In March of 2019 it was my turn to host a book club meeting, which meant I also had the privilege of choosing the book. Generally, when selecting a text, I am guided by three criteria: its historical importance, philosophical depth, and the aesthetic quality of the prose. I decided that we would read Victor Hugo’s Toilers of the Sea, one of his lesser known works. Unlike, say, Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (my review of the latter can be found here), it did not go on to influence a whole generation of artists and hence it did not meet the first criterion. But the second and third were not only met; in Toilers of the Sea Hugo reaches heights of literary beauty that easily match that of his other works. It is an emotionally powerful and intellectually enriching work which recounts the adventure of Gilliat, a reclusive and yet extraordinary character who, motivated by his love for the beautiful Deruchette, embarks on a dangerous voyage to recoup her uncle’s valuable steam engines which were lost at sea. This endeavour, and Gilliat’s battles with nature, take up most of the text, and Hugo beautifully narrates these episodes while distilling from them the deeper meanings about the sea, the natural world, human nature, and man’s capacity to triumph in the face of existential struggle.
The setting of Toilers of the Sea is the Island of Guernsey (between the French and British coasts) in the mid 19thcentury, and a significant part of the text includes Hugo’s anthropological observations of the inhabitants. He was exiled to Guernsey by Napoleon the 3rd, and lived there for fifteen years. This allowed him to observe the local traditions and to compare them with those of Paris. Two features of the inhabitants stand out: they are people of the sea, and of mixed ethnic heritage derived from their Gallic and Norman ancestry and the continuous intercourse (broadly understood) between French and British peoples. The islanders are semi-isolated, fiercely independent, and entrepreneurial. Lethierry, Deruchette’s uncle and adopted father, combines these elements, which leads him to be the first to introduce the steam engine to shipping between the island and the British and French mainlands. He becomes rich because this technology drastically reduces the cost and hence increases the productivity of transport. But when he is betrayed by Clubin, his business partner and the captain of Durande (Lethierry’s steamship), his destiny becomes entangled with Gilliat, the main character of the book.
Gilliat is also unique among the inhabitants of the island. He is raised by a single mother who came to the Island from continental France. As the islands are a source of refuge and asylum, the reader gets the impression that they are escaping something terrible. The fact that they do not attend church or participate much in broader society augments the sense that they have skeletons in the closet. Perhaps because of this solitude, Gilliat becomes a kind of jack of all trades, and masters multiple skills; his brilliance and ingenuity increase the air of mystery that surrounds his household, which naturally leads to gossip. Some of the more superstitious residents of the island (apparently untouched by the materialism of the French revolution just across the Channel) suspect the devil’s machinations at work.
At one point, Gilliat has an encounter with the immeasurably beautiful and charming Deruchette, and falls in love with her, but because of his life-long solitude, he lacks the basic social skills required to develop friendship or romance. Consequently, he is unable to communicate a word or express his love to her. He is in the painful position of recognizing that he would do anything for this woman while overwhelmed with fear, giving her complete power over him. His upbringing did not prepare him for this possibility, and so he is essentially paralyzed. Rather pathetically, therefore, all he can do is watch her from afar, indulging in his most puerile fantasies, overwhelmed with terror at the thought of actually speaking a word to her.
An opportunity for Gilliat arises out of disaster when Lethierry’s masterwork, the steamship Durande which made him fabulously rich, is lost at sea because the captain, Clubin, hatches a scheme to destroy the ship and run off with a large sum of money that belongs to Lethierry. This betrayal portends Lethierry’s bankruptcy and collapse into penury, an outcome which, of course, would mean impoverishment for his adopted daughter and the object of Gilliat’s desire, Deruchette. While the townspeople are gathered around Lethierry to express remorse for his misfortune, he expresses his wish to retrieve the steam engines, the most valuable part of the ship, and Deruchette offers to marry anyone who is willing to take the risk of such an adventure. What Gilliat lacks in social skills he more than amply makes up in talent for navigation and engineering, as well as bravery and daring vis-à-vis the sea. He therefore unhesitatingly takes up the offer even though it genuinely put his young and promising life at risk.
