Les Miserables read-a-long 2026 | Première Partie (1)

[AgualusasL0ver]

Welcome to the first thread of the Les Miserables Read-a-long.

I'll be using the Christine Donougher translation for posting in the main, but it doesn't matter which translation you have, they seem to follow the same breakdown. I have not seen the film, the musical, and have very little knowledge about the book, but suspect I will be doing all of these Christmas 2026.

The only rules
The plan is to read ONE chapter a day and contribute/follow the thread as you see fit. There are c. 365 chapters, so we plan to take the year to read slowly and really get under the skin. Sometimes we have clustered chapters in past read-a-longs, and people do sometimes read ahead. All fine - but No spoilers until the relevant day.

Notes from previous read-a-longs

• How you manage one a day is entirely up to you, some people prefer to store them and read all the chapters for the week at once, some read each day.
• Sometimes these books can go off on a tangent all their own (looking at Mr Tolstoy), stick with it :-)
• All formats and translations welcome. Sometimes the translation discussions are some of the most interesting conversations.
• You WILL get behind at some point, but don't worry, just catch up when you can.
• Tangents, things you discovered down a rabbit hole, articles, pod casts, clips of epic scenes when we get to them all very welcome on the thread.

Spoiler free summary , courtesy of Chat GPT below. Schmoop has book summaries so I will post those at the relevant points.

**

Les Misérables is a classic novel by Victor Hugo that explores justice, compassion, and the struggle for dignity in 19th-century France.
At its core, the book follows the lives of several interconnected characters from different social classes as they navigate poverty, law, love, and moral choice. Rather than focusing on a single hero or plotline, the novel paints a wide picture of society—showing how personal decisions are shaped by systems like the legal system, economic inequality, and social expectations.
Key themes include:

• Justice vs. mercy — how laws affect people differently, and whether strict punishment leads to fairness
• Redemption and moral growth — the possibility of change, even after hardship
• Poverty and inequality — the daily realities of people living on the margins
• Love and sacrifice — care for others as a powerful force for good
• Social responsibility — how individual actions impact the wider community

The novel is known for:

• Deep character development
• Emotional intensity
• Philosophical reflections on society and humanity
• Detailed descriptions of history and everyday life

Overall, Les Misérables is less about a single storyline and more about asking big questions:
What does it mean to be a good person? How should society treat its most vulnerable? And can compassion change lives?

Poor Fantine... although how the fuck do you go from 'aw, aren't they sweet, all playing together' to 'is it OK if I just leave her here, stranger who I've been talking to for all of about 10 minutes!'

I know it was a different time, and she had noone and blah de blah but.. bloody hell!

Also, not happy that Hugo felt obliged to let us know Tholomyes was able to go on and be a success in his life - yuk!

I think it was importantly that Hugo told us that! It really emphasises the difference in their situations.

I thought Hugo was very forgiving of Tholomyes which makes sense as you say he was kind of like that himself. He ends up twenty years later rich and influential, a wealthy lawyer, a wise elector and severe judge but always a man of pleasure.
In other words, the consequences for the way he treated Fantine (and encouraged his friends to treat the other women) are exactly none, just as he predicted in his letter. Patriarchy makes the world go round. Plus ca change.

Poor Fantine, how awful to have no choice but to leave your child with a total stranger because you have to find work. Horrible to think how much that must still happen in the world, and how precarious the child’s situation is. Having now read chapter 2, Cosette is clearly not going to be looked after well 🙁

I did think the bit about baby names was funny - plus ça change! 😄

I was wondering too if these trashy novels were what Emma was reading during her time at the convent in 'Madame Bovary'!

I’m admiring how “Master of the House” in the musical has captured the Thenardiers so well, they are just as grotesque and awful, poor Cosette. Hugo is damning of them as people and a class. I mean they are awful humans but his levels of judgement are very strong throughout really. I guess I’m not used to hearing the authors voice being expressed so loudly as opposed to being an undertone in the writing.

...his levels of judgement are very strong throughout really

Hard agree - although he does seem to reserve his most damning critique to the 'middle classes' as he thinks of workers as generous and the bourgeoisie as respectably honest... particularly jarring as he ends the chapter referencing the Revolution!

I think I have read on a little - very sad section but so vivid

The bit about the names did make me chuckle. (“Frogmella… it’s exotic!”)

I agree it’s nothing short of staggering that Fantine leaves Cosette with these people. I mean for goodness sake woman! Could she not at least have asked around first???
I think Hugo either has no actual understanding of motherhood (being male), or is hamming up the tragedy (possibly), or making out Fantine to be a complete numpty. Or all three.

I think childhood was a very different thing in times gone-by. Abandonment of children was common. Fantine herself had been abandoned, so leaving Cosette with someone is actually a “step up” from her own background.

