by Victor Hugo
10 (p. 224) for the third time.... ever shed: In addition to solidifying the Christian and, in this case, specifically biblical frame of reference (in imitating Mary Magdalene's gesture to Christ during his torture and crucifixion), this response to Quasimodo's thrice-repeated cry for water releases Quasimodo's soul from its state of dormancy. This transfiguration is highlighted by the release of a different kind of water from Quasimodo's eye--a tear--"perhaps the first that the unfortunate man had ever shed."
11 (p. 227) weeks had passed: In the chronology of the novel, which covers a period of approximately six months in the year 1482 and then shoots ahead a year and a half or two in the final chapter, time moves forward unevenly. Gaps, parallel accounts of the same moment, and flashbacks are some of the narrative techniques of acceleration and deceleration that Hugo employs to build suspense.
12 (p. 232) only the historian: The term "historian" was often employed by nineteenth-century French novelists as a way of lending veracity to their works through the illusion of objectivity. In reality, Hugo's narrator alternates between moments of God-like omniscience and moments of distance in which he consciously draws attention to what he--and consequently the reader--cannot know. This destabilized quality of the narration both adds a dimension of autonomy to the characters and forces the reader to participate actively in a decoding of the text.
13 (p. 240) spelled this word:--"PHOEBUS": From her first introduction, Djali, with her remarkable grace, beauty, and mystery, is figured as Esmeralda's double in every way. Yet in spite of their sororal complicity, Djali works against Esmeralda here, setting in motion a chain of events that will lead to disaster.
14 (p. 269) "do its work!": In this image of the spider and the fly, we see ananke (the French rendition of the Greek word for "fate") at work. A metaphor for his own unstoppable path toward calamity, this image will repeatedly come back to Frollo during the course of the novel.
15 (p. 318) "pity upon me!": After the slow revelation of Frollo's secret obsession with Esmeralda, this frenzied confession of his love reveals the depth of Frollo's "misery." The antithetical discourse employed by Frollo (abhorred/loved, torture/caress) further emphasizes the abyss that divides--and that will continue to divide--the priest from the gypsy.
16 (p. 339) strength of God: No longer the passive participant that he was during the Feast of Fools, his trial, and his torture, Quasimodo, with foresight and purpose, saves Esmeralda here from her imminent death. From this point on, he will remain active and even proactive in his behavior, seeking to protect Esmeralda at all costs.
17 (p. 360) gipsy utterly amazed: Like all of Hugo's heroes, Quasimodo is unable to communicate in a way that allows him to connect to others. With the exception of Frollo, with whom Quasimodo converses using a rudimentary mixture of signs and gestures, he is literally (as a result of his deafness) cut off from the world around him. The failure of this effort to express his feelings to Esmeralda underscores his isolation, as his only recourse is to silence.
18 (p. 436) "my good Bastille?": The answer to this question will, of course, come during the Revolution, when this Bastille, from which Louis XI so confidently monitors the vagrants' uprising, is the location of a "successful" assault, one that signals the beginning of the end for the French monarchy.
19 (p. 438) "It is myself!": With the threat of fissure ever present in his mind, Louis XI will be merciless in his repression of the vagrants. The difference in his attitude between the moment when he approves of the revolt (believing it to be against the Provost of the Palace and thus furthering his goal of eliminating decentralized power) and the moment when he does not (learning that it is against the Church, which is under his protection) highlights the unwavering tyranny of this king, who uses the people as a political instrument.
20 (p. 449) "your deaf friend ... who it could be?": Once the unique object of Frollo's love, Jehan, whose gruesome death at the hands of Quasimodo is relived here, has been all but forgotten by the priest during his increasingly relentless pursuit of Esmeralda. Yet no more than he could force his brother to yield to his wishes can he force Esmeralda to yield to his advances: Frollo-even when disguised, as he is here--continues to inspire only horror in her.
