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Fantine
Fantine (French pronunciation: ) is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables''. She is a young ''Grisette (person), grisette'' in Paris who is impregnated by a rich student. After he abandons her, she is forced to look after their child, Cosette, on her own. Originally a beautiful and naive girl, Fantine is eventually forced by circumstances to become a prostitute to support her daughter, losing her beauty and health until she finally dies of tuberculosis. She was first played in Les Misérables (musical), the musical by Rose Laurens in France, and when the musical came to England, Patti LuPone played Fantine in the West End. Fantine has since been played by numerous actresses. Fantine became an archetype of self-abnegation and devoted motherhood. She has been portrayed by many actresses in stage and screen versions of the story and has been depicted in works of art. In the novel Description Hugo introduces Fantine as one of four fair girls attach ...
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Les Misérables (musical)
''Les Misérables'' ( , ), colloquially known as ''Les Mis'' or ''Les Miz'' ( ), is a sung-through musical theatre, musical with music by Claude-Michel Schönberg, lyrics by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel, and a book by Schönberg and Boublil, based on the 1862 novel Les Misérables, of the same name by Victor Hugo. Set in early France in the long nineteenth century, 19th-century France, ''Les Misérables'' tells the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant, and his desire for redemption. After stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's starving child, Valjean is imprisoned for 19 years and released in 1815. When a bishop inspires him with a tremendous act of mercy, Valjean breaks his parole and starts his life anew and in disguise. He becomes wealthy and adopts an orphan, Cosette. A police inspector named Javert pursues Valjean over the decades in a single-minded quest for "justice". The characters are swept into a June Rebellion, revolutionary period in France, where a group of ...
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Les Misérables
''Les Misérables'' (, ) is a 19th-century French literature, French Epic (genre), epic historical fiction, historical novel by Victor Hugo, first published on 31 March 1862, that is considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. ''Les Misérables'' has been popularized through Adaptations of Les Misérables, numerous adaptations for film, television, and the stage, including Les Misérables (musical), a musical. In the English-speaking world, the novel is usually referred to by its original French title. However, several alternatives have been used, including ''The Miserables'', ''The Wretched'', ''The Miserable Ones'', ''The Poor Ones'', ''The Wretched Poor'', ''The Victims'', and ''The Dispossessed''. Beginning in 1815 and culminating in the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris, the novel follows the lives and interactions of several characters, particularly the struggles of ex-convict Jean Valjean and his experience of redemption. Examining the nature of law and grace, ...
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Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean () is the protagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables''. The story depicts the character's struggle to lead a normal life and redeem himself after serving a 19-year-long prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister's starving children and attempting to escape from prison. Valjean is also known in the novel as Monsieur Madeleine, Ultime Fauchelevent (once called Tranchelevent by Monsieur Gillenormand), Monsieur Leblanc, and Urbain Fabre. Jean Valjean and police Inspector Javert, who repeatedly encounters Valjean and attempts to return him to prison, have become archetypes in literary culture. Outline of the novel As a parolee, Valjean is issued a yellow passport with marching orders to Pontarlier, where he will be forced to live under severe restrictions. This document, often called a "passeport jaune" (yellow passport), identifies him to all as a former convict and immediately brands Valjean an outcast wherever he travels. His life tu ...
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Cosette
Cosette () is a fictional character in the 1862 novel ''Les Misérables'' by Victor Hugo and in the many adaptations of the story for stage, film, and television. Her birth name, Euphrasie, is only mentioned briefly. As the orphaned child of an unmarried mother deserted by her father, Hugo never gives her a surname. In the course of the novel, she is mistakenly identified as ''Ursule'', ''Lark'', or ''Mademoiselle Lanoire''. She is the daughter of Fantine, a working woman who leaves her to be looked after by the Thénardiers, who exploit and victimise her. Rescued by Jean Valjean, who raises Cosette as if she were his own, she grows up in a convent school. She falls in love with Marius Pontmercy, a young lawyer. Valjean's struggle to protect her while disguising his past drives much of the plot until he recognizes "that this child had a right to know life before renouncing it"—and he must allow her romantic attachment to Marius to blossom. In the novel Early life Euphrasi ...
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Margaret Bernadine Hall
Margaret Bernadine Hall (10 March 1863 – 2 January 1910) was an English painter who spent most of her career in Paris. Few of her works have survived, but she is notable for her 1886 painting ''Fantine'', which hangs in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England. The subject of the painting is Fantine, a character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables''. Biography Margaret Bernadine Hall was born in 1863 in Wavertree, Liverpool. Her father was Bernard Hall (1813–1890), a merchant, local politician and philanthropist, who was elected Mayor of Liverpool in 1879. Her mother was Margaret Calrow (1827–1902) from Preston, who was Bernard Hall's second wife. Margaret was their second child, and their oldest daughter. In 1882 the family moved to London, and later that year, at the age of 19, Margaret moved to Paris to study for five years at the academy run by Auguste Feyen-Perrin and Eduard Krug. This was at a time when there were few female artists in the city, and whe ...
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Thénardiers
The Thénardiers, commonly known as (; ) and , are fictional characters, and the secondary antagonists in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel and in many adaptations of the novel into other media. They are unscrupulous working-class people who blame society for their sufferings. Early in the novel, they own an inn and cheat their customers. After they lose the inn in bankruptcy, they change their name to and live by begging and petty thievery. They serve, alongside Javert, as one of the two arch-nemeses of the story's protagonist, Jean Valjean. While Javert represents the justice system that would punish Valjean, the Thénardiers represent the lawless subculture of society that would exploit him. The novel portrays them as shameless and abusive figures; some adaptations transform them into buffoonish characters, though sometimes still criminals, to provide comic relief from the generally more serious tone of the story. In the novel Part One: Fantine When Hugo introduces the Thénardi ...
