Part I, Book 3, Chapter 3
Haphazard Pairings
This chapter depicts the country outing of the Four Bros and Gal Pals. I think you can tell that Hugo is feeling A Way about growing older and yearning for the days of carefree youth, because he romanticizes this outing like you wouldn’t believe. “Delightful years! […] Oh, no matter who you may be, don’t you remember? Have you walked through the bushes, holding aside the branches for the pretty face following behind you?”
It’s a pretty idyllic picture. All the Gal Pals are “exceedingly pretty.” Tholomyès looks good for a prematurely aging manchild, dressed in—and I have to struggle not to laugh—copper-trimmed bell bottoms.
“‘That Tholomyès is amazing!’ said the others, in awe. ‘What trousers!’”
Y’all are too easily impressed. Amazing? This guy? In his goofy bell-bottomed outfit? You are not serious people.
Hugo moves on from Tholomyès’ pants to painting an extensive word picture of Fantine so detailed it becomes creepy. He starts with her “thick blonde hair” and “rosy lips” which, while being very stereotypically “men writing about women,” seems normal enough. She’s got “voluptuously turned-up corners of her mouth.” Okay.
Then we go on, because it’s not enough to know that Fantine is super pretty and you just have to take Hugo’s word for it. No, we must be told, in excruciating detail, about her “fleshy eyelids” and “small arched feet” and how her neck is “supple in the nape” and that there’s a “voluptuous dimple” between her shoulders.
Several paragraphs later (oh yes, this is a very long word painting) Hugo says, “In that very telling space that separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had a slight and charming hollow, the mysterious sign of chastity”—UM.
This is the writing of someone who needs to be put on a registry. It is all so much, too much about the exact appearance of what I’m understanding to be a very young girl. There are so many mentions of how “virginal” and “chaste” and “innocent” her beauty is. You can just say “child”! FANTINE IS A CHILD.
Above all, “Fantine was beautiful without really being aware of it.” Oh dear, here we have the core of the problem I feel is coming: beauty is power, and one that can be dangerously wielded against its bearer. If you are aware of your beauty and use it, you can get nice things and move in spaces otherwise barred to you and be introduced to people you wouldn’t otherwise and gain money, fame, and/or power. (This is not life advice, just an observation.) Girls unaware of their own beauty (or who have been psychologically beaten into low self-esteem) make themselves vulnerable to those who wish to possess them—and to possess a human being, you have to dehumanize them.
All in all, a disturbing chapter for many reasons. I gotta hand it to Hugo, though, it is still a beautifully written chapter considering he definitely didn’t have all his blood going to his head while writing it.
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