#lm 1.5.9

[lesmisletters-daily]

Madame Victurnien’s Success

Les Mis Letters reading club explores one chapter of Les Misérables every day. Join us on Discord, Substack - or share your thoughts right here on tumblr - today's tag is #lm 1.5.9

So the monk’s widow was good for something.

But M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost never entering the women’s workroom.

At the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this superintendent,—a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright, full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are often obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power, and the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent had instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Fantine.

As regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund which M. Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving assistance to the workwomen, and of which she rendered no account.

Fantine tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood; she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her furniture—and what furniture!—said to her, “If you leave, I will have you arrested as a thief.” The householder, whom she owed for her rent, said to her, “You are young and pretty; you can pay.” She divided the fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture-dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and still about fifty francs in debt.

She began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she began to pay the Thénardiers irregularly.

However, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.

Fantine learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing’s worth of millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one’s petticoat, and a petticoat of one’s coverlet; how to save one’s candle, by taking one’s meals by the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being a talent. Fantine acquired this sublime talent, and regained a little courage.

At this epoch she said to a neighbor, “Bah! I say to myself, by only sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing, I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one is sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one hand, trouble on the other,—all this will support me.”

It would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the Thénardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

There are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.

At first, Fantine had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.

When she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh and soul like a north wind.

It seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris, at least, no one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!

She was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame, and began to go about as though there were nothing the matter. “It is all the same to me,” she said.

She went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.

Madame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window, noticed the distress of “that creature” who, “thanks to her,” had been “put back in her proper place,” and congratulated herself. The happiness of the evil-minded is black.

Excess of toil wore out Fantine, and the little dry cough which troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite, “Just feel how hot my hands are!��

Nevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she experienced a moment of happy coquetry.

[lmchaptertitlebracket]

Round 1, Matchup 45: I.v.9 vs I.v.13

[cliozaur]

Fantine's decline begins here, plunging into a realm of misery that, as Hugo asserted a few chapters earlier, supposedly did not exist in the town. It is profoundly distressing to witness the deterioration in the quality of her life and how she adapts to living without certain essentials.

The egregiously low wages for women's work are a glaring injustice. The system seems indifferent to the plight of women without fathers or husbands to provide for them, refusing to acknowledge the existence of female breadwinners.

I ponder: What might have happened if Cosette were with Fantine at this juncture? Considering her harrowing life with the Thénardiers, by Fantine's side, she would have been miserable but at least loved and not subjected to abuse.

Hugo now suggests that Fantine would have fared better if she had remained in Paris. Her life appears to be a series of unfortunate decisions, exacerbated by the oppressive norms and biases of bourgeois society.

Fortunately, Fantine finds support in her neighbour Marguerite, and the occasional solace of her beautiful hair brings a fleeting cheer. But not for long.

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Madame Victurnien's Success, LM 1.5.9 (Shoujo Cosette)

The old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.

[dolphin1812]

Hugo’s choice to describe both the woman who fires Fantine and the woman who teaches her how to live in poverty as “spinsters” indicates that there are parallels between them. The former is “full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving”, while the latter, Marguerite, is “pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich.” I think what we’re once again seeing is the debate over the place/value of charity. The woman who fired Fantine is praised for her charity - that is likely what convinced Madeleine to hire her - but as her charity is limited by her idea of who is “deserving,” it can never truly have that great of an impact. In contrast, Marguerite is willing to help everyone. As we know from the latter half of this chapter, Fantine is scorned by the rest of the townspeople, so interacting with her could be risky. Marguerite, however, cares more that there’s someone in need, making her charity more impactful. At the same time, Marguerite is poor herself. While this may be exactly what gives her solidarity with Fantine, it seriously limits her ability to change her situation. It’s true that without her, Fantine wouldn’t have been able to survive after losing her job. But it’s also true that Fantine’s health is constantly deteriorating (her cough is getting worse) and that, even with all of the time she spends working, her payments to the Thénardiers have become irregular. Charity is wonderful, but only social change and a real support system could help Fantine.

