Les Misérables, Book 4: To Confide Is Sometimes to Put Yourself in Someone’s Power, Chapter 2 summary
Book 4: To Confide Is Sometimes to Put Yourself in Someone’s Power, Chapter 2 of 365 · 4 min to read the chapter
In Chapter 2, the narrator describes the Thénardiers as morally corrupt people, questions the husband’s military claims, and explains how the wife’s reading shapes her daughters’ names. The discussion then shifts from their personal failings to changing naming customs, which the narrator connects with equality and the French Revolution.
What happens
- The narrator places the Thénardiers between two social classes and describes both as capable of growing increasingly evil.
- Thénardier claims military experience, but the narrator treats his account with doubt and notes his self-painted inn sign.
- Madame Thénardier consumes romantic fiction, while her husband favors Pigault-Lebrun and behaves crudely toward women.
- The wife’s taste in romances influences the names Éponine and Azelma.
- The narrator connects the exchange of fashionable and rustic names across classes with revolutionary equality.
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In this chapter
What to notice
The image defines the couple’s moral direction. Experience does not correct them; it feeds their capacity for evil.
Quick check
What does the narrator see beneath changing naming customs?
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