Jean Valjean, Emissary of Peace Who Seeks Peace
In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo offers us a broad vision of what he often called “universal peace,” a peace broader than that among nations. As we see in Jean Valjean’s actions, universal peace also refers to the peace found among individuals and to the peace felt in one’s soul. Valjean is at once an emissary of peace for others and a man who is looking for personal peace. Paradoxically, although Valjean feels only rarely peaceful in his own soul, he spreads peace around himself, making himself as much an agent of peace for his adopted daughter, Cosette (and, as a corollary, for Marius, too), as he does at the barricade and for Inspector Javert.
But how can the troubled soul of a man who has experienced so much injustice find any sort of peace? And how that soul manage to bring peace to others? That’s equally paradoxical. Still, Jean Valjean can spread peace because he is inspired by a respect for what is right, as Hugo defines it in his essay “Right and the Law” (“Le Droit et la loi”). Valjean is also inspired by the peace he sees in Monseigneur Myriel. But Valjean is torn between the anxieties prompted by society’s disdain of him and the attraction of the peace he feels when he is outside society or alone. As a result, his path toward peace and God is complicated.
Led by what is right, incarnating a desire for and tendancy toward peace, Jean Valjean shows us tangibly what progress toward personal peace can entail, something that Victor Hugo explains more theoretically in his essay. And, in the end, Valjean’s complex progress toward peace reflects the progress toward societal peace that revolution can create in an equally paradoxical way.