This is less direcly related, but I’m fascinated by the number of women in this book who don’t have husbands, given the expectation for women to marry. Some of them, like Mme Victurnien, are widows, but many of them (Baptistine, the two “spinsters” in this chapter) simply never married. To some extent, it’s possible this is simply a realistic representation of France at the time. After years of war, it wouldn’t be surprising if many women lost their husbands either during the Revolution, one of the wars relating to it, or during Napoleon’s campaigns, for instance. These women would also be more directly vulnerable to poverty. We don’t know how much Fantine was paid while she worked at the factory, but afterward, she makes 12 sous a day, which is less than what Valjean made working on his way to Digne (and that’s even after he was paid half as much because he was a convict). Consequently, they’re less likely to be able to support themselves, as their salaries are very low and, if they don’t have a male relative to provide for them in the way that Baptistine does (and that Valjean’s sister did, although poverty still caught up to her), it’s very hard to live off of what they earn alone. Additionally, these women would be more likely to work for that same reason: they need the money if they don’t have a husband who can work. And on top of that, their behavior in relation to men is constantly scrutinized. Even their titles - Madame, Mademoiselle - automatically indicate to us if they have ever been married. Hugo himself pointed out the difference in status accorded to women based on marriage and motherhood while describing Baptistine, and that’s certainly at play here (although without one, the other isn’t given value; otherwise, Fantine would be much more respected as a mother). As an unmarried woman who hasn’t been in town long enough to establish “respectability” in the same way that, say, the woman running the factory, has, Fantine’s behavior in relation to men remains what is used to condemn her (the idea that she had a relationship with a man that left her with a child outside of marriage). For once, this horrible treatment of women is actually not on Hugo, but it’s very frustrating to read about.

[katenepveu]

I'm now ahead on Les Mis Letters, having decided to read all of Part One in one gulp based on what @fremedon says in this post (thematic/tone description of the rest of the book, no plot spoilers).

A few comments on 1.5 through today's email, not recapping or comprehensive, just things I noted:

Chapter 1.5.4, "Monsieur Madeleine in Mourning": I cannot begin to say how upsetting I found the long paragraph about the beauty of "being blind and being loved" (by a woman, specifically):

to know you are the center of every step she takes, of every word, of every song, to manifest your own gravitational pull every minute of the day, to feel yourself all the more powerful for your infirmity, to become in darkness, and through darkness, the star around which this angel revolves—few forms of bliss come anywhere near it!

Gah!!!!!

Chapter 1.5.5, "Dim Flashes of Lightning on the Horizon":

What a heck of a character introduction:

The Asturian peasants are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one pup who is killed by the mother because otherwise it would grow up to devour all the other pups.

Give that male wolf puppy a human face, and you’d have Javert.

(I strongly disapprove of Hugo's conflation of beauty with virtue, so this is not about the appearance but the analogy.)

Chapter 1.5.9, "Madame Victurnien's Success": Well. There's the interiority I was wondering if we'd get for Fantine. Shame it isn't under better circumstances.

Chapter 1.5.10, "Continued Success": Hugo loves irony with these chapter titles, huh? It really works.

Rose's translation of the last line here echoes the last line of book three. Compare:

... she had given herself to this Tholomyès as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child.

With:

The poor girl made herself a whore.

It's very effective.

[pilferingapples]

LM 1.5.9 (retrobricking)

So here's a thing about Fantine's newly intense poverty that absolutely kills me.

Hugo mentions that Marguerite teaches Fantine how to live on nothing.  But the awful thing to me, the thing that genuinely makes me feel nauseous thinking about it, is that FANTINE ALREADY KNOWS THAT . Fantine was a street orphan! She spent the first ten years of her life living on absolutely and exactly nothing, surviving on scraps.  And she worked her way out of that, for the entire decade of her teens and her early twenties--and now here she is , AGAIN, put Back In Her Place, everything she tried so hard to do ripped away  specifically BECAUSE she tried to have more than nothing, to be more to the world than a stray thing drifting in the streets. This isn't unexpected; this is something she's been fighting every day of her life. 

