Les Misérables: A Character and Relationship Map
Full spoilers: this guide discusses identities, relationships, and events through the end of Victor Hugo’s novel.
Use the family maps for kinship and upbringing, the grouped entries for people’s roles, and the name lookup when a familiar character appears under another name. This guide follows the novel, including characters and episodes often shortened or omitted in adaptations.
Contents
The main relationships at a glance
Jean Valjean raises Cosette, whose mother is Fantine and whose father is Félix Tholomyès. Cosette later marries Marius Pontmercy. Javert pursues Valjean through his changes of name and occupation. The Thénardiers connect these lives: they mistreat Cosette as a child, their daughter Éponine loves Marius, and Marius believes that he owes Thénardier a debt for saving Georges Pontmercy, Marius’s father, at Waterloo.
Cosette’s birth family, upbringing, and marriage are different relationships. Javert’s pursuit changes when Valjean saves his life.
Hugo moves between these households, the republican Friends of the ABC, and the criminals known as Patron-Minette. The two groups have different aims. Their members and associates meet at several points in the story, but the barricade is not a gathering of Thénardier’s gang.
The novel has a wide-ranging narrator who can enter characters’ thoughts, interrupt the action, and revisit history. Its accounts of Waterloo, convent life, slang, and the Paris sewers belong to that narrator. When a character guesses a name or believes a story, the surrounding narration may give the reader information that the character lacks.
Jean Valjean, Javert, and the people who shelter him
Jean Valjean is the former prisoner at the center of the novel. He steals bread while supporting his widowed sister and her children; escape attempts extend his original sentence to nineteen years. Released in 1815, he eventually becomes a prosperous manufacturer and mayor under the name Monsieur Madeleine. He gives up that security to prevent Champmathieu from being condemned in his place. His later life centers on protecting Cosette, and then on accepting her love for Marius. His prison numbers, 24601 and later 9430, belong to different periods of imprisonment.
Javert is a police officer who has known Valjean as a convict and grows suspicious of Madeleine. He pursues the same man across several identities. At the barricade, their positions reverse: Javert is a prisoner, and Valjean is allowed to take him away for execution. Valjean releases him. After encountering Valjean again at the sewer exit, Javert lets him take the wounded Marius home and ultimately leaves him free. Unable to reconcile this mercy with his understanding of duty, Javert dies by suicide in the Seine.
These connections belong to different moments during and after the June 1832 barricade. Valjean’s gunshot after releasing Javert misleads Marius about what happened.
Bishop Myriel, also called Monseigneur Bienvenu, receives Valjean in Digne after other doors have closed to him. His full name is Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel. When the police return Valjean with stolen silver, the bishop says that he gave it to him and adds his silver candlesticks. Valjean keeps the candlesticks for the rest of his life. Mademoiselle Baptistine is the bishop’s sister; Madame Magloire keeps their house. They are separate women in the same household.
G., the former Conventionist, is the dying revolutionary whom the bishop visits early in Part One. Their conversation challenges the bishop’s judgment of him; Myriel asks for his blessing. G. is not Gillenormand, the royalist grandfather introduced much later.
Little Gervais, often called Petit-Gervais, is the boy whose coin Valjean keeps shortly after leaving the bishop. Valjean’s subsequent search for the child and his remorse follow this second theft. The boy’s encounter with him occurs before his life as Madeleine.
Champmathieu is the defendant mistakenly identified as Jean Valjean at the Arras trial. He is a separate person. Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille, men who knew Valjean in prison, support the mistaken identification; Javert also believes it. Madeleine appears in court and identifies himself as the real Valjean.
Fauchelevent is the man whom Madeleine saves from beneath a cart. Valjean secures him work as a gardener at the Petit-Picpus convent in Paris. Later, Fauchelevent recognizes his rescuer and shelters him and Cosette. He arranges Valjean’s admission as his supposed brother, Ultime Fauchelevent. The original Ultime was Fauchelevent’s deceased brother; Valjean borrows his identity.
Mother Innocente, the prioress of Petit-Picpus, admits the supposed brother as another gardener and Cosette as a pupil. The burial of Mother Crucifixion, a deceased nun, gives Fauchelevent an opportunity to smuggle Valjean out in a coffin so that he can return openly. Gribier, the new gravedigger, nearly buries Valjean alive; he has replaced Father Mestienne, on whose habits Fauchelevent had counted.
Toussaint is the servant who lives with Valjean and Cosette after they leave the convent. She belongs to their Paris household at the Rue Plumet and later the Rue de l’Homme Armé. Her position is different from that of the nuns who educated Cosette and from the Thénardiers who boarded her earlier.
