#1.3.3

“‘Wise!’ you will say, and Tholomyès? Solomon would answer that love is a part of wisdom.”

“She worked to live; then, also to live, for the heart too has its hunger, she loved.”

“Love is a fault; be it so. Fantine was innocence floating upon the surface of this fault.”

...you know, once it’s pointed out to you, the Enjolras-Fantine parallels are, no pun intended, stunning. There are other parallels, but I’m going to cut to the chase and point you to: “And discernible beneath these trappings and ribbons was a statue, and within this statue a soul." Swap out ‘trappings and ribbons’ for, I don’t know, ‘waistcoats and top hats’, and you’ve got something that might as well have come out of Enjolras’ intro.

Which means that, even though Hugo has pretty much come out and said that Fantine and Tholomyes have slept together, she still gets to be basically virginal! Because apparently virginity is something that you can see in someone’s facial expression and... their philtrum? Hugo, what? Sometimes I think he just, like, picks out a body part at random and decides that this is what signifies Virginity today. Or if he’s working from accepted tradition, then someone is doing that.

But yeah, you know how I talked about how Valjean isn’t a Romantic Novel Protagonist, at least in the classical sense? Fantine is. Fantine is 1000% in the right genre, which means that I expect every single person reading this then and now knows that things will end poorly for her.

Anyway, backing up a bit, I love the image of them deliberately touristing. They’re going to do all the tourist things and they’re going to have a blast doing every single one of them. Them going to the fountain, seeing it dry, and uttering what I can only assume is the stereotypical tourist ritual response is delightful to me.

The girls remain lovely. If ever you had doubts about which of these eight people was going to be our main character, this chapter probably cleared them up for you (if the fact that the volume is named after her hadn’t already tipped you off), but the others get some lovely glimmers of character. Dahlia and Zephine are adorable, and if they haven’t started kissing each other “for practice,” they probably will soon.

In other news, hold up, Blondeau is a real person? Why did it never occur to me that Blondeau might be a real person? He was a professor of Roman Law, according to Donougher, and translated the works of Justinian, according to google. This, according to amazon (I know, sorry) is the title of one of his books: “ Chrestomathie, Ou Choix De Textes Pour Un Cours Elementaire De Droit Prive Des Romains Et Rei Agrariae Scriptorum Nobiliores Reliquiae (1830)” Or, “Chrestomathie, Or Choice Of Texts For An Elementary Course On Private Law* Of The Romans”. Which leads us now to the extremely important question of, given how the Romantics felt about neoclassicism (badly), how did they feel about actual classicism? Because I can’t help but feel like Blondeau, professor of Roman Law, as mortal enemies of Bahorel, Parisian super-Romantic, is A Choice.

The last moments of pure joy in this book.

Victor Hugo is very insistent on reminding us that there are eight young people, four couples, four men, four women, do not forget this.

The women’s situation is revealed to be even more precarious as apparently none of them can write? I don’t know how typical this is for the time period, taking into account gender, class, etc, but what is it that these ladies actually do to survive without a wealthy lover, or in between them as they are left in the wake of Tholomyes’s plan?

Also, the return of Hugo’s weirdness with women: “Fantine was beautiful, without being too conscious of it.” Because, of course, as soon as you realize you’re beautiful, you start acting immodestly, wearing low necklines and such, which immediately makes you less beautiful. You really don’t get to win.

“This chaste restraint is the shade which separates Psyche from Venus.” Clearly, you haven’t read your mythology, Hugo, cause Aphrodite herself is coming for your ass for saying that.

The joy of this day is just completely spoiled for me, obviously knowing what’s coming, but also just realizing how utterly dependent the ladies are on the boys and just the gross power imbalance. Ugh, I can’t enjoy this, and I can’t imagine the women can fully be in the moment either, knowing their own situations. Favourite makes some revealing comments in this vein in chapter VI, you can see her struggle to overcome the cognitive dissonance this relationship demands.

“Favorite, [was] the only one of the women who knew how to write […]”

It reminds me of way back in 1.1.4 when Hugo had this to say about M Myriel’s philosophy:

“He was indulgent toward women and the poor, upon whom the weight of society falls most heavily. He would say, ‘The faults of women […] and the ignorant, are the faults of their husbands, fathers, and masters, of the strong [and] the rich […] Teach the ignorant as much as you can; society is guilty in not providing universal free education’”

Obviously this is very patronizing, but I do think there is a link. Fantine is poor and ignorant and a woman with little educational prospects. And this lack of education not only makes it easier for her to fall prey to Tholomyès, but it means when she needs to find work she can’t.