Part I, Book 3, Chapter 2
Two Foursomes
It is, as previously established, 1817, and we are introduced to a group of four guys who are all students in Paris. Are these brilliant, exceptional students set to do great things? Nope, they’re “unexceptional young men—everyone has seen their type: four average specimens.” Uh oh. I’m getting bad vibes already, because it is never a good sign when a band of mediocre bros shows up.
The Four Bros, as I will refer to them henceforth, are named Félix Tholomyès, Listolier, Fameuil, and Blacheville. None of these will be added to the list of cat names (despite my great love for the name “Felix”) because all these names come with bad vibes attached and you cannot give a cat a bad vibes name.
The Four Bros have mistresses who all are one friend group, referred to (by me) from now on as the Gal Pals: Favourite, Dahlia, Zéphine, and Fantine. I’m declaring the first three to be great cat names—Fantine would be a good name only we all know what happens to her and I have mixed feelings about giving cats tragic names. All four girls are young, relatively innocent women; Fantine is the youngest of the four, and unlike the other three has had no lovers or romantic experience. Oh no.
Hugo singles out Fantine as being unlike her friends; in addition to having no experience whatsoever, she is “virtuous” while the other three are “philosophical.” I’m sure that an English teacher would have a lot to say about this distinction, but I’m interpreting it as something close to the idealistic vs. realistic divide, the way that in Hadestown Orpheus is someone who sees “the way the world could be” while Eurydice sees “the world as it was.”
Even if you don’t know anything about the story going in, there’s already a creeping sense of doom from Hugo’s description of the Gal Pals’ approach to life. “Povery and love of finery are two disastrous counsellors. One scolds and the other flatters, and beautiful young girls of humble origin have both whispering in their ears […] That is how they come to be fallen women and to have stones thrown at them.”
I’m losing track of how many times this chapter has made me go “Uh oh!”
So the Four Bros are messing around with the Gal Pals (unclear to which base everyone is going, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon). Everyone seems on board with the fact that this is all harmless playing around, except for (uh oh) Fantine. “Fantine’s love was a first love, an exclusive love, a true love.”
We get a little backstory for where Fantine came from, which is…unclear. No one, herself included, knows who her parents are. She just appeared running around on the streets and was named by the first person who saw her and greeted her with “little Fantine.”
Wait, is Fantine also a cat? This is a cat origin story. Are all the main characters in Les Misérables secretly cats?
It is a very good thing that “Fantine” is a decent name and that whoever first greeted little Fantine didn’t say, I don’t know, “little street rat” in French or whatever, because “[s]he accepted a name the way she accepted moisture from the clouds on her forehead when it rained.” Sorry but that is such cat energy.
Fantine, in addition to being a cat, is also absurdly beautiful. “She had gold and pearls for her dowry, but her gold was her head of hair and her pearls were in her mouth.”
It is very, very weird to read about someone’s teeth like this. I realize that this all takes place in a time before modern dentistry and everyone was probably walking around with terrifyingly bad teeth, so it’s very special to have naturally even pearly whites, but still. Hugo writing about Fantine’s “splendid teeth” just makes me go TEETH TEETH TEETH! in my head like the tweet.
So little Fantine has her beauty (including great teeth) and basically nothing else. “She worked to keep herself alive. Then, also to keep herself alive, she loved, for the heart has its own hunger. She loved Tholomyès.”
I feel that. The pull of love can be a pretty great thing. Tell me more about this guy Tholomyès!
“A conquest for him, for her the love of her life.”
Oh dear. I don’t love this for her. Still, you could say that it’s better to have loved, etc. and to have the memory of a wonderful lover to get you through life. Tell me more, tell me more about this guy.
“Tholomyès was a thirty-year-old pleasure seeker, and badly preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he was beginning to show signs of baldness.”
…
Are you telling me Tholomyès isn’t hot, and in fact is a dude aging really badly? I’ve heard “I Dreamed a Dream” so many times and imagined who this figure could be who “filled my days with endless wonder”—of course he’s a fuckboi who leaves Fantine, but I at least assumed that he was really, really, really ridiculously good looking and charming, because if you’re going to let someone ruin your life, they should be really hot.
Well, he must then have a great personality.
“He replaced his teeth with buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony.” And earlier: “[He] was the classic perpetual student.”
…
I can’t even with this. So not only was he not hot, he was an overgrown manchild in arrested development with class clown energy?
And Fantine fell deeply in love with this guy? GIRL. What is WRONG with you? YOU CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER.
The vibes at this point are so bad they’re rancid.
The chapter ends with Tholomyès taking the other Bros aside and telling them he has a great idea for a scheme involving the Gal Pals.
THE VIBES. THEY ARE SO BAD. FANTINE, RUN.
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