schmergo:

Can you imagine, though, how radical a modern-day adaptation of Les Miserables– the book, not the musical– would be considered by the general public, though? Especially if it never actually said it was based on Les Miserables in the promotional materials? Like, 156 years after that book was published, people would freak out about the ‘blatant agenda.’ Yeah, because a lot of the same problems haven’t gone away and the same topics are considered controversial. And the sympathetic treatment of ex-convicts, sex workers, poor people, and rebels who protest and even want to overthrow the government– I feel like that’s only accepted now because they’re dressed in 19th century clothes.

No wonder the preface says, “

SO long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age—the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night—are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

“