Character guide

Jean Valjean

major

Also known as Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent, M. Leblanc, the prisoner, the stranger, the man whom all the country of Montreuil-sur-Mer called M. Madeleine

Once branded by the galleys, he rises in Montreuil-sur-Mer as Monsieur Madeleine, a factory owner whose charity no one can quite explain. His strange hesitation before any violence, even against himself, marks a man divided between the bishop who spared him and the law that will not. When Javert's suspicion closes in, his choice to surrender rather than let another man bear his name sets the moral engine of the whole story running.

Marius Pontmercy

major

Also known as M. Marius, little Marius, M. Pontmercy, Pontmercy, Mr. Marius, Poor Mr. Marius

Raised in his grandfather Gillenormand's drawing room, Marius discovers too late that his father was a Bonapartist colonel, and the revelation splits his inheritance from his heart. Absent-minded enough to be erased from the roll and saved by a stranger's joke, he drifts toward the Friends of the ABC and a girl in the Luxembourg. His double devotion—to Cosette and to a cause—drags him into the uprising that will test everything he believes about duty.

Cosette

major

Also known as little Cosette, Poor Cosette, Euphrasie, Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent, the young girl

The child who once swept inn floors and feared the dark becomes Mademoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent, raised in a convent and adored by the old man she calls Father. When she learns he is only a kinsman, the news barely dents her joy—she has Marius now, and the old man recedes. Yet her mysterious childhood has taught her to accept enigmas, and that quiet readiness will matter when the truth of her parentage finally surfaces.

Javert

major

Also known as Police Officer Javert, Inspector Javert, Police Inspector Javert, Monsieur Javert

Born in a jail and risen through the ranks, Javert treats vagrants as vermin and his own instincts as scripture. He watches Madeleine with an eye full of suspicion, investigating old traces and muttering that he has found his man, yet the mayor's unshakable calm unsettles him. His private snuffbox is his only concession to humanity—and that rigid certainty is exactly what the story will eventually break.

Fantine

major

Also known as little Fantine, poor Fantine

Abandoned with a child she leaves in the Thénardiers' care, Fantine sews through bitter winters while their letters demand more and more money. When they threaten to turn little Cosette into the cold, she sells what remains of herself and becomes a woman of the town. Rescued half-dead by Madeleine and praying before a crucifix, she embodies the novel's claim that hell is only the first form of heaven.

Gavroche

supporting

Also known as Little Gavroche, little Gavroche, Monsieur Gavroche

Gavroche lives by his wits in the gutters of Paris, mocking drunks, stoning lanterns, and belting bawdy songs to empty streets. He is the Thénardiers' cast-off son, though he knows nothing of it, and his fearlessness makes him useful to the insurgents when a letter must be carried through guarded lanes. His excess of zeal—and his refusal to consider objections—makes him the rebellion's smallest and most reckless conscience.

Thénardier

supporting

Also known as Monsieur Thénardier, Jondrette, Fabantou

At his Montfermeil inn he takes in Fantine's child as a boarder and promptly converts her into an unpaid servant, billing her mother for imaginary illnesses. He is a man of appetites — for money, for leverage, for the small cruelties that make him feel tall — and he keeps a lawyer's memory for other people's secrets. His letters and schemes thread through the novel's middle, dragging Cosette's past and Valjean's identity into the same squalid room.

Madame Thénardier

supporting

Also known as Madame, Mother Thénardier

Where her husband calculates, Madame Thénardier simply resents: Cosette is the drudge of the house, fed scraps and sent barefoot into the dark while Éponine and Azelma are dressed up like little ladies. She is a woman of enormous physical strength and no tenderness, and her cruelty is domestic, daily, and unremarkable to herself. She anchors the Montfermeil chapters in a kind of petty hell that makes Cosette's rescue feel like a jailbreak.

Éponine

supporting

Also known as Thénardier, the Thénardier, Ponine

She grows up ragged in Paris while her parents run their cons and her younger siblings run wild, and she knows the city's underside the way other girls know a piano. Her love for Marius is hopeless and unsentimental — she does errands, finds addresses, and stands in the rain for him without ever saying why. Her willingness to act against her own family is the quiet hinge on which several of the novel's middle chapters turn.

Enjolras

supporting

Also known as VI Enjolras, Shadow Enjolras

He is the soul of the barricade before there is a barricade: a leader who commands by purity rather than volume, and who treats the coming revolution as a matter of logic and duty. His severity is almost priestly — he has no private life to speak of, and his friends tease him for it — but it is precisely that severity that makes the group cohere. When the fighting comes, he is the figure against whom every other insurgent's commitment is measured.