AND YET. It's even worse than that. Because it means Marguerite isn't teaching her how to get by on nothing,or even on less than nothing. Fantine knows that song.  Marguerite is really  teaching her how to survive on nothing in a way that is socially acceptable.    Because Fantine hasn't been here as an adult; and she's definitely never been here as an adult with a child, who needs to find a way to have a steady income to support someone else.  A woman who wants to keep getting "honest" work -- meaning, work that nearly kills her and pays barely enough to survive  and makes sure every minute she knows her place, but at least doesn't require her to commit to prostitution and being a target for cops and random passerby's abuse all at once--that woman can't use the tricks of survival a street urchin would know.  She has to wear SOME sort of passable clothing, live in a permanent residence, not beg or busk or find Convenient Items in the road.   

What Marguerite has to teach her, what Fantine genuinely needs to learn, is how to suffer in a way that doesn't inconvenience the more fortunate. 

And then to learn how to deal not just with being invisible , but being infamous , in a small town.   Hugo's sometimes silly about Paris, but he's of course quite right about the anonymity of big cities. An unwed mother in Paris?  Please, let us know if she gives birth to a minotaur. In a small town ? Fantine's probably not wrong about being stared at-- especially by the people who put her into this situation. 

And yet, right now, Fantine's got Marguerite, who is genuinely a friend--and she's got at least one other neighbor she talks honestly to about her distress. In her desperation and in the middle of her shame, she's reaching out and making connections.  I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it many more times: Fantine is the bravest damn character in this whole story.   I love her, and I currently hate roughly 90 percent of Everything Else. 

[everyonewasabird]

Brickclub 1.5.9 ‘Success of Madame Victurnien’

“Bah! I say to myself: by sleeping but five hours, and working all the rest at my sewing, I shall always succeed in nearly earning bread. And then, when one is sad, one eats less. Well! what with sufferings, troubles, a little bread on the one side, anxiety on the other, all that will keep me alive.”

It’s heartbreaking and horrible and bitter, but--this may be the first time Fantine talks honestly about her inner state to another human being. I hate that this is how it happens, but I love that amid all this, it happens.

Interestingly, FMA renders the line: “I shall always more or less manage to earn some bread,” which sounds far less bitter to my ear--it sounds optimistic, honestly. The rest of the paragraph is bitter in both. Any French speakers want to weigh in on which is closer?

Marguerite is the hero of this novel, seriously. Everything is about to be very, very bad, but I’m so glad Fantine got one real friend.

The chapter says of Marguerite:

There are many of these virtues in low places; some day they will be on high. This life has a morrow.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, if not the cosmology.

Also--

The narrator seems clearly to mean heaven here. But. Okay. The following reasoning may be a sign it’s time for me to go to bed instead of write about Les Mis, but:

When Combeferre says,

My friends, there is a morrow; you will not be here to-morrow, but your families will; and what sufferings!

He’s using very nearly the same wording to describe... exactly the scenes we’re reading. He’s talking about women and children left without resources and facing starvation and prostitution.

Marguerite’s morrow is looking from starving towards heaven. Combeferre’s morrow is looking from the barricade and his imminent death towards living women who are starving.

It’s like he looked through a window to this opposite end of the book and saw all this. I don’t know, it feels like magic to me. It’s like there’s a magic mirror connecting these parts.

..Alternatively, I really should go to bed.

--

The best men are often compelled to delegate their authority.

The narrator says this of Madeleine avoiding the women’s factory and putting his confidence in the overseer.

On it’s face, it’s a negative statement about how a good man can’t be everywhere at once and that’s why all this went wrong, but there are two things wrong with that:

1) Valjean’s not compelled to anything here, he’s just being weird about avoiding women.

2) Delegation is Enjolras’s best quality.

Like, really--the fact that Enjolras refuses to be a great man and trusts a troop of goofballs who make fun of him to make his important decisions and check his reasoning is the best thing he does as a leader.

Why are these delegations different? What’s the difference?

The thing that occurs to me is:

Enjolras knows and loves his men. He trusts them because he has years worth of reasons to.

Valjean hasn’t gotten close enough to anyone to make that kind of judgment. He’s acting directly off the overseer’s reputation, somehow believing that it’s accurate, and he absolutely should Know Better than to trust reputation. But he has a blind spot around himself and his own unique unworthiness that maybe makes him believe that other people are exactly what it says on the tin.