21 (p. 451 ) stolen away with the goat ... Rue Grenier-sur-l'Eau: Gringoire's escape with Djali instead of Esmeralda again underscores the fact that the goat is her mistress's double. But Djali represents for Gringoire a more "attainable" version of Esmeralda, one who will re turn his affection. This burlesque couple will be among the few to survive the mass evacuation of characters that is about to occur.
22 (p. 467) was no longer there: In spite of Esmeralda's plea, no "help" will come from the guardsman. This final appearance--and disappearance--of Phoebus, which leads directly to Esmeralda's perdition, accentuates, on the contrary, her complete and utter insignificance to him.
23 (p. 483) "all that I ever loved!": Even if Frollo's death is at Quasimodo's own hand, this loss, coupled with that of Esmeralda, is overwhelming and indeed insurmountable for Quasimodo, who has received so little love in his life and knows nothing outside the protective enclaves of the cathedral.
24 (p. 483) tragic end: he married: This ironic commentary on Phoebus's "fate" speaks to the moral emptiness, criminal indifference, and bourgeois mediocrity that define him. In opposition to the "marriage" that is the subject of the novel's concluding chapter, this loveless union, through which Phoebus will link his name to Fleur-de-Lys's fortune, cements Phoebus's place and role in the social world depicted in the novel.
25 (p. 485) crumbled into dust: This "erasure" of all traces of Quasimodo--as his skeleton fantastically disintegrates into dust--brings the novel full circle back to the "absent" word ananke on which the story is "based."
26 (p. 486) are not new: The chapters added to this eighth edition in 1832 are: "Unpopularity" (book 4, chapter 6), "Abbas Beati Martini" (book 5, chapter 1 ), and "The One Will Kill the Other" (book 5, chapter 2).
27 (p. 487) creation ... of the poet: In all of Hugo's fiction, he cultivates the "other readers" to whom he refers in this paragraph--those who look beyond the plot to uncover the ideological content of the work. In a proposed dedication to The Man Who Laughs (1869), Hugo christens this reader le lecteur pensif ("the thoughtful reader") and promises greater rewards to any reader who seeks to apprehend the meaning of the multiple and sometimes contradictory layers of his writing.
28 (p. 489) clumsy architecture ... Renaissance: This theme will be further amplified in Hugo's "Guerre aux demolisseurs" ("War on Those Who Demolish"), published in 1834 in Litterature et philosophie melees ("Literature and Philosophy Mingled"), which builds upon his 1825 musings in "Sur la destruction des monuments en France" ("On the Destruction of Monuments in France"), a piece on the unnecessary demolition of historical monuments.
Inspired by The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been brought to the screen an extraordinary number of times, including two silents titled Esmeralda (1905 and 1922), Jean Delannoy's 1957 version starring Anthony Quinn, a BBC TV play (1977), a 1982 made-for-television production starring Anthony Hopkins as Quasimodo and Derek Jacobi as Claude Frollo, and another television adaptation simply titled The Hunchback (1997), starring Mandy Patinkin and Salma Hayek.
The first full-screen production of Hugo's classic was the silent 1923 film The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo. Director Wallace Worsley faithfully re-creates medieval Paris, in particular the majestic cathedral of Notre Dame. But the one-eyed Chaney, wearing a hairy body suit, a leather harness to prevent him from standing upright, and a seventy-pound hump on his back, is the film's most memorable spectacle, giving a sensitive performance as the grotesque, misshapen bell ringer. Chaney's portrayal of the deaf, hideous, but ultimately kind "monster" predicts the pathos of later films centered around an outsider--especially those in the golden age of horror such as Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula (1931). The scene of Quasimodo's publi
c flogging, followed by Esmeralda's (Patsy Ruth Miller) offering him water to drink, is particularly moving.
The next exemplary film of The Hunchback of Notre Dame was William Dieterle's lavish, all-star adaptation of 1939. Shot on location in Paris, with large-scale fifteenth-century sets, the film features grand camera sweeps of Notre Dame Cathedral and captures the swarming crowds and the ominous public square, perfectly setting the medieval stage on which Church and State grapple for dominance.