M. Mabeuf

supporting

Also known as Mabeuf, Father Mabeuf

Once a churchwarden with a respectable income, M. Mabeuf now tends a patch of indigo and lives on almost nothing, too proud to accept the charity his neighbors offer. He is gentle, bookish, and utterly unworldly, and his friendship with Marius is one of the few uncomplicated affections in the novel. His poverty and his dignity make him the moral test case for what the coming insurrection is actually about.

Father Fauchelevent

supporting

Also known as Fauchelevent, old Fauchelevent, Ultime Fauchelevent, Goodman Fauchelevent

He is a plain man of the old school — suspicious of the new mayor at first, then fiercely loyal once he understands who lifted the cart off him. When Valjean needs a hiding place for himself and Cosette, Fauchelevent is the one who arranges the convent garden, the coffin, and the silence. His gratitude is the practical kind that moves furniture and keeps secrets, and it gives the novel one of its few safe houses.

M. Gillenormand

supporting

Also known as Luc-Esprit, M. Luc-Esprit Gillenormand, Father Gillenormand, old Gillenormand

Gillenormand presides over a household of wigs, wit, and Bourbon nostalgia, where Marius is fed, dressed, and largely ignored between meals. When the boy begins vanishing, the old man shrugs it off as gallantry, mistaking a soul-deep conversion for a flirtation. His blindness to Marius's inner life is the quiet engine of the family rupture that will define the novel's middle.

Monseigneur Bienvenu

supporting

Also known as Monseigneur Bienvenu, Bienvenu, the Bishop, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel, M. Myriel, Charles Myriel

In a diocese of mountain hamlets and muddy roads, Bienvenu walks, carts, or rides an ass to reach every cure and chapel, scandalizing mayors who expect episcopal pomp. He argues not with doctrine but with neighboring villages' kindness, holding up Briançon's harvest customs and Queyras's judge-less peace as living parables. His radical, unarmed goodness sets the moral weather of the entire book before Valjean ever knocks on his door.

Grantaire

minor

Also known as R. Grantaire, gib Grantaire

A cynical, drunken student revolutionary and friend of Enjolras.

Courfeyrac

minor

Also known as plain Courfeyrac, Monsieur Courfeyrac, Monsieur de Courfeyrac

A cheerful student revolutionary and close friend of Marius.

Combeferre

minor

A thoughtful, philosophical student revolutionary and second-in-command to Enjolras.

Feuilly

minor

Also known as Bossuet, Joly

A working-class student revolutionary and passionate republican.

Bossuet

minor

Also known as Laigle de Meaux, Laigle, Meaux

A cheerful, unlucky student revolutionary and friend of the group.

Joly

minor

A hypochondriac medical student and revolutionary.

Bahorel

minor

A dandyish student revolutionary with a taste for adventure.

Jean Prouvaire

minor

Also known as Prouvaire, Jeanne

A poetic student revolutionary who dies at the barricade.

Montparnasse

minor

A young, elegant member of the Patron-Minette criminal gang.

Babet

minor

Also known as Monsieur Babet

A member of the Patron-Minette criminal gang.

Gueulemer

minor

Also known as Guelemer, Monsieur Guelemer

A strong, brutish member of the Patron-Minette gang.

Claquesous

minor

Also known as Monsieur Claquesous

A masked member of the Patron-Minette gang who also works as a spy.

Brujon

minor

Also known as Monsieur Brujon

A young, cunning member of the Patron-Minette gang.

Azelma

minor

Also known as Zelma

The younger daughter of the Thénardiers.

Tholomyès

minor

Also known as Félix Tholomyès, Félix, M. Félix Tholomyès

Fantine's wealthy, callous lover who abandons her.

Favorite

minor

Also known as O Favorite

One of Fantine's friends in Paris, a grisette.

Dahlia

minor

Also known as Miss Dahlia

One of Fantine's friends in Paris, a grisette.

Zéphine

minor

One of Fantine's friends in Paris, a grisette.

Blachevelle

minor

One of Tholomyès's friends, a student.

Listolier

minor

One of Tholomyès's friends, a student.

Fameuil

minor

One of Tholomyès's friends, a student.

Madame Magloire

minor

Also known as Madam Magloire

The Bishop of Digne's devoted housekeeper.

Mademoiselle Baptistine

minor

Also known as Baptistine

The Bishop of Digne's gentle, pious sister.

Little Gervais

minor

Also known as little Gervais

A young Savoyard boy from whom Jean Valjean steals a coin.

Champmathieu

minor

Also known as Father Champmathieu, the pretended Champmathieu

A poor man mistakenly arrested as Jean Valjean.

Madame Victurnien

minor

Also known as VIII Madame Victurnien

A gossipy woman who exposes Fantine's past, leading to her dismissal.

Sister Simplice

minor

Also known as Simplice, VI Sister Simplice

A nun who nurses Fantine and later helps Jean Valjean.