Valjean assuming he can judge people by externals and be distant and benevolent and not have to relate to individuals as human beings is the root of everything that goes wrong with Fantine.

--

Everything is horrible by the end of this chapter, and Fantine is growing bitter to survive, and Madame Victurnien is pleased with what she’s done, so here’s the line I’m ending on.

She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite, “just feel how hot my hands are.”

Fantine has a real friend to whom she can say these things, who cares about her, and who holds her hands.

Good night.

[meta-squash]

Brick Club 1.5.9 “Madame Victurnien’s Victory”

This is simply a translation thing, since Hapgood translates it as “success,” but I think the title containing the word “victory” is interesting because it really implies that Mme Victurnien got something out of what she did to Fantine, that she “won” against Fantine. What she got was a sense of sated curiosity, a curiosity whose satisfaction ruined another human being.

Hugo starts the chapter off saying that Victurnien’s actions did some good, only he then reveals that Valjean never entered the workshop and explains that the overseer was only charitable from a certain angle. How is this good? Valjean, who is described as “even the best men,” is trusting that this woman’s morals are in line with his own simply from word of mouth, rather than checking in. He never sets foot in the workshop and has given her full power. Again, no wonder people are turning to sex work as a side hustle. How many other women has this happened to? And the overseer thinks she’s doing some good!

The overseer is “full of the charity that consists of giving, though to some extent lacking in the charity that consists of understanding and pardoning.” But isn’t this the entirety of Madeleine’s system and philosophy? He helps people by giving them money. He tosses money at them but doesn’t want to see the aftermath and doesn’t want to be the one doing the face-to-face benevolence. He can’t handle being responsible for problems that a little bit of money can’t fix. The only time he seems to do things face-to-face with others is when they specifically come to him (like as a judge or a settler of conflict); he doesn’t ever go to them. The overseer is full of the “charity that consists of giving” because that’s what Valjean’s rules teach. They don’t have space for sitting down and trying to understand. The morality of these rules don’t allow for that. If the only rule to work in this factory is to be an “honest woman,” how do you confront a structure that creates this desire to seek out and banish immorality rather than examine itself and its components for prejudices and then find ways to assist these women who clearly have little to no support?

I’m wondering too if Valjean’s rule fostered this rumor mill. Having a strict code of morality is a great way to foster ill will if people are more nosey or malicious or less mutual aid-minded than others. Especially in a factory where people are paid by their output. If someone is better than you at the job you share, it makes sense to start a rumor about them to get them kicked out so you become the one who gets their pay. This isn’t quite what happens to Fantine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened to other women. In terms of Fantine and Victurnien, again this strict moral code is a breeding ground for the gossips and rubberneckers that Hugo described last chapter.

Valjean’s system just frustrates me so much. Again, putting so much power in the hands of a person without checking if they’re trustworthy or not, without having a system of “is this person treating my workers right” is just so....careless? That’s not exactly the word I’m looking for but it’s just like Valjean puts this morally strict system in place and expects it to just solve all problems. He’s busy helping other people solve conflicts and things and doesn’t seem to realize that these rules he’s put in place are going to create problems as well. Not to mention that everyone’s ideas of ethics or morals are going to be different. Would Valjean have condemned Fantine if he’d heard her story? We don’t know. But this overseer’s idea of the right thing to do and the right action to take may well be very different from Valjean’s intention upon setting these rules. Which creates circumstances like this.

Am I reading something wrong, or did the overseer not take record that she had given Fantine the 50 francs? I read “of which she rendered no account” as the overseer not bothering to write down the fact that she gave Fantine 50 francs from the money for donation and aid to workers. Is that right? If this is true than it would also give even more reason for Valjean to have no idea: if he doesn’t set foot in the women’s workshop but does look at the expenses, this wouldn’t have shown up either.

The landlord telling Fantine “you’re young and pretty” is a foreshadowing of the next couple chapters, but I also think it’s interesting that the landlord seems to insinuate that she could be a sex worker. Again, this is a garrisoned town. Sex work must be an open secret here, something Valjean maybe refuses to see.

