page_title: Cosette
hierarchical_section_title: Cosette
caption_attribution_description: English: Young Cosette sweeping: 1862 drawing for Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. French illustrator Émile Bayard drew this sketch of Cosette for the first edition. It has become emblematic of the entire story, being used in promotional art for various versions of the musical.
context_page_description: Cosette 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, 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 must yield to her romantic attachment to Marius.
context_section_description: Cosette 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, 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 must yield to her romantic attachment to Marius.
caption: Illustration of Cosette in the Thénardiers' inn at Montfermeil depicted by Émile Bayard (1837-1891).
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