Les Misérables, Book 2: The Great Bourgeois, Chapter 5 summary

What happens

1. M. Gillenormand argues that an unloved wife’s control of money frees her husband while giving her a consuming occupation.
2. His second wife’s management leaves him, as a widower, with little beyond an annuity of fifteen thousand francs.
3. He accepts that most of the annuity ends at his death because he does not want to leave an estate.
4. He owns his house and renames male servants after their provinces, calling his valet from Bayonne Basque.
5. He offers the cook Olympie fifty francs instead of her requested thirty, while changing her name to Nicolette.

What to notice

M. Gillenormand offers more money than the cook requests while imposing a new name. The exchange joins financial generosity with personal control.

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