Eugène Sue describes the miserable living conditions in the Parisian slums, where the story - set in 1838 - takes place, and he recognizes how the manual worker is degraded to the condition of beast of burden. The author pleads for a philanthropic intervention to put an end to that aberrant state of affairs clamoring for direct state intervention. Alongside a repressive state apparatus of crime (which thrives among the plebs), he advocates a protectionist juridical apparatus of the weakest by outlining a perspective that will come true in the welfare state, advocating a radical overcoming of the liberal gendarme-state. Sue debunks the myth of equality on which the law of the bourgeois state is based, denounces the social origin of the crime and questions the entire individualistic-liberal structure. A vision of promotion of the law must prevail, where the (positive) sanctions are aimed at the inclusion of the weaker classes, not at their further marginalization, which occurs through punishment.
