Les Misérables Volume 4, Chapter 3 Summary

Summary

The chapter surveys the character of slang and popular song among the marginalized classes, contrasting an older, mournful idiom with an eighteenth-century shift toward a defiant, mocking tone. Hugo opens with vivid images—cards, grotesque scenes, and plaintive melodies—that convey the old pègre’s humility, fear, and moral self-abasement. That melancholy idiom, he shows, expresses a class that shrinks before society, makes itself small, and entreats pity.

Hugo then locates a decisive change toward the middle of the eighteenth century: prison and galley songs become jaunty and insolent, adopting refrains and a frolicsomeness that disguise or diminish the sense of guilt. He proposes cultural causes: alongside the great Enlightenment thinkers (Diderot, Turgot, Voltaire, Rousseau), Hugo warns of sophists and corrupting writers like Restif de La Bretonne whose writings and ideas seep into the masses and give rise to dangerous resentments. He broadens the argument historically—citing German unrest and Schiller—and concludes that the French Revolution, by instituting rights and creating civic dignity, halted the imminent social jacquerie and transformed the moral landscape, making large-scale popular uprisings far less likely.

Key events

1. Description of old slang and its mournful, symbolic imagery (cards, songs).
2. Quotation of a plaintive moan that exemplifies the old pessimism.
3. Shift in the mid-18th century: prison songs become insolent and lively.
4. Identification of literary and philosophical influences, both salutary and corrupting.
5. Warning about sophistical writings (Restif de La Bretonne) fomenting resentment.
6. Argument that the French Revolution preempted a looming jacquerie by creating civic rights.

Analysis

This essay-like chapter functions as social and intellectual commentary rather than plot action. Hugo uses the subject of slang and song to examine how language reflects and shapes popular consciousness. The contrast between the old melancholic idiom and the later insolent refrains becomes a diagnostic tool: changes in tone indicate changes in class feeling and potential for social upheaval. Hugo frames Enlightenment figures as largely positive civilizers but separates them from more pernicious sophists and lesser-known writers (Restif), whose ideas insinuate into the suffering masses and can catalyze violent revolt. Thematically, the passage links speech, moral sensibility, and political possibility: when the poor laugh insolently, their moral self-restraint loosens and social disorder becomes more plausible. Structurally, the chapter interrupts narrative action to deliver a panoramic meditation—typical of Hugo—providing historical context and ideological scaffolding for the novel’s concerns about justice, revolution, and social order. Symbolically, the cards, songs, and refrains represent communal memory and mood; the shift in refrains foreshadows collective action unless checked. The narrator’s assurance about the Revolution’s salutary effects also reveals Hugo’s complex faith in political institutions to transform ethics, a claim that aligns social reform with literary analysis.

Important quotes

“I do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren and hear them cry, without himself suffering torture.”

NarratorAn example of the plaintive, self-abasing refrain attributed to the old slang and songs of the marginalized.

“Miralabi suslababo Mirliton ribonribette Surlababi mirlababo Mirliton ribonribo.”

NarratorA sample of the lilting, insolent refrain sung in prisons and galleys, showing the shift to mocking gaiety.

“Jacqueries are earthquakes of the people.”

NarratorA concise metaphor capturing Hugo's view that peasant revolts are cataclysmic social eruptions distinct from ordinary political agitation.

Characters in Volume 4, Chapter 3

• Restif de La Bretonne
• Diderot
• Turgot
• Voltaire
• Rousseau
• Schiller
• Robespierre
• Louis XV