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Les Misérables
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BetaPart 2, Books 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Book 5 Summary: "Silent Stalkers in the Dark"
The narrator describes the city of Paris as it was when they were young. The nostalgic descriptions convey the narrator's love for a city, even though the narrator has not returned to the French capital for many years, and it is now transformed.
Returning to the main narrative, Valjean and Cosette are chased by Javert and his men through the labyrinthine Parisian streets. Cosette trusts him to keep her safe, so Valjean decides to place his own trust in God. As he runs, he sees more guards in the streets. When faced with a dead end, he uses the "formidable talents of a convict" (345) and heaves Cosette over a wall by fashioning a harness from some nearby rope. Keen to stress the importance of the situation and hoping to keep the girl attentive, Valjean tells Cosette that they are being pursued by "that Thénardier woman" (346). They find themselves in a large, unusual garden and wait in a shed until the soldiers pass. As they hide, they hear the sound of a woman singing. They spend the night in the very cold shed. Cosette sleeps, while Valjean stays awake. When a man arrives at the shed, Valjean offers him money in exchange for protection. The man recognizes Valjean and exclaims that he must have "fallen from heaven" (352); the man is Fauchelevent, whom Valjean saved from being crushed by a cart. Valjean and Cosette are in the garden of the Petis-Picpus convent where Fauchelevent now works as a gardener. He offers to hide Valjean and Cosette in his small home. Cosette sleeps before a warm fire.
Like most people, Javert was convinced that Valjean died in the Bagne of Toulon. However, he became incredulous when he heard about Cosette leaving the Thénardiers' care. The Thénardiers did not want attention brought to their illicit affairs, so they lied, explaining that Cosette's grandfather took her away. Although Javert initially believed this story, the rumors about a very generous man in Paris rekindled his suspicions. After a brief investigation into the beggar who gives alms to the poor, Javert deduces that this new arrival in Paris is Valjean. Taking pleasure in stalking Valjean rather than immediately arresting him, Javert feels angry that he has let Valjean slip away. He abandons his search and returns to the police station, ashamed.
Part 2, Book 6 Summary: "Petit-Picpus"
The Petit-Picpus convent was founded by a Spanish man named Martin Verga. The nuns who live in the convent are very devout; at all times of the day, at least one nun must be praying for the world's sins while another prays before the Holy Sacrament. The narrator describes in detail life inside the convent and speculates on the role of religion in society. No men other than the archbishop and the gardener are allowed inside. In fact, Fauchelevent is required to wear a bell on his leg to alert the solemn nuns when he is nearby. The convent houses a boarding school, where the female pupils adhere to the same strict rituals as the nuns. However, the pupils give the convent a sense of life and vivacity. This way of living cannot be sustained, however, and the older generations of nuns are not replaced so that, by 1840, the "peculiar house" (376) is not the thriving community it once was. It is now in decline.
Part 2, Book 7 Summary: "Parenthesis"
The narrator takes a brief aside to extol the importance of prayer, even though "monasticism is doomed" (381) and most religious institutions get in the way of the normal functioning of society. To the narrator, religion and democracy are not mutually exclusive, and faith is "indispensable to man" (388). However, the narrator criticizes religious orders and sects such as the convent at Petit-Picpus, which seclude themselves from society. For the narrator, this monasticism robs the nuns or monks inside these orders from experiencing the fullness of life. This turns convents such as Petit-Picpus into religious prisons.
Part 2, Book 8 Summary: "Cemeteries Take What They Are Given"
Fauchelevent helps Valjean hide from the authorities. Valjean believes that "he and Cosette [are] doomed if they [go] back into Paris" (391). The gardener continues to refer to Valjean as Monsieur Madeline and believes that the one-time mayor has fallen on hard times, forcing him to hide from the people who loaned him money. Fauchelevent plans to save Valjean by securing him a job as a gardener at the convent. However, he must leave and reenter the convent as the nuns will not take kindly to a man who is discovered within their walls.
