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architecture of the Paris of yesteryear with the Paris of the 1830's, showing us how impossible it is to stop the tide of
change from working its magic/destruction. There is also a whole chapter devoted to the printing replacing
architecture in the fifteenth century, so 1482 also represents a major turning point in history when the status quo of
the church is going to be severely shaken up (see our Symbols, Imagery, Allegory section for more on why the
printing press is so great).
In short, time is really important to this novel. Check out our Themes section if you want some more convincing.
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So while it's completely plausible that Hugo's narrator is just Hugo, we need to recognize that this is still a work of
fiction and that there is nothing stopping Hugo from making things up and claiming that it is real. It might only be
"real" in the world of the narrator. Everything is fair game in fiction
QUASIMODO
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Character Analysis
There's Something About Quasimodo
Quasimodo is the hunchbackyou know, the one from the title. He's deformed, he's ostracized, and he's the bellringer of Notre-Dame.
He's also got a heart of gold, if you'd just give him a chance to prove it.
There have been so many representations of Quasimodo in pop culture it's ridiculous. We're not just talking about the
Disney movie either, which, for all of its awesome musical numbers, totally G-rates the story. (What, you mean all that
death at the end of the novel is too much for toddlers? Pshaw).
There's just something about Quasimodo's grotesqueness that captures peoples' imaginations. Early filmmakers
found him really appealing, as well; we're guessing they were jumping at the chance to try and create the ugliest
person imaginable, which is what Lon Chaney attempted in 1923. The image of him clambering up the sides of the
great cathedral with Esmeralda dangling off his back is pretty much iconic.
But if you think that pop culture has taught you everything you need to know about The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,
think again. Most people assume that Quasimodo is the protagonist of the novel, and in many adaptations,he is. But
we think of him as sharing the stage with a number of protagonists (see our "Character Role Identification" section to
learn why).
Still, one thing is for certain: more than for anyone else, we feel compelled to root for this guy. Maybe it's because he
can't seem to get a break, what with that unsightly visage and all. Maybe it's because everyone loves a character
who's misunderstood. Or maybe it's because, out of all the characters in the novel, we feel like Quasimodo is the only
one capable of pure, genuine love. He's the ultimate ugly-on-the outside, beautiful-on-the-inside character. Even
Disney can't make him escape his looks.
How could you not feel for this guy?
On a broader level, Quasimodo's extreme ugliness means that he will never find love. See, there is a difference
between an unattractive character and a character like Quasimodo: Hugo chose to create a character so grotesque
that Esmeralda can't even bear to be in the same room as him. The people of Paris automatically despise him.
Basically, his appearance is an insurmountable barrier.
Yet unlike Frollo, this knowledge that he's never going to be in a relationship doesn't turn Quasimodo into some kind
of lustful, obsessive monster. Instead, Esmeralda's one act of kindness while he's on the pillory turns him into an
incredibly compassionate and caring person. As he says when Esmeralda asks why he rescued her,
"You have forgotten a wretch who tried one night to carry you off, a wretch to whom, the very next day, you brought
relief on the vile pillory [] You have forgotten that wretchbut he has not forgotten." (IX.III.13)
This kind of generosity is not lost on poor Quasimodo. Considering how this is one of the few acts of kindness he has
ever received in his life, it's not too surprising that he would be way more interested in reciprocating that kindness
than he would be in fulfilling a possessive sexual desire, as Frollo does.
It's this refusal to be the monster that society thinks he is that allows Quasimodo to at least momentarily transcend
his ugliness. Remember that it's when Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda that he is described as "really beautiful":
Yes, he was beautifulhe, that orphan, that foundling, that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked in
the face that society from which he was banished, and in which he had so powerfully intervened. (VIII.VI.105)
When Quasimodo asserts that he is beyond the rules and customs of society (society has done nothing good for him,
anyway), he is able to be something other than what society has always defined him as. Yes, Quasimodo is more
than just an ugly face.
What Is Love?
