Hugo has an instinct for innocence; with sexually mature women characters he is sometimes uneasy as a writer, but with the girl-woman his touch is unerring. Confronted by the elder Jondrette girl, with her torn bodice, her harsh voice, and her abominable argot, he looks beyond the surface and shows us hunger, grief, modesty, shame, courage, a longing for affection and even for respectability. Through her and her sister, he gives us a vivid illustration of his thesis that "le misère de l'enfant" is the most appalling of all.
However, this is not his only purpose in introducing them. Where his plot is concerned, he is taking up again, on a deeper, more human level, the Cinderella theme treated at the beginning of Book II. These two creatures in rags were once the spoiled darlings, Eponine and Azelma; the "ugly sisters" have become ugly indeed, and when Cosette appears before her erstwhile tormentors in silk cloak and velvet hat, she takes a crushing revenge, though she is quite unaware of it The irony of their meeting is mingled with tragedy: Eponine and Azelma were, at Montfermeil, and are still, only children and no more deserve their present fate than Cosette deserved her ill-treatment at the inn. All three have been equally victims of Thénardier.
Thénardier is the most enigmatic of the characters in Les Misérables, and during most of Book VIII he has us, like Marius, standing on tiptoe with an eye to the peephole to see what he will do next.
