Abstract

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Victor Hugo distanced himself from the nobility in which he was born in order to defend the rights of the poor. In Les Misérables , he assigned a name and a face to various forms of misery. Fantine represented the hardships of women, Valjean, those of men, and Gavroche, those of homeless orphans. Gavroche plays a fundamental role in this novel. He is the only character who can access all physical sites. He is thus the one who describes them to the reader. This boy expresses the social views of the author: the rich are superficial and selfish, the poor are caring and generous. Victor Hugo entrusts this orphan boy with the social goal that he stated in the preface: to abolish social misery. The character of Gavroche sets an example of how anyone can change their social standing by making the most out of what little they have. To better analyze Gavroche's marginality, it will be broken down into three distinct aspects: the physical locations where he spends his time, his strong and adaptive language skills, and his uncanny mythical powers. Ironically, Victor Hugo's fight for social justice forced him into exile until the end of the Second Empire. Though it is true that this novel lead readers to acknowledge the various hardships of the poor, regrettably, this social phenomenon has yet to be abolished.