The Influence Of Cosette, The Light Of Jean Valjean

1168 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Reactions and criticisms of the novel Les miserables

Cosette, the light of Jean Valjean’s life
In the book Les Miserables by Victor Hugo we are introduced to two characters, a father named Jean Valjean and a daughter named Cosette. Before Cosette comes into Jean Valjeans life, he is a convict, a thief but then a Bishop gives him the candlesticks he was trying to steal and lets him off with some wise words and basically gives him a second chance to change his life and make it better. Cosette, who is left by her mother to people who do not even try to love her gets rescued by Jean Valjean. Like the Bishop gave Jean Valjean a second chance, Jean Valjean gave Cosette a chance at a happy life and in return Cosette contributed to Jean Valjean changing for good.
Cosette had a childhood because of Jean …show more content…

Jean Valjean starts noticing that she is is caring for her appearance more and wanting to dress up and go out more. He sees that Cosette is happy, but also thinks about that maybe her happiness is not coming from but from someone else. Maybe someone else is making Cosette happy and maybe Cosette loves that person more than Jean Valjean. That sacred Jean Valjean, could there be someone else? Yes there is someone else, and his name was Marius. Cosette and Marius meet and they confess their love for each other (Hugo 187). Jean Valjean does not approve of this realationship, but eventually gives in. Cosette and Marius get in engaged (Hugo248) and they get married a few months later (Hugo 254), Jean Valjean leave the wedding early. A few weeks later Jean Valjean tells Marius everything, all his secrets and Marius decied its best for him not to see Cosette (Hugo 259-261). Marius ends up telling Jean Valjean that he can visit Cosette each night for an hour, he does this but feels different. A new life starts taking possession of Cosette for she is marries now (Hugo 267) and she sees Jean Valjean less and less. Jean Valjean is happy that Cosette is living a happy life, but at the same time he is sadden by the fact that Cosette no longer needs his protection because she has Marius now. Eventually Jean Valjean stops visting Cosette (Hugo 270) and he gets sick. The doctors say that it is …show more content…

They can impact their life better more. They can give the reader an extra push and help them be content. Cosette opened Jean Valjeans eyes, and helped him become better than he was. Although it was hard at the end it was worth it. They were not family but they meant so much to each

Show More
Related

  • Terror in the French Revolution

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Was the Terror of 1793/4 inherent from the revolutions outset or was it the product of exceptional circumstance?

    Read More

  • Margaret of Anjou: Monstrous Monarch or Quintessential Queen?

    1352 Words  | 3 Pages

    As child, Margaret was raised primarily by her mother and grandmother; her father had been taken hostage in Dijon, Burgundy when she was only a few years old. With her mother in charge of her education, Margaret was able to study with the same tutors who taught her brothers until the age of fift...

    Read More

  • A Character Analysis Of Meursault In The Stranger By Albert Camus

    375 Words  | 1 Pages

    Efforts to engage Meursault in secular structures of meaning are equally futile. When Meursault's boss offers Meursault a position in Paris, he expects Meursault to embrace the opportunity for career advancement. Meursault, though, lacks all ambition and turns down the boss' offer without considering it. As a student, Meursault recalls, "I had lots of ambitions…But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered." When Marie asks Meursault whether he wants to marry her, she expects him to take the institution of marriage seriously. Yet Meursault is indifferent towards it, thinks "it didn't mean anything" to love a person, and agrees to marry Marie simply because she wants to marry him. Though he grows fond of her, he doesn't cultivate any attachment to her more meaningful than superficial attraction. Throughout his trial, Meursault is equally bemused by the meaninglessness of the justice system and finds its attempts to impose rational, meaningful structure on his actions ridiculous. He considers the guilty verdict he eventually receives entirely arbitrary, and describes its "certainty" as "arrogant."

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Antoinette's I Was Bridesmaid When My Mother Married Mr. Mason

    170 Words  | 1 Pages

    Annette: This is Antoinette’s mother who provides a negative perspective on her daughter’s life. She always needed to be liked by everyone and this personality trait rubbed off on Antoinette, which reflected on her in a negative way later in the novel. “I was bridesmaid when my mother married Mr. Mason in Spanish Town...their eyes slid away from my hating face” (36). Neglected from her family and being less favored by her mother to her brother, Antoinette lives a life without love and peace, but with a lack of respect and with a husband who finds pleasure in asserting his male dominant power over his wife. Unfortunately, Antoinette has got many of her mother’s undesirable characteristics and possibly could have inherited the mental illness

    Read More

  • Wide Sargasso Sea Epiphany

    928 Words  | 2 Pages

    Often, Rochester tricks her into answering questions in a way he deems unsuitable, simply to chastise her. He does this when he questions her about her mother’s death and again when he calls her dressing habits into question (Rhys). Rochester adds to his horrible treatment of Antoinette when he has sex with Amèlie. According to Rajeev Patke, “[h]er husband’s deliberately casual adultery with a coloured servant in Antoinette’s house distastes and dispossesses her of the only place she had learned to identify herself with as her natural habitat and patrimony” (192). Serving as the ultimate betrayal and reinforcing the bitterness and trust issues that Annette drilled into her head, Antoinette becomes more unstable. Edward Said expresses that “the exile experience constitutes an “unhealable rift between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home”” (137). As the couple’s relationship becomes more and more precarious Rochester taunts Antoinette’s already fragile state. Rochester’s feelings of entrapment or rather his feelings of self-pity, pressed further by his question, “[p]ity. Is there none for me? Tied to a lunatic for life-A drunken lying lunatic-gone her mother 's way (Rhys

    Read More

  • Girl Stolen 'And Saving Ceecee Honeycut' By

    526 Words  | 2 Pages

    Situations can affect people in various ways;positively or negatively.In the case of Griffin from "Girl Stolen", and CeeCee from "Saving CeeCee Honeycut", the effect is positive. They both face struggles most would not be able to recover from.With the help of other main characters in the novel, Griffin and CeeCee develop into better characters and show they can overcome these hardships.

