An interesting article

On Les Miserables. I'm not sure that I 100% agree with everything, but it's definitely helpful. (For example, in the book Valjean explicitly admits to himself that if he had asked for bread, he would have been given it, and he would not have had to steal it. Still, at worst that was a venial sin, and he did it without thinking.) Note that there are some references to the mature subject matter in the book.