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.
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Hugo frequently used deadpan and understatement, especially after flowing, eloquent, nanced description of suffering. It wasn’t unintentional. He knows how bad it hurts. It was too show the depths of misery that can be caused by the most banal of motivations.
Well, to be honest victor hugo wasn’t the best guy irl and his mistress juliette drouet was kind of a fantine (not as miserable but she didn’t have a happy life tho) and he was also a great writer so I guess it impacts
The French are realists IMHO. You don’t often get the fairy tale ending.
I highly doubt it was unintentional, and I believe your reaction was the intention.
But it was intentional, and your distress shows that it worked.
The narration (both what is said and HOW it is said) is as much part of the story as the dialogue. It is NOT just the author’s personal thoughts on what’s happening.
The matter-of-fact “Cosette was not ill” makes Fantine’s plight and the pointlessness of it all hit so much harder than if you replaced it with a few paragraphs of insults towards the Thénardiers.
Before you describe the author as “devoid of empathy”, consider that that same author, in that same book, included a description so evocative that you struggled to sleep after reading it.
This is why I find the casting of the Thenardiers as comic figures in the musical to be hilarious. In the novel they are despicable horrible awful characters with no redeeming characteristics. The musical keeps them as despicable characters, but turns them into a joke.
One could argue that the clue was in the title.
Devoid of any empathy at all, that in the very moment I read it, Hugo himself was nothing more than a Thenardier to me.
I’m very curious about how one could read Les Miserables and come away with the idea that Hugo was devoid of empathy, even if just for a moment.
The entire book painstakingly explores the injustices in the world and how they cause suffering, especially for the poor, sex workers, and women in general. Page after page of compassion and empathy for those who society has forgotten or trampled.
Hugo sets up this heartbreaking story, and delivers the harsh truth in a single, blunt line, designed to punch you in the gut with the sheer brutality of it. And your takeaway was “wow, this author is devoid of empathy”?
I am genuinely confused.
fantine and jean valjean are the definition of “bad things happen to good people”
That line was not at all unintentional. It’s exactly the point. Some people suffer awful, horrible things, because other people want money. He’s making that baldly plain in an intent to shock you with it.
oh lord… and everyone keeps saying read it. Glad I missed that.
This OP literally has the critical reading skills of a toddler, I wouldn’t take their opinions for much. Les Miserables has remained relevant for over 160 years explicitly because of the empathy that Hugo shows in his writing. The novel explores the human condition, everything from suffering from poverty to raging against society to learning how to love, both familial and romantic, to redemption and loss.
It is my favorite story in the entire world
the brevity makes it hit harder, which is the indended effect. it helps the reader empathize more
I’m reading Les Mis for the first time at the moment and am at the point where Marius has encountered Eponine / the Thenardiers as his neighbours at the Gorbeau tenement. What is striking to me is the adject squalor they live in… The description of Eponine versus the image of Samantha Barker in the musical is quite a striking disconnect. Also, it hasn’t been outright stated but it seems to me that Gavroche is actually one of the Thenardier’s children? As someone who only knows the story through the musical, this detail is kinda blowing my mind a little bit. I don’t think it’s ever hinted at or referenced there? Then again, Azelma doesn’t exist in the musical either…
I’m absolutely loving the novel. It’s so vast and sprawling and dense. The biggest slog so far was all the stuff about Waterloo, which while interesting at points goes into such specifics as to be somewhat impenetrable. But most of the other tangents are actually super interesting and insightful.
It’s something that a lot of french writers did, and I love it. Such a dissonance between the miserable life of the characters and how it’s described. Since i’m french, we talked a lot about french litterature, and it’s good to note that Victor Hugo was very critical of all the french society, and how the upper-class treated everyone under them. If the book tell it this way, it’s because the upper-class didn’t give a fuck about the poorer, and it would be how a rich guy of this time would have describe the story. A lot of messages still work today with our modern society