Les Misérables Volume 3, Chapter 9 Summary

Summary

A dark, cellar-like garret houses the Jondrette family in squalor. Two strangers enter hesitantly but are clearly seen by the garret's inhabitants. One stranger, called M. Leblanc, produces a package of clothes and blankets and addresses Jondrette, who instantly launches into an elaborate, theatrical appeal for help. Jondrette invents or inflates hardships—his wife's illness, a child’s injured wrist, a broken chair and pane, imminent eviction for an alleged year’s unpaid rent—and plays to the visitors with staged humility and grandiose references to theatrical acquaintances like Talma and Mademoiselle Mars.

M. Leblanc listens, alarmed and sympathetic; Jondrette coaxes the little girl to cry and manipulates his audience. He lies about the amount owed and the family’s situation while murmuring sharp comments to his daughter and wife. Touched, M. Leblanc throws five francs on the table, then removes his overcoat, lays it on a chair, and promises to return at six with the sixty francs required to avert the eviction. Jondrette shows mixed reactions—gratitude outwardly, private calculation and irritation at the smallness of the coin. As M. Leblanc and the young visitor prepare to leave, the elder daughter speaks up about the forgotten coat; Leblanc insists he leaves it for them. Jondrette hastily dons the coat and escorts the visitors out, triumphant at securing the promise of money.

Key events

1. Two strangers enter the dim Jondrette garret and are seen clearly by its inhabitants.
2. M. Leblanc offers a package of clothes; Jondrette launches a theatrical plea.
3. Jondrette fabricates and exaggerates miseries (illness, injury, eviction) to solicit aid.
4. M. Leblanc gives five francs and pledges to return at six with sixty francs.
5. Jondrette privately scolds his daughter and reveals his calculating attitude.
6. Leblanc leaves his overcoat; Jondrette puts it on and escorts the visitors out.

Analysis

This chapter functions as a concentrated social scene showing the dynamics of performance, deception, and charity in urban poverty. Through Jondrette’s theatrically staged mendicancy, Hugo exposes how public sympathy can be manipulated; Jondrette’s language mixes theatrical vanity and base calculation, tying his former actor identity to his present fraud. M. Leblanc’s straightforward, humane responses contrast with Jondrette’s insincerity and highlight the moral complexity of charitable acts—charity is both a genuine kindness and, in the hands of the manipulative, an exploitable transaction. The scene also advances structure by setting a concrete appointment (six o’clock) that will anchor later events and by revealing the Jondrette household’s methods of controlling and using their children as emotional instruments. Symbolically, the overcoat works on two levels: as literal warmth and as a token of transient charity that the recipient must don to perform gratitude; it underscores themes of appearances versus reality. Narratively, the chapter favors close third-person observation and conversational detail, allowing the reader to witness Jondrette’s duplicity while also seeing how easily performances of distress gain traction. The frequent theatrical references (Talma, Mademoiselle Mars) reinforce the motif of life-as-performance and foreshadow moral questions about identity and pretense.

Important quotes

“Monsieur, in this package you will find some new clothes and some woollen stockings and blankets.”

M. LeblancLeblanc presents a relief package, prompting Jondrette's performance of poverty.

“To-morrow is the fourth day of February, the fatal day, the last day of grace allowed me by my landlord; if by this evening I have not paid my rent, to-morrow my oldest daughter, my spouse with her fever, my child with her wound,—we shall all four be turned out of here and thrown into the street, on the boulevard, without shelter, in the rain, in the snow.”

JondretteJondrette escalates his appeal with an urgent threat of eviction to solicit immediate aid.

“I will be here at six, and I will fetch you the sixty francs.”

M. LeblancLeblanc promises to return with money, creating a fixed appointment that advances the plot.

Characters in Volume 3, Chapter 9

• Jondrette
• M. Leblanc
• Jondrette's eldest daughter
• Jondrette's wife
• the little girl
• Marius Pontmercy
• Fabantou
• Talma
• Mademoiselle Mars
• Célimène
• Elmire
• Bélisaire