alues that Hugo means to criticize and that dominate human experience in bourgeois France.
That critique is literally embodied in the characters Valjean encounters throughout the story. According to Negus and Pickering, the creative process "entails a communicative experience which is cross-relational, intersubjective and interactive dialogue bringing its participants together in the activity of interpretation, exchange and understanding" (2004, p. 25). One instance of this occurs when Javert and M. Madeleine (Valjean) clash over Fantine. Javert wants to arrest her (illegally), and Madeleine--kindly but with the stern strength that moral right supplies--prevents it. That helps explain Javert's vengeful pursuit of Valjean once he discovers his true identity; that pursuit represents the vengefulness of the state apparatus. In that regard Negus and Pickering refer to Romantic art's balancing critique of "a secularized, utilitarian society [as] a force that would break the cold, clinical fetters of rationalism" (p. 7).
Hugo's placement of opposing social ideologies in the mouths of his characters draws the reader into the social background for the emotional conflicts that are to come. When Valjean becomes the hunted once again, it is very clear that the whole social apparatus of early-19th-century France is unfairly stalking him. The tremendous problems that the decent characters of the novel have to face before the balance is restored are the conflict element of the narrative, and it is innovative in mak
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