Les Miserables: Volume 1, Book 5 Summary & Analysis

Chapter 1 Meanwhile, Fantine has returned to M.-sur-M., which, while she’d been away, had grown from wretched to prosperous. In 1815 a stranger had come to town and had been inspired to make certain substitutions in the manufacture of “black goods” or trinkets. This allowed prices of raw materials to go down and profits to go up. In three years, the inventor had become rich and had created wealth all around him. Little is known about his origins, but the day he arrived in town, there was a great fire in the town hall, and he had rushed into the flames to save two children, so no one had thought to ask for his passport. He is called Father Madeleine.

Chapter 2 By the end of his second year, Madeleine builds a large factory that can employ many who are hungry and poor. He separates the workrooms by sex to promote good morals and tolerance. Now almost no one is desperately poor. He only asks that each person be honest. Madeleine has spent over a million francs on the town and its poor, though he keeps 630,000 in a bank. At first, people are skeptical, even though he regularly attends church. In 1919 he’s appointed mayor by the king, but he refuses, and then also refuses a Legion of Honor. Then the gossips say that he must be ignorant, without education, or else ambitious, or else an adventurer. Nevertheless, he slowly gains the admiration of the town, and when he again refuses the mayoralty in 1820, everyone begs him to accept, which he finally does.

Chapter 3 Madeleine remains simple and largely in solitude, enjoying spending time alone reading. He’s known to be extraordinarily strong. He always goes out on walks with pockets filled with money, and returns with nothing. He does know a number of useful country tricks, like how to exterminate growths from a field or make medicine from plants. He is often completing good actions discreetly, so no one knows. But people whisper that he has millions deposited at the Laffitte bank, though in reality it’s the 630,000 already mentioned.

Chapter 4 In 1820, M. Myriel, Bishop of D---, dies at age 82, having been blind for several years, though happily accompanied by his sister and servant. This kind of love, the narrator says, means he did not lack anything. The day after the announcement of his death, Madeleine begins to wear only mourning clothes. People conclude that he had some sort of relationship with the Bishop, but he says only that he was a servant in the family as a young boy. It’s also noticed that every time Madeleine sees a young Savoyard boy wandering in the town, he asks for his name and gives him money.

Chapter 5 Slowly the townspeople lose their skepticism about Madeleine. One person, however, is instinctively against him—a policeman named Javert who watches him as though he knew him. Javert is tall, with a heavy cane and hat, and has the authoritative air of a policeman. He had been born in prison to a fortune-teller. He decided that society excludes only those who attack it and those who guard it, so he became a policeman. He has a flat nose, large jaw, and permanent frown between his eyes. He loves authority and hates rebellion, scorning all who had ever committed a legal wrong. He would have arrested his own father if necessary, and without remorse.

Chapter 6 One morning Madeleine is passing through M.-sur-M. when an old man, Father Fauchelevent, falls beneath his cart, his horse having fallen. Fauchelevent had lost his business just as Madeleine’s was growing, and thus he tried to hurt Madeleine at any chance he could. Now, the man is caught in the wheels, which rest on his chest. The only way to get it off is to lift up the vehicle. When someone tells Madeleine that it will take 15 minutes to fetch a jack-screw, he begins to name prices—10, 20 louis—for someone to lift the cart with his back. No one answers, and Javert, who has just arrived, say that it’s not for lack of will but for lack of strength.

Javert says he only knew one man, a convict in the galleys, who was strong enough to lift such a thing. Madeleine turns pale, but at that moment Fauchelevent yells that he is being strangled. Madeleine smiles sadly, darts under the cart, and slowly lifts the cart, quickly joined by twenty others and saving Fauchelevent. In the joy that follows, Javert stands still, staring at Madeleine.

Chapter 7 Madeleine takes Fauchelevent to the hospital. The next morning, Fauchelevent finds a 1,000-franc note, on which Madeleine has written that he’s purchased his cart (broken) and horse (dead).

Soon afterwards, Madeleine is appointed mayor, and Javert begins to avoid him as much as possible. Meanwhile, the tax collection begins to increase exponentially—the sign of a prosperous place. When Fantine returns, she’s admitted to the women’s workroom and begins to earn her living.

