I enjoyed playing Eponine in Les Miserables. Being neurodivergent and growing up moving around and always being the “new kid”, and worse, that weird deaf kid with the interpreter that followed them around everywhere like a shadow, seemed to put me on the orbit of groups without really finding kinship anywhere beyond the thespian realm. Theater kids were my tribe- the misfits and the socially marginalized. We were nerds, geeks, and had a love of fringe stories that no one outside our tribe began to understand. So, for me, playing Eponine, a girl who has unrequited love for Marius, who is in love with her adopted sister, Cosette, and is really only seen by him when she is dying in his arms, seemed a vague parallel to the teenage angst felt by adolescents everywhere. She and Gavroche, who was the poster child for rebellion and tenacity, were the living anthem of what being a teenager felt like. In a sea of people, we try to fit in, but it always feels a bit performative because of societal expections. Conforming means losing ourselves, and being ourselves alienates us to orbit around those who mask and perform better than us. She was me, in another life, another form, a victim of social justice with her swan song a duet with the man she loved finally realizing she did, and seeing her, even if briefly and performatively to ensure she found peace as she fell asleep for the last time.
In the world of Les Misérables, justice is not blind— it’s rigid, hierarchical, and deeply flawed. For many neurodivergent viewers, especially those navigating the intersections of auDHD, the musical’s portrayal of classism and systemic cruelty resonates with lived experience: being misunderstood, surveilled, and punished for difference. This dynamic is established from the very first scene, where imprisoned laborers are presented not as individuals, but as burdens— positioned beneath notice, both physically and morally. The imagery evokes a society where poverty is criminalized and compassion is a luxury afforded only by the privileged. It sets the tone for the entire narrative: a world where dignity must be reclaimed from the margins, and where justice is not found in law, but in human empathy.
Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean is the gravitational center of Les Misérables—the ethical axis around which every other character orbits. His arc isn’t just redemptive; it’s mythic. And through a neurodivergent lens, especially one shaped by auDHD, Valjean becomes a portrait of moral intensity, adaptive identity, and emotional resilience in the face of systemic cruelty. After the bishop’s act of mercy, Valjean doesn’t just change—he commits with obsessive clarity. His transformation is total, and his new moral compass is felt deeply, not socially conditioned. It’s the kind of hyperfocus that many ND individuals recognize: when something finally aligns with your internal truth, you follow it with everything you have. Valjean’s multiple identities—Madeleine, Fauchelevent, Leblanc—aren’t just aliases. They’re masks. They reflect the constant adaptation required to survive in a world that criminalizes difference. He’s always reshaping himself to fit into systems that would otherwise reject him, yet he never fully detaches from who he was. That tension between past and present is a form of emotional labor that ND folks know intimately.
His inner life is volcanic. He makes decisions in solitude, through intense moral reflection. External calm hides deep emotional processing. And his care for Cosette isn’t performative—it’s sacred. She becomes his anchor, his reason to remain in the world, his ritual of love and protection.
Valjean’s story is also a social justice reckoning. He’s imprisoned for stealing bread—a survival act punished as criminal. Even after release, his yellow passport brands him as permanently unworthy. The system doesn’t allow redemption; it marks and discards. But Valjean refuses to replicate the violence he endured. He builds a factory, saves lives, raises a child, and shows mercy to his greatest pursuer. His refusal to punish Javert is revolutionary. It’s restorative justice in motion.
Valjean’s journey becomes even more profound. He’s constantly surveilled, doubted, and pursued—not because he’s dangerous, but because he doesn’t conform. His difference is treated as threat. Yet he never stops choosing compassion. His intensity becomes a moral superpower. Valjean isn’t just the center of the story—he’s the embodiment of what it means to reclaim dignity from the margins. He’s the proof that justice, when rooted in empathy, can transform everything.
Javert
Javert is Valjean’s shadow—rigid where Valjean is fluid, legalistic where Valjean is ethical. He is not evil. He is devout. But his devotion is to a system that cannot bend, and when faced with mercy, he breaks.