I love Marguerite so much. I think this might be the first and only time Fantine has a friend who actually cares about her. It makes sense that Fantine would have a much older woman as her friend. Hugo says she’s wise, and I think that her sort of quiet wisdom would resonate more with someone much older than with grisettes her own age. Plus an older person might be much more patient with her when teaching her these new ways of living and maybe guiding her through actually noticing these social cues for the first time. Marguerite is kind of like Fantine’s Myriel; she is a pious and religious old woman who takes Fantine under her wing to learn how to live and survive. Only, rather than taking Fantine’s soul for god or anything, she’s giving Fantine a friend, which seems to be something she’s never had before. This is the first time we see Fantine talking to someone else as an equal.

Hugo mentions that Marguerite taught Fantine how to give up an expensive bird. It’s odd to me that this bird is never mentioned. When did she get a bird? If it was with her in Paris why did she not sell it to move to M-sur-M? However, I 100% understand owning a pet even when you barely make any money to buy yourself food. Pets make you feel better about yourself because you’re caring for and getting love from another creature. Fantine has now had to give up Cosette and her bird, both two small things she’s able to give her love to.

Fantine’s backstory is so odd. How did she not know how to “live poor” already? She was an orphan, and as we see later, orphans in the Brick (taken in or otherwise) are generally treated poorly and are exceedingly impoverished. How had she never lived in enough poverty to learn how to reuse things and give things up? This is clearly the most poor she’s ever been, and even Feuilly makes a good deal more than her later on, but it seems strange that even as a young child or teenager she didn’t live in similar poverty, if she was an orphan with no other monetary support besides her own work.

Fantine mentions that she only sleeps five hours a night. We don’t get a lot of mention of characters sleeping. A little here and there, but the Thenardiers don’t seem to sleep, like, at all when they’re in Paris. This is a kind of subtle aspect of it, but being this poor is crazy hard to get out of because it requires so much work. Fantine makes like 9 sous (I think?) making shirts. She’s taking up just under 19 hours of her day sewing, which I would imagine might produce maybe 3 shirts? Depending on whether she’s doing the entire thing from scratch or using patterns or taking someone else’s already fitted and cut out pieces and stitching them together. Either way, sewing takes quite a while, and if she’s taking 19 hours of her day doing that, she has no time to do things like look for a better job. And she’s also still in debt, so she can’t move somewhere with more opportunities, either. The Thenardiers barely sleep because they’re constantly trying to come up with ways to get money as well. Marius seems to barely sleep; he spends his time translating. Sleep is so rare in this book, it’s kind of a surprise when it’s mentioned.

“When one is sad, one eats less. Sufferings, troubles, a little bread on the one hand, a little anxiety on the other--all that will keep me alive.” More of Hugo’s weird thing about suffering. Even more than an ableism kink, he’s got this whole suffering = good thing going on. This is from 3.5.1, about Marius, but I think it summarizes Hugo’s opinion well: “Firm and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a step-mother, is sometimes a mother; destitution gives birth to might of soul and spirit; distress is the nurse of pride; unhappiness is a good milk for the magnanimous.” (Hapgood translation as I’m too lazy to transcribe from FMA.) Reaction to suffering is Hugo’s gauge for a character’s goodness.

Also, this line about bread reminds me of Eponine’s line about not eating for three days, only Eponine admits to the misery of not eating, while Fantine tries to keep things light and optimistic. Again, we have Fantine seeing things through a sort of rose-colored lens. This time I don’t think it helps much, but it’s also not concealing danger from her either. It’s just that Eponine has lived so long in poverty that hunger is just an aspect of her life, and misery is something she seems to have simply accepted, while this is still vaguely new to Fantine and she’s trying to figure out how to deal with it.

“In this distress, to have had her little daughter with her would have been a strange happiness.” Mostly I just want to hang on to this quote because it parallels the later line talking about Baron Pontmercy wishing to have young Marius with him. I made a post before about the parallels between Fantine and Pontmercy, and somehow I didn’t catch this one, but here it is.