In the role of Quasimodo is a terrifically made-up and stooped Charles Laughton, who also appeared in another Hugo film adaptation, Les Miserables (1935). The grotesque Laughton cuts a stunning figure as he peers out from the spires of Notre Dame sandwiched between gargoyles. Nineteen-year-old Maureen O'Hara, in her screen debut, shines as the gypsy Esmeralda, charming the audience along with Quasimodo, Claude Frollo (Cedric Hardwicke), and even King Louis XI (Harry Davenport), who watches, positively enthralled, as she dances. Hardwicke's Frollo, with his ghastly pallor and ghoulish repugnance, emerges as the story's true monster, who, surprisingly for the period in which this film was made, threatens Esmeralda with decidedly licentious intent. Supporting these actors are Edmond O'Brien (another film debut) as the poet-playwright Gringoire and Walter Hampden as Frollo's brother.
The year 1939 is often remembered as the grandest moment in American cinema with the release of such renowned films as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, and Wuthering Heights. Yet even with this stiff competition, Dieterle's Hunchback garnered Oscar nominations for sound and Alfred Newman's score.
Exceedingly popular is Disney's 1996 animated feature The Hunchback of Notre Dame, featuring the vocal talents of Tom Hulce, Kevin Kline, and Demi Moore. Directors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, who explored a nearly identical theme in Disney's Beauty and the Beast (1991), struggle to carry off a production interesting to both children and adults. Hulce (best known for his vir tuosic performance as Mozart in 1984's Amadeus) lends his voice to Quasimodo, playing him more youthfully than his predecessors. When "Quasi" finds himself pelted with objects at the Feast of Fools celebration, the fiery Esmeralda (Moore) comes to his rescue, forever endearing herself to the hunchback. Kevin Kline portrays the film's other hero in love with Esmeralda: the punning Phoebus, captain of the Guard. Together they lead a heroic crusade against prejudice and persecution.
Typical of Disney's safe approach to classics is a chorus of three gargoyles, animated to provide a bit of forced comic relief. And not surprising is the removal of Hugo's bleak-hearted pessimism from the tale's conclusion. However, the animation, aided by some computer-generated imaging, is wonderful, particularly the pleasingly dark landscapes and Notre Dame's intricate architecture. Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame was nominated for an Academy Award in the Original Musical or Comedy Score category for its roster of songs by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work's history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW
Notre Dame de Paris has already, within a few months of its publication, run through several editions; and as long as a taste remains for the extraordinary, or perhaps it should be called the tremendous, such works must be popular. They appeal to an appetite which is shared by the peer with the peasant. Victor Hugo is not a writer in whose hands the power of moulding the human sympathies is likely to be idle. He is eloquent, his fancy is active, his imagination fertile; and passion, which gives life and energy to the conceptions of a writer, and which, acting upon ideas as fire does upon the parched woods of America, sets the whole scene in a flame, is in him readily roused. Hugo may be called an affected writer, a mannerist, or a horrorist, but he can never be accused of the great vice, in modern times, the most heinous of all--dullness. A volume of Hugo is an active stimulant.
--July 1831
THE ATHENAEUM
It is especially in Notre Dame de Paris--a terrible and powerful narrative, which haunts the memory with the horrible distinctness of a nightmare--that M. Victor Hugo displays, in all their strength, at once the enthusiasm and self-possession, the boldness and flexibility of his genius. What varieties of suffering are heaped together in these melancholy pages--what ruins built up--what terrible passions put in action--what strange incidents produced! All the foul-ness and all the superstitions of the middle ages are melted, and stirred, and mixed together with a trowel of mingled gold and iron. The poet has breathed upon all those ruins of the past; and, at his will, they have taken their old forms and risen up again, to their true stature, upon that Parisian soil which toiled and groaned, of yore, beneath their hideous weight, like the earth under Etna. Behold those narrow streets, those swarming squares, those cut-throat alleys, those soldiers, merchants, and churches; look upon that host of passions circulating through the whole--all breathing, and burning, and armed!