Javert has an intense and unmalleable internal structure— a mind built on rules, order, and binary thinking. He sees the world in absolutes: law equals justice, rebellion equals crime. There is no room for nuance, no space for contradiction. And when Valjean shows him compassion, Javert’s entire framework collapses.
He was born in a prison, the child of criminals, and he spends his life trying to erase that origin. His obsession with law is not just professional—it’s personal. He believes that by enforcing the rules, he can outrun the shame of where he came from. But the tragedy is that he never questions the rules themselves.
Javert’s downfall is not caused by Valjean. It’s caused by kindness. When Valjean spares him, Javert is forced to confront a truth he cannot process: that justice and mercy can coexist. That a man can be good even if the law says he is not. This cognitive dissonance is unbearable. He doesn’t rage. He doesn’t plead. He simply disappears— a quiet, determined exit from a world he no longer understands. Javert is not a villain. He is a casualty of a system that demands obedience but punishes reflection.
Monsieur and Madame Thénardier
Speaking of villains, Monsieur and Madame Thénardier are the kind of villains who don’t need power to be dangerous. They don’t enforce the law like Javert. They don’t haunt the shadows like Erik in the Phantom of the Opera. They exploit, manipulate, and survive—by feeding off the suffering of others.
From the moment they appear, the Thénardiers are petty, cruel, and transactional. They take in Cosette not out of kindness, but as a business arrangement. And even then, they extort Fantine for more money, fabricating illnesses and needs while dressing their own daughters in luxury. Cosette becomes their scapegoat, their servant, their punching bag.
Madame Thénardier is especially brutal—physically abusive, emotionally cold, and entirely convinced of her own righteousness. She doesn’t see herself as cruel. She sees herself as entitled. That’s what makes her terrifying.
Monsieur Thénardier, on the other hand, is a schemer. He’s not just greedy—he’s opportunistic. He tries to rob Valjean, blackmail Marius, and twist every situation to his advantage. He’s the embodiment of lawless survival, a man who believes that suffering is currency and morality is for fools. Unlike Javert, who is destroyed by mercy, Thénardier is untouched by it. He never changes. He ends the story as he began it—self-serving, cruel, and unrepentant. Victor Hugo even has him flee to America to become a slave trader, a final indictment of his “incurable” nature.
Through a neurodivergent and social justice lens, the Thénardiers represent what happens when cruelty is normalized in poverty. They are not just villains. They are the system’s rot— the people who survive by becoming what the system rewards: exploiters, abusers, opportunists.
And yet, they’re also funny in many adaptations. Comic relief. Buffoons. That dissonance is intentional— because laughing at them is safer than confronting what they represent. They are the mirror held up to unchecked capitalism, to performative morality, to the kind of survival that costs everyone else their dignity.
Gavroche
Gavroche is the embodiment of defiant joy in the face of systemic cruelty. He’s not just a street urchin.
He’s a revolutionary mascot, a walking middle finger to the world that discarded him. Born to the Thénardiers, Gavroche is thrown out and left to survive on his own. And he does—brilliantly. He’s resourceful, loud, clever, and emotionally attuned. He doesn’t beg for pity. He builds his own world from scraps and laughter.
Gavroche is someone who thrives in chaos because he’s never known stability. His quick wit, sensory adaptability, and emotional resilience mirror the survival strategies many ND individuals develop when the world refuses to accommodate them. He’s constantly scanning, improvising, and connecting. He sings, he mocks, he organizes. He’s the youngest voice at the barricade, but he acts like he owns it. That’s not arrogance—it’s necessity. He’s learned that visibility is power, and he refuses to be erased.
And yet, Gavroche is also heartbreakingly vulnerable. He dies gathering ammunition from fallen soldiers, singing as he moves through gunfire. It’s not just bravery—it’s ritual. He’s reclaiming dignity in a world that never gave him any.