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Éponine
Éponine Thénardier (; ), also referred to as "Ponine", the "Jondrette girl" and the "young working-man", is a fictional character in the 1862 novel ''Les Misérables'' by Victor Hugo. The character is introduced as a spoiled and pampered child, but appears later in the novel as a ragged and impoverished teenager who speaks in the argot of the Parisian streets, while retaining vestiges of her former charm and innocence. In the novel Life in Montfermeil Éponine is born in 1816, the oldest child of the Thénardiers. As children, Éponine and her younger sister Azelma are described as pretty, well-dressed, and charming. They are pampered and spoiled by their parents, the Thénardiers, who run an inn in Montfermeil, France. Three years later, when Fantine and her illegitimate daughter Cosette come across the inn, Fantine sees Éponine and Azelma playing outside. Cosette joins the two sisters and the three play together. Fantine asks the Thénardiers to take care of Cosette ...
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Fantine (painting)
''Fantine'' is a painting by Margaret Bernadine Hall (1863–1910) hanging in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, England. It is executed in oil on canvas, and measures 157 cm by 116.2 cm. History The subject of the painting is Fantine, a character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables''. It was painted in Paris in 1886, the year following Victor Hugo's death, and received an honourable mention from the Société des Femmes Peintres. The following year some of Hall's paintings were shown at exhibitions in Vienna, Chicago, London and Manchester, and it is likely that ''Fantine'' was among them. After Hall's death in 1910, her brother Sir Douglas Bernard Hall offered the painting to the National Gallery, London, but it was declined. During the following year he offered it to the Walker Art Gallery, where it was accepted. In 1988 the painting was restored in the Harriet Owen Hughes Conservation Centre in Bluecoat Chambers, Liverpool, and as of 2012, it ...
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Javert
Javert (), no first name given in the source novel, is a fictional character and a main antagonist of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel ''Les Misérables.'' He was presumably born in 1780 and died on June 7, 1832. First a prison guard, and then a police inspector, his character is defined by his legalist tendencies, authoritarian worldview, and lack of empathy for criminals of all forms. In the novel, he persecutes the protagonist Jean Valjean after his violation of parole and theft from the child Petit Gervais. Character Hugo writes that Javert is composed of two "simple" sentiments, which are "respect for authority" and "hatred of rebellion". In Javert's eyes, "murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion". He also "(envelops) in a blind and profound faith everyone who had a function in the state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman". Reflective thought is "an uncommon thing for him, and singularly painful" because thought inevitably contains "a certain amount ...
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Patti LuPone
Patti Ann LuPone (born April 21, 1949) is an American actress and singer. After starting her professional career with The Acting Company in 1972, she soon gained acclaim for her leading performances on the Broadway and West End stage. Known for playing bold, resilient women in musical theater, she has received numerous accolades, including three Tony Awards, two Olivier Awards, and two Grammy Awards. She was inducted to the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2006. She made her Broadway debut in '' Three Sisters'' in 1973. She went on to receive three Tony Awards: two for Best Actress in a Musical for her roles as Eva Perón in Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber's '' Evita'' (1980), and Rose in '' Gypsy'' (2008) and one for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for playing Joanne in the Stephen Sondheim revival ''Company'' (2022). She was Tony-nominated for '' The Robber Bridegroom'' (1975), '' Anything Goes'' (1988), '' Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'' (2006), ...
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Grisette (person)
The word grisette (sometimes spelled grizette) has referred to a French working-class woman from the late 17th century and remained in common use through the Belle Époque era, albeit with some modifications to its meaning. It derives from ''gris'' ( French for grey) and refers to the cheap grey fabric of the dresses these women originally wore. The 1694 edition of the ''Dictionnaire de l'Académie française'' described a grisette as simply "a woman of lowly condition". By the 1835 edition of the dictionary, her status had risen somewhat. She was described as: ...a young working woman who is coquettish and flirtatious. This usage can be seen in one of Oliver Wendell Holmes' early poems "Our Yankee Girls" (1830): ...the gay grisette, whose fingers touch love's thousand chords so well. ... In practice, "young working woman" referred primarily to those employed in the garment and millinery trades as seamstresses or shop assistants, the few occupations open to them in 19th cen ...
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Montreuil-sur-Mer
Montreuil-sur-Mer (; or ; ), Montreuil-on-the-Sea, is a subprefecture in the Pas-de-Calais Department in northern France. Though commonly called by this name since at least the twelfth century, it was legally known as Montreuil until 31 December 2022. It is located on the Canche river, not far from Étaples. The sea, however, is now some distance away. Montreuil-sur-Mer station has rail connections to Arras and Étaples. History Montreuil-sur-Mer is surrounded by notable brickwork ramparts, constructed after the destruction of the town by troops of Habsburg emperor Charles V in June 1537. These fortifications pre-date the extensive fortification of towns in northern France by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban in the 17th century. Montreuil-sur-Mer was the headquarters of the British Army in France during the First World War from March 1916 until it closed in April 1919. The military academy there provided excellent facilities for GHQ. Montreuil-sur-Mer was chosen as GHQ ...
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