Fantine - Tumblr Posts
@themiserablesmonth Day 9: Strength
@themiserablesmonth Day 22: Leaf
;-;
[ID: pen drawing of Fantine hugging a young Cosette to her. Fantine’s long hair is blowing in the wind, and there are leaves being blown around them. End ID.]
HAPPY BARRICADE DAY
please enjoy my first ever full animatic!! this song has always been so les mis-coded to me. please understand I have been daydreaming about making this animatic for literal years. it's, ah, a bit messier than I'd intended since I did Not practice effective time management and didn't start until june 1, but I'm SO GLAD I finished it!
hope you like it :D
Interesting Les Mis Fact #6
Cosette’s biological dad, Félix, was 10 years older than Fantine, making him 30 and Fantine 20 when Cosette was conceived.
"Les Misérables" musical character interpretations: Fantine
As usual, these three characterizations are all based on performances I've seen, either in person or filmed. They can also be, and often are, combined with each other to create still more characterizations. For example, Anne Hathaway's Oscar-winning Fantine in the film version is basically "the Ingénue," but with a distinct undertone of "the Fighter." And none of them are precisely Hugo's Fantine. I'd say that they all represent aspects of the character as Hugo wrote her, and that the ideal Fantine would blend all three of them, as the occasional actress does.
I'd like to thank @quarryquest for sending me the Fantine chapter of her book on the stage history of Les Mis just as I was in the middle of writing this. It provided excellent insights.
The Lady
This Fantine, in the words of Victor Hugo, displays “a serious and almost austere dignity.” At the beginning, her dress and hair are as neat, clean, and pretty as factory work allows, and her bearing is strikingly graceful and refined. She clearly once knew a better, more elegant life before her lover abandoned her. This sets her apart from the rough, uneducated factory folk who surround her, and at first, she might seem slightly cold and haughty in her distance from them, which no doubt contributes to how quickly they turn on her. But “I Dreamed a Dream” earns all our sympathy as she sings of her lost happiness, while in “Lovely Ladies” she moves us further by slowly sacrificing all her elegance for her daughter. Yet she never loses her core of pride and dignity. While this Fantine has as much raw anguish as any other, she tries to hide it from her oppressors under a brave face. Though she might reach the verge of tears several times, she’ll rarely let herself cry. When the moment of selling her body arrives, she’ll swallow her grief and fear with the drink she’s given, and offer a firm, resolute hand to her first customer. Her “Come on, captain…” is sultry, but not drunk or grotesque; instead, her hard, cold tone evokes Hugo’s description of the fallen Fantine as having “turned to marble.” Her rejection of Bamatabois will be calm and businesslike until he turns violent, and when “Monsieur Madeleine” approaches her, she’ll express her anger with head held high, making it clear that she sees him as no better than herself. This Fantine is a gemstone that’s thrown into the mud of the streets, but never breaks.
The Ingénue
This is a warmer, softer Fantine than the Lady, and whether the actress is twenty-five or forty, she’ll probably seem younger too. This characterization keeps in mind that Fantine’s name means “childlike” and that her “tragic flaw” in her past was her naïveté. Despite being an abandoned mother, she hasn’t entirely lost that naïveté at first. Her air of gentle innocence is what sets her apart from the other, more worldly factory folk, and throughout the factory scene she’ll be frightened and brutally shocked by the cruelty she faces. Then “I Dreamed a Dream” will overflow with anguish, and likely with tears too. With just cause, this Fantine is more prone to tears than any other. More than the loss of her dignity, the tragedy of “Lovely Ladies” is the loss of her innocence, which dies once and for all when she accepts her first prostitution client, crying or trembling with fear as she does so. What comes next will depend on whether the director thinks the “Old men, young men…” verse contains a time skip or not. If not, then this Fantine will be awkward and nervous on “Come on, captain…” still all too new to her profession. But if so, then she’ll reenter heartbreakingly transformed: staggering drunk, crudely flaunting her body, utterly disheveled and broken. Either way, she rejects Bamatabois out of rash fear, then claws at his face in rash, animalistic rage. Abuse and misery reduce this vulnerable young woman to behaving like a cornered stray dog or cat. Yet through it all, there’s never a doubt that her heart remains pure and tender, because everything she endures is for the sake of her little girl.
The Fighter
This is the grittiest Fantine. Her portrayal reminds us that Hugo’s Fantine was an orphan who grew up on the streets and that he describes her as having “fierce courage.” This is a passionate, determined woman, no longer naïve and never afraid to be unladylike, who boldly stands up to her oppressors and who battles all obstacles to provide for her daughter. In “At the End of the Day,” her fight with the Factory Girl will be fierce – where the Lady and the Ingénue will chiefly be victims of the Factory Girl’s attack, this Fantine will protect her letter like a mother bear – and her self-defense to the Foreman will be firm and simmering with frustration. Her “I Dreamed a Dream” will also be angry as well as anguished and yearning, and in “Lovely Ladies,” the chief tragedy will be that despite her fierce, valiant efforts to stay “above the water,” poverty pulls her under anyway. Her prostitution sequence may or may not be drunken, but it will most definitely be hard, brash, and filled with biting, feral rage. In her bitterness, this fallen Fantine will recall Jean Valjean as a convict before the Bishop’s mercy, and when she confronts him about her firing, she’ll stop just short of attacking him. None of this means she lacks vulnerability or deep, heartbreaking sadness; like any Fantine, she has them in spades. But the way she combines them with strength and anger make her a more complex figure than some other Fantines, and arguably, it makes the gentleness of her deathbed scene especially poignant. There, for the first time, we fully see the motherly tenderness that lies beneath her fire, and which has motivated her struggles all along.
