iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by The Les Misérables Reading Companion

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

For International Women’s Day, let’s take a look at the women of Les Misérables. Hugo is sometimes (fairly) criticized for not giving as much focus to his female characters as to his male ones. But the women we do get to know in this book are strong and brave, and it’s BECAUSE they’re women. 1/

111

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

I love that you're doing this, thanks for sharing! I've been away from my socials for a bit, but this all looks so interesting!

010

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Thank you for listening! I'm glad you're enjoying it!

000

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

I wish Javert’s story ended differently. I wish he could have a conversion experience like we see other characters have, that Hugo is right that a locomotive can have a road to Damascus. That’s how he could start making things better. 10/10

010

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Let me not be subtle: if seeing the victims of your government piling up alarms you, even if that's for the first time, it’s possible, today, to begin to think differently. Javert doesn’t have that in him, but you can. 9/10

120

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

He had been at the barricade as a spy, and had been taken prisoner by the insurgents before he could do anything to harm their cause. He didn’t kill them, but his philosophical support was for the soldiers who did. And now, in this moment, he sees what that means. 8/10

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

But today, I’m OK with that. Because this moment suggests that when Javert sees the protesters killed by government forces, he suddenly sees good innocent people who fought for something honorable, who deserve his Legion of Honor medal, maybe more than he does. 7/10

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Adding this moment to the 2012 film – over a musical motif from “Bring Him Home” that corresponds to the lyrics, “he’s like the son I might have known if God had granted me a son” – adds a layer that isn’t in the book. 6/10

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

He entertains the idea that maybe not everyone on the other side (of the law, or the barricade, or another divide) is utterly and irrevocably bad. That maybe Jean Valjean doesn’t deserve to be turned in to face a likely death sentence. That maybe Marius deserves dignity. 5/10

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

What Javert *does* do after the barricade section in the book is glimpse something that he can’t quite reckon with: that he’s been wrong this whole time, because his way of carving up the world and picking sides has been wrong. 4/10

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

But this moment from the 2012 film is decidedly not in the book. The book is pretty clear that Javert didn’t return to the barricade after Jean Valjean freed him, so this couldn’t even have happened “off stage.” But it asks us to think about Javert in a way that is important right now. 3/10

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Les Misérables (the book) said its piece on the subject of government forces killing protesters and the right and wrong of protest and resistance – for heaven’s sake, there have even been barricades in Minneapolis. A huge chunk of the book is about EXACTLY THIS. 2/10

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

In this grim time in the U.S., being a Les Misérables account, I want to talk about Javert, and the choice to add this moment to the 2012 film adaptation. I promise it’s relevant. youtu.be/g35YkMe3O1A?... 1/10

youtu.be

Gavroche Gets a Medal

YouTube video by Graeme Scott

110

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

Happy New Year 2026!! I don't plan to repeat my daily posts this year, but any year is a great year to read the 365 chapters of Les Misérables in 365 days! Resources for doing that, including my daily commentary from 2025, at the link in my bio

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

If you’ve read a chapter a day, it’s time to listen to the podcast “Ep59 - V,9,v-vi - Endings,” and then, to wrap up, “Ep60 - So what is Les Misérables about?” Available at the website (link in bio) or your preferred podcatcher.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

A careful read of this book resists comfort at the end, even as the surface may offer it. Sure, Cosette gets her happy ending, and Jean Valjean finds peace, of a sort. But the work of this book is never done.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

And then Hugo leaves us, as ever, with a complex message about the way his story ends. It’s tragic, but it’s peace. It’s Jean Valjean’s wish, but it’s a sign of vast persistent injustice, which he has shown us at length.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Meanwhile, lifting one little girl – ONE – out of poverty has taken the herculean efforts of many, many people, including Fantine’s and Jean Valjean’s immense sacrifices. Things are still deeply broken.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Plus, Thénardier is still profiting off human misery in the Americas. Gavroche’s little brothers (children Thénardier basically sold) are still wandering, starving, or worse, and many good people have succumbed to this world.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

I won’t make you guess: it was Thénardier. The first words Marius heard him say when he peeked through the hole in the wall were citing exactly this as a persistent sign of inequality.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

But, because this is Les Misérables, all is not necessarily well. The description of where his tomb is placed is oddly familiar, as someone earlier on talked about these damp, forgettable tombs for the poor….