Fantine, Cosette, and the separation of mother and child
Fantine is Cosette’s mother. Her lover, Félix Tholomyès, abandons her in Paris. She leaves Cosette with the Thénardiers in Montfermeil while she returns to her hometown, Montreuil-sur-Mer, to work. The arrangement is paid boarding. Fantine continues sending money and does not know how badly her daughter is treated.
After losing her factory job, Fantine sells her hair and teeth, and eventually becomes a prostitute. Madeleine intervenes when Javert arrests her and promises to bring Cosette to her. Fantine dies during Javert’s confrontation with Madeleine, before mother and daughter can be reunited. Valjean’s care of Cosette fulfills his promise to Fantine; he and Fantine are not a romantic couple.
Félix Tholomyès is Cosette’s biological father. He takes part in a Paris outing with three male friends, then abandons Fantine through a farewell letter presented as a joke. His companions are Blachevelle, paired with Favourite; Listolier, with Dahlia; and Fameuil, with Zéphine. The women are Fantine’s friends in this episode. Tholomyès does not return to raise Cosette.
Madame Victurnien travels to Montfermeil, speaks to the Thénardiers, and reports that she has seen Fantine’s child. The unnamed superintendent of the women’s workroom then dismisses Fantine in Madeleine’s name, without his knowledge. Fantine blames Madeleine because the superintendent invokes his authority.
Marguerite is Fantine’s poor but helpful neighbor. Bamatabois is the man who torments Fantine and pushes snow down her back; her retaliation leads Javert to arrest her. Sister Simplice and Sister Perpétue nurse the sick. Simplice is especially important after Fantine’s death, when she lies to Javert to protect Valjean.
Cosette is the familiar name of Euphrasie, Fantine’s daughter. Valjean takes her away from the Thénardiers at Christmas 1823 and raises her as his daughter. She is educated at Petit-Picpus and later lives with him in Paris, where she and Marius fall in love. Catherine, whom Cosette treasures as a child, is her doll.
Before the wedding, Valjean arranges papers that make Cosette legally Euphrasie Fauchelevent, the orphaned daughter of the deceased convent gardener, Fauchelevent. Valjean becomes her legal guardian. This family history is fabricated. Her biological parents remain Fantine and Tholomyès; Valjean is the father who raises her. She marries Marius Pontmercy on February 16, 1833.
The Thénardier family and the children they abandon
Thénardier and Madame Thénardier run the inn at Montfermeil where Fantine leaves Cosette. They take her money, demand more through false reports of illness and expenses, and make Cosette work while favoring their own daughters. After the inn fails, they live in the Gorbeau house in Paris under the name Jondrette. There they lure Valjean into an ambush with criminal accomplices.
Thénardier’s reputation as a rescuer comes from Waterloo. He pulls the wounded Georges Pontmercy out from among the fallen while robbing him. Pontmercy survives and believes that Thénardier deliberately saved him. The distinction between the beneficial result and the robber’s purpose explains Marius’s later gratitude toward a man the reader knows to be cruel.
The two youngest boys are Gavroche’s brothers. Cosette’s paid lodging with the family does not make her their sister.
Éponine is the elder Thénardier daughter. As a child she enjoys the comforts denied to Cosette; in Paris she experiences hunger, poverty, and her father’s exploitation. She loves Marius, who loves Cosette. She finds Cosette’s address for him and later prevents her father and his accomplices from entering the Rue Plumet house.
Her later actions are more conflicted. She keeps Cosette’s letter from Marius and directs him toward the barricade, where she expects them both to die. When a gun is aimed at him, she puts her hand before its muzzle; the bullet passes through her hand and into her body. Dying beside Marius, she gives him the withheld letter and tells him of her love.
Azelma is Éponine’s younger sister. Her father forces her to break a window to make the Gorbeau room look more wretched before Valjean’s visit. Later, at her father’s instruction, she follows Marius and Cosette’s wedding party. She leaves France with Thénardier after his final visit to Marius.
Gavroche is the Thénardiers’ eldest son. Neglected by his parents, he lives largely on the streets of Paris. He feeds and shelters two younger boys in the hollow elephant monument at the Bastille without knowing that they are his own brothers. He also helps his father escape from La Force prison, without receiving a father’s welcome or gratitude. At the barricade he recognizes Javert as a policeman, carries Marius’s letter intended for Cosette to Valjean, and is killed while gathering cartridges from fallen soldiers.
