Editing Les Misérables (section)

=== Digressions ===
More than a quarter of the novel—by one count 955 of 2,783 pages—is devoted to essays that argue a moral point or display Hugo's encyclopedic knowledge but do not advance the plot, nor even a subplot, a method Hugo used in such other works as ''[[The Hunchback of Notre-Dame]]'' and ''[[Toilers of the Sea]]''. One biographer noted, "The digressions of genius are easily pardoned".<ref>A. F. Davidson, ''Victor Hugo: His Life And Work'' (J. B. Lippincott, 1929), Kindle Location 4026, 4189</ref> The topics Hugo addresses include cloistered [[religious order]]s, the construction of the [[Paris sewers]], [[argot]], and the [[street urchin]]s of Paris. The one about convents he titles "Parenthesis" to alert the reader to its irrelevance to the storyline.<ref>{{cite book|last=Brombert|first=Victor|chapter=''Les Misérables'': Salvation from Below|editor=[[Harold Bloom]]|title=Modern Critical Views: Victor Hugo|location=New York|publisher=Chelsea House|year=1988|page=195}}</ref>

Hugo devotes another 19 chapters (Volume II, Book I) to an account—and meditation on the place in history—of the [[Battle of Waterloo]], the battlefield of which Hugo visited in 1861 and where he finished writing the novel. It opens volume 2 with such a change of subject as to seem the beginning of an entirely different work. The fact that this "digression" occupies such a large part of the text demands that it be read in the context of the "overarching structure" discussed above. Hugo draws his own personal conclusions, taking Waterloo to be a pivot point in history but definitely not a victory for the forces of reaction.

{{blockquote|Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in another direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.}}

One critic has called this "the spiritual gateway" to the novel, as its chance encounter of Thénardier and Colonel Pontmercy foreshadows so many of the novel's encounters "blending chance and necessity", a "confrontation of heroism and villainy".{{sfn|Brombert|1988|pp=195–197}}

Even when not turning to other subjects outside his narrative, Hugo sometimes interrupts the straightforward recitation of events, his voice and control of the storyline unconstrained by time and sequence. The novel opens with a statement about the bishop of Digne in 1815 and immediately shifts: "Although these details in no way essentially concern that which we have to tell..." Only after 14 chapters does Hugo pick up the opening thread again, "In the early days of the month of October 1815...", to introduce Jean Valjean.<ref>Alexander Welsh, "Opening and Closing ''Les Misérables''," in Harold Bloom, ed., ''Modern Critical Views: Victor Hugo'' (Chelsea House, 1988), 151–152</ref>