Hollywood might love a happy ending, but having Quasimodo ride off into the sunset is not on Hugo's agenda. The
fact of the matter is that it's pretty much impossible to conceive of any kind of positive outcome for the poor
hunchback. He's never going to get the girleven the Disney movie didn't attempt to convince us that it was plausible
and it's hard to imagine all of Paris having a sudden change of heart and deciding unanimously that beauty is on
the inside. Nope, that's all way too happy for this novel.
That doesn't mean, though, that Quasimodo can't teach us, the readers, a little thing or two about love.
Because Quasimodo is the most unlikely candidate for love, he's also the perfect character to teach us something
about its nature. He uses his last line of dialogue to do just that: gesturing at the dead bodies of Esmeralda and
Frollo, he cries out, "There is all I ever loved!" (XI.II.30). One person he did everything to protect; the other person he
killed. Love is complicated.
But let's start from the beginning. The Festival of Fools is "the first gratification of self-love that [Quasimodo] had ever
experienced. Until then he had encountered nothing but humiliation, contempt for his condition, and disgust for his
person" (II.III.23). It's telling that the only time Quasimodo feels accepted is when people are praising him for being
the ugliest person around. Even here, people are totally focused on what Quasimodo looks like on the outside. Once
the festivities are over, they're just going to go back to treating him as they always have.
Later, we also learn about the master-servant relationship that Quasimodo has with Frollo in the chapter "The Dog
and His Master" (IV.IV). We're starting to get a picture of someone so starved for love that any kind of positive
attention is good attention.
But that doesn't stop Quasimodo from knowing real kindness when he sees it, and he sees it in Esmeralda on the day
she gives him some water on the pillory. But his newfound love for Esmeralda is not possessive, lustful, or jealous.
It's selfless, through and through. Heck, he even offers to throw himself off of the cathedral towers for her just so she
won't have to look at him.
But Quasimodo's devotion to Frollo and his devotion to Esmeralda are bound to collide. The first challenge arises
when Frollo tries to rape Esmeralda in her cell. Quasimodo proceeds to kick the tar out of him, but as soon as he
realizes that the assailant is in fact his master, here's what he does:
Quasimodo looked at him, was seized with a trembling, relaxed his grasp, and started back []
Quasimodo stood for a moment with bowed head, and then, falling on his knees before the door of the gypsy, said,
"Monseigneur," in a tone of gravity and resignation, "kill me first, and do what you please afterward." (IX.VI.21-22)
Old habits die hard. Even Frollo's clearly nefarious intentions can't make Quasimodo disobey him. Quasimodo
remembers how Frollo acted kindly by adopting him, and he's fiercely loyal to those who have been kind to him.
This incident makes us worry, though, that when it comes down to it, maybe Quasimodo's slavishness towards Frollo
overrides Esmeralda's compassion. But the scales do eventually tip, and when Quasimodo sees Frollo bark out a
laugh at Esmeralda's death, he recognizes that his master is no longer a person at all capable of love.
That's because Quasimodo realizes that true love comes from kindnessand he is not the kind of character to take
acts of kindness for granted. His love might be too ideal for the real world to handle, but as an outsider, he's the one
to at least give us a glimpse of it.
ANALYSIS: GENRE
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Romanticism
Speaking of historical eras, The Hunchback was published in 1831, which puts it smack-dab in the middle of the
Romantic period (the first half of the nineteenth century). No, it's not that people were more lovey-dovey then. It's that
writers were more focused on emotion and people's internal lives than on, say, reason or scientific facts.
In English literature, for example, Romanticism is associated with poets likeLord Byron, Keats, Shelley (both of
them), Coleridge, and Wordsworth. These writers wanted to create art where the emphasis was on emotion, the
individual, and natural beauty.
Now, just because something was written during the Romantic period does mean that it's necessarily Romantic. The
Hunchback of Notre-Dame, though, fits the bill in a lot of ways. First of all, it romanticizes a distant past by making it
pretty and dramatic. Sure, the past as presented in the novel isn't always that pretty, but the narrator spends a whole
book complaining about how contemporary Paris lacks that certain je ne sais quoi it used to have during the Middle
Ages.
