Les mis victor hugo6/28/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Until then, it had centered around Fantine, a poor woman forced into prostitution to earn a crust of bread. ![]() When Hugo witnessed that scene, he was already three months into writing his novel. It is retold in The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables, a new book out this month by Princeton professor David Bellos, which tells the fascinating story behind Hugo's 1862 masterpiece. "The man was no longer a man in my eyes but the specter of la misère, of poverty."Īnyone who has read or watched Les Misérables will recognize that wretched scene immediately. He was dressed in mud-spattered clothes, his bare feet thrust into clogs, his ankles wrapped in bloodied rags in lieu of stockings. Bystanders said he was being arrested for stealing the loaf. On a bitterly cold day in February 1846, the French writer Victor Hugo was on his way to work when he saw something that affected him profoundly.Ī thin young man with a loaf of bread under his arm was being led away by police. ![]() There was no sharper barometer of economic status in 19th-century France than bread. Anyone who has read or seen Victor Hugo's masterpiece knows the plot of Les Miserables turns on the theft of a simple loaf of bread. ![]()
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