Fantine

Fantine ( ) is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. She is a young grisette in Paris who is impregnated by a rich student. After he abandons her, she is forced to look after their child, Cosette, on her own. Originally a beautiful and naive girl, Fantine is eventually forced by circumstances to become a prostitute to support her daughter, losing her beauty and health until she finally dies of tuberculosis. She was first played in the musical by Rose Laurens in France, and when the musical came to England, Patti LuPone played Fantine in the West End. Fantine has since been played by numerous actresses. Fantine became an archetype of self-abnegation and devoted motherhood. She has been portrayed by many actresses in stage and screen versions of the story and has been depicted in works of art.

Fantine ( ) is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Misérables. She is a young grisette in Paris who is impregnated by a rich student. After he abandons her, she is forced to look after their child, Cosette, on her own. Originally a beautiful and naive girl, Fantine is eventually forced by circumstances to become a prostitute to support her daughter, losing her beauty and health until she finally dies of tuberculosis. She was first played in the musical by Rose Laurens in France, and when the musical came to England, Patti LuPone played Fantine in the West End. Fantine has since been played by numerous actresses. Fantine became an archetype of self-abnegation and devoted motherhood. She has been portrayed by many actresses in stage and screen versions of the story and has been depicted in works of art. ==Character== Fantine has been interpreted as a holy prostitute figure who becomes a quintessential mother by sacrificing her own body and dignity for the purpose of securing the life of her child. She is an example of what has been called "the cliché of the saved and saintly prostitute that pervades nineteenth-century fiction", which is also found in the writings of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens. Oscar Wilde presented her as a figure whose suffering makes her lovable, writing of the scene after she has her teeth removed, that "We run to kiss the bleeding mouth of Fantine". Kathryn M. Grossman says she moves into a form of "maternal sainthood" and that "When Madeleine (Valjean's pseudonym as mayor) affirms that she has remained virtuous and holy before God, Fantine can finally release her hatred and love others again. Or rather, it is because he perceives the reality beyond her appearance that she finds the mayor worthy of renewed devotion. For Valjean, the bedraggled prostitute verges on 'sanctity' through 'martyrdom' (640; sainteté . . . martyr)." John Andrew Frey argues that the character has a political significance. Fantine is "an example of how women of the proletariat were brutalized in nineteenth-century France...Fantine represents Hugo's deep compassion for human suffering, especially for women born into low estate". Mario Vargas Llosa takes a less positive view, arguing that Hugo in effect punishes Fantine for her sexual transgression by making her suffer so horribly. "What disasters follow from a sin of the flesh! On the matter of sex, the morality of Les Misérables melds perfectly with the most intolerant and puritanical interpretation of Catholic morality." Fantine's image as a saint-like symbol of female victimhood appears in the writings of the union leader Eugene V. Debs, founder of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1916 he wrote the essay Fantine in our Day, in which he compared the sufferings of Fantine to abandoned women of his own day: ==References== ==External links== French text of Les Misérables – English translation. Search for Fantine at the Internet Broadway Database

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