She is one of the purest symbols of innocence and tragedy. Her greatest mistake in life was falling in love with Tholomyès because of her beauty after starting work as a seamstress in Paris at the age of fifteen. Abandoned by her fake lover while pregnant, she is forced to return to her hometown. She entrusts her child (Cosette) to the devious Thénardier couple, who run an inn. However, due to crushing debt and moral hypocrisy, she is fired from her job in her hometown; over time, she sells her hair and teeth to barbers to pay for her daughter's fabricated medical expenses, and eventually descends into prostitution, practically selling her flesh and bones. While she finds a glimmer of hope when the kind-hearted mayor reaches out to her as she walks toward death from the tuberculosis consuming her body, she dies on her deathbed without ever reuniting with her daughter.
While she was one of the orphaned girls growing up on the streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer, she stood out from a young age for her beauty and shyness. While living a worker's life in Paris, she was deceived by a young man from the bourgeois circles, full of the naive passions of youth. Left alone by her friends and lover, she was forced to sell every part of her body just to hold on to life.
She was once very attractive with her brilliant golden blonde hair, snow-white skin, pearly teeth, and delicate, angelic dimples. After illness and misery corrupted her, she transformed into a terrifying specter in the wretched attire of a streetwalker, with her scalp shorn, her front teeth pulled, her jaw torn from coughing, and her face as pale and bruised as lime.
Javert
The demon who caused her life to darken and her to die away from her daughter.
Cosette
The only light that guides her in the darkness.
Tholomyes
Her false lover who deceived her like a game and abandoned her during her most difficult days.
Jean Valjean
The man who was first the target of her hatred, then her spiritual savior, and whom she worshipped like a God.