Shortly after, another character enters the scene and complicates Gilliat’s scheme. Just as he departs, Lethierry, in a state of despondency, is visited by the local rector and his associate, a junior priest named Ebenezer. The latter happens to be, like Deruchette, stunningly beautiful. According to Hugo, the most striking thing about Ebenezer “was his personal beauty… as he was a priest he must have been at least twenty five, but he looked eighteen. He showed the harmony, and also the contrast, between a soul that seemed made for passion and a body made for love…he was all charm, elegance, and almost sensuousness.” At the end of this scene, Ebenezer’s and Deruchette’s eyes lasciviously meet.
Hugo’s purpose, of course, is to tease the reader’s imagination. Gilliat has just embarked on his dangerous voyage, a decision motivated by his overwhelming desire for Deruchette, and she has promised to marry him if he succeeds. And yet a betrayal of this promise already seems to be in the cards. At this point, the reader is midway into the book, and the next one hundred fifty or so pages recount Gilliat’s extraordinary efforts when faced with the unforgiving and merciless forces of the natural world. This is one of the more enrapturing sections of the book, but while the reader is savouring Hugo’s literary virtuosity, he or she cannot help wondering how this love triangle between Gilliat, Deruchette, and the priest Ebenezer will pan out. Before examining that, it is worthwhile to explore Hugo’s narration of Gilliat’s perilous voyage.
Man, Nature, and God
Gilliat sets out on a sailboat to the site of the shipwreck, the Dover reef. He brings with him tools and survival gear which will allow him to brave the elements while he accomplishes his objective, namely, reach the location, separate the steam engines from the hull, transfer them into his boat, and sail back to Guernsey. Reaching the destination is rather straightforward, but the challenges begin when he must set up camp and devise ways to detach the engines from a shipwreck which is resting on a rocky and protruding section of the site. Almost immediately, disaster strikes when he loses his food supplies; he therefore must improvise and feeds off the crabs and other natural detritus found on the rock. The process takes longer than he envisages, and eventually runs out of fresh water, forcing him to depend on the rain to quench his thirst. Meanwhile, he is faced with a violent and ferocious storm which threatens to destroy his boat; in that scenario, he would fail and be stranded, ignominiously dying on the reef.
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| The Durande |
But, as often is the case, it is in the face of existential danger that man’s extraordinary abilities are revealed. When the storm hits, Gilliat’s talents and his determination to succeed unleash creative solutions to the imminent danger. For example, he must protect his boat from the violent waves, but lacks the tools and equipment to construct the necessary barriers. He spontaneously concocts a scheme to use material from the shipwreck and the rocks to create makeshift tools—rope, wood, hammer, nails, knife, sharpener. From these he erects a water breaker which prevents the violent waves from entering the area of the reef where his boat is anchored.
Gilliat survives the storm, but more challenges lie ahead. A riveting scene is his fight to the death against an octopus which he encounters while looking for crabs to satiate his hunger. It is a hideous creature which kills its prey essentially by strangulation; if Gilliat loses the fight, he will die a slow and painful death. As the combat proceeds, the octopus’s tentacles are wrapped around Gilliat, slowly tightening and choking him, and forcing him into its orifice, which is part mouth, part anus. Gilliat has his hunting knife in his left hand which was free from the monster’s grasp. The moment before he is about to be consumed, Gilliat stabs the creature between the eyes and twirls the knife so as to maximize the damage and expedite the kill.
The dangers of the natural world are not without irony, and Gilliat, after defeating a storm, hunger, creating shelter in the most inhospitable environment, and defeating a monstrous creature, must face his most dangerous challenge yet: a trickle of water through a leak in his boat. When it is discovered, two feet of water have already entered; at that rate, the boat would sink in about 30 minutes, destroying any hope of returning home. He lacks the material to fix the leak, and so must improvise, using his clothes and tarp, but these provide only a temporary fix. Meanwhile, he must empty the water that has entered the boat with a small bucket, which would require an enormous physical effort; he lacks the strength to carry this out because he has been on the reef for almost six weeks and is exhausted. Gilliat was never religious, but in desperation he falls on his knees and appeals to God, asking for mercy. Evidently, Hugo seemingly wants to say, even ubermen like Gilliat are powerless under certain conditions, and can be saved only by divine intervention. But for Hugo, and pace Nietzsche, this does not represent weakness or defeat: “to be powerless is a strength. In the presence of these two blind forces, nature and destiny, man in his very powerlessness has found support in prayer.” God answers Gilliat’s cry for help by ensuring that the leak is sufficiently blocked to permit him rest which gives him the strength to empty out the water; consequently, he can sail back home in triumph.
