person.