    Read More

  • The Depiction of Male/Female Relationships in Tolstoy's War and Peace

    1916 Words  | 4 Pages

    The relationship shared by Pierre and Helene is best described as a lustful charade. It is no coincidence that Pierre, one of the most introspective characters in the novel, first marries a shallow, inwardly-ugly adulterer. His first recorded attitude towards Helene is one of admira...

    Read More

  • The Insignificance of Women in Camus’ The Stranger

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the text, Meursault uses Marie simply as a means to an end to satisfy his own ambitions, without very much regard to her own inner feelings and aspirations. “That evening Marie came by to see me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said it didn’t make any difference to me and that we could if she wanted to. Then she wanted to know if I loved her. I answered the same way I had t...

    Read More

  • The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

    670 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is quite ridiculous how much Marguerite’s happiness lies in her husband Sir Percy Blakeney alias the Scarlet Pimpernel. One of Marguerite’s major struggles throughout the story is getting him to love her again, and until she did she could not sleep peacefully. Her husband who goes to France to save the aristocrats is in danger of being guillotined on his missions. Armand, her brother and a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel who is entrusted to bring the fugitives to Pere Blanchard’s Hut, is in equal danger of execution. Yet Marguerite cares only for the husband she realized she loved the night before, while completely ignoring the brother who helped raise her. “My brother!” she cries when Sir Andrews points this out. “Heaven help me but I fear I had forgotten.” She later screams, “No! no! no! no! Oh, God in heaven! this cannot be! let Armand's blood then be on her own head! let her be branded as his murderer! let even he, whom she loved, despise and loathe her for this, but God! oh God! save him at any cost!” The very man whom she called “the only being in the world who has loved . . . truly and constantly,” the man for whose safety she spied on the Scarlet Pimpernel, is cast aside for the foppish husband she fell in love with only yesterday. Marguerite’s life is centered on Percy to the point ...

    Read More

  • An Evaluation on the Different Scenes within the Movie Color Purple

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    Moments in life make up a person as scenes make up a movie. Celie had to suffer all her life. She gave up on some of the joys that family could have brought. She was abused and beaten because of the way she looked. No one looked underneath to see what she had to offer. Her sister knew, but she was taken away and Shug also learned, but she never stayed. It wasn’t until Celie understood her worth that it made a difference. Once, Celie knew she could do anything she wanted, that was when she made a difference. She chose a better life and became something. She became something without the help of the people that hated her. When we fight, fight for our rights and freedoms that is when we can become something that others envy. We have to love ourselves before someone can truly love us.

    Read More

  • Antoinette At Coulibri By Jean Rhys: A Literary Analysis

    863 Words  | 2 Pages

    After the fire at Coulibri, Antoinette endures a rough time in her life, for her mother rejects her and Pierre dies. Antoinette’s mind is full of fear, sadness and instability. This trauma is clearly shown in the convent that she attends for the remainder of her adolescence. Upon entry, Antoinette takes immediate note and puts extra emphasis on describing the stones in the school. Taking note of the “cool stoneflagged room” (Rhys, 28) and providing this as the initial description suggests that she is at first uncomfortable. Having just been aggressively confronted by two residents of the island Antoinette is shaken (Rhys, 27). In order to further convey Antoinette’s distrustful mind, Rhys describes the uninviting and cold stones of the convent thus allowing the reader to more deeply

    Read More

  • Les Miserables, Theme (forgiveness, Self Sacrifice, And Courage)

    991 Words  | 2 Pages

    Secondly, we come to the element of Self-Sacrifice. This is also another widely used theme in Les Miserables. One such example of this element is with Valjean. He lets Marius and Cosette marry, and for a while, he seems all right with that fact. Later on however, he goes to Marius, and confesses to his past. He tells Marius his whole story, and thinks it best if he never sees Cosette again. Marius agrees…but allows Valjean the occasional visit. Only at the end, does Marius realize what a good man Valjean is…and by then it was too late. Valjean dies shortly after Marius and Cosette visit him to ask him to come back and live with them.

    Read More

  • Albert Camus' The Outsider

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    The concept of attachment is associated with many female characters throughout the novel. Marie, clearly shows attachment for Meursault as she delights in physical contact, enjoys kissing in public and engages in casual sex. Furthermore, her visit to Meursault in jail consolidates her sentimental longing for him. Even evidence of Meursault’s mother showing attachment to men can be seen. When the warden of the nursing home was asked if Meursault’s mother “reproach[ed] [Meursault] for having sent her to the home ... he said, ‘Yes’” (Camus, 86). When she looses the last male figure in her life, she soon found another – Thomas Perez. “[Thomas Perez] and your mother had become almost inseparable”(18), said the keeper of the nursing home. Marie also is unable to let go of Meursault even after he turns down marriage proposals, refuses to say that he loves her and goe...

    Read More

  • The Transformation of Jean Valjean Exemplified in Les Miserables

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    All humans have different morals that change based on their environment and circumstance. Jean Valjean, in the novel Les Miserables(1961), changes from someone with confused morals to a man with more morals than most whom with respect learns to love and share.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Main Characters in Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

    807 Words  | 2 Pages

    Without their roles in the book there would not be a book. They play important parts, and they made it interesting, and fin to read. They deserve their own scrapbook because they have such an important role in the book. With them there would not be a book to read.

    Read More

More about The Influence Of Cosette, The Light Of Jean Valjean

Open Document