The two younger Thénardier boys are not given names. Their parents hand them over to Magnon, a former servant of Gillenormand. After her own two children die, she substitutes these boys so that Gillenormand will continue paying an allowance. The payment does not establish that Gillenormand is their father. Following Magnon’s arrest, the boys lose their home and the address meant to guide them to help. Their last scene shows the elder sharing food with the younger in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Madame Thénardier dies in prison before the trial. Thénardier and Azelma eventually go to America with money supplied by Marius; Thénardier becomes a slave trader. The novel does not give the two younger boys a corresponding adult future.
Marius, the Pontmercys, and the Gillenormands
Marius Pontmercy is the son of Georges Pontmercy and Gillenormand’s younger daughter. He grows up in his grandfather’s royalist household, initially sharing its contempt for his father. After learning how much his father loved him, Marius embraces his memory and Napoleon’s cause. He quarrels with his grandfather, lives in poverty, qualifies as a lawyer, and earns money through translation and publishing work. Courfeyrac introduces him to the Friends of the ABC, although Marius’s early Bonapartism differs from their republican convictions.
His love for Cosette draws him into Valjean’s life. His father’s last instructions draw him toward Thénardier. These two attachments collide when Marius discovers that the man he has promised to help is preparing to extort money from Cosette’s supposed father.
Gillenormand is Marius’s maternal grandfather. Mademoiselle Gillenormand is his mother’s elder half-sister.
Colonel Georges Pontmercy is Marius’s father, a Napoleonic officer wounded at Waterloo. Gillenormand threatens to disinherit Marius unless Georges surrenders his upbringing and stays away. Georges accepts for the boy’s sake and secretly watches him at church. Marius reaches Vernon just after his father’s death. Georges’s written instructions ask his son to help Thénardier if he finds him.
Monsieur Gillenormand, whose full name is Luc-Esprit Gillenormand, is Marius’s maternal grandfather and Georges’s political opponent. His hostility conceals from Marius the reason for his father’s absence. His love for his grandson also survives their estrangement. After the barricade, his house becomes the place of Marius’s recovery, reconciliation with the family, and married life with Cosette.
Madame Pontmercy, Marius’s mother, is Gillenormand’s younger daughter. She dies while Marius is a child. Mademoiselle Gillenormand the elder is her half-sister and Marius’s aunt; she lives with their father and helps bring up Marius. The two daughters are children of Gillenormand’s different marriages.
Lieutenant Théodule Gillenormand is Marius’s cousin and a favorite of the aunt. Asked to investigate Marius’s excursions, he finds him at Georges Pontmercy’s grave. His family connection and military appearance should not be confused with Georges’s place as Marius’s father.
Monsieur Mabeuf is the churchwarden who tells Marius about his father’s secret visits to Saint-Sulpice. His brother, the Abbé Mabeuf, is the priest at Vernon who befriends Georges Pontmercy. The churchwarden loves books and plants and has little interest in political factions. As poverty destroys his security, he sells his books and struggles to support his household. At the barricade he raises the fallen flag and is shot. Mother Plutarque is his elderly housekeeper, whose illness increases his distress.
Courfeyrac becomes Marius’s close friend and offers him lodging. He is also a member of the Friends of the ABC. Nicolette and Basque are servants in Gillenormand’s household. Madame Burgon, whom Courfeyrac nicknames Ma’am Bougon, manages the Gorbeau house where Marius and the Jondrettes lodge; she belongs to a different household.
The Friends of the ABC and the barricade
The Friends of the ABC are a small republican association whose name plays on abaissé, meaning the downtrodden. They meet at the Café Musain and at Corinthe. Most are students; Feuilly is a working man. Marius knows the group through Courfeyrac, and the barricade later brings in people who have different reasons for being there.
Character | Place in the group |
|---|---|
Enjolras | The committed republican leader who commands the barricade. He expects discipline from his companions and orders Javert held as a police spy. |
Combeferre | A learned, humane companion of Enjolras, deeply interested in education and scientific progress. Hugo distinguishes his desire to guide people from Enjolras’s ability to lead them into battle. |
Courfeyrac | The group’s sociable center and Marius’s friend and host. His warmth helps bring people together. |
Jean Prouvaire, also Jehan | A shy but courageous poet. Captured in the fighting, he is shot before his friends can arrange an exchange for Javert. |
Feuilly | A self-educated fan maker and orphan. His political interests extend to oppressed peoples beyond France. |
Bahorel | A combative, generous, long-standing law student who links this circle with other political groups. He is killed in the first attack on the barricade. |
Lesgle / Laigle / Légle, called Bossuet | A humorous, unlucky law student who frequently lodges with Joly. The different names refer to one member of the group. |
Joly | A medical student preoccupied with his own health and a close companion of Bossuet. He loves Musichetta; the narrator hints that she also belongs to their shared life, saying “to some extent.” |
Grantaire, who signs himself R | A skeptical drinker whose attachment to Enjolras keeps him among people whose convictions he doubts. His devotion to Enjolras matters more to him than their political program. |
Enjolras and Grantaire: Enjolras usually rejects Grantaire’s drunkenness and skepticism. During the final defeat, Grantaire wakes, chooses to stand beside him before the soldiers, and asks his permission to die with him. Enjolras smiles and takes his hand. They are shot together.
