Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Hugo himself is the central peak of French literature, at least in his own estimation. Hugo associated himself with majesty, with size. Les Miserables, huge, sprawling, prolix, is Hugo at his most majestic. In the debates about the purpose of art which were such a feature of 19th century culture, Hugo was on the side of those who believed that art should have a purpose beyond itself.
Art for Hugo should subordinate itself to political necessity, which he saw as moral enlightenment, the betterment of humanity, Progress. Art should morally uplift. Art should teach.
This view of art is everywhere evident in Les Miserables, with its book length rants on the evils of capital punishment and religious incarceration, the moral depravity of the ancient regime, the evils of poverty, the role of women, the injustices of the penal system, the nature of history, the sociological study of argot, the legitimacy or otherwise of insurrection.
With Shakespeare and Dostoevsky, the reader is always given the role of interpreter and final arbiter between the great dialogues of the plays and novels. In other writers, it is necessary to always hold in mind the gap between the narrator and the author, who, theoretically, are quite different.
In Hugo, the opposite is true. The narrator is always Hugo, and we always know exactly what he intends, what he thinks, and what he means, because he tells us, unambiguously, at length. In the narrative voice, in the same way that Hugo the man positioned himself in the society of his time, Hugo the narrator positions himself as the Great Teacher, the Great Reformer, the Seer of Society, the High Priest of Progress, the Almighty Father. The reader is given the role of student, of disciple, of child, and any movement on the part of the reader towards independent thought, towards personal interpretation, is strictly prohibited by the narrative voice.
