Bishop Myriel - Role and Significance

Role and Significance

Writing in the Contemporary Review in 1885, Margaret Oliphant welcomed Hugo's portrait of Myriel as a refreshing change from his depiction of religious life in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a "surprise of sweetness and relief". Calling Myriel "the keynote of the wonderful tale", she considered all the adventures of Valjean and Javert "on a much lower level of art than the opening". She continued:

All the after-struggle is secondary to the great event of the beginning, which is the salvation of Jean Valjean, not from the law or the prejudices of society, but from the power of evil. Javert is an accident, though a striking one; the real matter is much higher; it is the work of Bishop Myriel, not of the penal code. It is the redemption of a soul; it is the struggle, first of the dominating sin with the dim risings of a better life....

Kathryn M. Grossman describes Myriel's work in transforming the lives of the poor as a moral "investment". His "fraternal demeanor thus corresponds to an economy marketing in souls." She continues:

By his theft, Jean Valjean shows that he is still chained to hatred and anger; by his generosity, Myriel operates a spiritual purchase (achète) that substitutes "goodwill, gentleness, and peace"--in other words, "God"--for this satanic mentality. While Christ alone can redeem (rachète) with the sacrifice of his life, his bishop can perform an equally effective exchange. In divesting himself of his silver, Myriel invests in Valjean. All he demands of the recipient is that he prove worthy of the promise that he could not have made in his prison of sin, but that he will have made following his liberation. Sublime fiction opens the way, as in Simplice's case, to a higher truth.

The Catholic writer Theresa Malcolm says that after Valjean leaves, "Monseigneur Myriel never again appears in the story, but he is the soul of the novel, he who sowed love where there was hatred, light where there was darkness."