Second, the entire story centers on the lives of individualsand, more importantly, on their emotional responses.
That's all very romantic. Hugo does eventually go on to talk about grand themes and events (also Romantic themes),
but he does so throughthe personal experiences of these individuals.
Tragedy
Last but not least, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a tragedy. The easiest way to recognize this is by counting the
number of corpses you have by the last page.
Yeah, it's a lot.
All right, a high body count doesn't necessarily make something a tragedy (though it helps). What really makes this
novel a tragedy is that pesky hand of fate doing its thing all over the place. Hugo brings up fate right away in the
Author's Preface, and the theme never really goes away: it sets the tone for the whole novel.
As the characters get more and more wrapped up in each other's' lives, we see them moving unstoppably toward
some sort of climax. We get a sense that not everyone is going to come out of this novel in great shape. In classical
Greek drama, tragedy involves the inevitable fall of a great character, and fate in The Hunchback gives all of the
events in the novel that same sense of an inevitable catastrophe.
But there is a little play on this genre at the end of the novel. By Shakespearean standards, tragedies end in death,
and comedies end in marriages. Now, the last two chapters of The Hunchback are called "The Marriage of Captain
Phbus" and "The Marriage of Quasimodo." What's up with that?
Neither of these are particularly happy marriagesthe narrator even tells us that Phbus himself "came to a tragic
end" (XI.III.5) in marriage (we're supposed to get a chuckle out of that), and Quasimodo's marriage involves two
corpsesbut they do provide an ending that focuses, in a way, at least partly on hope, rather than just on death and
more death. Fate, though it has wreaked a lot of havoc, in the end brings Quasimodo and Esmeralda together, and
we guess that is something.
MINOR CHARACTERS
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Character Analysis
Jehan du Moulin
Another comic character, Jehan du Moulin, alternately called Joannes Frollo de Molendino, is Claude Frollo's younger
brother and the quintessential Prodigal Son.
Money burns a hole in Jehan's pocket, especially when there are drinks and prostitutes to be had, but his older
brother just can't say no to him. Jehan keeps cropping up everywhere in the book to cause trouble and say bawdy
things (though you should take a look at our "Character Role Identification" section to see why they
are important bawdy things). He comes to a rather gruesome end at the hands of Quasimodo.
Djali
Djali is Esmeralda's ber-talented goat. For a goat, she actually plays a pretty big role in the story: aside from being
Gringoire's love interest, she gives away Esmeralda's crush on Phbus, she stands trial for sorcery, and she
narrowly escapes death. But don't worry, all you animal lovers! We like to imagine she lives out her days in a field in
France making cheese.
Clopin Trouillefou
Clopin is the head of the Cour des Miracles, the leader of the Tramps, the King of Thunes, and the supreme ruler of
the realm of slang. Sometimes he's even a beggar. He's got so many titles on his rsum to make anybody jealous.
Fleur-de-Lis
Fleur-de-Lis is Phbus's wealthy bride-to-be. She's green with envy of Esmeralda's good looks, but Phbus
manages to sweet-talk himself back into her good graces. Her job is to be respectable and boring.
Jacques Charmolue
Charmolue is the King's Proctor and is in cahoots with Frollo to help convict Esmeralda. He's the nasty guy who
oversees all the "justice." Djali does a mean imitation of him.
Louis XI
Yes, he was a real king of France. In the novel he visits Claude Frollo in his cell, and then later on while Notre-Dame
is being besieged and he gives this spiel about how the monarchy should be all-powerful and how the Bastille will
never fall (oh, the irony).
PHBUS
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Character Analysis
Phbus, or Captain Phbus de Chteaupers to use his full name, is the swaggering, crude, handsome, sex-driven
soldier Esmeralda worships as if he really were the sun god (as his name suggests).
