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Jean Valjean (French: [ʒɑ̃ val.ʒɑ̃]) is the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables.The story depicts the character's struggle to lead a normal life and redeem himself after serving a 19-year-long prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister's starving children and attempting to escape from prison.
Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Les Misérables. The story depicts Valjean's struggle to lead a normal life after serving in prison for 19 years. He learns honesty from Bishop Myriel and promises a dying Fantine to care for her child, Cosette. He devotes the rest of his life to helping others, especially Cosette and Marius Pontmercy. Valjean was born into a poor peasant family. His parents died when he was very young, leaving him with his older sister to fend for him. Unfortunately, his ...
- 1769
- Male
- 1833 (aged 64)
- 3 min
Jean Valjean stands at the center of Les Misérables and becomes a trial figure for Hugo’s grand theories about the redemptive power of compassion and love. Valjean goes into prison a simple and decent man, but his time in jail has a seemingly irreversible effect on him, and he emerges from the chain gang a hardened criminal who hates society ...
Jean Valjean. A convict from a poor provincial family, whose long and torturous transformation amounts to the most significant narrative arc of the novel. The 19 years spent by Valjean in the galleys transform him from a desperate boy into a hardened criminal—revealing, according to Hugo, the social evil of the prison system.
Sep 6, 2024 · They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Last Updated: Sep 6, 2024 • Article History. Jean Valjean, fictional character, the fugitive protagonist of Victor Hugo ’s sweeping novel Les Misérables (1862). This article was most recently revised and updated by ...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Eugène Vidocq, whose career provided a model for the character of Jean Valjean. An incident Hugo witnessed in 1829 involved three strangers and a police officer. One of the strangers was a man who had stolen a loaf of bread, similar to Jean Valjean, being taken to the coach by a police officer. Nearby, two onlookers, a mother and daughter, had ...
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Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean (zhah[n] vahl-ZHAH[N]), a convict of unusual strength, is originally sentenced to five years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving family ...
