Introduction
As noted in the plan mentioned above, this work is an analysis of the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo. It will present the results of a study of the past writer, narrative, characters, and various opinions related to the work. Also, this paper explores the author’s perspective on the theme of love that love is a trap because it cannot be mutual.
About the Author
The author of the widely known novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a French writer Victor Hugo, who had already been recognized as a pioneer of French Romanticism. Hugo’s childhood played a massive role in perceiving the theme of love. His father was an unemotional military man, as a result of which he and Victor’s mother began to live separately (Cengage Learning 4). As a result, Victor Hugo lived a significant part of his life in Paris.
These events were mirrored in the character of Phoebus and the scene of the work. However, he also learned the positive side of love, having married his childhood girlfriend. It is also expressed in the novel as a representation of different patterns of attachment. This work explores the author’s perspective on the theme of love that love is a trap because it cannot be mutual.
In general, external influences, such as times of social and literary change, are also adequately conveyed in the novel. Before writing The Hunchback from Notre Dame, the author already had writing experience and was also the flagship of the Romanticism movement (Cengage Learning 4). The accumulated knowledge is expressed in the maximum detail of various descriptions as well as in an exciting and logical narrative.
Also, the romanticist note is shown in the grotesque tragedy and emotionality of what is happening in the novel. The work is personal since Hugo realized the importance of the Gothic buildings of Paris and loved them, unlike the French public, which was expressed in the crisis of reciprocity in the novel. It can be stated that the author wrote this work equally for himself and his contemporaries, to indicate their misunderstanding and insensibility.
Plot Summary
The scene of the Gothic novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo is Paris of the first half of the fifteenth century, namely, 1482. According to Hugo, “yet the 6 of January, 1482, was not a day of which history preserved any record” (9).
The protagonist and central character of the story is the ringer Quasimodo who has several physical disabilities. In one of the winter festivals, which is called “Feast of the Fools,” during which an aggressive gang beats Quasimodo, he meets Esmeralda, who helps him, and he falls in love with her. At the same time, the churchman Claude Frollo, who is the adoptive father of Quasimodo, and the noble captain Phoebus de Chateaupers are also attracted to Esmeralda. Esmeralda’s feelings towards Phoebus are mutual, and at the moment of their solitude, filled with anger and jealousy, Claude stabs the noble captain in the back. Phoebus survives; however, both lovers lose consciousness, and the churchman escapes.
Guards capture the gypsy, and, during the trial process, she mistakenly admits that Esmeralda is an evil sorceress and the assassin of a noble captain. The jailer Jacques Charmolue sentenced her to death by hanging, after which Quasimodo tries to save her in the building of Notre Dame. However, Claude betrays Quasimodo and leaves the gypsy to the embittered crowd, which carries out the execution. According to Hugo, “that young girl had a noose about her neck” (642). The hunchback, filled with grief and rage, pushes the churchman from the cathedral. The book ends with someone finding hunched and female skeletons embracing in a tomb, and Phoebus getting married a few years later.
Character Analysis
As already noted above, Quasimodo is a major character in the work of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo is a young man of twenty years, having several physical abnormalities, including one sighted eye and deafness, developed due to his profession as a bell ringer of the cathedral. His parents abandoned him in infancy, and later the churchman Claude became his adoptive father. According to Clark, “his extreme ugliness separates him from the people of Paris who jeer and deride him at all times out of fear and disgust” (3). That is why Quasimodo very rarely leaves the building of the cathedral, more specifically only during certain events. One such event was “Feast of the Fools,” during which he meets a gypsy Esmeralda and sincerely falls in love with her.
Esmeralda is a good-hearted and a little naive young gypsy girl of sixteen years old. She can be fully considered the second protagonist of the novel. The author forms a love polygon around her character, while Esmeralda herself is in love only with the noble captain. The reader may notice how, in the course of the novel, the attitude of society towards Esmeralda changes from love, as she is an excellent entertainer, to hatred, because she was recognized as a sorceress. According to Clark, “yet the people of Paris love her, but only to a certain extent” (12). It also turns out that in reality, Esmeralda is not a gypsy and that she was stolen by them and replaced with the hunchback of Notre Dame.
Phoebus de Chateaupers is a nobleman and military captain of one of the royal units. He is in an unhappy engagement with Fleur de Lys and does not have any romantic feelings for her. His lack of love for his fiancée is due to his improper noble upbringing, military career, and broad womanizer past. When he meets Esmeralda, he experiences only a physical attraction to her, but not a spiritual one. According to Clark, “but Esmeralda is too ensnared in Phoebus’ web…” (15). As a result, during the story, Phoebus is pursued by a number of unhappy events, such as an attempt to kill him by the churchman Claude and further unhappy marriage. From a structural point of view, Phoebus de Chateaupers is a minor antagonist.