He isn't the nicest of guys, to say the least: he devotes most of his energy to getting down with the ladies. Yet despite
getting stabbed, things don't turn out so badly for Phbus in the end. Unlike most other characters in the novel, he
avoids a violently tragic endingunless, as the novel implies, you consider getting married a tragic ending.
Mr. Universe
Think of Phbus as your ultimate frat bro: someone who spends a lot of time at the gym, doesn't use his brain too
much, and gets a lot of female attention despite the fact that he's a total jerk. The novel gives pretty much this exact
description of him:
By her side stood a young man, of a bold but somewhat vain and swaggering lookone of those handsome fellows
to whom all the women take a liking, though the serious man and the physiognomist shrug their shoulders at
them. (VII.I.3)
So Phbus is a pretty face without much behind it. It's not very surprising, then, that he's also self-centered and
shallow. Though Esmeralda might fall for his well-rehearsed declarations of undying love, commitment isn't exactly on
Phbus's mind. Look at how he responds when Quasimodo tells him that a woman wants to meet with him:
"A rare imbecile," said the Captain, "to suppose that I am obliged to go to all the women who love me, or say they do.
After all, perhaps she is like yourself with that owl's face. Tell her who sent you that I am going to be married, and that
she may go to the devil." (IX.IV.37)
Phbus obviously thinks the world of himself to assume that he's that hot of a commodity (though he probably really
is that hot of a commodity).
Of course, the irony here is that there probably isn't a person in the novelless deserving of Esmeralda's love, and yet
he's the one who gets it all. To the very end, Esmeralda is swooning and crying Phbus's name. Remember
Quasimodo's little example of the earthenware and crystal vases in Book IX.IV? Phbus is totally the cracked vase
with all the dead flowers insidebut how, his pretty face sure does take him a long way.
We don't mean to be overly pessimistic, but it really does seem as if in Hugo's world, the good people suffer while the
shallow and nasty people ruin others' lives and walk away happily, obliviously scot-free.
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While bored to death at the house of his fiance Fleur-de-Lis de Gondelaurier, Phbus re-encounters
Esmeralda. He arranges to meet with her later that evening.
Before his hot date, Phbus is accosted by a man in a cloak who demands that Phbus prove to him that
he is meeting Esmeralda... by letting him spy on them. Seeing nothing odd about this and needing money
for a room, Phbus agrees.
Phbus tries to get into Esmeralda's pants by making all sorts of declarations of love. She's just about to
give in when Frollo stabs Phbus.
A few months go by, and Phbus brushes off the whole stabbing incident. He tries to patch things up with
Fleur-de-Lis, but while he's over at her place, he happens to see Esmeralda doing penance in front of NotreDame. Awkward.
Phbus is called in when Notre-Dame is attacked. Esmeralda calls out his name while she's in the Sack
Woman's cell, but he's already gone.
In the end, Phbus gets married. His happy ending is kinda sorta happy, we guess.
PIERRE GRINGOIRE
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Character Analysis
Pierre Gringoire is a playwright with a very high opinion of himself. He's pretty central to the major events in the story
he's technically Esmeralda's husband, and he helps arrange the attack on Notre-Damebut his main job is to
provide some comic relief.
Luckily, however, he soon recovered and quickly rediscovered it, thanks to the gypsy girl and her Djali, who were still
walking before himtwo elegant, delicate, charming creatures, whose small feet, handsome shapes, and graceful
manners he admired, almost confusing them in is imagination. He regarded them both as young girls for intelligence
and their fondness for each other, and thought of them both as young goats for their agility and lightness of
step. (II.IV.16)
Wow. We've seen some pretty goats in our time, but this takes the cake. So yes, when Gringoire runs of with Djali at
the end of the novel, we're supposed to have that "Wait, really?" reaction. Call it funny, call it gross, call it another
form of love, but it's definitely more than a little odd. Maybe the point is that Gringoire is so removed from reality with
all his excess language that the best love he can muster is love for a goat.
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Gringoire writes a play to be performed at the Palace of Justice during the Festival of Fools. It's a flop.
Gringoire decides to follow Esmeralda in the street and witnesses her attempted kidnapping, though he gets
knocked out when he tries to intervene.
