A Review of Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"

Some meals can be wolfed down, swallowed with little chewing, and be done with immediately. Others need to be eaten slowly, gently savoured, and extended as much as possible to maximize enjoyment. The written word also has its various forms which must be approached in different ways. A memo from work, an email from the dean, any bureaucratic form, the small print on a contract, are all at times essential reading, but the sooner they are over with, the better. In contrast, verse from Shakespeare or Dante should be slowly absorbed in a way that enables one to capture the many nuances, layers of meaning, and aesthetic qualities of the work. Beautiful novels, like Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, fall in this latter camp. The book is delectable on so many levels, but in this review I will focus on three: the insights gleaned about human relationships from the lives of the characters, the scenery, especially Paris and particularly its great cathedral, and, of course, the beauty of the prose, which is characterized with a poetic rhythm and metaphorical richness that is immensely pleasurable to consume and which, like a good meal, leaves one satiated and yet yearning for more.

He does not get the girl

The Virtues of Ugliness

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a cultural icon in the West. Its reproduction in film and other media has made most familiar with the basic outlines of the story, and hence there is probably little need to repeat it here. It might be worthwhile, however, to mention the main characters: Don Frollo, the compassionate but also lovesick priest, Quasimodo, the deformed, revolting and yet good hearted hunchback, and Esmeralda, the gorgeous gypsy who both men fall in love with, although in very different ways. The priest’s love is carnal, obsessive, maddening, and ultimately leads to his ignominious demise. Quasimodo’s, in contrast, is selfless and pure, although his ending is no less tragic.

            When the reader initially encounters Don Frollo, one is struck by his remarkable professional and personal qualities. He combines the self-sacrificing features of the principled priest with the insatiable curiosity and objectivity of the disinterested scientist. The Black Plague kills both his parents, and he consequently must raise his much younger brother Jehan, which he does, ensuring his needs are met and providing opportunities for education that most boys in 15^th century Paris would never have. Quasimodo, too, is saved from destitution by Don Frollo, and here, familial duty plays no role. Rather, we see the purest expression of the Christian devotion to the excluded: Quasimodo is orphaned and left for dead, and when found is brought into the cathedral (as were all abandoned babies at the time). Even as an infant his deformities—hunchbacked, no neck, one eyed, asymmetrical limbs, warts—make him revolting. The parishioners are aghast at the sight of him, asserting that he is a demon in human form. In those superstitious times, such beliefs were held literally, and thus one is not surprised when some of the ladies at the church recommend throwing the baby into a fire.

Don Frollo approaches Quasimodo and ignores the natural inclination of lesser beings to see only the hideousness of the creature. Recognizing that only he can prevent the baby’s certain death, Don Frollo assumes the responsibility for raising him, which he does while fulfilling his priestly duties. This full schedule does not prevent Don Frollo from pursuing his other passion: the advancement of scientific knowledge. He devours the literature of his day, is fluent in the classical languages, and spends much of his time theorizing, hypothesizing, and conducting experiments. These two noble impulses—the moral sensitivity of the genuinely religious, and the unbounded thirst for knowledge of the true scientist—give him an aura of authority that is recognized by his peers in Paris, who treat him with reverence and defer to his leadership in matters spiritual and intellectual.

            But beneath the surface lie darker features which are not fully revealed until later in the book. The reader is given hints of Don Frollo’s internal demons in the first part of the text when we are told, for instance, that he avoided making eye-contact or conversing with women, and that when he was struck by sexual desire, he would immediately dive into his scientific endeavours until the impulse passed. This suggests that science was not only valuable in its own right; it was also a tool for Don Frollo to escape the painful conflicts between celibacy and the needs of the flesh. When Esmeralda enters the picture, this tension could no longer be contained and, like the screaming vapors that suddenly escape a pot of boiling water, Don Frollo loses his composure when he encounters her.

