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.
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.