His death is jarring. He’s a child. He’s cheerful. He’s helpful. And the system kills him anyway. Victor Hugo doesn’t romanticize it—he indicts it. Gavroche’s gallant soul flees, and the barricade loses its heartbeat. Gavroche is the poster child of “Forget you!” But he’s also the poster child of “I exist.” He refuses invisibility. He refuses silence. And in doing so, he becomes the loudest symbol of what revolution is truly for: the discarded, the defiant, the ones who never got a chance.
Éponine
Éponine is the heartbreak you see coming and still can’t stop. She’s the daughter of abusers, the sister of silence, and the girl who learns too early that love doesn’t always mean safety. As a child, she’s spoiled—dressed in lace, praised for charm. But when her family falls, she falls harder. She becomes a streetwise survivor, speaking in the argot of Paris, doing her father’s bidding, and slowly unraveling into someone who knows too much and is loved too little.
The thing I noticed the most about her is that Éponine is emotionally hyper-attuned. She reads Marius like a book—his tone, his silences, his longing. She knows he doesn’t love her. She knows he never will. And yet, she stays. Not because she’s delusional, but because her love is ritual. It’s focus. It’s devotion. It’s the one thing she can control in a world that never gave her anything. She’s not passive. She’s not weak. She’s the one who stops her father from robbing Valjean. She’s the one who finds Cosette’s address for Marius. She’s the one who walks into gunfire with a letter in her hand and a song in her throat.
Her death is not a sacrifice for love. It’s a final act of agency. She chooses where to be, how to die, and what truth to carry with her. And in her final breath, she doesn’t ask for fantasy. She asks for presence. Éponine, “Just hold me now and let it be.” She knows he’s lying in Marius saying he loves her. She knows it’s not love. But she wants to be seen—just once—without pity, without pretense.
Éponine is not a tragic side character. She’s the emotional spine of the barricade. She’s the girl who knew the truth and still chose kindness. And through her, Les Misérables asks: What does it mean to love when love is never returned? What does it mean to be loyal in a world that forgets your name?
Marius
Marius Pontmercy is the emotional fulcrum of Les Misérables—the character who stands between legacy and revolution, love and blindness, privilege and awakening. He begins as a sheltered boy, raised by his monarchist grandfather, cut off from the truth of his father’s Napoleonic ideals. When he learns the truth, he doesn’t just shift—he fractures. He rejects wealth, embraces poverty, and seeks meaning in ideology.
Marius reads as someone navigating intense internal conflict. His loyalty is obsessive. His idealism is rigid. And his emotional perception is often delayed. He doesn’t see Éponine’s pain until it’s too late. He doesn’t understand Valjean’s sacrifice until after the damage is done. He’s not cruel—he’s unaware. And that unawareness causes harm.
Marius’s love for Cosette is pure, but also isolating. He hyperfixates on her, writes letters, dreams of escape, and builds a world where she is the only light. It’s romantic, yes— but it also reflects the kind of emotional tunnel vision that many ND folks experience when overwhelmed by feeling. At the barricade, Marius is ready to die. Not just for France, but because he believes he’s lost Cosette. His grief becomes martyrdom. And yet, he survives—because Valjean saves him. That act of mercy rewrites everything. But Marius doesn’t understand it right away. He misjudges Valjean, pushes him away, and only later realizes the depth of what was given.
Marius is not a hero in the traditional sense. He’s a mirror of emotional growth— flawed, reactive, and slowly learning how to see beyond himself.
Cosette
Cosette is the quiet center of Les Misérables—the child of suffering who becomes the symbol of hope. She begins in darkness, raised by the Thénardiers in cruelty and neglect, forced to scrub floors, wear rags, and go barefoot in winter. She is not just poor—she is invisible. And yet, she survives.
When Valjean rescues her, it’s not just a change of circumstance. It’s a rebirth. He gives her safety, education, and love— not as a reward, but as a restoration. Cosette becomes the embodiment of what mercy can build when it’s given without condition.
