When I say "Victor Hugo's depiction of Jean Valjean's grief over losing Cosette is a reflection of Hugo's own grief at the death of his daughter" I'm not just theorizing-- some lines from Les Mis are basically just ripped word-for-word from Hugo's poems about the death of his daughter. Here are a few of them.
Leopoldine drowned horribly with her husband only a few months after they were married; she was only nineteen. Jean Valjean's paralyzing fear of Cosette's marriage, his misguided useless rage at her husband, and his violent grief over losing her and never being able to see her again, is heavily influenced by Hugo's own grief.
I have trouble finding good English translations of some of Hugo’s Leopoldine poems online, and would appreciate better links to English translations if anyone has them. But In A Villequier, one of Hugo's poems addressing God with furious grief over the death of Leopoldine, he writes:
Consider again how I have, since dawn,
Worked, fought, thought, walked, struggled,
Explaining Nature to Man who knew nothing of it,
Lighting everything with your clarity;
That, facing hate and anger,
I have done my task here below,
That I could not expect this wage,
That I could not
Foresee that you too, on my yielding head,
Would let fall heavily your triumphant arm,
And that you who saw how little joy I have,
Would take my child away so quickly!
Which is almost word for word just Jean Valjean's:
I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall, I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose Cosette, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul....
And this from the same poem:
I keep seeing that moment in my life
when I saw her open her wings and fly off!
I will see that instant until I die,
the instant, no tears needed!
where I cried: the child I had a minute ago—
What? I don’t have her any more?
Is a similar sentiment to this angelic description of Cosette “taking flight” away from Jean Valjean:
Cosette, as she took her flight, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty chrysalis, Jean Valjean.
And the moment when Jean Valjean realizes she’s in love with Marius, and has been “lost” to him without him realizing it:
The unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had fallen without perceiving it. All the light of his life had departed, while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.
This from the poem Demain dès l'aube, where Victor Hugo describes visiting Leopoldine's grave:
I will walk with my eyes fixed on my thoughts,
Without seeing anything outside, without hearing any noise,
Alone, unknown, back bent, hands crossed,
Sad, and the day for me will be like night.
And Jean Valjean walking to Cosette's house, but never able to enter or speak to her:
There [Jean Valjean] walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed on a point which seemed to be a star to him
This bit where Hugo talks about his faith weakening/cursing God in vain after Leopoldine’s death:
Consider how one doubts, O God! when one suffers,
how the eye that weeps too much is blinded,
how a being plunged by grief into the blackest pit,
seeing you no more, cannot contemplate you.
Is similar to Jean Valjean’s spirtual self weakening and his consience “taking flight” at the idea of losing Cosette:
Any one who had beheld his spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened at that moment. (...) Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience. These are fatal crises. Few among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty.
Victor Hugo agonizing over his dreams of growing old with his daughter in A Villequier:
You make loneliness return always
around all his footsteps.(...)
As soon as he owns something, fate takes it away.
Nothing is given to him, in his speedy days,
for him to make a home and say:
Here is my house, my field and my loved ones!
“As one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside.
Victor Hugo's poetry in A Villequier again:
in the midst of cares, hardships, miseries,
and of the shadow our fate casts over us,
how a child appears, a dear sacred head,
a small joyful creature,
so beautiful one thinks a door to heaven has opened
when it arrives;
when for sixteen years one has watched this other self
grow in loveable grace and sweet reason,
when one has realized that this child one loves
makes daylight in our soul and in our home,
this man, who had passed through all manner of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, (...) merely asked of Providence, of man, of the law, of society, of nature, of the world, one thing, that Cosette might love him! That Cosette might continue to love him! That God would not prevent the heart of the child from coming to him, and from remaining with him! Beloved by Cosette, he felt that he was healed, rested, appeased, loaded with benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Cosette, it was well with him! He asked nothing more! Had any one said to him: “Do you want anything better?” he would have answered: “No.” God might have said to him: “Do you desire heaven?” and he would have replied: “I should lose by it.”
Victor Hugo begging God to talk to his daughter again:
Let me lean over this cold stone
and say to my child: Do you feel that I am here?
Let me speak to her, bent over her remains,
in the evening when all is still,
as if, reopening her celestial eyes in her night,
this angel could hear me!
Jean Valjean thanking God for letting him speak to Cosette one more time:
The good God says: “‘You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid! No. No, things will not go so. Come, there is a good man yonder who is in need of an angel.’
I think the ending of Les Mis never made complete sense to me until I realized that Jean Valjean isn't grieving like a parent who has watched their child grow up; he is grieving like a parent who has just watched their child die.
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