Even in the 1960s parenting was viewed as a success if a child was fed and clothed. Those were the minimum requirements! You didn’t have to concern yourself too much with where children were or feel any responsibility at all as to their mental state. Corporal punishment still existed in schools and at home. Attendance at school was a legal requirement but it wasn’t the “thing” it is today. And that’s the 60s! 140 years before 1817.

Laying it on with a trowel! 🤣

How do you mean? @SanFranBear

It’s kind of like the baby farms in Oliver Twist where the orphan babies too young for the orphanage got left with a woman who was supposedly going to wet nurse them but in fact you’d be lucky if they got anythIng at all. The invention of formula and sterilisation has saved so many lives.
I don’t think it was that uncommon though for working class women to leave their babies with a wet nurse especially after the Industrial Revolution.

It’s the total lack of knowing who they are though.. I think a wet nurse would have been known to a village?
Although yes I suppose I am thinking about a more cohesive social circle, which Fantine doesn’t have. The points about abandonment etc are well made. It really does make you appreciate how far we’ve come (compulsory school, social services, etc - for all the faults, at the systems are there).
I think Hugo is also condemning the village a little bit for observing and not realising what it going on.

This is a good piece on the history of feeding bottles with a small bit about wet nurses, you really were gambling with your babies’ life in industrialised Britain leaving them with a wet nurse. There is one horrifying case of a woman who regularly accepted children and offered to raise them if you sent a monthly sum and then promptly murdered them. Glass bottles were great but all the rubber teats etc were a nightmare for bacteria and sterilisation was quite a late development and I think took a while to filter down . Formula helped but animal milk was also a regular substitute, sterilisation was the game changer.
https://www.alimentarium.org/en/story/history-baby-bottles#:~:text=Between%201850%20and%201950%2C%20the,and%20fitted%20with%20rubber%20teats.

I remember reading about "baby farming". It seems that either the stigma of unmarried motherhood, or just the practicalities of needing to work and having no childcare, meant that this was not an uncommon choice. Poor women, poor babies.

livingwithdying.leeds.ac.uk/2022/11/01/unloved-and-undisciplined-nineteenth-century-baby-farming-and-the-demonisation-of-working-class-mothers-across-the-ages/

This is no doubt why many people also thought their grandmother or sister was their mother, rather than their actual (young, unmarried) mother, if the baby could be looked after in the family structure rather than farmed out. And then later there were the Magdalen laundries of course…

Can’t help taking a step back and thinking this whole bloody mess in the story is ALL because of men not taking responsibility for offspring. Tholomyès the Twat obviously, but also the father of Valjean’s sister’s SEVEN children who clearly they could not support. I know I know no contraception etc etc but men just have to shag no matter what don’t they, and women always bear the cost.

Thank you @VikingNorthUtsire That was an interesting read.

I liked the way they drew modern parallels with the Boris Johnson quote about working class mothers having children today who are “unloved and undisciplined.” (How dare he comment at all!!!!)

The mothers bear all the judgement and blame from a society that just leaves them to struggle. The fathers are just ‘absent.’

Fantine knew she had to separate from her child for both their sakes. She was resigned to it with no considered plan, making her way back to Montreuil sur Mer. I think it was always a gamble, whoever an unmarried mother left her child with? Her assumption was that Madame Thenardier had strong maternal instincts and would not be capable of mistreating a child in her care. 😔

Interesting in today’s chapter about certain nature’s that have to balance outpourings of love with outpourings of hate that cannot be suppressed.

That’s a lot to ponder! 🤯

This was a harrowing chapter.
La pauvre Cosette :(

Hugo doesn't overstate the fact of the matter, but his words speak volumes, especially the last line of the chapter.
'Only, poor Alouette never sang'.

I think Fantine is sweet and naive to a fault, which is how in days when people knew getting pregnant out of wedlock was socially taboo and would lead them into difficulties, she has ended up succumbing to the blandishments of a player. So her placement of Cosette and her hopefulness with her clothing etc is all part of the same character that Hugo has built up for her.

Yes it is so sad. They only bother to keep her with them and alive because she is a cash cow for them.

I did not know until today what Alouette meant. I sang the song at secondary!
Alouette, gentille alouette,
alouette, je te plumerai
but I didn’t realise it’s about plucking the lark! 😕

Just that during the Revolution, i wouldn't have said the workers were generous - they rose up en masse to tear down the social inequality and were ruthless in their aims of dismantling the feudal system and removing their oppressors. And the bourgeoisie were not respectably honest, they were very much happy with the status quo, keen to remain at the top of the heap at the expense of the poorer people.. although perhaps they were all as honest as Tholomyes and his crew in being open about their utter contempt for them, I don't know.

But I think categorising the poor as being generous and the rich as being honest but those damn middle classes as being the trouble-makers is an odd take.