American Prisons: A Study in American Social History Prior to 1915 Book

From my personal perspective, this book is an UNSUNG MASTERPIECE.

Could it be a dark fable as well? I think so.

Hugo must have heard the story during his exile. It clicked for him, Big Time.

PERFECT! quoth he - for my disfigured hero will stand for all those who refuse to discontinue - despite the pressuring of authority - their eternal, unabashed public display of a POSITIVE, MORAL ATTITUDE.

Just like Victor Hugo himself.

So, he had a bit of black-humoured fun. In Paris, as in any modern country, dark deceit and hypocrisy ruled the roost.

Time to SHAKE THEM UP A BIT, ya think?

So he did.

But I guess a mediocre writer could only milk so much astonished sympathy from his readers out of a perpetual rictus. Hugo, though - ever the masterful stylist - diverts our attention from this hapless victim of bad luck to his noble interlocutors.

Who are all into their own ugly games at his expense.

In spades.

And of course, like the poor hero of Les Misérables, Hugo was none too popular with la crème de la crème.

But guess what?

His readers (and now his film and musical viewers!) ADORED AND WILL ALWAYS ADORE him.

It doesn’t hurt his storyline here that he added a bit of a beaut in the way of an innocent story of two simple hearts - WAY beyond the corruption of the ‘normal’ human heart!

And Hugo knew true love’s ways RARELY survive the awful and onerous degradation of the jeering world.

There but for the Grace of God might have gone I.

He was an ethically-sound sort of PRACTICAL man, and hence he was a pessimist.

It’s sad to lack Faith.

So yes - it IS a sad story.

Though you can hear the resounding echoes of unworldly Voltairean cackles throughout.

But it remains a novel with a Heart -

A broken, weeping heart.