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.
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.