We will confine ourselves to saying that the love of Fantine was a first love, a sole love, a faithful love."(Hugo, 145) in the endeavor to survive and sustain her child she is forced to become a prostitute, thus enduring extreme humiliation. For Hugo thus, she represents another 'miserable' being, part of the dregs of society who is nevertheless pure and luminous because of her inner goodness, the divine essence that cannot be corrupted by the extraneous influence of man: "Fantine was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, from the dregs of the people. Though she had emerged from the most unfathomable depths of social shadow, she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous and the unknown."(Hugo, 145) Fantine thus represents the poor and ignorant woman who is forced to practice prostitution as the ultimate resource for survival, but who nevertheless remains pure and uncorrupted...
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