Personal Musings: Fantine

So I’ve been reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, and when you get past the overly detailed writing, it’s a wonderful and powerful story.  Grace, forgiveness, redemption, transformation, love, attention to the struggles of our fellow humans, and other such beautiful themes pervade the story.  Furthermore, each of these themes is approached with maturity.  Mature.  I want to dwell on that word a bit.  In today’s culture, what is meant by the word “mature” with regards to stories?

In my experience, “mature” stories, or stories containing “mature content” most often mean “stories that include explicit sex scenes, graphic violence, and/or a large amount of swearing”.  However, if we really consider the term “mature”, how often do we really use that word in connection to such content?  When we say someone is “mature for his age”, we usually mean the opposite of what we mean in regards to “mature content”, such as that he is tact and treats people well and with consideration, that he is wise and doesn’t give in as quickly to emotional urges.  The very list above, or at least a tendency to unnecessary or frequent swearing and easily roused to violence, is, in common society, regarded as immature or childish.  So why is it that “mature” in the literary sense carries with it a stigma for pornographic scenes, constant swearing, and scenes that make you think blood will start dripping off the pages rather than wise and edifying?  Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question.  Instead, I wish to use Hugo’s story, Les Mis, in order to illustrate true maturity in literature, and for that purpose, let’s look at one character who, perhaps more than any other in all of literature, has stimulated my thoughts time and again: Fantine.

Who is Fantine?  Within Hugo’s story, Fantine is a young girl near the beginning of the story who falls in love with a playboy and then is abandoned not long before giving birth to his child.  Afterwards, in order to raise the child, Cosette, she returns to her hometown to earn money, leaving Cosette with a pair of innkeepers because she knows that if anyone finds out about the illegitimate child it would cause trouble.  In the end, Fantine is found out, ostracized, and slowly declines in health and social standing as she does everything she can to pay the innkeepers (who are conning her in order to raise their fees) for caring for Cosette.  Eventually, after resorting to prostitution, the insensitive prank of a young man causes her body to succumb to illness, and she dies.

So why does the tragic Fantine fascinate me so?  Quite simply, it’s Hugo’s ability to write such a sympathetic character with maturity.  First of all, Hugo doesn’t feel the need to give detail in places most authors would in today’s literature.  Fantine’s intimacy with her lover, her time as a prostitute, the violence regarding some of her struggles, Hugo mentions them but does not give more detail than necessary.  He doesn’t describe sexual scenes in order to “prove” Fantine’s love; when Fantine’s two front teeth are pulled to be sold, he does not go into the bloody details, nor is either one necessary.  Hugo did not seek out shock value or detailed realism or sexual arousal.  But yet he did not shy away from such heavy topics, either.

The other sign I see of maturity in Fantine’s story is how Hugo turns Fantine into a sympathetic character without denying her sin.  As Hugo writes of Fantine “After recklessness comes trouble” (Hugo 148).  Fantine foolishly gives her all to a man who doesn’t truly love her, who isn’t a husband committed to her.  Intoxicated with love, she neglects work and, once abandoned, cannot support herself.  She has acted without wisdom, and Hugo does not let her off for it.  She suffers for her folly, but she doesn’t let herself stay there.  She, who possessed an honest and innocent heart from the start, takes responsibility and commits herself to working hard for the sake of her child.  In doing so, she displays herself to be more than one sin.

And so the audience is distraught at what happens to her.  No, Hugo didn’t leave her wrongs without consequence, nor is the reader to pity Fantine for her foolishness; rather, the tragedy comes from the treatment she receives by others.  Abandoning responsibility, deceit in order to obtain more money from her, taking pleasure from ruining the life of another, not being able to see the person trying to change her life beyond a social stigma, judging based on social status, oh the hypocrisy!  The lack of mercy and grace of the supposedly morally superior!

Did not Jesus himself show mercy unto the woman caught in adultery?  “I do not condemn you.  Go.  From now on sin no more” (New American Standard John 8:11)  Did not Paul, a “pharisee among pharisees” take with him Timothy, a child who at the least was born to a forbidden marriage but may have even been a bastard son between a Jew and a Greek?  “To Timothy my true child in the faith…” (1 Tim 1:2).  “To Timothy, my beloved son…” (2 Tim 1:2)  Was is not to the supposedly moral giants that Christ had his harshest condemnation?  “Woe to you, teachers of the law… you hypocrites!  You are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside appear beautiful but inside… are full of dead men’s bones… you serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell?” (Mat 23:27, 33).  Was it not Christ Himself who sought out sinners and tax collectors, who welcomed the least and the outcast, who healed the sick, who, knowing we are all sinners and deserve death, came unto us and showed us mercy?  And are not we also called to be like Him?

And yet.  And yet why is it that the one who extends a hand to this woman, shivering with illness and overcome with despair, who had stood up with the resolution to “Go and sin no more”, rather than the “upright” who have never been charged with a crime, rather than those who supposedly clothe themselves in justice, why is it the ex-convict, the thief, the supposed blight upon society, why is he the one to show her mercy?  Because he knew what it meant to be redeemed by grace.

Why do I love Fantine?  Why does her story so move me?  Because I am the overseer, rejecting her when I learn of her misdeeds.  Because I am the man who decided the prostitute on the street was so below humans I could treat her as sport.  Because I am Javert, too quick to seek justice when I am also called to be merciful.

What Fantine did was wrong.  Hugo knew it and acknowledged it.  As did Fantine.  But what was worse, far more wicked than a heart led astray by desire, was the heart led astray by self-righteousness.  We are all sinners.  We all deserve death.  But we have been forgiven.  “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you” (Eph 4: 32).  When you look down upon other people, do so only as you stretch out your hand to pull them up because guess what, the ground is a thin mirror of ice.  And none of us can swim.  When you look down upon the sinner, in truth you are merely looking at yourself.  The “you” before that Divine Hand, that Divine Christ, dove into the mud and mire to pull you above the surface.  If not for Him, you would have drowned.  I would have drowned.

When I began this post, I lamented the use of the word “mature” in connection with such content as pornography.  Such a use is like labeling poke berries as grapes.  A “mature” story should be one like aged wine, or finely crafted bread.  Nourishing.  Yes, there are stories where graphic violence is necessary.  Yes, there are stories in which swearing is fitting.  But these don’t necessarily make a story mature any more than cinnamon necessarily makes bread delicious.  Such ingredients should not be used lightly.

What is a mature story?  A mature story is nourishing.  And mature story has enough maturity to know what content, what ingredients, what conditions and length of storage, to employ in order to give its reader the best it can.  It doesn’t matter if it’s about a little girl opening a wardrobe into a magical land or a side-character’s tragedy in the face of merciless self-righteousness, if a story is not these, it is no more than childish.



Hugo, Victor.  Les Miserables.  Trans. Lee Fahnestock and Norman MacAfee.  New York: Signet Classics, 1987.  Print.

The New Inductive Study Bible.  Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2000.  Print.