Les Miserables

Describe the setting for the novel Ð'ÐŽÐ'oLes MiserableÐ'ÐŽÐ'±?

Amidst the redemption story, the love story, the bravery and heroism story, the setting for Les MisÐ'ЁÐ'¦rables is the Parisian underworld. The novel depicts the living conditions and political problems of France and Paris during the French revolutions of 1830, 1832, and 1848. In doing so, Hugo portrays the life of the revolutionary middle class.

Victor Hugo uses Fantine to exemplify the life of the single working woman. He shows how people take advantage of her and how she is thrown deeper and deeper into poverty and desperation by her circumstances. Even though she is able to procure a job as a factory worker, and finds a foster home for her illegitimate daughter, she has difficulty in making ends meet and becomes a prostitute in order to meet the payments that her daughterÐ'ÐŽÐ'Їs caretakers require.

Men had a wider range of opportunities and could work almost anywhere. Many men were skilled artisans, shopkeepers, factory workers, or unskilled migrant workers. Unfortunately jobs were not abundant and most people were poor and out of work.

The working class lived either in boarding houses or apartments. Single workers would usually rent a room in a Boarding house and share a bed with another worker. Workers with families usually rented an apartment which consisted of one or two rooms. Usually it was shared with another family or with another generation of the same family. The rooms had no heat or candles for light and no water. The facilities were shared by all the occupants of the building and were located either on a landing or in the courtyard. The ThÐ'ЁÐ'¦nadiers represent the struggles that a poor family had to endure. They try running an inn and when that fails they have nothing and live in utter poverty. They scheme and plot to try to get money but everything fails.

In order to escape the crowded conditions of the home, the cafÐ'ЁÐ'¦ provided a certain amount of relief. It offered entertainment and served as a meeting place mostly for men. This setting serves as the background at various times throughout the novel.

3. Develop the following thesis: The doctrine