Gringoire accidentally finds himself in the Cour des Miracles, where he narrowly escapes the hangman's
noose thanks to Esmeralda. The two are "married" for four years, though Esmeralda doesn't let him get
within ten feet of her.
Gringoire joins the Tramps and starts performing on the street. Frollo questions him about his sexual
relations with Esmeralda.
Frollo convinces Gringoire to help him "rescue" Esmeralda from Notre-Dame, so Gringoire helps organize
the Tramps' attack.
During the commotion, Gringoire and Frollo steal into the cathedral and take Esmeralda away by boat.
When they land, Gringoire leaves with Djali.
CLAUDE FROLLO
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Character Analysis
The Disney version of this story may have made the Archdeacon of Josas evil to the core, but as it turns out, Frollo
wasn't always such a bad guy. He has his redeeming moments: he's devoted to his good-for-nothing brother, for
example, and he was the one who took pity on little Quasimodo and adopted him.
It makes us all the more uncomfortable, then, when Frollo gets warped into such a thoroughly twisted figure in the
novel.
One-Track Mind
Frollo has a hard time letting things go. Case and point: he's obsessed with knowledge, and he takes this obsession
so far that it leads him right into superstition and alchemy:
[] he was forced, if he could not make up his mind to stop where he was, to seek further nourishment for the
insatiable cravings of his understanding. The antique symbol of the serpent biting its tail is peculiarly appropriate to
science, and it appears that Claude Frollo knew this from experience. (IV.V.4)
Frollo's obsessive nature prepares us for the moment when he goes all-out stalker on Esmeralda. Look at what he
says to himself in his cell:
"One fixed idea haunts me and pierces my brain like a red-hot iron."(VII.IV.23)
Then there's this gem, which he says to Esmeralda while she's in prison:
"I kept hearing your song ringing in my ears, kept seeing your feet dancing on my breviary, at night, in my dreams []
When I had seen you twice I wished to see you a thousand times, to have you always in my sight."(VIII.IV.55)
Yep, Frollo has got a certified one-track mind.
But while having goals is great and all, the problem is that Frollo's mono-vision ends up obscuring whatever it was he
originally set out to do. It's a classical can't-see-the-woods-for-the-trees situation. His passion in his quest for
knowledge, for instance, ends up drawing him away from knowledge and into the pseudo-magic that is alchemy.
Likewise, his desire to possess Esmeralda leads him to have her killed.
That's irony, folks.
Frollo might be a rotten apple, but he's also the one who saved the baby Quasimodo when everybody else wanted to
throw him on the garbage pile.
If Frollo wasn't always so mean, then what turned him? We're given a few clues, like when we're told in Book IV.V that
Frollo's lost the youthful idealism that had compelled him to adopt Jehan and Quasimodo. It seems Frollo had a lot of
dreams about the future, and things didn't really turn out the way he thought they would. Now, the dude is
disillusioned and prematurely old: the book tells us that "if, as he grew older, gaps opened up in his science, they did
in his heart as well" (IV.V.10).
But something else is afoot. Frollo is a gloomy, troubled, and withdrawn person as it is, but we also find out that
"[t]hese symptoms of a violent moral preoccupation had acquired an unusual degree of intensity at the period of the
events related in this story" (IV.V.11). In other words, something is eating at Frollo. We're next told that Frollo's
recently developed an unusual aversion to women and gypsies. Sounds suspicious
These clues let us know that Frollo is taking out his sexual frustration on Esmeralda. As the story progresses, we get
to see a lot more facets to Frollo's emotions, but the real kicker comes after he thinks that the deed is done and
Esmeralda is dead. At this point, he goes to the outskirts of Paris to do some serious soul-searching:
And when, while diving into his soul this way, he saw how large a space nature had prepared there from the
passions, he laughed still more bitterly. He stirred up from the bottom of his heart all its hatred and its malice, and he
perceived, with the cold indifference of a physician examining a patient, that this hatred and this malice were only
distorted love; that love, the source of every virtue in man, was transformed into horrid things in the heart of a priest,
and that someone constituted as he was, in becoming a priest made himself a demon. (IX.I.4)
All right, Frollo, go ahead and blame the priesthood. Really, though, it sounds like young Frollo once saw the world
through rose-colored glasses and is now realizingtoo latethat you can't utterly deny yourself something like
romantic love without becoming a teensy bit bitter about it.