Mademoiselle Gillenormand

minor

Also known as Mademoiselle Gillenormand the, IV Mademoiselle Gillenormand, Aunt Gillenormand

Marius's spinster aunt who lives with his grandfather.

Théodule

minor

Also known as Lieutenant Théodule Gillenormand, Lieutenant Théodule, Lieutenant Gillenormand

Marius's cousin, a vain and shallow officer.

Basque

minor

Also known as V Basque, honest Basque

The Gillenormand family's loyal valet.

Nicolette

minor

The Gillenormand family's maid.

Toussaint

minor

Also known as poor old Toussaint, Old Toussaint

Jean Valjean and Cosette's loyal servant in Paris.

Boulatruelle

minor

Also known as Sieur Boulatruelle

A former road-mender turned suspicious peasant in Montfermeil.

Father Mestienne

minor

Also known as Mestienne

The gravedigger at Père-Lachaise who helps Fauchelevent.

Gribier

minor

Also known as this Gribier, gravedigger Gribier

The gravedigger who replaces Mestienne at the convent.

Mother Crucifixion

minor

Also known as reverend Mother, Mother

The prioress of the Petit-Picpus convent.

Mother Ascension

minor

Also known as reverend Mother

A nun at the Petit-Picpus convent.

Sister Euphrasie

minor

Also known as Euphrasie

A nun at the Petit-Picpus convent.

Marguerite

minor

Also known as Marguerite de Blemeur, de Blemeur

A kind neighbor who helps Fantine in Montreuil-sur-Mer.

Master Scaufflaire

minor

Also known as this Scaufflaire, Scaufflaire, Monsieur Scaufflaire

A coachman who rents Jean Valjean a carriage.

Brevet

minor

Also known as Cochepaille

A former convict who testifies at Champmathieu's trial.

Chenildieu

minor

A former convict who testifies at Champmathieu's trial.

Cochepaille

minor

A former convict who testifies at Champmathieu's trial.

Ma'am Bougon

minor

Also known as Bougon, old Bougon

The miserly landlady of the Gorbeau tenement where Marius lives.

Mother Plutarque

minor

Also known as Mother

M. Mabeuf's elderly housekeeper.

Father Hucheloup

minor

Also known as Hucheloup, the Widow Hucheloup, Mame Hucheloup, Mother Hucheloup

The owner of the Corinthe café, a meeting place for revolutionaries.

Gibelotte

minor

A waitress at the Corinthe café.

Matelote

minor

A waitress at the Corinthe café.

Le Cabuc

minor

Also known as This Cabuc, Cabuc

A violent man at the barricade who is executed by Enjolras.

The Magnon

minor

Also known as Magnon, This Magnon

A woman who falsely claims to be the mother of the Thénardiers' sons.

Georges Pontmercy

minor

Also known as Pontmercy, Colonel Baron Pontmercy, Colonel Pontmercy

Marius's father, a heroic colonel under Napoleon.

M. Bamatabois

minor

Also known as XII M. Bamatabois

A dandy who harasses Fantine on the street.

Laffitte

minor

Also known as M. Laffitte

The banker who holds Jean Valjean's fortune.

M. Madeleine

minor

Also known as Madeleine, IV M. Madeleine, Mirror M. Madeleine, Father Madeleine, Monsieur Madeleine

The alias Jean Valjean uses as mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer.

M. Leblanc

minor

Also known as Leblanc, Neither M. Leblanc, Monsieur Leblanc

The alias Jean Valjean uses in Paris while living with Cosette.

Madame Albertine

minor

A neighbor of the Jondrette family.

Ursule

minor

The name Marius gives to Cosette before he knows her real name.

Panchaud

minor

Also known as This Panchaud

A member of the Patron-Minette gang.

Mademoiselle Vaubois

minor

A friend of Mademoiselle Gillenormand.

Mademoiselle Bouchard

minor

A woman who lives in the Gorbeau tenement.

Father Mabeuf

minor

Also known as Mabeuf

M. Mabeuf's brother, a gardener.

Father Fauvent

minor

Also known as Fauvent

A gardener at the convent, possibly related to Fauchelevent.

Madame Pontmercy

minor

Also known as Madame la Baronne de Pontmercy, Madame la Baronne

Marius's mother, who dies when he is young.

M. Fauchelevent

minor

Also known as That M. Fauchelevent, This M. Fauchelevent, the Fauchelevent, Monsieur Fauchelevent

The alias Jean Valjean uses after leaving the convent.

The Lark

minor

Also known as The poor Lark, the Lark

The nickname given to Cosette by the people of Montfermeil.

Bigrenaille

minor

A member of the Patron-Minette gang.

Printanier

minor

A member of the Patron-Minette gang.

Mademoiselle Fabre

minor

A friend of Mademoiselle Gillenormand.