New Historicism
Victor Hugo indeed produced a french historical novel entitled Les Miserables that is Romantic in style and theme. His work occupies a unique and problematic place in the history of the French novel. Les Misérables was written during a century of massive social upheaval in France. The Revolution of 1789, and subsequent uprisings in 1830 and 1848, saw the country go from monarchy to republic to empire and back again several times. Many supported the idea of universal suffrage and secular education, but putting these ideas into practice proved to be challenging (State Library Victoria, 2019).
According to Rukmana, R. (2014), the characters of this novel are interesting where most of them experience suffer, and they always struggle in difficulty. The main character was named Jean Valjean whose life was drawn as a hero of his family and Cossete. He is sincere to help someone without expecting anything in return. There are many critics and messages that can be found in the novel that tells about patriotism, religion, romance, and fight in the french revolution period. On the other hand, the author of this novel saw that poor people were just being exploited as they were before the revolution, and because of that, he committed himself to social justice causes.
Through this novel, he hoped that this could be an instrument to persuade people to work towards creating a truly equal society. Alfar, R. (2015), also stated that the citizens of France were in unrest and wanted a change in their government long before the massive revolt occurred. They were dissatisfied with how things were run at the time which caused tension to build. Victor Hugo gives a detailed description of the Battle of Waterloo and even ties some of his characters to figures that were present and explain how it affected their lives because of these relations. Hugo inserted information about this conflict into his story because he had family members that fought in the Battle of Waterloo. The author paints a picture of the scene where the battle took place and describes how the conditions and setting played an important role in the fighting. He gives the reader such minute details as he does to help them experience what he thinks is necessary to truly understand what took place during the Battle of Waterloo. The reader is told how the change of political views in Paris contributed to the revolt.
All in all, the novel is set during the French era, from 1815 to 1833 just after the failure of the Paris uprising the previous year. These years featured the fall of Napoleon, the return of the Bourbon monarchy to France, the overthrow of that monarchy in 1830, and its replacement by another branch of the royal family, the Orleanists, and the revolution of 1830, followed by an unsuccessful revolt in Paris in 1832. The author also uses flashes to the French revolution that began in 1789, the Napoleonic wars of early 1800 in Europe, and flashes forward to the revolution of 1848.
References
Alfar, R. (2015). Literary Criticism- Les Miserables. Retrieved from http://literarycritics2015.
blogspot.com/2015/10/rica-rose-m-alfar-historical-approach.html
Rukmana, R. (2014). Background Study of Les Miserables. Retrieved from http://eprints.
ums.ac.id/31707/2/04._CHAPTER_I.pdf
State Library Victoria, 2019. Victor Hugo: Les Misérables – From Page to Stage. Retrieved
from https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/lesmiserables/politics#:~:text=Les%20Mis%C3%
A9rables%20was%20written%20during,and%20back%20again%20several%20times.
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