Up until now, I have examined Gilliat’s encounters with nature’s cruelty, but throughout his adventure he has moments of sublime transcendence from experiencing the beauty of the natural world. In one scene, while exploring the many sides of the Dover reef, he swims into a cave and discovers a cavern that seems like a temple created by the gods, replete with natural colours and formations which resemble man’s most majestic monuments. In Hugo’s incomparable description of the cavern:
“one stretch of wall was cut into square shape and carved into rounded forms suggesting the attitudes of figures…contemplating it, one might think of a roughly sketched piece of sculpture prepared by Prometheus for the chisel of Michelangelo. It seemed as if human genius, with a few strokes of a hammer, might complete what the giant had begun…there were panels that looked like Corinthian bronze, arabesques such as are found on the doorway of a mosque…it was a union of the wildness of nature and the delicacy of goldsmith’s work in the awe-inspiring and misshapen architecture of chance.”
Hugo continues:
“These deformities, mysteriously adapted to one another, combined to create a strange sovereign beauty. The works of nature, no less supreme than the works of genius, contain a quality of the absolute and have an overwhelming presence. Their unexpectedness impresses itself powerfully on the mind; they have a feeling of premeditation, and they are never more striking than when they suddenly produce something exquisite out of the terrible.” The water in the cavern was the colour of emerald green, a result of the limited light which entered through the cave and penetrated the cavern while mingling with the natural vegetation. These elements combined to create “a feeling of sacred awe, enhanced by the gentle restlessness of the weeds that grew in the depths of the water.”
The Gods of Nature
One discursive technique that Hugo frequently utilizes in his writing is anthropomorphization, i.e., ascribing will and agency to the natural elements. In so doing, he enriches the story immensely, an observation shared by others in the book club when we discussed Toilers of the Sea. Perhaps this technique resonates because there is an innate psychological tendency to ascribe agency to the external world, since it allows us to project categories—choice, emotions, behaviour—that we are familiar with. The polytheism of the ancients perhaps arose out of humans’ natural inclinations to comprehend mystery by deifying the natural world. Hugo continues this ancient practice while narrating Gilliat’s struggles with the sea; his purpose, successfully executed, is to enhance the story by incarnating, as it were, the power of nature. When Gilliat arrives at the Dover reef and discovers the twisted and mangled shipwreck, Hugo observes that
“no wild beast is as ruthless as the sea in tearing its prey to pieces. Water has countless claws. The wind bites, the sea devours, waves are voracious jaws…everything was collapsing and falling away…what remained of the vessel’s powerful frame, once so triumphant, was split wide open at various points, revealing the dark and mournful interior. Down below the sea foamed, spitting in contempt of this wretched object” [emphasis mine].
In another scene, while on top of the rock, just before the storm, Gilliat sensed, in the wind, the sea, and the clouds, its imminent arrival. The storm is still not visible, but “for those [like Gilliat] who are on familiar terms with the sea, its aspect at such moments is strange; it is as if it desired and at the same time feared the cyclone. Some nuptials, though strongly desired by nature, are received in this fashion. The lioness in heat flees from the lion’s pursuit. The sea, too, is in heat: hence its trembling motion…impulsions have to be given to the waves, to the clouds, to the emanations; night is an auxiliary, and use must be made of it. There are compasses to be led astray, beacons to be extinguished, lighthouses to be masked, stars to be hidden. The sea must cooperate in all these.” And when the “vomiting of the tempest arrives, rain, hurricanes, fulgurations, fulminations, waves reaching up to the clouds…roars, frantic torsions, whistling—all at the same time.” The storm lasts twenty hours, and almost destroys Gilliat, but when he prevails, he “felt the immemorial need to insult an enemy that goes back to the heroes of Homer”.
