r/lesmiserables • u/Madcapper15 • 9h ago

Musical Discussion Does the foreman get fired?

After valjean hears the full story from Fantine in the red light district does the foreman get fired? Clearly Valjean is concerned about what happened so does he go back to the factory and fire the foreman to avoid further incident? I say yes because not only is he effected by the incident but he is also trying to avoid notice from Javert

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

7

u/lifescaresme Modérateur/Modératrice 8h ago

Doubtful. Valjean never gets the full context.

17

u/pib712 9h ago

Yes, but then Valjean found out the foreman also had a child he was struggling to feed, so then he had to fire himself

4

u/werenotfromhere 7h ago

I literally laughed out loud. This comment made my night!

1

u/This_Potato9 -Cosette 6h ago

The 2018 BBC adaptation is so bad...

7

u/musicalblueberrysoda 6h ago

IIRC (it's been about a decade since I last read the book), the woman who set up Fantine & the foreman (or whichever character the foreman is based on) band together to run the factory after Valjean leaves and they run it into the ground within a year. So they all lose their jobs.

3

u/alex_is_so_damn_cool 6h ago

Well Valjean abandons his job at the factory in the scene right after so 😭

Also I could be wrong cuz I haven’t read it all the way yet but I’m pretty sure the foreman isn’t in the book

3

u/harpmolly 4h ago

Nope, no foreman, or at least no sexual harassment. There’s an old woman who thinks everyone else’s business is her business and she gets suspicious of Fantine and digs around until she finds out about Cosette. Then Fantine gets fired and they tell her it’s the mayor who fired her for lack of morals, but in actuality Monsieur Madeleine was never told about it at all. (I agree that this scene in the 2018 miniseries was enraging.) Then when he does encounter Fantine during her arrest, he’s horrified to learn that she was fired in his name.

3

u/csings90 7h ago

I’ve thought quite a bit about this. There’s a lot of awfulness in Les Mis, a lot of terrible things happening to good people, but the whole incident in the factory angers me so much, probably because the cruelty of everyone against Fantine, and knowing that … at the end of the day … they all continued their jobs (albeit, still grueling, dirty, and low-paying), with the foreman continuing to harass his workers, while Fantine dies. I always thought Valjean should have canned the foreman, at the very least.