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

After the absolute gutting that the last few chapters have been, there’s a sense of peace that reaches an almost existential level: he accomplished his mission, and when it was done, he could rest.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

The way Hugo uses the Alexandrines, in other words, takes us from a kind of halting, bumpy ride as it discusses his “strange fate” and his final loss, to resolution and peace as “day” retreats.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

The first two have an irregular rhythm, which makes for an awkward, uneasy read, but the 3rd and 4th – (Hapgood’s final sentence) – are in a very regular, calming rhythm.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

But because poetry is always richer in its original language, I’ll mention just a bit about the verses themselves. They are Alexandrines, the 12-syllable prestige verse in traditional French poetry.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

“He sleeps. Although his fate was very strange, he lived. He died when he had no longer his angel. The thing came to pass simply, of itself, as the night comes when day is gone.”

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

I hope your translation keeps the meaning of those lines more or less intact; here is the Hapgood translation, which is pretty precise in meaning, if a bit clumsy:

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Here are those four lines in Hugo’s handwriting (from the manuscript digitized by the French Bibliothèque Nationale):

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

That mystery, and the fact that we are led to consider Hugo, contributes to a sense that this is real, that if we knew where to look, we might still find this stone in Père-Lachaise.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Who wrote Jean Valjean’s makeshift memorial couplets? Cosette? Marius? Hugo himself, who was a well-known young poet in Paris in 1833, and whose style this (obviously) reflects?

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Reading Les Misérables in 2025, a chapter a day: December 31, Part V, Book 9, Chapter 6, “L'herbe cache et la pluie efface” 👇

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

He requests not to have any name at all on his simple tombstone – his various pseudonyms are of course lies, and his own name, Jean Valjean, has been the burden he’s spent his life running from, of which he’s now free.

000

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

It all reads like a curtain call, but also, like the life we’ve lived with him passing before his eyes. Even as it’s tragic, we should all have such a meaningful life to look back on, when the time comes.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

The importance of the Bishop here – his candlesticks lighting the scene, his spirit providing priestly accompaniment in his agony, the hope that he is pleased – is particularly poignant, bringing us back to where we began.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

The memories of their first meeting in the woods, and the big doll that she left behind when they fled to the convent. And him pronouncing to her, for the first time, the name Fantine.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Cosette promising him a garden, the domain of benevolent older men in this book from the Bishop to Marius’s father to Fauchelevent to Mabeuf.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

There are so many wonderful details here. Marius repeating the “Ecce homo” (“Here is the man”) that we have seen sprinkled across his story, beginning on the night he arrived in Digne.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

And that’s because fundamentally, the story of Jean Valjean’s life is a tragedy, with society creating the ill fate he lives under. And this is how tragedies end – with hope and rescue that arrive too late.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Of course, this had to be how this book would end. I always know it’s coming, and I always hope it won’t, just like I did the first time. But even then, I think I knew it couldn’t go any other way.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Reading Les Misérables in 2025, a chapter a day: December 30, Part V, Book 9, Chapter 5, “Nuit derrière laquelle il y a le jour” 👇

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Again, that is NOT the same content I’m posting here; these are just some brief thoughts about each chapter. Especially as we get toward the end, the podcast ties it all together.

000

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

If you’re reading a chapter a day, it’s time to listen to the podcast “Ep58 - V,9,iv - Change and Changers.” Available at the website (link in bio) or your preferred podcatcher.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

He has been getting paid for others’ misery and exploitation – Fantine’s, Cosette’s, his daughters’, and who knows how many others’ – for as long as we’ve known him.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

On the other hand, we know what sort of person Thénardier becomes: exactly what he has always been. Because becoming a slave trader in the Americas is not, as Hugo says, much of a change for him at all.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

I often wonder what sort of person Marius would become if this book continued. What we see at the end of this chapter feels like the start of a transformation. But into what?

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

And when he tries and fails to be hidden or disguised, Thénardier’s plans have a way of going sideways – in this case, to everyone’s benefit.

100

The Les Misérables Reading Companion @readlesmispod.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

As he tries to act from a place of disguise, he’s less disguised than he thinks, thanks to Marius’s previous exposure to his letters and moneymaking schemes.

100