Claude Frollo, in turn, is a major antagonist of the novel by Victor Hugo. He is the leader of Notre Dame Cathedral, namely the Archdeacon. Despite his high religious rank, he is exceptionally prone to sin, and this is expressed in his practice of alchemy and falling in love with Esmeralda, even though this love has a deformed misogynistic character. According to Clark, “he does not see women as people or equals…” (11). However, the author does not portray him as a one-sided figure, since he sincerely cares about his younger brother and Quasimodo. Claude, like any classic antagonist, is the driver of the entire chain of events of the novel.
Interconnections and Appeal to the Reader
All the main characters relate to the central theme that love is a trap because it cannot be mutual through a chain of relationships, as well as the general nature of the ultimate fate. Quasimodo and Claude’s love for Esmeralda is not reciprocal, just as her feelings for Phoebus. The life of Esmeralda ends on the gallows, the churchman falls from the cathedral tower, Phoebus remains unhappy in the marriage, and the hunchback dies from the unbearable loss in the tomb of his beloved. All these climaxes are incredibly negative, which in turn causes an emotional response from the reader.
To create such a response, the author uses such a literary technique as “…mingle lyricism, epic, melodrama, and satire, the sublime, and the grotesque (Grossman 1). He creates empathy and the relationship between characters and readers through a detailed description of emotional experiences and situations, especially such as Claude’s presence in the closet during the seclusion of Esmeralda and Phoebus. The author is extremely skeptical about the topic of love, arguing its destructive influence showing the same fate for all who experience it, regardless of status, gender, and age.
Symbols and Motifs
One of the notable symbols of the author’s attitude to the topic of love as a trap is the description of the situation with the spider web and the fly. According to Hugo, “at this moment, a giddy fly, attracted by the March sun, flew into this net and became entangled in it” (359). The sun here symbolizes idealized, mutual, bright, and warm love; however, when a fly tries to reach it, it is faced with the brutal reality of a spider web.
Also, another fundamental symbol of the novel, which is even reflected in its title, is Notre Dame Cathedral. Victor Hugo sincerely loved Gothic Parisian architecture, but the Parisian public rejected the classical buildings and demanded to demolish the cathedral and build something more neo-classical in its place (Henley). Also, the author often turns to the eyes and sight aspect of the characters to convey their feelings or describe the characters’ perception (Onofrei 153). In general, the whole novel is filled with many compelling descriptions of both living and non-living objects.
Others and Personal Reactions to the Work
Various reviewers and literary researchers from different perspectives, depending on their specialty, evaluate the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. For example, Henley considers this work an integral part of the French national treasure. Grossman writes that this novel is a pioneer of the creative peak of the French Romantic movement, which had a significant influence on literature, especially Russian (1). Onofrei believes that the Hunchback of Notre Dame to this day successfully combines the past and present of France (156).
However, Clark, in turn, considers social isolation is the central theme of the work (1). Furthermore, Dunn believes that deaf people are depicted incorrectly in the novel and are not relatable (94). As there can be seen, the opinions of experts differ mainly in the minor aspects of the interpretation of the work of Victor Hugo.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a classic Western European basis for a personal portfolio. From a literary point of view, Victor Hugo’s novel is representative of French Romanticism. It is also indicative in terms of the presentation of detailed descriptive techniques in writing. It is also a great example of conveying the context of the past and the performance of various social and gender groups. Presumably, the instructor included this work in the list of possible ones due to the author’s contradictory attitude to the subject of love.
The work offers a different, albeit grotesquely tragic, but mostly sobering perspective in relation to this human feeling. From a personal point of view, love is not an entirely negative phenomenon; in fact, love should be viewed from a contextual point of view, because each situation is unique. That is why this novel seems overly fatalistic and tragic, which, to some extent, removes it from the final perception of the book. An obvious lesson, or the author’s opinion, is that it is naive to always count on mutual feelings because the universe does not owe anything to anyone.
Conclusion
This work analyzes the novel by Victor Hugo The Hunchback of Notre Dame in general and his interpretation of love in particular. The author believes that love is a trap because it cannot be mutual. This perspective is due to the family circumstances of his childhood and the social processes in France. The paper contains a brief description of the novel, a comprehensive analysis of the protagonists and antagonists, their relationship, and the embedded symbolism of fate and architecture. Moreover, there is a personal attitude to this work and in the context of the portfolio, as well as the perspectives of credible specialists.
Works Cited
Cengage Learning. A Study Guide for Victor Hugo’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Gale, 2016.
Clark, Debbie. “This dreadful web”: Alienation and Miscommunication in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Honors Thesis, South Carolina Honors College, 2018.
Dunn, Patricia A., et al. “Disabling Assumptions: Inauthentic Deaf Characters in Traditional Literature.” The English Journal, vol. 105, no. 4, 2016: pp. 94-97.
Grossman, Kathryn M. “Victor Hugo’s Romantic Registers.” A Companion to World Literature, 2020: pp. 1-13.
Henley, Jon. “Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame novel tops bestseller list after fire.” The Guardian. 2019. Web.
Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Collector’s Library, 2004.
Onofrei, Paula-Andreea. “Medieval Elements in Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” Anastasis Research in Medieval Culture and Art, vol. 5, no.2, 2018: pp. 152-156.