Everything in this book is about money, about how to pay. Everything in life is about money. It puts Valjean in an expressly unique position as someone who has a frankly ridiculous amount of money compared to pretty much every other character. But everyone except Valjean and Cosette are so highly aware of money, of how much everything costs, and what it takes to pay for something. And really the thing about poverty is that “cost” isn’t just francs, it’s also time and labor and emotion. If Fantine had just the tiniest bit more money, she could send for Cosette, but would Cosette then end up like the child of Valjean’s sister, sitting out in the cold in the early morning after Fantine went to work but before the schools had opened? Sewing shirts takes time; that’s either less time to be with Cosette and nurture Cosette or less time making shirts which is less money. Making enough money to live means sacrificing so much.

Only now does Fantine seem to be aware of social cues, which now have turned into paranoia (though she’s probably at least a little right). Since the beginning, she hasn’t noticed when people are laughing at her or whispering about her or making fun of her to her face. Even when Tholomyes left, I doubt she noticed because all of the grisettes were abandoned at the same time; I don’t think she would have realized that for everyone else it was a little bit different. But now all those whispers and mocking and social cues have been thrown in her face, and now she’s seeing them everywhere. It sounds like paranoia, but I think she’s right, and Hugo basically says so about a sentence later.

“She came and went, head high and with a bitter smile, and felt that she was becoming shameless.” This is another reason why I Dreamed A Dream in English frustrates me so much. The French version at least touches on Fantine’s anger, on the ways she has begun to harden. The English version really does not do that at all. It is interesting that she longs for the anonymity of Paris, and in the end seems to decide to treat M-sur-M as though it was Paris, and go out brazenly anyway.

Mme Victurnien and Tholomyes are at opposite ends of the self-centered individual. Tholomyes fucked Fantine over but didn’t care or think much of it, because once he’d satisfied the amusement he got out of his affair with Fantine, he simply dropped her and probably never thought of her or Cosette ever again. Victurnien, on the other hand, turns Fantine into a weird sort of obsession. Instead of not caring about ruining Fantine’s life, that becomes a kind of pleasure for her. A “dark happiness,” as Hugo calls it. It’s a sort of sadistic schadenfreude. Tholomyes didn’t spend anything to abandon Fantine, he simply left to go back to the country. Victurnien spent money to destroy Fantine’s life. Both are so terrible because one is so deliberately careless and the other is so heartlessly deliberate.

A last thought which is just kind of a throwaway thing, but since gaining the “Fantine as autistic” headcanon from whoever it was that came up with it, I’ve been imagining Fantine’s love of brushing and braiding her hair as a form of self-soothing. I haven’t had long hair in over 15 years but I remember when I did, brushing it or having someone else brush it always felt really nice. Fantine’s hair is so beautiful (later on Hugo says it falls to her knees which is !!!!) and I wonder if part of that is because of how often she uses brushing it to self-sooth when things are terrible.

[greenleaf-starbright]

BrickClub: 1.5.9 Madame Victurnien’s victory

I've been researching the role of poor women in the garment trade all this week, after a fit of grumpiness at how history-of-clothes-community persistently focuses on skilled artisans, couturiers and home-sewers, while excluding any mention at all of the masses of poverty-line workers who supported the garment industries. I’ll post a link as soon as my writeup was done.

So Fantine's landlord figures out she's going to wind up in sex work pretty much immediately - setting up the stakes for the next section of the narrative, I suppose. The narrative moves on to shirtmaking, a job it was extremely common to supplement with sex work, and a trade which we are told is related to the presence of the soldiers in the garrison. You can feel where this story is going.

I like Hugo's admiration for the skill of being in poverty successfully, and that he associates it with courage. In the previous chapter, he associated Fantine's job loss with an emotion of shame, and I wondered whether this was a self-belief Fantine was going to carry with her - a sort of "sex work is all I am worth because I am good for nothing". I love that they resist this narrative. Hiding indoors or wanting to hide in Paris, then trying to overcome it and go out head-up. Finding other jobs, and adapting. Even though most things that happen in this chapter are negative, the mood feels positive.

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I.v.9 Succès De Madame Victurnien

Success of Madame Victurnien: Wilbour, Wraxall, Walton

Madame Victurnien’s Success: Hapgood, Denny, Rose

Madame Victurnien's Victory: FMA

Success for Madame Victurnien: Donougher