From Triumph to Tragedy—Sort of
Gilliat successfully reaches his objective because of his exceptional talents, sheer force of will, bravery, and divine intervention. When he returns to Guernsey, and Lethierry sees that his valuable steam engines are saved, the latter—who throughout the text frequently expresses his contempt for religion—praises God for the miracle. What an abrupt turn of fortunes! From certain bankruptcy and penury, the middle-aged Lethierry can now look forward to rebuilding the steamship and re-establishing his profitable business, and having a serene and comfortable retirement. Lethierry also looks forward to having the heroic seaman Gilliat as his future heir; after all, Deruchette promised to marry him were he to successfully return with the steam engines. It is now only a matter of organizing the wedding, getting married, and embarking on a new, prosperous, and happy life.
Hugo has primed the reader to want this outcome; after all, Gilliat is a heroic figure who triumphed in the face of danger and who arose from humble beginnings; consequently, there is a sense, instilled by Hugo, that he deserves his reward. But the beautiful priest Ebenezer has complicated things. While Gilliat was away, Deruchette becomes more religious (what a surprise!) and frequently attends Ebenezer’s church. What is more, Ebenezer’s rich uncle has just died, meaning that he will inherit his estate and become wealthy; he can now provide Deruchette with all the material comforts her heart desires. The two finally meet privately, the evening of Gilliat’s return, and Ebenezer’s expresses his love to Deruchette, a feeling reciprocates. Gilliat is hiding by Lethierry’s house when this encounter occurs and hears the whole thing.
At this point, the book is impossible to put down because of the need to know what happens next. Lethierry hates the church and hence would never consent to Deruchette’s marrying the priest; Gilliat is madly in love with her, and in fact it was she who motivated his decision to embark on the perilous voyage; she is now in love with another man, but her adored adopted father, to whom she is unquestionably obedient and loyal, wants her to marry Gilliat. Gilliat, therefore, could still marry her even if she did not want to because she would ultimately bend to her adopted father’s wishes. Unexpectedly perhaps, Gilliat displays a heroic self-abnegation and refuses to marry Deruchette. Even more, despite loving her madly, he arranges for her to marry Ebenezer by forging documents that confirm Lethierry’s consent (without this act of deceit, the marriage could not proceed). He then gives himself to the sea, quite literally, by drowning, while Ebenezer and Deruchette blissfully sail off in the sunset.
My first reaction to this ending was sadness and disappointment; after all, Ebenezer gets the girl because of unmerited and arbitrary circumstances: he was born beautiful, inherits his uncle’s wealth, and because of Gilliat’s self-denial. Gilliat’s successes, in contrast, are the product of effort, sacrifice, and skill. Even more, Gilliat’s humble origins give him the aura of an underdog, another feature which primes the reader to want Gilliat’s success. But Hugo’s purpose is evidently not to satisfy the reader’s desire for a happy and just ending; rather, he wants to depict the harsh and arbitrary reality of the real world. In Hugo’s own words:
“man is at the mercy of events. Life is a perpetual succession of events, and we must submit to it. We never know from what quarter the sudden blow of chance will come. Catastrophe and good fortune come upon us and then depart, like unexpected visitors. They have their own laws, their own orbits, their own gravitational force, all independent of man. Virtue does not bring happiness, crime does not bring unhappiness; our consciousness has one logic, fate another, and the two never coincide.”
Upon second reflection, I concluded that Gilliat did, in the end, get his reward because of his exceptional qualities. He may have not gotten the girl and died before his time, but he was a Jesus-like figure who indelibly etched his pursuits in the history of the island. Ebenezer, in contrast, will quickly be forgotten; after all, beautiful young priests who abscond the clergy to marry beautiful young women can hardly be said to have done something extraordinary or heroic. Moreover, the marriage is likely doomed because it was born in deceit; in fact during the marriage ceremony (which only occurred because Gilliat selflessly forged a document with Lethierry’s consent) Ebenezer feels a “vague sense of oppression,” in my view because it was Gilliat, and not he, who displayed the genuinely selfless qualities one expects from men of the cloth. Gilliat’s sheer strength of will, courage, bravery, and talent will forever be remembered, and perhaps inspire others to feats even greater than his. It is men like Gilliat and not Ebenezer who leave a permanent and often transformational mark on history even though their lives are often tragically cut short.