Cosette’s transformation is striking. She moves from hypervigilance to emotional openness, from silence to song. She is not loud, not rebellious, not dramatic— but she is present. She listens. She learns. She loves. Her relationship with Valjean is sacred. She calls him “Papa,” and he becomes her entire world. Their bond is built on trust, not blood— and for many ND individuals, that chosen connection feels more authentic than any inherited one.
When she falls in love with Marius, it’s not a rejection of Valjean. It’s an expansion. She is ready to step into her own life, to build something beyond the shelter she was given. And Valjean, though heartbroken, lets her go. Because love, in its truest form, does not cage.
Cosette is often dismissed as passive or idealized, but that misses the point. She is not a fighter like Éponine. She is not a rebel like Gavroche. She is the result of their sacrifice— the child who gets to live, who gets to love, who gets to grow.
Fantine
Cosette’s mother, Fantine, is the first casualty of Les Misérables’ brutal social order. She begins as a hopeful young woman, naive but full of love, and ends as a discarded body in a system that punishes survival.
Fantine’s is the devastating portrait of someone who is emotionally attuned, loyal, and vulnerable— yet constantly misread, surveilled, and punished for her difference. She trusts too easily. She loves too deeply. And when society turns on her, she doesn’t fight back with rage— she internalizes the shame. That kind of emotional collapse is familiar to many ND individuals who’ve been gaslit by systems that demand conformity but offer no compassion.
Fantine loses her job not because she fails, but because she’s deemed indecent. She’s punished for being a single mother, for being poor, for being visible in her suffering. Her descent into sex work isn’t a moral failing—
it’s a survival strategy in a world that criminalizes poverty. Her body becomes currency. Her dignity becomes expendable. And yet, she never stops loving Cosette. That love is obsessive, sacrificial, and pure— a kind of hyperfocus that many ND folks recognize as both a strength and a vulnerability.
Fantine’s death isn’t just tragic. It’s systemic. She dies not because she’s weak, but because the world refuses to make space for her. Valjean’s mercy is the only justice she receives— and even that comes too late. Fantine is not a cautionary tale. She’s a mirror. She reflects what happens when society demands perfection from those it gives the least. Her arc reminds us to think about what we owe the suffering we refuse to see.
Classism and Social Justice
Now that we understand the cast of Les Mis, let’s dive into how it emphasizes the themes of classism and social justice within the musical.
Classism and social justice are woven into every note of Les Misérables—not as backdrop, but as driving force. From the opening chain gang to the final chorus, the musical confronts how poverty, punishment, and power shape human lives. It doesn’t just portray injustice—it embodies it. Every character is sculpted by the systems they’re forced to survive. And those systems—legal, economic, social—are anything but neutral. They are built to protect the powerful, and to punish the vulnerable for daring to exist outside the margins.
Jean Valjean’s imprisonment for stealing bread is the musical’s first indictment. He’s not a villain—he’s a man trying to survive. But the system doesn’t care. It brands him, breaks him, and refuses to let him change. Even after he builds a new life, the law—embodied by Javert—pursues him relentlessly. This isn’t justice. It’s surveillance. It’s class warfare dressed as order.
Valjean’s transformation is miraculous, but it’s also a rebellion against the idea that people cannot change. He becomes a philanthropist, a father, a savior— but only by living outside the law. His goodness is illegal. His mercy is criminal. And that contradiction is the heart of the musical’s critique.
Javert, who represents the law, is not evil. He’s devout. But his devotion is to a system that cannot bend. When faced with Valjean’s mercy, he cannot reconcile it. He breaks—not because he’s weak, but because the system he worships has no room for grace.
Fantine’s descent is equally brutal. She isn’t fired for incompetence—she’s fired for being a single mother. Her poverty is treated as indecency, her motherhood as a liability. To support Cosette, she’s forced into sex work. Not because she lacks virtue, but because the world offers her no other way to survive. She doesn’t die from sin. She dies from neglect. Her suffering is ignored until it becomes inconvenient. Only Valjean sees her humanity— and even then, it’s too late.