--July 8, 1837
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
The moral end that the author had before him in the conception of Notre Dame de Paris was (he tells us) to "denounce" the external fatality that hangs over men in the form of foolish and inflexible superstition. To speak plainly, this moral purpose seems to have mighty little to do with the artistic conception; moreover it is very questionably handled, while the artistic conception is developed with the most consummate success. Old Paris lives for us with newness of life: we have ever before our eyes the city cut into three by the two arms of the river, the boat-shaped island "moored" by five bridges to the different shores, and the two unequal towns on either hand. We forget all that enumeration of palaces and churches and convents which occupies so many pages of admirable description, and the thoughtless reader might be inclined to conclude from this, that they were pages thrown away; but this is not so: we forget, indeed, the details as we forget or do not see the different layers of paint on a completed picture; but the thing desired has been accomplished, and we carry away with us a sense of the "Gothic profile" of the city, of the "surprising forest of pinnacles and towers and belfries," and we know not what of rich and intricate and quaint. And throughout, Notre Dame has been held up over Paris by a height far greater than that of its twin towers: the Cathedral is present to us from the first page to the last; the title has given us the clew, and already in the Palace of Justice the story begins to attach itself to that central building by character after character. It is purely an effect of mirage; Notre Dame does not, in reality, thus dominate and stand out above the city; and any one who should visit it, in the spirit of the Scott-tourists to Edinburgh or the Trossachs, would be almost offended at finding nothing more than this old church thrust away into a corner. It is purely an effect of mirage, as we say; but it is an effect that permeates and possesses the whole book with astonishing consistency and strength. And then, Hugo has peopled this Gothic city, and, above all, this Gothic church, with a race of men even more distinctly Gothic than their surroundings. We know this generation already: we have seen them clustered about the worn capitals of pillars, or craning forth over the church-leads with the open mouths of gargoyles. About them all there is that sort of stiff quaint unreality, that conjunction of the grotesque, and even of a certain bourgeois smugness, with passionate contortion and horror, that is so characteristic of Gothic art. Esmeralda is somewhat an exception; she and the goat traverse the story like two children who have wandered in a dream. The finest moment of the book is when these two share with the two other leading characters, Don Claude and Quasimodo, the chill shelter of the old cathedral
. It is here that we touch most intimately the generative artistic idea of the romance: are they not all four taken out of some quaint moulding, illustrative of the Beatitudes, or the Ten Commandments, or the seven deadly sins? What is Quasimodo but an animated gargoyle? What is the whole book but the reanimation of Gothic art?
--The Cornhill Magazine (August 1874)
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
[Hugo,] the greatest poet of this century [,] has been more than such a force of indirect and gradual beneficence as every great writer must needs be. His spiritual service has been in its inmost essence, in its highest development, the service of a healer and a comforter, the work of a redeemer and a prophet. Above all other apostles who have brought us each the glad tidings of his peculiar gospel, the free gifts of his special inspiration, has this one deserved to be called by the most beautiful and tender of all human titles--the son of consolation. His burning wrath and scorn unquenchable were fed with light and heat from the inexhaustible dayspring of his love--a fountain of everlasting and unconsuming fire.
--Victor Hugo (1886)
VICTOR BROMBERT
The principle of effacement in Hugo's work has far-reaching implications. It not only signals a steady displacement of the historical center of gravity but corresponds to the dynamics of undoing that Hugo reads into the process of nature and of creation. It also denies the priority, and even the status, of the historical event. History itself--both as event and as discourse on the event--must ultimately be effaced in favor of transhistorical values. To be historically committed is a moral responsibility. But more important still is the need to understand that beyond history's inability to provide meaning, there is history as evil. What is involved is not a banal inventory of history's horrors--the brutalities, contusions, fractures, mutilations, and amputations attributed to man throughout history by the narrator of Notre-Dame de Paris as he considers the historical ravages that disfigured gothic architecture. More fundamentally, evil is linked to the very notion of sequentiality.