Fantine:
There was a time when men were kind,
When their voices were soft
And their words inviting.
There was a time when love was blind,
And the world was a song
And the song was exciting.
There was a time
Then it all went wrong.
I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high
And life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die.
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung, no wine untasted.
But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
And they turn your dream to shame.
He slept a summer by my side.
He filled my days with endless wonder.
He took my childhood in his stride,
But he was gone when autumn came.
And still I dream he'll come to me
That we will live the years together.
But there are dreams that cannot be,
And there are storms we cannot weather.
I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I'm living,
So different now from what it seemed,
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
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Fantine in Victor Hugo's novel
Les Misérables
Fantine is first introduced as one in a group of four enchanting girls:
the others being Dahlia, Zéphine, and Favourite. Her parents and origins
are unknown. She is described as having "gold and pearls for her dowry;
but the gold was on her head and the pearls in her mouth," by Hugo.
Fantine was passionately in love with a man named Félix Tholomyès, who
fathers the daughter
Cosette
and then abandons her. She pays the
Thénardiers who are owners of an inn, to care for Cosette when she
sees their daughters
Éponine
and
Azelma playing outside. Fantine's only will to live is keeping Cosette
alive. She is a worker in Mayor Madeleine's (a.k.a.
Jean Valjean's) factory but is fired by a woman supervisor, Madame
Victurnien, when the latter finds out that Fantine is an unwed mother,
without the knowledge of the mayor.
From here, she sells her belongings, her hair, her two front teeth, and
goes on to be a
prostitute to earn money for Cosette. During a January evening, a
dandy called
Bamatabois heckles her and shoves snow down her dress when she ignores
him. Fantine ferociously attacks him.
Javert,
the town's police inspector, immediately arrests her while Bamatabois
sneaks away. The mayor, Valjean, comes to help Fantine, and comes to find
out the reasons she became a prostitute and why she attacked Bamatabois.
He feels sorry for the innocent Fantine and Cosette, and comes to
Fantine's side when she is on her deathbed, dying of
tuberculosis. Valjean promises that he will protect Cosette, and then
Fantine dies.
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