Who are the Les Miserables?

[Ajoy]

Hi,

Who exactly are the Les Miserables mentioned in the book? Does it actually refer to the Thenardiers? I faintly recollect some passage in the book that refers to them as the 'Les Miserables', unless I am mistaken?

Cheers

[Feer]

The human subject to extreme necessity is driven to the limit of its resources, and to misfortune for all who pass this way.
Labour and wages, food and shelter , courage and will to them all is lost. Daylight merges with shadow and darkness in their hearts hard ; and in the midst of this darkness the man takes advantage of the weakness of women and children and forcing them to ignominy. After that fits all horror. The enclosed desperation among some flimsy walls accommodates the vice and crime ...
They seem totally depraved , corrupt , vile and hateful ; but it is very rare that those who have reached as low have not been degraded in the process also comes a point where the unfortunate and the infamous are grouped , merged into one fateful world.
They are "Les Miserables" , the outcasts , the homeless. Victor Hugo.

[Ajoy]

Feer wrote: "The human subject to extreme necessity is driven to the limit of its resources, and to misfortune for all who pass this way.
Labour and wages, food and shelter , courage and will to them all is los..."

Yes the same passage, but it follows some thing about the Thenardiers, hence my doubt if it was a specific description of them.

[Feer]

Depends on how you look, for me; all some point in history were :miserable" Maybe the Thernadier a little more tha others.

[[deleted user]]

It's all those who are miserable, but especially those who are crushed by the French legal and social systems of the time. The poor and hungry, the unemployed and poorly compensated, the powerless and unprotected. First, Valjean before his first imprisonment, driven to steal a loaf of bread for not just himself but his dependents too. Then, Valjean in prison, paying too much for a small crime. Then, Valjean out of prison, kicked out of inns for his yellow passport even when he has the means to pay. Then, Fantine, who pays all the rest of her life for having been seduced by a feckless law student. Then Cosette, who pays for not having respectable parents. It goes on and on.

[Alex]

The book is not at all meant to be about "these particular Miserables over here," but rather all of those human beings who have suffered under tyranny and injustice. Which is almost everyone at some point or another. Aside from the specific characters he follows, I think Hugo's long digressions on Pariasian and French life, the wars and the courts of rulers, and all the rest are meant to illustrate this. Then Valjean, Cosette, Fantine, the Thenardiers and all the rest are object lessons of this larger theme.

[Anna]

All of them.

[Sarah]

Feer: wow. That's pretty epic.

Everyone is miserable in this story, or has been connected by some kind of hardship or misery. Although I always think it's strange to Cosette miserable, or at least once she grew up. She found true love, while poor Eponnine died tragically for her unrequited love.

[Rick]

Anyone who is not the Aristocracy!

[Alex]

I just had a thought about Cosette and why she is a "miserable" despite her relatively charmed life once Valjean enters the picture. Despite all the affluence and love he provides her with, she is missing a big part of her life with regards to her mother and the secrets of her birth--an absence that is enforced by the stigma associated with the choices her mother had to make to care for her in absentia. She is not able to truly shed the label of "miserable one" until the end of the book, when Valjean's confession affords her the opportunity to come to terms with that chapter of her mother's history.

[Sage]

I suppose almost all the character in 'Les Mis' are miserable, but the ones who always struck me as "The Miserables" are the Thenardiers. Not because they're poor and wretched, ( after all, most of the characters are, but because they have completely turned away from the light and only live to serve themselves. They are poor and wretched in soul, and that's what makes them truly miserable.