Now, Quasimodo and Esmeralda are both young characters who are unable to find loveQuasimodo because he's
too ugly, Esmeralda because she's too beautiful. Frollo shows us what happens to someone who never gets love,
and it ain't pretty. Do you think Quasimodo and Esmeralda would end up like Frollo in fifteen years' time? Would they
become bitter and nasty?
We can't say for sure, but one thing we do know: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame shows us how essential love is for
everyone.
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Frollo is born to a wealthy bourgeois family who own a good chunk of Paris. His parents decide to make a
churchman out of him, so he goes to school to study Latin and other scholarly things.
When Frollo is nineteen, both of his parents die in a plague outbreak. He decides to care for his infant
brother, Jehan.
Around 1481, Frollo receives a personal visit from the King of France, Louis XI.
Frollo is about thirty-six when the novel takes place. One day, he sees Esmeralda dancing and goes nuts
over her.
During the night of the Festival of Fools, Frollo attempts to use Quasimodo to kidnap Esmeralda. It doesn't
work out, so he goes back to the drawing board.
Plan B is to have Esmeralda arrested for witchcraft by Jacques Charmolue, the King's Proctor. It's at this
time that Jehan witnesses Frollo write "ANKH" on the wall of his cell.
By chance, Frollo overhears Phbus telling Jehan that he made plans to meet Esmeralda that night. Frollo
follows the captain and gives him money to let him spy on the encounter.
While Phbus is in the process of seducing Esmeralda, Frollo jumps out of the closet and stabs him.
Frollo goes to visit Esmeralda in prison after she has been sentenced to death. He declares his love for her
and asks her to come away with him, but she refuses.
After seeing Esmeralda's penance in front of Notre-Dame, Frollo runs off in a high moral fever. When he
sees Esmeralda in the cathedral later, he thinks that it is her ghost.
After learning that Esmeralda claimed sanctuary in the cathedral, he goes to her cell one night and tries to
rape her. Quasimodo stops him but backs off once he realizes that it is his master.
Frollo coerces Gringoire into arranging the Tramps to attack Notre-Dame. During the siege, they get
Esmeralda from her cell and take her away.
Frollo brings Esmeralda to the Place de Grve and asks her again to choose between him and death. She
goes for death. He hands her to the Sack Woman and runs off.
From the towers of Notre-Dame, Frollo watches Esmeralda hang. Unfortunately for him, Quasimodo is
watching him watch Esmeralda hang, and the hunchback throws him off of the tower.
ESMERALDA
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Character Analysis
Pretty much everyone in Paris is in love with Esmeralda.
Actually, that's not quite true. People either love her or hate for being a witch, or both. Really, though, Esmeralda is
just a sixteen-year-old girl trying to navigate through a mean world. She wonders who her parents are, she navely
falls in love for the first time, and she performs good deeds when she canwhile trying to brush off her two haters,
Frollo and the Sack Woman.
Unfortunately, such a good person is destined for tragedy in this novel.
Like Quasimodo, Esmeralda has mesmerized readers for as long as this novel has been around. Some of the earliest
adaptations of the novel to opera and ballet where actually just called La Esmeralda, just to give you an idea of how
popular of a figure she was (after all, why should Quasimodo hog the spotlight?). She's totally one of the most
popular gypsies in literary history.
What makes Esmeralda so cool? Well, she's got a lot going for her.
She has a mysterious past. Who were her parents? Where did she come from?
She has a mysterious present. What kind of person is she? How does her goat know so many tricks? Is she in
cahoots with the devil?