Chapter 8 The ability to earn her keep makes Fantine enormously happy, and she thinks only of Cosette and their future. She writes often, which leads the other women to gossip about her, as people are wont to do. Finally, a certain Madame Victurnien travels to Montfermeil to talk to the Thenardiers, having seen the address on Fantine’s letters. She returns and tells everyone about Fantine’s illegitimate child. Not long after, the workroom superintendent tells Fantine that she is no longer employed and asks her, in the mayor’s name, to leave the neighborhood. But she’s in debt for her rent and furniture, and doesn’t dare visit the mayor herself. In addition, the Thenardiers have just increased their demands to 15 francs a month.

Chapter 9 Madeleine had heard nothing of this, for he relies wholly on the superintendent of the women’s workroom. No one in the neighborhood will hire Fantine as a servant, and her furniture dealer says that if she leaves he’ll have her arrested as a thief. She begins to sew soldiers’ shirts, but barely makes anything, and begins to pay the Thenardiers irregularly. She learns to live on increasing privations, sleeping and eating little. Seeing her passing, Madame Victurnien sometimes congratulates herself on having put Fantine back “in her place.” Fantine’s small cough grows worse, and her only small joy is to comb her still-beautiful hair each morning.

Chapter 10 In winter, lack of light means that Fantine earns too little. She has her hair cut off for 10 francs to buy a petticoat to send to Cosette. The Thenardiers, who wanted money, are furious and give it to Eponine, while Cosette continues to shiver. Fantine grows bitter and begins to despise the mayor. She takes a lover who abuses her, and sinks lower and lower. One day the Thenardiers say that Cosette is ill with miliary fever, and they need 40 francs to pay the doctor so she won’t die. Fantine laughs wildly, but as she crosses the town square, a tooth-puller approaches her and says he’ll give her two gold napoleons for her two front teeth. After thinking hard and asking her sewing partner about military fever, she heads back out that night to have the two teeth pulled. Of course, Cosette’s fever was all a ruse by the Thenardiers.

Fantine works 17 hours a day for nearly nothing. She feels hunted, and finally, when Thenardier asks for 100 francs at once or else he’ll throw Cosette out, she becomes a prostitute.

Chapter 11 The narrator says that Fantine’s story is one of society purchasing a slave: prostitution pits man’s disgrace against woman’s grace and beauty. Fantine has become deaf and cold to feeling, resigned to her fate, though she doesn’t realize there are always new depths to sink to.

Chapter 12 It’s January 1823 and a man named M. Bamatabois is amusing himself by following Fantine up the street, making fun of her ugliness and heaping insults on her. Finally, he picks up a handful of snow and throws it into her bare shoulders. She yells and buries her nails in his face, swearing and cursing at him. Javert notices the scuffle, and takes Fantine away, as the dandy escapes.

Chapter 13 Upon arriving at the station, Fantine crouches down like a frightened dog. It’s a rare occasion for Javert to seem troubled by the kind of judgment he should impose, but ultimately he tells the other policemen to bring the woman to jail for six months. She grows desperate and frantic, saying that she must send money for her daughter. She begs for his mercy, saying that she is not to blame. She begins spewing frantic phrases about the Thenardiers and her need to make money, finally growing silent and sobbing. Javert simply says that she will get six months, and that’s the end of it.

As the soldiers drag Fantine back up, the mayor—having slipped in without anyone’s notice—asks for a moment. Fantine laughs hysterically and spits in his face. Wiping it off, Madeleine tells Javert to set the woman free. Javert feels like he is going mad, and Fantine is similarly shocked and bewildered, spewing forth another diatribe about how the mayor was the one who unfairly dismissed her and forced her to become a bad woman. Suddenly, she seems to realize that she is free to go, and she stands up, no longer weeping, and puts her hand on the door latch. This stuns Javert protesting that it cannot be, since the woman has insulted a citizen. Madeleine explains that he had been in the square, and had seen what happened. Javert continues to insist that she serve six months, but Madeleine orders him to obey. Finally, after continued protests, Madeleine tells Javert to leave the room. Fantine feels a strange confusion, failing to understand how the mayor had saved her after she insulted him.

Madeleine tells her he did not know that she had been dismissed. He says he will pay her debts and send for her child. If she is telling the truth, he says, she has never ceased to be virtuous. Fantine can only exclaim, “Oh!” and then she faints.