            His obsession is, at least partly, understandable, since Esmeralda has a charm and beauty that surpasses all the other women in Paris. According to Hugo, she was a gypsy and bohemian, with thick black hair, and the golden complexion of Roman or Andalusian women. In order to survive, she sings and dances in a way that entrances those around her. Adding to her mystique is Daija, her golden-horned pet goat with seemingly human powers to calculate numbers and communicate ideas. From his perch in the Notre Dame, the tallest building in Paris, Don Frollo could observe her and became captivated by her sounds, movements, and features. The shenanigans he is willing to pull off to obtain her are in equal parts pathetic and farcical. One evening, Don Frollo hides in the building where Esmeralda is having a tryst with her lover Phoebus, the shallow and handsome official who does not feel the same way for her. The priest can hear and see everything in the room, and at a certain point he loses his marbles, enters, and stabs the other man, while leaving Esmeralda unharmed. She loses consciousness, but wakes up to discover that she has been accused of murdering Phoebus—a capital crime. While in solitary confinement in a medieval dungeon, the priest goes to her under the pretence of fulling his religious duties to prisoners. He reveals his love for her even as Esmeralda recognizes that he is the man who stabbed her lover. Horrified, she refuses his advances, and is condemned to be hanged.

            In medieval Paris, executions were public affairs, and even a form of entertainment for the masses. Esmeralda is taken through this crowd, chained to a cart like a beast about to be slaughtered. When she is about to be hanged for a crime she did not commit, Quasimodo comes to her rescue. With his superhuman strength he easily knocks the hangmen and the guards to the ground, removes the noose from Esmeralda’s neck, and takes her into Notre Dame. At the time, cathedrals were the only refuge where the secular force of kings and their minions could not penetrate. There, she is safe and tended to by Quasimodo, who, like his adopted parent Don Frollo, loves her. But the contrast is profound. Whereas Don Frollo is sickened by a pathological obsession, Quasimodo’s love is almost entirely selfless. He knows, for example, that he is too hideous for Esmeralda or anyone else for that matter, and he is also aware that she is in love with the dashing Phoebus. But this does not prevent him from nursing her back to health and protecting her from execution. At one point, he even leaves the cathedral to try to convince Phoebus to come and talk to Esmeralda because that is what she desperately wanted.

            Meanwhile, Don Frollo has cooked up another scheme to obtain her, this one more outrageous than previous attempts. He conspires with another pathetic character in the book, the philosopher Gringoire, to convince the Tramps—Esmeralda’s tribe, the outcasts and bohemians of Paris—to storm the church and kidnap her. On the night of the deed, Quasimodo can only watch in dismay as he observes thousands of them, dressed in rags and carrying clunky weapons, approach Notre Dame with the intension of breaking in. Quasimodo’s defense of the church against the Tramps is one of the most riveting scenes of the book; as they try to break through the doors, Quasimodo must find ways to stop them, and improvises with whatever he could get his hands on. From the roof of the cathedral, he first tosses a large log of wood, which crushes and slaughters dozens of Tramps. But this does not deter them. Next, he discovers liquid lead in one of the rooms being renovated by workmen. He lights it on fire, and pours the burning liquid over the roof onto the crowd of Tramps at the entrance, causing many of them to die in agony. After these efforts, which helped to delay but not prevent the storming of the church, he goes to Esmeralda’s room and finds her missing. She has been taken by Gringoire and the priest, who, under the pretext of saving her, enter Notre Dame and escape through the back exit. When they are far from the Church, Gringoire leaves the two alone, and again Don Frollo expresses his unwavering love for her, his willingness to break his priestly vows, and, ominously, an ultimatum: either she give herself to him, or he would allow the authorities to capture her, which would lead to her certain death. She once again refuses his advances, which is too much for Don Frollo to bear, and, in perhaps the most pathetic scene in the book, he explodes into paroxysms of weeping and rage.