Esmeralda's also a completely innocent bystander who gets wrapped up in everything against her will (you have the
hand of fate to thank for that). She's also, like Quasimodo, one of the few genuinely good characters in the novel.
She has her flaws, like her blind devotion to Phbus (who can't even remember her name), but given all the stuff
she's up againstlecherous priests, racism against gypsies, sorcery accusationswe think she deserves our
support.
Damsel in Distress?
One of the saddest aspects about Esmeralda the way she becomes more and more powerless as the novel goes on.
In one of her first scenes, she's all stepping forward to save Gringoire's life out of sheer compassion, even wielding a
dagger like the free-spirited Miss Independent that she is. She even gives the slip to Phbus when he first rescues
her. In short, helpless she is not.
But things go downhill for Esmeralda pretty quickly. She's accused of murdering Phbus; she's tortured, imprisoned,
and sentenced to death; and in the end, she's completely in Frollo's power. Well, almost. She's defiant toward Frollo
to the very end, choosing death instead of sexual enslavement to him:
She tore herself from his clasp and fell at the foot of the gallows and kissed the deadly contraption; then, half-turning
her head, she looked over her shoulder at the priest. The priest stood like a statue, motionless, his finger still raised
towards the gallows.
"This horrified me less than you," the gypsy said at last. (XI.I.51-52)
There are times when Esmeralda strikes us as the typical beautiful maiden in need of manly rescuing, but this
moment is not one of them. Esmeralda may be completely at Frollo's mercy, but we shouldn't forget that initial image
of her when she was free and capable of taking care of herself.
If there's one thing The Hunchback of Notre-Dame shows us, it's that good, strong, loving people, and independent
people can be struck down just as easily as anyone else. In fact, they may be even more likely than most to face
destruction. Not a happy thought, but it's something to think about.
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Esmeralda is born to Paquette la Chantefleurie. While still a baby, she is kidnapped by gypsies.
Esmeralda comes to Paris and dances in the street with her pet goat Djali.
On the night of the Festival of Fools, Quasimodo and Frollo attempt to kidnap Esmeralda. She is valiantly
rescued by Phbus.
When Gringoire is about to be hanged at the Cour des Miracles, Esmeralda saves his life by offering to
marry him. Their marriage is strictly in name, though.
Esmeralda is brought to the Gondelaurier mansion to perform for Fleur-de-Lis and her friends. While there,
the Fleur-de-Lis and the girls discover that Djali has been taught to spell out "Phbus" with block letters,
and they kick Esmeralda out. Phbus follows her and arranges to meet her later.
Esmeralda meets Phbus at a dingy inn where he attempts to seduce her. Just as she gives in, Frollo
jumps out of a closet and stabs him. Esmeralda passes out, and when she comes to, she finds herself
accused of stabbing Phbus.
At her trial, Esmeralda refuses to confess. She is briefly tortured and admits to anything and everything. Her
sentence is death.
While in prison, Esmeralda is visited by Frollo, who professes his love for her and begs her to come away
with him. She refuses, and Frollo tells her that Phbus is dead.
Just as she is being led away, Esmeralda sees Phbus watching her from a balcony. She is then rescued
by Quasimodo.
When the Tramps attack the cathedral, Gringoire and Frollo come to Esmeralda's room to lead her away.
Frollo gets Esmeralda alone and takes her to the Place de Grve, where he tells her to choose between the
gallows and him. She chooses the gallows.
Frollo gives Esmeralda to the Sack Woman, who is all too happy to see Esmeralda die. But then it's
revealed that Esmeralda is actually her long-lost daughter.
The reunion doesn't last, though, and guards come to execute Esmeralda.
Esmeralda's body is taken to Montfaucon, where it is found in the embrace of Quasimodo years later.
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You've probably heard the old spiel about not judging a book by its cover. Well, the saying exists because
people do tend to judge covers. Sometimes, an entire identity is constructed around a cover. Books, people, you
name itwe all judge.
