Les Miserables

Charles Darwin once stated, “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” For the duration of the French Revolution, France is veiled in chaos. Destitute men have no opportunities to prosper, women are forced into prostitution to support their families, and children are cloaked in the darkness of hunger, abuse, and dispirit. These misfortunate victims of society are shunned by the wealthy, belittled by the government, and left alone to struggle and suffer in the ruins of France. In Victor Hugo’s novel, Les Miserables, Cosette represents the child atrophied by darkness through her time with the Thenardiers, the beginning of her transformation and the final completion of her alteration. Cosette is a chief example of the ability and endurance of the poor, being able to stand up and move on with life even after years of shattered hope.
To begin, Cosette is drowning in a darkness that is occupying her early life as a child from the scarce and inconsiderate treatment, nourishment, and love from the cruel Thenardiers. In the beginning of Hugo’s novel, Cosette is a petite and young child in rags, constantly sweeping with large miserable eyes always filling up with tears. Her current time with the atrocious caretakers is stunting her mental and physical growth dramatically. She is not fed enough, but she is nevertheless expected to carry out the workload of an adult. Along with stealing Cosette’s precious years of youth, they are also scamming her mother, Fantine, of her hard-earned money for Cosette. Basically, the Thenardiers are treating Cosette as a source of money, seldom caring about the necessary resources to keep up with her fragile health. For example, in the novel, the ...

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...o accept it from Jean Valjean, who has raised her with pure fatherly love. Cosette is reciprocating that feeling, only without knowing it, making the topic foreign to her. Next, while Cosette is receiving unconditional love from her father, she also begins discovering her love for a man. On her daily promenades with Jean Valjean in Luxembourg, Cosette, even without realizing, is starting to become attracted to Marius, a young gentleman. Just one moment of eye contact makes both of them fall in love for the first time. Despite knowing that she is most certainly attracted to Marius, Cosette is still confused from what she is feeling for this stranger. In the novel, the narrator states, “Cosette did not know what love was. She had never heard the word uttered in its earthly sense. She did not now, therefore, what name to give to what she now experienced” (Hugo 254).