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?

Me too! In fact sometimes I had to read 7-8 chapters as I’d fallen behind. Those were heavy days! 😳

I took it that Javert actually recognised JVJ but couldn’t place him.

In the Donougher translation she says J grimaces on seeing JVJ in a way that might say

”Now who on earth is that man? I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before… Anyhow I’m not in the least taken in by him”

And yes as someone said upthread, J’s experience of prisons etc tells him something is “off.” If that’s the right way to talk about our hero?🤣

@DuPainDuVinDuFromage Ah thanks! Daemons… Yes that’s what I was thinking about! Not familiars 🤣

Yes the physiognomy stuff is uncomfortable in places. I’m heartened though by how Hugo made Quasimodo in ‘Notre Dame de Paris’ essentially “good.” He was deformed but capable of great love and loyalty. Violence was prompted by people’s cruelty to him, not some kind of inherent wickedness.

Yes @lifeturnsonadime I thought that too

All caught up. @Neitherherenorthere I don't love audio to be honest and am very fussy about narrators and things, I did manage 8 or 9 last year but they were almost exclusively Agatha Christie with a couple of author read non-fiction.

I loved the penny slowly dropping that Madeleine is JVJ and I read it as Jalvert recognising him as I think it does say he felt he knew him or something similar, and the bit with the cart convinces me - he has only seen one man ever have such strength.

I have actually enjoyed catching up as I have got a whirlwind of story all at once and cannot wait to see what happens next.

Will post next week's reading tomorrow.

Yes I read it that Javert actually knew him in the prison, recognised him when he arrived there and the show of strength confirmed his identity. It also suggests to me that JVJ knows Javert and realises that he has recognised him.

I thought it was really curious that a 'family that has disappeared' is mentioned, as presume they mean Jean Valjean's sister and her children? Which makes me wonder why Javert was investigating that and what he took from that? Javert obviously knows who Jean is but I don't get the impression it's from any former meeting..

I thought Javert knows who JVJ is and had made enquiries back to where the prisoner JVJ came from and to his his original family, who had disappeared.

I don’t think Javert was investigating the family beyond trying to find out as much as possible about JVJ in order to look for clues and evidence linking JVJ to Monsieur Madeleine.

So far he can’t prove it’s the same person, but he is obsessed with this task.

That’s my take on it anyway 🤣

Javert just needs someone from the original family to identify and confirm that the two men are the same person. That’s what Javert was hoping he could do? But he’s not able to do that.

I feel like it’s a kind of threat that he mentioned the disappeared family? Like he’s saying “when I find one of them it will all come out!”

I enjoyed the observations about public willingness to pay tax in today’s chapter. I read a thread about this on here just this week! Hugo’s 160 year old observations seem very relevant today.

Also how the cost of collecting taxes is an ‘infallible gauge of public wealth and poverty.’ I’m wondering if that information is in the public domain today regarding recent times?

Next week's reading:

Part 1 - Fantine | Book 5 - The Descent ...

• Monday 16 February: ch 8, Madame Victurnien Spends Thiryy-Five Francs for the Sake of Morality
• Tuesday 17 February: ch 9, Success for Madame Victurnien
• Wednesday 18 February: ch 10, The Consequences of her Success
• Thursday 19 February: ch 11, Christus Nos Liberavit
• Friday 20 February: ch 12, Monsieur Bamatabois's Idleness
• Saturday 21 February: ch 13, Resolving Some Questions of Municipal Policing (possibly the longest chapter to date)
• Sunday 22 February: Part 1 - Fantine | Book 6 - Javert | ch 1, An Initial Rest

Thanks @AgualusasL0ver 😊

Thanks for the schedule @AgualusasL0ver !

I read the bit about searching for a missing family as being Valjean making enquiries about his sister and her children - he’s got money now, so has the resources to try and track them down. Javert has heard that someone is interested in this particular family and it has raised his suspicions…and then he definitely recognises Valjean at the cart, and basically challenges Valjean to deny he is the prisoner from Toulon by letting Fauchelevant die - after all, there’s only one person who could be strong enough to lift the cart. Poor Valjean, knowing that doing the right thing will expose him to Javert - and all for a guy that doesn’t even like him!

