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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.
He is without vices, but upon occasion will take a pinch of snuff. His life is one "of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity—never any amusement".
Javert has been described as a legalist: His "moral foundation... is built strictly on legalism"; he is "one of the most tragic legalists in Western literature" and "the consummate legalist".
Born in a prison (his mother, a fortune-teller, and his father serving in the Galley slave), Javert sees himself as excluded from a society that "irrevocably closes its doors on two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it". He becomes a law officer on the basis of "an irrepressible hatred for that bohemian race to which he belongs" and a personal foundation of "rectitude, order, and honesty". So devoted is he to this choice that, Hugo writes, "he would have arrested his own father if he escaped from prison and turned in his own mother for breaking parole. And he would have done it with that sort of interior satisfaction that springs from virtue."
Following his encounters with Jean Valjean during the June Rebellion, in which he is first spared by Valjean and, later, spares him arrest, Javert experiences a deep torment caused by the compromise of his previous worldview. Where previously he has "never in his life known anything but one straight line", Jean Valjean's behavior compels him to see two lines, "both equally straight" and "contradictory". The profound confusion caused by the realizations that the law is not infallible, that he himself is not irreproachable, and that there exists a superior force (identified by Hugo with God) to what he has known, plunges him into such a despair that he commits suicide.
The character of Javert is loosely based on Eugène François Vidocq, a criminal and adventurer who became a police official (though Vidocq wrote that he never arrested anyone who stole out of need).E. F. Vidocq, "Mémoires" Hugo also drew on Vidocq's life for the character of Valjean.Robin Walz, "Vidocq, Rogue Cop", introduction to François Eugène Vidocq, Memoirs of Vidocq: Master of Crime, AK Press, 1935, xv In the novel, Hugo describes Javert as "a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq".Les Miserables, vol. 1. Cricket House, p.135.
Unsure, Javert goes to Arras to see Champmathieu and satisfies himself that this is the real Valjean. He visits Madeleine and asks him to dismiss him from the police because he "has failed in respect, and in the gravest manner, towards a magistrate" by suspecting Madeleine. He tells Madeleine: "You will say that I might have handed in my resignation, but that does not suffice. Handing in one's resignation is honorable. I have failed in my duty; I ought to be punished; I must be turned out." He condemns himself at length—"if I were not severe towards myself, all the justice that I have done would become injustice"—and begs to be dismissed.
Madeleine/Valjean travels to the court in Arras and discloses his true identity, saving Champmathieu. He returns to Montreuil-sur-Mer, where Javert arrests him the next morning at Fantine's hospital bedside. Valjean asks for three days to bring Fantine's daughter Cosette to her, but Javert denies his request. Valjean escapes from the city jail, is later recaptured and returned to the galleys, and again escapes a few months later, though the authorities think he has drowned.
When Valjean appears at the barricade with the intent of finding Marius Pontmercy, the beloved of Cosette, he and Javert recognize one another. Valjean soon requests, as reward for protecting the barricade from soldiers and national guardsmen, that he be allowed to execute Javert. Enjolras, the leader of the insurrection, acquiesces, and Valjean leads Javert away from the barricade and into a side street. There, instead of killing Javert, Valjean cuts his bonds and implores him to run and save himself. He also gives Javert his address, in the unlikely case that he survives the uprising. Valjean then fires a shot into the air and returns to the barricade, where he tells everyone that the policeman is dead.
As the army storms the barricade, Valjean manages to grab the badly wounded Marius and dives into a sewer, where he wanders with Marius on his shoulders. With the help of Thénardier, Valjean manages to find an exit but is again met by Javert. Valjean repeats that he is ready to surrender, but he asks for Javert's help in delivering the wounded boy to safety. They travel to Valjean's house, and Javert says that he will wait for Valjean to come back downstairs. However, when Valjean looks out of the window, Javert is gone.
Javert wanders the streets in emotional turmoil: his mind simply cannot reconcile the image he had carried through the years of Valjean as a brutal ex-convict with his acts of kindness on the barricades. Now, Javert can be justified neither in letting Valjean go nor in arresting him. For the first time in his life, Javert is faced with the situation where he cannot act lawfully without acting immorally, and vice versa. Javert is unable to find a solution to this dilemma, and horrified at the sudden realization that Valjean was simultaneously a criminal and a good person — a conundrum which reveals deep flaws in his ethical system, and suggests to him the existence of a superior moral system. He feels that the only possible resolution for himself is in death, and—after leaving for the prefect of police a brief letter addressing lapses in the Conciergerie — he drowns himself in the river Seine.
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