Victor Hugo & Montreuil

VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885) single-handedly sums up the 19th century.

He is an ordinary man: son, husband, father and grandfather with moments of happiness but also tragedies and pettiness that adversaries like to highlight.

More exceptional is the committed writer. From the 1830s he began a fight for freedom and more especially a fight for the oppressed.

It is this point which bothers the right-thinking people who have read the preface to “Les Miserables”: “as long as there is ignorance and poverty on earth, books of this nature may not be useless” .

Hugo leaves behind an immense body of work in terms of quantity, quality but also influence.

The novel “Les Misérables” has traveled the world.

In 1837, Victor Hugo walked under the large trees of the ramparts of Montreuil sur Mer. He wrote to his wife Adèle, while on the arm of a certain Juliette Drouet:

“Montreuil sur mer would be better named Montreuil sur plaine; From the ramparts, we have an admirable view of hills and meadows, because the city is high up.

A few years later, it was in this city that he located most of the first part of Les Misérables. Montreuil is the hometown of Fantine, the city of which Jean Valjean becomes mayor under the name of Monsieur Madeleine.

It is here that the fight between good and evil begins, the famous “storm under a skull”, the terrifying journey into the depths of the hero’s consciousness. This is where the action of the novel takes place.