Mabeuf, Gavroche, Éponine, Marius, and Valjean have their own ties to the barricade. Mabeuf arrives after personal ruin; Gavroche joins the insurgents; Éponine hopes to die with Marius; Marius comes in despair over losing Cosette; Valjean comes after receiving Marius’s letter. Their presence does not make them interchangeable members of the original association.
Madame Hucheloup is the widow who runs Corinthe, the wine shop beside the barricade. Matelote and Gibelotte are its serving women. Her husband, Father Hucheloup, has already died by the time of the uprising.
Le Cabuc joins the barricade and kills a resident who refuses to open his door. Enjolras executes him. A police tradition reported by the narrator identifies Le Cabuc as Claquesous; the narrator calls this probable, not certain.
The fighting takes place on June 5–6, 1832, under Louis-Philippe, after General Lamarque’s funeral. Waterloo belongs to 1815; the July Revolution belongs to 1830. Hugo moves among these different historical moments. For the novel’s larger treatment of political change, see Hugo, Tolstoy, and the Soul of the Times.
Patron-Minette and the other criminal connections
Patron-Minette is the criminal association led by Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse. Thénardier works with this network in Paris. The name identifies a group, not an additional person.
Babet is the thin, calculating criminal who has worked as a traveling performer and tooth puller. He helps arrange escapes and robberies.
Gueulemer, also printed Guelemer in the Hapgood text, supplies formidable physical strength.
Claquesous conceals his face, works in darkness, and uses ventriloquism. His mysterious disappearance from police custody raises the possibility of police complicity. The later suggestion that he is Le Cabuc remains a reported identification.
Montparnasse is the young, fashion-conscious robber and killer who knows Gavroche and Éponine. He helps from outside during the La Force escape. He is a criminal associate of the Thénardiers, not one of their sons.
Brujon is an accomplice involved in the Gorbeau ambush, prison planning, and the attempted Rue Plumet robbery. He is distinct from the four named leaders.
Panchaud, also called Printanier and Bigrenaille, is another participant in the Gorbeau ambush. His several names can make the band seem larger than it is.
Boulatruelle is the road mender who searches the woods near Montfermeil for buried treasure. His suspicions lead toward the place where Valjean has concealed his money.
Javert’s police work brings him against the Gorbeau criminals as well as against Valjean. Valjean is their intended victim in the ambush. His criminal record does not make him a member of Patron-Minette.
Name and alias lookup
The same name can refer to a disguise, a nickname, or a mistaken guess. Fauchelevent is especially confusing because a real man’s family name becomes Valjean’s assumed name and then part of Cosette’s legal identity.
Name encountered | Who it means |
|---|---|
24601; 9430 | Jean Valjean’s first and second prison numbers. |
Bienvenu; Monseigneur Bienvenu; Myriel | The bishop who receives Valjean in Digne. |
Bossuet; Lesgle; Laigle; Légle | One member of the Friends of the ABC, Joly’s companion. |
Bougon; Burgon | The Gorbeau housekeeper: Burgon is her name; Bougon is Courfeyrac’s nickname for her. |
Cosette; Euphrasie | Fantine’s daughter. Cosette is the name her mother gives her in everyday life. |
Euphrasie Fauchelevent | Cosette’s legal name in the papers arranged before her wedding. The stated Fauchelevent parentage is invented. |
Fabantou; Genflot; Don Alvarès; Balizard | Identities used in Thénardier’s begging letters. They do not introduce four new neighbors. |
Fauchelevent; Father Fauvent | Usually the real gardener when the convent story introduces him. Ultime Fauchelevent and the other Fauvent refer to Valjean under the identity of the gardener’s deceased brother. Context matters when only the surname is used. |
Jehan; Jean Prouvaire | The poet among the Friends of the ABC. |
Jondrette; Thénardier | The former innkeeper in his Paris life; his wife and daughters also appear as the Jondrette family. |
Le Cabuc; Claquesous | A possible shared identity, presented through a police tradition. The narrator does not make it certain. |
Monsieur Jean | The form of address Valjean asks Cosette to use after her marriage, as he withdraws from his place as her father. |
Monsieur Leblanc; Mademoiselle Lanoire | Courfeyrac’s nicknames for Valjean and Cosette at the Luxembourg Gardens. |
Monsieur Madeleine; Father Madeleine; the mayor | Valjean during his life as a manufacturer and mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. |
Panchaud; Printanier; Bigrenaille | One criminal involved in the Gorbeau ambush. |
R | Grantaire’s signature, a rebus on his name. |
Thénard | The shortened name Thénardier signs to his letter seeking a final meeting with Marius. |
Urbain Fabre | The name Valjean gives his captors in the Gorbeau room. |
Ursule | Marius’s mistaken guess at Cosette’s name, based on the initials U. F. on a handkerchief. The handkerchief belongs to Valjean. |
Monsieur / M., Madame / Mme, and Mademoiselle / Mlle are forms of address. They are not additional given names. “Father” can also be a familiar form of address: Father Fauchelevent and Father Mabeuf are not priests.