            The story takes a bizarre turn when Don Frollo goes and calls the authorities and leaves Esmeralda in the captivity of the recluse, a woman whose baby was kidnapped 16 years ago and, in despair, decides to cage herself in a hole to live a life of perpetual wailing and prayer (another practice that was quite common in medieval Paris). When Esmeralda sees the baby’s shoe in the recluse’s cell, she recognizes it as the other half of a shoe that she possessed and that was the only trace of the mother from whom she was orphaned. Unbeknownst to Don Frollo, the recluse is Esmeralda’s long lost mother, and after moving scenes of joy at this realization, she makes an effort to save Esmeralda from the authorities by hiding her in the cell. Initially it works, but the appearance of Phoebus on the square (he actually survived the stabbing) causes Esmeralda to lose control and call for him, in the process betraying her hiding place and leading to her capture and execution.

            In the real world, Don Frollo probably would have gotten away for this crime. In the fantasy land of literature, he does not. When she is being hanged, squirming and convulsing as the body enters its final struggle to survive, the priest is watching from the cathedral and laughs at her demise. Quasimodo sees the same and is struck by grief and sorrow. When he sees the priest’s reaction to her death, it is too much to bear, and he throws him over the roof. The priest falls 200 feet to his death, which is eventually ruled a suicide.

            The story has enough realism to withstand this fantasy-land ending to the tragic love triangle. Don Frollo is the archetypical genius who is also crazy—a not uncommon mix of traits among artists and intellectuals. Esmeralda’s surpassing beauty makes men fall madly in love with her, except for Phoebus, the man she loves. She is vain, naïve, and deluded by her passion for Phoebus, believing, against all the evidence, that he will one day love her, confirming the adage that love is most intense when it is most unreasonable. In fact he cares little for her well-being, and even inadvertently hastens her death when his appearance near the cell leads Esmeralda to call for him and reveal herself to her executioners. Quasimodo is the caring and nice but ugly guy who does not get the girl, at least not in this life. In a tragic final twist, he finds Esmeralda’s corpse on a slab in Paris’s mausoleum, lies beside and embraces it, and dies. Their skeletons are discovered in that final position of love, with Quasimodo’s arms wrapped around her. The story ends tragically for all concerned except Phoebus, who marries a beautiful aristocratic girl and likely continues to live his shallow life of privilege and luxury.

Thus just like in the real world, there is no ending where each gets what he or she deserves. Rather, outcomes are determined by fate, or rather by the unchangeable elements of each character—Don Frollo’s genius and madness, Quasimodo’s hideousness, Esmeralda’s beauty, and Phoebus’s good looks and aristocratic connections; it is these things, and not some arc of justice, that determines their lives.

The Beauty of Paris and the Notre Dame

In the book, Paris has a double personality. On the one hand, it is composed of inhabitants full of cruelty and superstitions, especially towards Quasimodo. On the other, the medieval outline of its unplanned zigzagged streets, with houses and buildings sprouting spontaneously like mushrooms, give it charm and personality, the kind that is totally lacking in the bland homogeneity of planned modern cities and neighborhoods. The architecture, a hybrid of Gothic and classical forms, provide Paris with a vitality and vibrancy that seems to transcend the corruption of its inhabitants. The icon is the Notre Dame itself, which took centuries to build, and which represents the labours and creativity of countless unnamed persons who worked anonymously to construct its towers, arches, spires, and gargoyles that overlook the city with piercing eyes and mouths eternally agape, as if expressing equal amounts of astonishment and chastisement. As the tallest building in the city, Notre Dame also provides an unparalleled view of Paris, and Hugo’s description of this panorama of sights and sounds is gorgeous and deserves to be quoted at length:

“Reconstruct in your imagination the Paris of the 15^th century…mark clearly the Gothic profile of this old Paris on a horizon of blue, make its contour float in a wintry fog that clings to the innumerable chimneys; drown it in deep night, and observe the extraordinary play of darkness and light in this dark labyrinth of buildings…at sunrise, listen to the awakening of bells. Behold at a sign from heaven, because it comes from the Sun itself, those thousand churches trembling all at once. At first a faint tinkling passes from church to church, as when musicians  give notice that they are about to begin. Then see, for at certain times the ear too seems to be endowed with sight [emphasis mine]. See how, all of a sudden, at the same moment, there arises from each steeple as it were a column of sound, a cloud of harmony. At first the vibration of each bell rises straight, pure, and in a manner separate from that of the others, into the splendid morning sky; then, swelling by degrees, they blend, melt, intermingle, and amalgamate into a magnificent concert. It is now but one mass of sonorous vibrations…and it floats, undulates, leaps, and swirls over the city…You can see clear and rapid notes dart around in all directions, making three or four luminous zigzags, and vanishing like lightening. There the abbey of St. Martin sends forth its harsh, sharp tones; here the Bastille raises its sinister and husky voice. At the other end of the city it is the great tower of the Louvre, with its countertenor…Then again, at intervals, this mass of sublime sounds opens and makes way for the finale of the Ave Maria, which glistens like a plume of stars…This is truly an opera that is well worth listening to. Normally, the noises that Paris makes in the daytime represent the city talking; at night, the city breathes. In this case, the city sings.”

Hugo mourns the passing of medieval Paris and its replacement with more modern forms of planning. He also proposes an interesting theory about Paris’s beauty, which can be summed up with the statement that “printing killed architecture”. What he means is that before the mass production of the written word, artists devoted their efforts to architecture, which is one reason why medieval churches possess an intricacy and beauty that cannot be matched by modern ones. I found this thesis to be provocative, and perhaps it helps explain the fact that Protestantism—which spread because of the printing press, and which emphasized the written word—has generally produced bland and ugly churches, in some instances buildings that are little different from the lifeless block buildings of government and commercial plazas. To my knowledge, there is no building in the Protestant world that is comparable, in terms of beauty, grandeur, and intricacy, to St. Peters in Rome, or the Holy Mary cathedral in Florence, or, of course, the Notre Dame.

The splendor of Notre Dame

Victor Hugo’s striking sensitivity to and description of medieval churches perhaps goes some way in explaining the memorable beauty of his prose. I found myself re-reading certain sentences for no other reason than the desire to experience the aesthetic pleasure of absorbing the words, sentences, and, most notably, his use of metaphor. Emblematic is his description of the cathedral, which according to Hugo, is a “vast symphony of stone”. The image of the orchestra conjures up impressions of a singular beauty that is the result of the coordination and harmonization of all its distinct sections, creating something that is much more than the sum of its parts. It is human talent, ingenuity, and creativity at its finest, and synthesizes the various cultural influences and innovations of different historical epochs. In this regard, medieval architecture was, according to Huge, “the great book of humanity” before it was overtaken by printed books—quite literally.

            Metaphors are skillfully used elsewhere. When Esmeralda danced, “her feet disappeared in movement like the spokes of a turning wheel.” In one scene, she enters a room where Phoebus is present and surrounded with young ladies of aristocratic lineage trying to court him, and the effect is profound: “One drop of wine is sufficient to redden a glass of water; to taint an entire company of pretty women with a certain degree of ill-humour merely introduce an even prettier woman, especially when there is only one man in the party”. When the unlucky Esmeralda is imprisoned and accused of murdering Phoebus, Hugo tells says “only two things showed signs of life in the dungeon: the wick of the lantern, which crackled because of the humidity, and the drip of water from the roof that broke this irregular crackling with its monotonous splash, which made the light of the lantern dance in concentric rings on the oily surface of the puddle” [emphasis mine].

Hugo’s talent evokes wonder at how such feats of literary brilliance are achieved. I think his skill as a poet provided that distinct ability to transform sense experience into representations that needed to be communicated in a way that illuminated some of the more amorphous, inchoate, and ineffable aspects of interior and social life while being sensitive to the aesthetic quality of the final result. This ability shines throughout the prose of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, making this compelling story immensely enjoyable to read.