Cosette

Uncommon card · No. 116880

Cosette (French pronunciation: [kɔzɛt]) is a fictional character in the 1862 novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and its many adaptations of the story for stage, film, and television. Cosette's birth name, Euphrasie, is only mentioned briefly. As the orphaned child of an unmarried mother deserted by her father, Victor Hugo never gives her a surname. In the course of the novel, she is mistakenly identified as Ursule, Lark, or Mademoiselle Lanoire. She is the daughter of Fantine, a working woman who leaves her to be looked after by the Thénardiers, who exploit and victimise her. Rescued by Jean Valjean, who raises Cosette as if she were his own daughter, she grows up in a convent school. She falls in love with Marius Pontmercy, a young lawyer. Valjean's struggle to protect her while disguising his past drives much of the plot until he recognizes "that this child had a right to know life before renouncing it"—and he must allow her romantic attachment to Marius to blossom.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Émile Bayard, Public domain