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the moral dynamics of his story might seem to rule out the possibility of enlightened choice: “Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do” (p. 11); “it seems as if it were necessary that a woman should be a mother to be venerable [instead of merely respectable]” (p.12); “there is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher” (p. 15). Such generalizations appear to reflect a traditional belief in a “human nature” that remains invariable. But this impression is misleading. First, Hugo always grounds his maxims solidly in a social context, and in the social, financial, and biological contingencies of one’s individual existence. He is not La Rochefoucauld, the classicist whose aphorisms describe unvarying relationships among abstract nouns, as if wealth, health, gender, or ethnicity made no difference: “Hypocrisy is a form of respect that vice pays to virtue.” Second, throughout the novel he dramatizes the titanic inner struggles of Jean Valjean with his conscience; and he richly analyzes the moral evolution of many other characters such as Bishop Myriel, Fantine, Thénardier, Marius, Gillenormand, Eponine, and Javert.
    Throughout most of Les Misérables, cosmic motifs are muted and implicit. They often appear subtly in descriptions of looming darkness and unexpected radiance. Nature seems hostile to the outcast Jean Valjean; as he contemplates the sleeping bishop, that man’s face seems to glow with an inner light; Eponine, hating her life as an outlaw and pursued by a larval form of conscience, describes the hallucinations of starvation to Marius by saying that the stars seem like floodlights, and the trees like gallows—her crimes are known to God, and she is doomed to hang, she feels. Hugo adopts the motif of the Transfiguration from the Bible: filled with the Holy Spirit, the faces of Moses or of Jesus shine.

Characters
    Hugo integrates this worldview with his character depiction and plot development through the implied religious doctrine of supererogation (in French, réversibilité): exceptional individuals may accrue sufficient merit, through their loyal faith and virtuous acts, not only to ensure their own salvation but also to aid in the salvation of others, to whom some of their extra merit may be transferred. Supererogation is the dynamic and positive mode of the archetype of Inversion: what seemed bad (Christ’s betrayal by his friends, humiliation, torture, and agonizing death on the cross) proves good (mankind will be redeemed). It allows the concept of free will to be synthesized with the concept of Providence. Hugo represents this force not mystically, but quite realistically, through the influence of conversation and example, which often occurs partially, gradually, and belatedly. Good influences, in his view, are not compulsions, but invitations to which their objects must choose to respond. But they can create a chain reaction.
    The first example appears in the figure of the conventionist G—(a representative of the assembly that dissolved the monarchy, and of which a majority excluding G—condemned Louis XVI to death). He humbles the initially scornful Bishop Myriel, who comes to recognize the moral excellence of his devotion to humanity and kneels before him to ask his blessing. “No one could say that the passage of that soul before [Myriel‘s] own, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his own had not had its effect upon [the Bishop’s] approach to perfection” (p. 34). This blessing is later transferred, so to speak, from Myriel to Valjean, thus saving the ex-convict from further hatred and crime: “Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I am withdrawing it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I am giving it to God!” (p. 63). In turn,