Les Misérables Volume 1, Chapter 1 Summary

Summary

Early one October evening in 1815 a barefoot-looking, travel-worn man enters the fortified town of D—— after a long day's walk. His appearance alarms the townspeople; he is described in minute, humiliating detail. He first tries the respectable inn called the Cross of Colbas, kept by Jacquin Labarre, but Labarre, having received word from the town-hall, refuses him entry and publicly exposes him. The traveller then attempts a humbler public house in the Rue de Chaffaut, but the landlord there also banishes him after a local fishmonger recognizes him.

Rejected again, the man tries the prison (only to be told to "get himself arrested"), peeps into a cheerful domestic cottage and is driven off with weapons by the suspicious husband and wife, and even finds and is chased out of a road-laborer’s hut by a fierce dog. Wandering the fields beneath a bleak sky, he returns to the town and collapses on a bench near the printing office. There an old charitable woman—Madame de R———gives him four sous but urges him to try one more house beside the Bishop’s palace, suggesting there may be help there, and sends him to knock at that untried door.

Key events

1. A weary traveller (Jean Valjean) arrives in D—— and seeks food and lodging.
2. Jacquin Labarre examines a note from the town-hall and ejects him from the Cross of Colbas.
3. A public house in Rue de Chaffaut also turns him away after recognition by a fishmonger.
4. He is refused shelter at the prison, a peasant's cottage (threatened with a gun), and chased from a kennel-like hut.
5. Exhausted, he sleeps on a stone bench where Madame de R—— finds him and gives him four sous.
6. Madame de R—— directs him to a final house beside the Bishop’s palace and tells him to knock.

Analysis

This chapter establishes tone, social atmosphere, and the protagonist’s outsider status through a sequence of rejections that expose how society treats a certain kind of destitution. Hugo concentrates on physical detail—ragged clothes, bristling hair, iron-shod shoes—to create both pathos and suspicion around the traveller. The repeated refusals (innkeeper, tavern, peasant, prison) function structurally as a narrowing corridor: each closed door increases the reader’s sense of social exclusion and the man’s moral isolation. The public note from the town-hall and the instant recognition by townspeople mark the man as known, stigmatized, and feared; the spectacle of Labarre reading the note aloud makes exclusion communal rather than merely individual.

Symbolically, the cold October evening, the hostile sky, the closed gates, and the kennel with the dog emphasize a world that is literally and figuratively shut to the poor. Hugo’s narration shifts between empiric description and pointed moral observation, eliciting both narrative empathy and social indictment. The episode with Madame de R—— introduces a counterpoint: private charity contrasts with institutional and popular hostility and opens the way for the next development. The chapter thus frames themes of judgment, mercy, and the consequences of social labelling while placing the unnamed traveller at the novel’s moral center.

Important quotes

“You are going to get out of here.”

Tavern-keeperA tavern-keeper forcefully orders Jean Valjean to leave after the fishmonger recognizes him, showing immediate social rejection.

“I am not even a dog!”

Jean ValjeanSpoken after he is chased from the kennel-like hut, this cry expresses humiliation and the depth of his exclusion.

“You have been a soldier?”

Madame de R——Madame de R—— questions the exhausted man on the bench—this small exchange precedes her giving him four sous and directing him to another house.

Characters in Volume 1, Chapter 1

• Jean Valjean
• Jacquin Labarre
• Labarre of the Three Dauphins
• General Drouot
• Napoleon
• Madame de R——