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.
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.