Fantine’s downfall isn’t accidental. It’s structural. She is punished for being poor, for being a mother, for being visible. Her descent into sex work is not framed as moral failure, but as the inevitable result of a society that refuses to care. She dies not from shame, but from abandonment.
The barricade scenes shift the lens from personal injustice to collective resistance. The students aren’t just fighting for France. They’re fighting for the poor, the unseen, the discarded. The barricade is where personal pain becomes political. These students are young, idealistic, and doomed— but their fight is not naive. It’s necessary. They rise up not just for liberty, but for dignity. For the right to be seen, heard, and valued.
Gavroche, the child of the Thénardiers, is discarded by his own family. And yet, he becomes the loudest voice of resistance. He sings, he fights, he dies. Yet, it’s not for glory, but because he believes the world should be better than the one that threw him away. Éponine, too, is shaped by cruelty. She loves without hope, acts without reward, and dies with a letter in her hand. Her sacrifice isn’t romantic—it’s radical. She chooses love over bitterness, agency over despair.
Their deaths are not tragic flourishes. They are indictments. They are the cost of a world that refuses to protect its most vulnerable. And through them, the musical insists: revolution is not just about politics, but about survival.
Les Misérables doesn’t offer easy answers. It shows how systems fail, how mercy disrupts power,
and how love—especially love for the vulnerable—can be an act of rebellion.
In its final moments, when the chorus sings “To love another person is to see the face of God,” it’s not just sentiment. It’s a call to action. To see. To care. To change the world by refusing to look away. The musical’s closing refrain is not just a reprise. It’s a reckoning. That line is not a conclusion. It’s a demand. To love is to witness. To witness is to act. And to act is to challenge every system that tells us some lives matter less.
Les Misérables doesn’t ask us to feel sorry. It calls us to feel responsible. To see suffering not as background, but as a call to transform the world.
If Les Misérables has stirred something in you—whether it’s a hunger for justice, a love of layered storytelling, or simply the need to hear those soaring harmonies again—there’s more waiting beyond the page. From cast recordings to annotated scripts, from behind-the-scenes memoirs to ND-friendly adaptations, the world of Les Mis is vast and worth exploring.
Below, you’ll find curated Amazon links to some of the most resonant materials: editions that honor the musical’s emotional weight, resources that deepen its social critique, and tools for performers, educators, and dreamers alike. Because sometimes, loving another person means giving them the right book, the right soundtrack, the right doorway into a story that refuses to look away. And sometimes, changing the world simply starts with changing a heart.
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Les Misérables Motivational Wall Art (UNFRAMED)
A striking poster that captures the spirit of resistance and redemption. Ideal for rehearsal spaces, classrooms, or any wall that needs a reminder that love is revolutionary.
Les Miserables – The 25th Anniversary in Concert at the O2 [DVD]
A landmark performance featuring Alfie Boe, Lea Salonga, and Ramin Karimloo. This isn’t just a concert—it’s a celebration of the musical’s mythic power, staged with grandeur and sung with soul. Ideal for performers, educators, and anyone who wants to feel the barricade shake from their living room.
Les Miserables – Original Broadway Cast Recording
Featuring Colm Wilkinson as Valjean and Frances Ruffelle as Éponine, this recording captures the raw theatrical intensity that made Les Mis a legend. Ideal for performers, fans, and anyone who wants to feel the barricade rise in their chest.
Les Miserables T-shirt
Simple, bold, and stage-ready. Whether you’re rehearsing, teaching, or just living your truth, this shirt lets the world know you believe in barricades, ballads, and justice. Ideal for performers, fans, and anyone who wants to wear their heart on their sleeve—literally.
Les Miserables: The Story of the World’s Longest Running Musical in Words, Pictures and Rare Memorabilia
A stunning collection of photos, posters, and behind-the-scenes memorabilia that chronicles Les Mis from its earliest stagings to global acclaim. Perfect for dramaturgs, designers, and anyone who wants to hold the myth in their hands.