“Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo (post 4): “Double nature”—a Jekyll/Hyde dual personality—unnecessarily attributed to minor character

“Thénardier was one of those double natures who sometimes appear among us without our knowledge, and disappear without ever being known, because destiny has shown us but one side of them. It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged. In a quiet ordinary situation, Thénardier had all that is necessary to make—we do not say to be—what passes for an honest tradesman, a good citizen. At the same time, under certain circumstances, under the operation of certain occurrences exciting his baser nature, he had in him all that was necessary to be a villain. He was a shopkeeper in which lay hidden a monster” (1, p. 368).

The narrator could simply have said this character pretended to be a decent fellow, but was really a monster at heart, which the reader already knew from his treatment of Cosette, anyway. So why make a general statement about psychology, and invoke the particular concept of “double nature”? It was evidently a kind of psychology in which the author was interested.

1. Victor Hugo. Les Misérables [1862]. Trans. Charles E. Wilbour. New York, The Modern Library, 1992.