Les Miserables

The first page of the novel introduces the reader to Monsieur Myriel, the Bishop of D—. Before meeting Jean Valjean, the Bishop foreshadows the stolen silver and the grace that he shows such thievery with personification and situational irony:

That evening, before he went to bed, he said again, “Let us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters is what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.”

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When a cruel man throws snow onto Fantine's bare shoulders, she attacks and curses him. Javert arrests Fantine and brings her to the police station, where spectators ironically revel in her misery:

The cloud of spectators followed, jesting, in a paroxysm of delight. Supreme misery an occasion for obscenity. On arriving at the police station, which was a low room, warmed by a stove, with a glazed and grated door opening on the street, and guarded by a detachment, Javert opened the door, entered with Fantine, and shut the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious, who raised themselves on tiptoe, and craned their necks in front of the thick glass of the stationhouse, in their effort to see. Curiosity is a sort of gluttony. To see is to devour.

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After Fantine gives her daughter Cosette to the Thenardiers, she returns to Montreuil-sur-mer to make a living in the new manufacturing town. The women's workroom, however, is a place full of ironically curious people:

There is no one for spying on people’s actions like those who are not concerned in them. […] They will bribe errand-porters, they will make the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting-maid, suborn a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing, and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophes, duels, failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of those who have “found out everything,” without any interest in the matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing.

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When Monsieur Leblanc—Jean Valjean—goes to the Gorbeau building and walks right into a trap, Jondrette reveals that he is the inn-keeper Thenardier. Marius, who is spying from the next room, uncovers the ironic secret about the man who saved his father's life at the Battle of Waterloo:

This man was that Thénardier, that innkeeper of Montfermeil whom he had so long and so vainly sought! He had found him at last, and how? His father’s savior was a ruffian! That man, to whose service Marius was burning to devote himself, was a monster! That liberator of Colonel Pontmercy was on the point of committing a crime whose scope Marius did not, as yet, clearly comprehend, but that resembled an assassination! And against whom, great God! What a fatality! What a bitter mockery of fate!

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​​​​​When Cosette and Jean Valjean settle at the Rue Plumet, Jean Valjean finally feels at peace. The narrator underscores his joy and gratefulness with situational irony:

When Cosette went out with him, she leaned on his arm, proud and happy, in the plenitude of her heart. Jean Valjean felt his heart melt within him with delight, at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive, so wholly satisfied with himself alone. The poor man trembled, inundated with angelic joy; he declared to himself ecstatically that this would last all their lives; he told himself that he really had not suffered sufficiently to merit so radiant a bliss, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted him to be loved thus, he, a wretch, by that innocent being.

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When Jean Valjean saves the severely injured Marius, he drags the young man's body through the sewers of Paris to find safety from the barricades. Jean Valjean prays to God after narrowly avoiding death in a nook full of quicksand, which the narrator frames with situational irony:

As he emerged from the water, he came in contact with a stone and fell upon his knees. He reflected that this was but just, and he remained there for some time, with his soul absorbed in words addressed to God. He rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed beneath the dying man whom he was dragging after him, all dripping with slime, and his soul filled with a strange light.

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Javert is completely derailed when Jean Valjean, the notorious fugitive, saves his life and lets him go free. The narrator points out the irony of the situation:

To owe his life to a malefactor, to accept that debt and to repay it; to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice, and to repay his service with another service; to allow it to be said to him, “Go,” and to say to the latter in his turn, “Be free”; to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to be conscious, in those personal motives, of something that was also general, and, perchance, superior, to betray society in order to remain true to his conscience; that all these absurdities should be realized and should accumulate upon him, this was what overwhelmed him.

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