More comparisons to come!
more lyrics I like from the french musical. these are from 'J'avais rêvé d'une autre vie' a.k.a. I Dreamed a Dream (this is not including the very first verse, but starts at the point where she starts singing 'for real', if that makes sense).
Translation
I was so young, where is the harm?
I wanted to laugh,
To love and to live,
Dance until the end of the ball
Drunk on the merriment of being free.
But the wolves prowl at night
And one of them was on my trail
Me, I satisfied the appetite
Of the first thief who passes.
He accustomed my life
To the warmth of his presence
And then one day he was gone
Having stolen my childhood.
Sometimes I still dream of him
He begs me and he regrets
But the dream is extinguished at dawn
Like the lanterns of a festive evening.
--
I like the slight defensiveness she shows at the start, with 'I was so young, where is the harm?'
It reminds me of that post about how Brick Fantine is naïve and makes some bad choices, because she's young and literally has no one to look out for her, but she is still treated sympathetically in the narrative (if not within society).
I also like how we get wolves here instead of tigers (idk the tigers always seemed a bit random to me), and that Tholomyès is then also compared to a wolf.
And finally, the closing lines create a beautiful image that ties back to the first stanza.
*me, staggering up to the next set of people doing a Les Mis adaptation* listen. LISTEN. Cosette is the future and the Republic, the Republic is the daughter of the Revolution, Fantine is the actual Revolution, her whole life is a protest, she is not a speedbump on Valjean's plotline, there's a reason that he comes into conflict with Authority the second he decides to take up her cause , there's a reason he starts seeing the bigger picture again, past bourgeois charity, when he's dedicated to helping her! She and Enjolras get described in almost exactly the same physical terms for a reason, so anyone can literally see they are the same! Symbolically! She is one of the three main figures of the story and one of the main themes, hey, no listen--- * I am forcibly removed from the group making the adaptation*
Les Misérables, French Comic by Gaston Niezab (1947)
There’re two types of people here:
normal people who enjoy watching a woman destroy an immoral man and asshole COPS
Aaaaand there they are, all of them ! Can you believe it took me more than one year to do all that, starting with the sketches !
I love them all ! but I think my favourite is probably the Jehan one.
ID texts in the alt description.
the story of those who always loved you
In Les Miserables
Valjean : The convict becomes a hero
Javert : The lawful becomes a criminal
Marius : The lost becomes an enlightened
Enjolras : The leader becomes a fallen
Grantaire : The cynic becomes a believer
Eponine : The misguided becomes a redeemed
Azelma : The despaired becomes a hopeful
Gavroche : The innocent becomes a cynic
Cosette : The abused becomes a survivor
Fantine : The misfit becomes a martyr
I don't think Fantine cares about your gay drama right now Javert😒
To be honest, I kind of like that Valjean isn't that mentioned in the concept album, not because I don't like him (Actually I love him, he's my favorite character). Just because it’s closer to the book that way. Because Valjean is mentioned in the book but we usually see the stories of other characters more often that his history from his own perspective.
Reasons to love the Original Concept Album
Fantine gets a song about misery that basically summarizes the political views of the book.
Gavroche has two full songs and multiple cameos!
Fantine is angry.
Gavroche is overtly political. Actually, everyone is more political.
Rose Laurens and Michel Sardou (my beloved).
Disco Enjolras!
The less talked-of Rock Javert.
"Master of the House" has much better puns.
Seriously, the lyrics of this album fuck severely.
Gavroche's death songggg. :((
It uses the lyrics of the songs from the book verbatim.
Marius is destitute.
No weird religious undertones.
Reasons to maybe not like the Original Concept Album as much
If you don't know the story already you're going to be lossssst.
Jean Valjean? Who? Oh, you mean the guy who gets mentioned a couple of times in passing?
Cosette calls both Valjean and Marius "my prince". Gross.
The Amis don't even get a death mention...
Marius and his grandfather make up.
Enjolras calls Marius "my best friend" (???).
scream why is jean valjean so tiny compared to javert
It's too bad that the musical of Les Mis downplays the parallels between Fantine and Enjolras and between Javert and Éponine. They're so unexpected and easy to miss the first time you read the novel, because the characters occupy such different worlds, but once you realize them, they're so striking!
And in the novel, both of these pairs of characters do seem to "trade" deaths.
Most obviously, Javert expects to die at the barricade, while Éponine contemplates drowning herself in the Seine, but the reverse happens.
More subtly, Fantine's last months seem to be leading toward Valjean reuniting her with Cosette. Even if we think her death is inevitable, we have reason to hope that at least she'll die happy, having seen her daughter, knowing she'll be cared for, and knowing her own sacrifices weren't in vain. But instead she dies in despair, thinking all is lost for herself, Valjean, and Cosette. Later, Enjolras is set up to die bravely but in total defeat and despair. But then Grantaire comes to his side, so he dies with a smile, knowing that at least one person, who once seemed to embody all the cynicism and apathy of Paris, was transformed by his ideals, which undoubtedly gives him hope that those ideals will live on after him and lead to change.
SLOWLY getting through the brick.....just at the part with bread valbread about to lift the cart...fantine I care you..
ALSO I have done so much traditional art compared to digital lately. so newer posts may be this. Questionable quality level AHAH