Once again the Thénardiers appear in our story, and we realize that they are and will remain an integral part of the novel. In contrast to Jean Valjean, who represents man rising from animality to sainthood, the Thénardiers are losing their humanity and becoming savage brutes. In describing them, Hugo uses the common realistic and naturalistic technique of presenting selected details of external appearance and letting these suggest the truth of the inner man. By the time he has finished painting Mme. Thénardier's stature, her energy, her great voice, her freckles, her beard, and her jutting tooth, we can see for ourselves that she is a monster, and Hugo does not need to tell us so.
With the innkeeper, Hugo extends his exploration somewhat beyond Thénardier's surface appearance. He adds details of manner, gesture, and speech that are characteristic of the man, and he even goes so far as to say that Thénardier is a hypocritical crook. None of these facts, however, goes beyond what a shrewd observer might deduce about the innkeeper on modest acquaintance, and Hugo is very careful never to take us "inside" Thénardier. "We believe," he says about the details of the man's past; it is a guess, not a statement; and he concludes, "There was some mystery in Thénardier." It is just this ambiguousness, in fact, that makes him so terrifying a personage.
As for Cosette, Hugo sums up the history of her last five years in terms of the most common and vivid of childhood experiences — fear of the dark. The intensity of her fear is so great, however, that we recognize without being told that it is the expression of a thousand other unexpressed real terrors. Her fear of the night is only the outward mark of the fear kindled in her by her total solitude and inhuman treatment.