During this time, one of the nuns dies, and the "formalities of dying" (394) begin. Although her fellow nuns want to bury her inside their special crypt, the laws of Paris dictate that she must be buried in one of the city's municipal cemeteries. The reverend mother explains to Fauchelevent that the wishes of "the dead must be obeyed" (400), so they cannot bury the nun in unconsecrated ground. The order does not recognize the secular health department, which it refers to as "Revolutionary invention" (402).The nuns tell Fauchelevent to pour dirt into an empty coffin and bury it in the municipal grave. When Fauchelevent shares his doubts about the plan, Valjean produces a plan: They can smuggle him out of the convent in an empty coffin. Despite running into problems with the gravedigger, the plan works: The empty coffin is buried, and Valjean returns to the convent where Fauchelevent has asked the nuns to offer a gardening job to his brother, who he says is named Ultime. Valjean is hired, and Cosette is enrolled in the boarding school as a "charity pupil" (421). Valjean immediately takes to gardening and is surprised by his skills. He lives at the convent with Cosette for some time, reflecting on the similarity between the convent and a prison as they are "two places of slavery" (425). Unlike prisoners, however, the nuns are not marked by sin. They remain in God’s grace.
Part 2, Books 5-8 Analysis
Here, more of Hugo’s biographical details emerge in the text. Hugo wrote the novel in exile following the ascent of Napoleon III, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew who ruled France as part of what modern scholars term a “proto-fascist” regime of oppression. Thus, the narrator’s grief over having been away from Paris for many years mirrors Hugo’s exile. Even still, Paris has changed so much since Hugo and the narrator’s youths that they fear the city may no longer be recognizable.
Valjean and Cosette flee from Javert by escaping over a wall and landing in the garden of a convent. Their escape represents one of the key battles in Valjean's conscience: He wants to be a better man, but he fears that he cannot trust the legal institutions of his country to accommodate his redemption. Valjean is a changed man who has performed a wealth of social good. As well as revitalizing the economy of a town, he has adopted Cosette and saved her from an abusive household. Despite this good work, he cannot exist under his real name. An outstanding warrant for his arrest means that he will be sent back to prison for the rest of his life if he is caught by Javert. As such, Valjean is forced to flee the representatives of the law so that he can continue to do good in the world. His decision to avoid Javert reveals the discrepancy between legality and morality. In a moral sense, Valjean is an upstanding individual. Everywhere he moves, he immediately develops a reputation for being charitable beyond belief. Despite the huge amount of moral work that he does to improve the world, old legal troubles threaten to take everything away from him. Valjean is forced to choose between adhering to the law, thereby submitting himself to the judgment of a system he knows to be flawed, or disobeying the law and continuing to pursue redemption through charitable acts. Valjean's decision to run away from Javert is a damning indictment of the French justice system.
Whereas Valjean is torn apart by his moral disputes and forced to reflect on the nuances of his situation, Javert deals only in absolutes. Cosette plays an important role in creating sympathy in the audience's mind for Valjean over Javert. While Javert is, by the letter of the law, technically correct, he threatens to do more harm than good. By capturing Valjean, Javert adheres to the exact demands of the French legal system. Valjean, however, has shown his capacity for good when acting in defiance of the French legal system. He has saved Cosette from an abusive situation already, and if he were to be arrested and imprisoned, she would have nowhere to go. Javert's pursuit is legally justified but morally unsound because it places Cosette in danger. Valjean's decision to run is legally unsound but morally justified. The difference between the two men serves as a critique of the inflexible legal system which provides justice only in a technical sense, rather than according to morality.
By the end of Part 2, Valjean has adopted his third identity of the novel. He has been Jean Valjean, then Monsieur Madeline, and now he is Ultime Fauchelevent. Valjean's shifting identities represent his attempt to distance himself from his past. The irony of this process is that Valjean is a man in pursuit of redemption. He wants to move himself closer toward God's grace and repay the faith shown in him by Bishop Myriel, but to accomplish this he is forced to lie. Like everything in Valjean's life, these changing identities represent his desire to make up for his mistakes and, in doing so, to struggle with the moral demands society places upon him.
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