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Transformational Grace in Victor Hugo's Les TRANSFORMATIONAL GRACE IN VICTOR HUGO’S LES MISÉRABLES A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, Chico In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of the Degree Master of Arts in English by © Janis Lynn Barnett 2012 Spring 2012 TRANSFORMATIONAL GRACE IN VICTOR HUGO’S LES MISÉRABLES A Thesis by Janis Lynn Barnett Spring 2012 APPROVED BY THE DEAN OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND VICE PROVOST FOR RESEARCH: ___________________________________ Eun K. Park, Ph.D. APPROVED BY THE GRADUATE ADVISORY COMMITTEE: __________________________________ Geoffrey Baker, Ph.D., Chair ___________________________________ John C. Traver, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Karen R. Sorsby, Ph.D. PUBLICATION RIGHTS No portion of this thesis may be reprinted or reproduced in any manner unacceptable to the usual copyright restrictions without the written permission of the author. iii DEDICATION To God With gratitude for the promise of Philippians 1:6 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Geoff Baker, for his helpful insights, encouragement, and guidance through this process, and the members of my committee, Dr. John Traver, and Dr. Karen Sorsby, for their helpful suggestions, encouragement and enthusiastic interest in this project. To my family and friends who have loved, encouraged, and prayed me through this process: Kathy Machuga, your steadfast friendship means more than I can say, thank you for your patience as I’ve pursued this path, we will quilt soon! Steve and Leslie Schibsted, Greg and Laura Cootsona, Cindy Young and the lovely ladies of grace, Pam, Jackie, Lori, and especially Vicki, thank you all! Thank you to Marcie Anderson and Bidwell Presbyterian Church for providing me a quiet place to study throughout my years at Chico State. I am truly blessed to have each of you in my life! Finally, I am forever grateful to my husband Dan, whose daily expressions of love, encouragement, cheerfulness, good humor, and compassion have sustained me throughout this process. Thank you Dan, not only for supporting me through this, but for wanting this for me, and for cheering me on, even when the way forward was hard for either of us to see. I love you very much! v TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE Publication Rights...................................................................................................... iii Dedication.................................................................................................................. iv Acknowledgements.................................................................................................... v Abstract...................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I. Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 II. “Mysterious and Terrible Blows” ............................................................ 15 III. “The Abyss” and “The Holy” .................................................................. 67 IV. The Convert ............................................................................................. 126 Works Cited ............................................................................................................... 164 vi ABSTRACT TRANSFORMATIONAL GRACE IN VICTOR HUGO’S LES MISÉRABLES by © Janis Lynn Barnett 2012 Master of Arts in English California State University, Chico Spring 2012 This thesis analyzes the process of human transformation apparent in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, specifically focusing on Hugo’s representation of God’s involvement in the process. I identify three major motifs: “Mysterious and Terrible Blows”; the “Abyss,” and the “Holy”; and the “Convert,” as movements in a recursive process of transformation which Hugo structures around four biblical imperatives of increasing difficulty: honesty, love of neighbor, love of enemy, and love of God above all else. I further analyze Hugo’s portrayal of human transformation through the lens of “transformational logic,” a theory which synthesizes insights from the human sciences and Christian theology. Reading Hugo’s text through this lens points to Hugo’s belief in God’s active presence in the abysses of life, graciously working to bring about his good purposes in the life of the individual. vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Victor Hugo, in the preface to his monumental work Les Misérables, declares: So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age―the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night―are not yet solved; as long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless. (xii) Though one may draw from this preface the seemingly obvious conclusion that Hugo’s Les Misérables is about the ills of social injustice and human misery on a universal scale, doing so misses Hugo’s insistence on the centrality of the spiritual realities of life. Mario Vargas Llosa, in The Temptation of the Impossible, states that “by focusing on this short epigraph, many critics have concluded that the book’s concerns are social, and that Victor Hugo was striving, in the novel, to combat the injustice, prejudice, and neglect suffered by workers and by women and children in France at that time” (147). That the novel addresses the social and political issues of Hugo’s day which called for such a work to be written is undeniable, for it clearly affirms Hugo’s desire that the darkness of civilization, especially institutionalized darkness, be eradicated. The preface may reasonably be taken as a declaration, if you will, of the problems faced by Hugo’s contemporaries, and common to humanity. The work itself, however, is about solving these problems, and offers a solution which Hugo frames, through the narrative of Jean Valjean’s 1 2 transformation, in theological terms. Vargas Llosa argues that Hugo wanted “to demonstrate the existence of a transcendent life, of which life on earth is a mere transient part” (147). Though Hugo prefaces his work with his socio/political concerns which suggest his reason for writing, deep within the heart of the work the narrator states that Les Misérables “is a drama the first character of which is the Infinite” (Hugo 443). In other words, it’s about what God is doing in the world. Lisa Gasbarrone, in “Restoring the Sacred in Les Misérables,” states that Hugo “chose deliberately to place faith in God and the experience of the sacred at the very heart of the work” (1). Vargas Llosa asserts that “the most important presence in the book, its essential context and its binding force: [is] the mysterious hand of God” (145). Hugo poses the central question of the novel, “Where is God?” (83), in the chapter “The Waters and the Shadow,” in which he describes the experience of a man overboard, drowning in the “monstrous deep” of the “abyss” (82). His question addresses the nature of God’s involvement in the problem of human suffering. According to Gasbarrone, “Hugo himself, like his characters, seems to grapple existentially with the question of God’s presence and meaning in the world” (2). The question of God’s whereabouts when one encounters the abysses of life, raised in the face of his own personal tragedy, and the many social ills of his time, drives Hugo to write Les Misérables, which ultimately stands as his answer to the question. Hugo’s passionate interest in the transformation of human society is evident within the novel, yet his masterpiece Les Misérables insists that the individual must first be transformed, and, being transformed, can then bring about positive change within society. His narrative about the nature of human transformation, which he exemplifies in the life of the convict Jean Valjean, shows God’s active involvement in bringing about 3 Valjean’s redemption and eventual sanctification. Hugo’s choice to frame his narrative of Jean Valjean’s transformation in Christian terms is not incidental, but central to the meaning of the novel, and points to God’s active presence in the world, graciously working to transform individuals, who in turn transform the world around them. In this thesis, I argue that Hugo intends his readers to recognize, through the narrative of Jean Valjean’s life, that human transformation is a spiritual undertaking which is often initiated, and always assisted, by God, whose grace is manifest in the details and circumstances of individual lives; that they connect the transformational grace made evident in the narrative to the “real reality” of their own lives; and that they come to understand that what matters most in life is relationship and union with God. Though the academy has produced many significant readings of Les Misérables which enhance our understanding of the social, political, psychological, literary, and even religious aspects of Hugo’s work, the many distinctly Christian allusions and symbols in Les Misérables have often been either neglected, relegated to structural purposes, or in some way secularized in the critical literature, leaving a gap in our understanding of the novel. Richard Maxwell for instance, in “Mystery and Revelation in Les Misérables,”
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