When and where the relationships change
The main dates
Period | What to place here |
|---|---|
1795–1815 | Valjean’s bread theft, sentence, and long imprisonment; his release in 1815. |
1815 | Thénardier pulls Pontmercy from the fallen at Waterloo. Later that year, Valjean meets Bishop Myriel. |
1817–1818 | Tholomyès abandons Fantine; the following year she leaves Cosette with the Thénardiers. |
1823 | The Champmathieu trial exposes Madeleine’s identity. Fantine dies. After another imprisonment and escape, Valjean takes Cosette from Montfermeil at Christmas. |
1827 | Georges Pontmercy dies. Marius begins to learn the truth about his father. |
1829 | Valjean and Cosette leave their convent life; he rents the Rue Plumet house in October. |
1832 | The Gorbeau ambush and the Rue Plumet courtship precede the June uprising. The barricade fighting occupies June 5–6. |
1833 | Marius and Cosette marry on February 16. Valjean’s confession, withdrawal, and final reunion with them follow. |
The places that separate the households
Place | People and events to remember |
|---|---|
Digne, often printed D— | Bishop Myriel’s home and Valjean’s encounter with him after prison. |
Montreuil-sur-Mer, abbreviated M. sur M. | Fantine’s hometown and Madeleine’s factory and mayoralty. |
Montfermeil | The Thénardiers’ inn; nearby woods where Valjean hides his fortune. |
Arras | Champmathieu’s trial and Madeleine’s public revelation. |
Toulon | Valjean’s imprisonment; later, his escape after rescuing a sailor on the ship Orion. |
Vernon | Georges Pontmercy’s home and grave. |
The Gorbeau house, Boulevard de l’Hôpital, Paris | An early refuge for Valjean and Cosette; later the lodging house where Marius and the Jondrettes are neighbors. These stays occur at different times. |
Petit-Picpus | The convent where Fauchelevent and Valjean work and Cosette is educated. |
Luxembourg Gardens | Marius sees Valjean and Cosette here; the two younger Thénardier boys also appear here near the end of the barricade narrative. |
Rue Plumet | Valjean and Cosette’s house and the garden where Marius and Cosette meet. |
Rue de l’Homme Armé | Valjean’s other Paris lodging, where he receives Marius’s letter and later dies. |
Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire | Gillenormand’s home, where the wounded Marius recovers and the married couple live. |
Corinthe, Rue de la Chanvrerie | The wine shop beside the insurgents’ barricade, close to the Rue Mondétour. The sewers provide Valjean’s escape route with Marius. |
What Marius learns at the end
After the wedding, Valjean tells Marius that he is an escaped convict and has no biological claim on Cosette. He begins withdrawing from the family. Marius allows visits at first but increasingly discourages them; he wrongly believes that Valjean stole Madeleine’s money and killed Javert. He still does not know who carried him out of the barricade.
Thénardier tries to sell Marius another accusation: that Valjean murdered a man and carried the body through the sewer. In explaining it, he supplies the facts that undo Marius’s suspicions. Valjean and Madeleine are the same man, Javert died by suicide, and the strip of coat Thénardier tore from the supposed corpse matches Marius’s own coat. The man being carried was Marius, alive but unconscious.
Cosette’s money comes from Valjean’s legitimate earnings as Madeleine. The invented inheritance story hid its origin; it did not make the money stolen. Marius and Cosette hurry to Valjean and reconcile with him before he dies. Valjean tells Cosette her mother’s name, Fantine, and leaves her the bishop’s candlesticks.
Sources
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1887). Complete text at Project Gutenberg, eBook 135. Character names and relationships follow this edition; familiar French accents have been retained where the translation’s spelling varies.
For the identification of D— as Digne: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Les Misérables.
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