# VII: The Wisdom of Tholomyès explained — Les Misérables

> Chapter companion for Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.

## What happens

Tholomyès delivers a long, rambling, and drunken speech to his companions and the grisettes, mixing mock-wisdom, puns, and cynical advice about love, marriage, and moderation, while the others interject with songs and banter.

## Themes in this chapter

### Love and Compassion

Tholomyès' cynical and mocking advice about love and marriage contrasts with genuine affection, highlighting the theme's complexity.

### The Human Condition and Fate

Tholomyès' reflections on desire, moderation, and the inevitability of folly explore the human struggle with passion and reason.

## Character check-ins

### Tholomyès

Delivers a lengthy, witty, and drunken monologue on love, marriage, and moderation, displaying his rhetorical flair and cynicism.

### Fantine

Mentioned as a dreamy, pensive grisette who sings and prays, with Tholomyès praising her freshness and innocence.

### Favorite

Listens attentively to Tholomyès and is addressed by him with flattery and mock-poetic praise.

### Blachevelle

Interjects with comments and leads a song in response to Tholomyès' speech.

### Listolier

Participates in the banter and joins in singing a couplet.

### Fameuil

Calls for down with the tyrant and joins in the singing.

### Zéphine

Addressed by Tholomyès in his speech, described as having an irregular face.

### Dahlia

Mentioned by Tholomyès, who suggests she should call herself Rosa.

## Key lines

> Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over the way.

Tholomyès claims women are deceitful and competitive with serpents out of professional rivalry.

_Tholomyès' misogynistic humor during his drunken speech._

> The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter where; and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into the azure depths.

Tholomyès compares a pun to excrement from a lofty mind, which then rises again after the joke.

_Tholomyès defends puns with a paradoxical metaphor._

> O Fantine, know this: I, Tholomyès, I am an illusion; but she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras!

Tholomyès declares himself an illusion and notes that Fantine, lost in her dreams, does not listen to him.

_Tholomyès' self-aware yet mocking praise of Fantine's dreaminess._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/les_miserables_se/chapters/vii-the-wisdom-of-tholomy-s
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/les_miserables_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/les_miserables_se/chapters