A Word About The Miserables

So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.  

I take the preface of Les Misérables to mean that there are unfair laws and customs that are inherently evil but is promoted by the people. These laws and customs create extreme hardships for many people in society and they pretend that these hardships are based on things out of our control such as fate. These hardships can be summed up into 3 main things, people struggling in poverty, women being forced to sell their bodies to survive, and children living in hopelessness. As long as these social dilemmas are possible anywhere throughout the world, then books like Les Misérables will always be needed by the people.