Les Misérables, Book 7: Parenthesis, Chapter 4 summary
Book 7: Parenthesis, Chapter 4 of 365 · 2 min to read the chapter
In Chapter 4, the narrator defends a voluntary monastery through the rights of association, privacy, and free movement, describing shared poverty, equality, and service. He makes willing participation the condition of his respect, then turns from communal arrangements to the meaning of prayer.
What happens
- The narrator grounds communal seclusion in individual rights to associate, close a door, and remain at home.
- He describes a community whose members share possessions, clothing, food, status, and care for others.
- An imagined listener objects that this description presents an ideal convent.
- The narrator grants such communities respect only when belonging to them is entirely voluntary.
- He argues that freedom gives monastic equality and fellowship a republican character.
- He ends by asking what the members’ kneeling and clasped hands mean.
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Quick check
What condition does the narrator place on his respect for a monastery?
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