Really enjoying this so far. I only noticed who was who after the mention of the candlesticks too.

I am enjoying the side explanations such as jet, cheese and looking forward to the promised sewers of Paris later

I guess with Jean Valjean being in prison for so long and in the main prison for that area (I presume?), there is a chance they met... I'm still not convinced but I'm sure we'll find out 😁

Today’s chapter made me think of the village busybodies in Miss Marple books and similar. It turns out small-town France was old-fashioned about children out of wedlock after all, even if Paris was more relaxed. Poor Fantine, she’s in an even worse situation than before.

I really hope that "urging her on behalf of monsieur le maire" and "urging her on behalf of monsieur le maire to leave town" are just symbols of the bureaucracy of the factory, and not a sign that JVJ/MM was in any way personally involved with this decsion! Otherwise I might be forced to do what seems to be happening a lot on another thread around here, and throw the book across the room!

Ah thank you @DuPainDuVinDuFromage I re-read that bit today and I think you are right that JV had made enquiries about his original family and Javert found about it.

My mistake! 🙏

Yes, and the office gossips or nosey neighbour characters that we have all come across….

Ahaha! 🤣 No I think it’s clear that the workshop supervisor is acting independently as she has free rein over the supervision of the woman’s workshop.

In this chapter I found myself considering the fact that Fantine had furnished her room on credit - ‘a vestige of her improvident ways’

That’s really the trouble with Fantine isn’t it? That and naivety. She doesn’t look to the future or consider the worst aspects of human nature. How can she have grown up on the streets and yet not be “street-wise?”

I didn’t particularly like the part about the Bishop’s sister - it was too close to idealising female characters, which is one of Dickens’ traits that I don’t enjoy. That said, I did think of how much housework there was to do 200 years ago and how easily a house would slide into disorder if there wasn’t someone managing the household, so if you were ill you probably would be very grateful to the person making you feel comfortable.

Hugo has some great phrases to describe Mme Victurien - I liked the detail that she had married a monk who had escaped from the cloister during the Revolution:

Elle était sèche, rêche, revêche, pointue, épineuse presque venimeuse ;

She was sharp, rough, surly, shrill, prickly, almost venomous ;

[I would normally translate sèche as dry, but the dictionary also gave sharp, which seems to fit better, but wizened might be a good alternative.]

A la restauration, elle s’était faite bigote, et si énergiquement que les prêtres lui avaient pardonné son moine.

[At The Restoration she made herself into a bigot, and so energetically that the priests forgave her her monk.]

The way Hugo describes Mme Victurien is almost comic (it made me think of Voltaire’s style) - but the impact she will have on Fantine is anything but.

@Neitherherenorthere- I think it’s understandable that Fantine can’t manage money as she is still young and has had no-one to help her understand money or to give her cast-off clothes or household items to get herself started.

I’m not sure JVJ was personally involved in the decision but there is a bit in the Chapter “Madeleine” going on about how he values women being virtuous above all else, so Fantine’s illegitimate child wouldn’t have been viewed kindly.

Ugh, Mme Victurien spending 35 Francs of her own money to check up on Fantine's back story is just cruel and spiteful... I do NOT like Mme Victurien and can see why her husband ruled her with a rod of iron (although, not excusing his cruelty either - they actually sound well suited!)

I was really interested in the word « bigote » - the dictionary gave me « sanctimonious, holier than thou » as well as « bigot » in English and I thought it was interesting, a slightly wider interpretation than just the « prejudiced or narrow minded person » we use it for today.
I think it said her monk « wore a red cap » (of the Revolution) and « passed Benedictines to the Jacobins »?? Which would imply some fairly nasty betrayals and a big anti- religious, anti-Church tone. Hence why she changed when the wind blew the other way at the Restoration. So not only is she nasty, she’s a massive hypocrite.

@MotherOfCatBoythe bonnet rouge was one of the symbols of the Revolution so it suggests the monk escaped the cloister to be a revolutionary. I understood the French to be that he went from the bernardins (Cistercians) to the jacobins (rather than betraying people) - but given that the Jacobins were in power under Robespierre in the Terror, you’re probably right that the monk was involved in some nasty stuff and definitely right that Mme Victurnien is a complete hypocrite.