I don’t know any other way to put it other than I feel almost traumatized from the plight of Fantine. I didn’t sleep after I read the description of her having sold her front teeth. Selling her hair, her teeth, her body- and after selling her teeth, we the reader are treated to nothing more than a sentence that says Cosette wasn’t ill at all… it was a ruse for the Thenardiers to extort money from Fantine.
I feel it was unintentional, but I found that Hugo’s next line after the description of how Fantine got her money, “After all it was a ruse of the Thenardiers to obtain money. Cosette was not ill.” was so… devoid of humanity, devoid of sympathy. Devoid of any empathy at all, that in the very moment I read it, Hugo himself was nothing more than a Thenardier to me.
​
by FilledUpTinCup
2 Comments
The Thenardiers are just horrible monsters. Luckily, Jean Valjean existed.
Er… the whole point of her story was that Fantine was ill-done by everyone around her. She was driven to desperation, and met her end with Jean Valjean swearing to her he would save Cosette. We are, well, Victor Hugo didn’t know/care about the word traumatized. He wrote about the terrible things that happened to people. He wrote about the people who tried to make the world a better place, and how far more effectual they were when they had suffered. But how some people would always be terrible, but some would be better despite their upbringing.