Éponine Thénardier (/ˌɛpəˈniːn təˌnɑːrdiˈeɪ/; French: [epɔnin tenaʁdje]), also referred to as "Ponine", the "Jondrette girl" and the "young working-man", is a fictional character in the 1862 novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.

The character is introduced as a spoiled and pampered child, but appears later in the novel as a ragged and impoverished teenager who speaks in the argot of the Parisian streets, while retaining vestiges of her former charm and innocence.

The Thénardiers abuse Cosette, dress her in rags and force her to work, while spoiling their daughters and letting them play.

During the 1823 Christmas fair, Éponine and Azelma admire a big, beautiful and expensive doll in a shop window.

After her family's bankruptcy of the inn, they move to Paris and live in a small run-down apartment at Gorbeau House under the assumed name of "Jondrette".

In adolescence, Éponine becomes a "pale, puny, meagre creature", with a hoarse voice like "a drunken galley slave's", having been "roughened by brandy and by liquors".

She is missing a few teeth, is barefoot, has tangled hair, bony shoulders, and heavy brooding drooping eyes, while the "grace of her youth was still struggling against the hideous old age brought on by debauchery and poverty" and has only a trace of beauty lingering upon her face.

The two sisters pass Marius while running away from the police, unaware that they dropped their package of forged letters begging for alms.

To impress him, she proves that she is literate by reading aloud a passage from one of his books and writing "The cognes (police) are here" on a piece of paper.

She then tells Marius that she sometimes walks by herself at night, how she and her family lived under the arches of bridges the previous winter, how she contemplated drowning herself and that she had hallucinations due to lack of nourishment.

Marius hears Éponine claim that she has arranged for a philanthropist from the local church to come to their home and give them money to help pay the rent.

In an effort to make his family look poorer, Thénardier orders Azelma to punch out the window, which she does, cutting her hand open.

It turns out that the "philanthropist" is in reality Jean Valjean, as yet unrecognized by the Thénardiers and known by a different name, and he visits to inspect their circumstances.

Éponine reacts bitterly, realizing his romantic interest in the philanthropist's daughter, but agrees to do so after he promises to give her anything she wishes in return.

As the crime unfolds, Marius attempts to stop Thénardier by tossing the note Éponine wrote earlier through a crack in the wall.

The next day, Éponine devises a plan "to thwart the projects of her father and the bandits upon the house in the Rue Plumet, and to separate Marius and Cosette".

The following day (5 June), on the night of the insurrection, Éponine visits Courfeyrac's lodgings and waits for Marius, "not to give him the letter, but ... 'to see'".

When he arrives and discovers that Cosette has departed, Éponine from a hiding place tells Marius that his friends are expecting him at the barricades at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and she returns there.

He sees her death as typically operatic, a drawn-out farewell scene with an aria-like speech exploring all her feelings.

He compares her to the character of La Maheude in Émile Zola's novel Germinal, who also contemplates an alternative life, and "hypothetically thinks about the possibility that they could have been lovers".

"[3] George Saintsbury argued that Éponine is the most interesting character in the novel, but that Hugo, like Marius, did not take enough notice of her:[4] The gamin Gavroche puts in a strong plea for mercy, and his sister Eponine, if Hugo had chosen to take more trouble with her, might have been a great, and is actually the most interesting, character.

But Cosette—the cosseted Cosette—Hugo did not know our word or he would have seen the danger—is merely a pretty and rather selfish little doll, and her precious lover Marius is almost ineffable.The name "Éponine" derives from the ancient Gaul Epponina, wife of Julius Sabinus, who rebelled against the Roman empire.

She "became the symbol of great patriotism and virtue" by protecting her husband for many years and by choosing to die with him when he was finally captured.

Hugo explains both names as the product of Mme Thénardier's love of "stupid romances", melodramatic novels on exotic themes with exaggeratedly noble characters.

[7] Dedicated to Hugo, the poem describes broken-down former beauties:[8] (These dislocated wrecks were women once, Were Eponine or Lais!

Since the original publication of Les Misérables in 1862, the character of Éponine has been in a number of adaptations in numerous types of media based on the novel, such as books, films,[9] musicals, plays and games.

A satirical version of Éponine also appears in the musical Spamalot as part of a contingent of stereotypically "French" stock characters who emerge from the castle of Guy De Lombard in order to inspect the Trojan Rabbit left behind by King Arthur and his knights.

Throughout the musical, the ragged, independent, and tragic Éponine is starkly contrasted with the demure, innocent, and sheltered Cosette.