Cosette
fictional character from Les Misérables
Cosette (French pronunciation: [kɔzɛt]) is a fictional character in the 1862 novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo and in the many adaptations of the story for stage, film, and television. Her birth name, Euphrasie, is only mentioned briefly. As the orphaned child of an unmarried mother deserted by her father, 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, 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.
In the novel
Early life
Euphrasie (a name from Greek Ευφράσια, 'good cheer, joy'), nicknamed Cosette (lit. 'little thing') by her mother, is the illegitimate daughter of Fantine and Félix Tholomyès, a rich student. She is born in Paris c. 1816.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cosette” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.