Girls, I Don't Know How I Can Bear It!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                       
                                  Just as I did 25 years before, to prepare for the upcoming musical, so now am I rereading the Victor Hugo classic, "Les Miserables," to prepare me for the upcoming film version.  I thought, what with a quarter of a century passing, me being older, and somewhat wiser, I would be able to handle it better, but I find I cannot.

                                    Yesterday, I found myself beginning the section, dealing with the figure who propels the story and everyone in it forward, who hangs over the work long after she has left it--Fantine.

                                       Fantine is done in by the social circumstances of her time. This is France of several centuries ago.  Priests may still have been buggering boys, but were not paid attention to, as they are now.  Women had it worse.  Someone like Fantine, who was unmarried and trying to raise a child, not only had no options--there were no day care centers, darlings!!!!!!!!-- if her status is found out, she can be fired, from any job she takes. Which is what happens.  She has left her daughter, Cosette, to the care of the Thernardiers, to whom she is sending money presumably for her care, but which they are spending on themselves!!!!!!!   She takes in patchwork sewing by the most minimum of light and lives in the most destitute way.  The Thernardiers keep demanding more, and Fantine, knowing nothing, has no choice but to believe them, leading her to sell her furniture, her hair, her teeth and then...herself!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                         There is a passage, after Fantine has given Cosette to Madame Thernardier, presumably leaving her in her care, where she is seen by a wayfarer, walking along the street, sobbing in such desolation.  I am telling you, unless you have a heart of stone, like if you are a Republican, you cannot help but be moved by Fantine's plight.  I found myself weeping on the subway, as I read this.  And, of course--there but for the grace of God, go I!!!!!!!  How many actual Fantines of this age are there still out there, and what help is available to them??????  And, of course, the fear that keeps gnawing at me--that I will end up like this, a denizen of the streets, dying alone in a doorway of destitution.

                                             I may be pouring it on thick, darlings, but so does Victor Hugo. And to a purpose!!!!!!!!!  But there is hope!!!!!!!  Jean Valjean finds and rescues Fantine from the streets, and while it is too late for her, she at least dies in a state of grace, in the comfort of a hospital bed, and is delivered to peace after the Hell she lived on earth.  With someone to care for the daughter whom she cared about so much she literally sacrificed her being for.

                                               Which is why, much as she breaks my heart, I just love Fantine.  She is the better in all of us, whose virtues outweigh her sins.  One cannot help but admire her, while lamenting the society that created her situation.

                                                  A society which still needs some eradicating, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!