Anne Hathaway In Les Miserables 2

Picasso's "The Young Girls of Avignon" created a scandal in 1907. He was painting prostitutes but he was also painting young women. The icicle-like forms covering one of the young women's vagina is a combination of the penis and glass. It makes me as a viewer feel very cold somehow, as if she had cut off my penis. One critic noted that this painting was about castration anxiety.

Anne's acting in Les Miserables has a similar effect. She is also a young prostitute and she also wants to cut off the penis of these men who just want the feeling of being inside her vagina. They want to possess her like a thing and then pay her. It's another easy conquest. But then, there is the other side of Fantine (Anne' character). She has a dream, a very pure dream, a dream of Gentlemen and Ladies. She blocks out the fact that many of her clients may be gentlemen in society or she is thinking of real gentlemen and the real gentleman does come in the form of the Christian humanist, Jean Valjean.

Nobility, I think, is a form of purity that longs for oneness with God. The viewer sees this in Fantine. She wants a world that is created and beloved by God.