In The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,the idea that you can't judge a book by its cover doesn't just apply to Quasimodo,
the character most ruthlessly judged on the basis of his appearance. Frollo is convinced that Esmeralda is evil
because she's sexy; Esmeralda is convinced that Phbus is noble and heroic because he's hotter than Johnny Depp
in the desert you get the picture. There's a lot of cover-judging in this bookand a lot of catastrophe as a result.
Do any of the characters in the novel overcome their initial dependence on appearances by the end of the
novel?
2.
3.
How does a preoccupation with appearances fit in with a novel about a cathedral?
4.
Do you think that Victor Hugo is simply telling us not to judge things by their appearances, or is there more
to it than that?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
Appearance is pretty much the only thing that matters to anyone in the novel.
Appearance in the novel is complicated: Quasimodo and Phbus are misjudged for their appearances, but
Esmeralda and Frollo aren't.
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"Love is a many splendored thing." "Love lifts us up where we belong." "All you need is love."
We can't tell if we're quoting different songs or just Moulin Rouge, but the point is that love does a lot of different
things and looks a lot of different ways to different people. Just take all the many ways people love each other
in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: Quasimodo's love for Esmeralda, Esmeralda's love for Phbus, Frollo's love for
Esmeralda, Gringoire's love for Djali it's like a love hexagon.
Does each of these characters experience love in quite the same way? Not so much. It's irrational, it hurts, it's
complicatedbut it's irrational, it hurts, and it's complicated in different ways for different characters. Which brings us
to something else you might want to consider: love isn't always as hunky-dory as cheesy love songs would have you
believe.
2.
What's the difference between love and lust in this novel? Is there a difference?
3.
4.
Which love songs would you assign to each of the relationships in the novel?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
The only true love in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is the love that Quasimodo feels for Esmeralda.
Love is what compels the characters in the novel to do ridiculous things.
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Are we meant to see the hand of fate in the events of the novel as much as Frollo does?
2.
Does this novel set fate against free will? Do we have any instances of blatant free will in this story?
3.
Would you say that all of the characters' fates are intertwined? Why or why not? What might Hugo be trying
to show about the nature of fate?
4.
Why do you think Victor Hugo chose this one word (ANKH, or fate) as the basis for the entire story? How
does the preface change how we read the novel?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
Everything is way too coincidental in this novel for us not to see the hand of fate behind everything that happens.
While Frollo asserts that everything is the work of fate, it's more his belief in fate than fate itself that drives him to do
the things he does.
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Pretty much nothing goes right for our main characters in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, at least while they're alive.
We guess that goes with the territory in a tragedy.
There's a lot of suffering in this novel. It seems like at any given point,something is going badly for someone, whether
it's Paquette losing her baby daughter, or Quasimodo being pelted with rocks on the pillory, or Esmeralda being
tortured and hanged. But, as is the rule in tragedy, in order for the suffering to really matter, it needs to be punctuated
by a few moments of joy and hope; so we get Esmeralda giving Quasimodo a drink of water, Paquette momentarily
reuniting with her daughter, and Esmeralda being saved from the gallowsall temporarily, of course.
Why is there so much suffering in this novel? Does it reflect reality? Is there any point to all this suffering?
2.
Which characters get off scot-free in terms of suffering? Why do you think this is?
3.
Though the novel has its funny moments, it's definitely a tragedy. What do you think the novel gains by being
a tragedy instead of a comedy? If the ending were a happy, Disney-esque one, how would that change our
reading of the novel?
4.
Is there any single force behind all of the suffering in the novel? Or, limiting it to the three major characters
(Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and Frollo), would you say that there is one central cause behind everything they
suffer?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
All of the characters in the novel are touched by some sort of loss or lack that they are trying to fill.
We can tell early on in the novel which characters' fates are going to be steered toward tragedy and which toward
comedy.
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We're gonna level with you, folks: sex is a major player in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Or at least, the desire to have sex is a major player. The problem is, that desire is usually unrequited. What we end
up with is a lot of sexual frustration that then manifests itself in some pretty ugly ways. We're talking, of course,
mainly about Frollo here (though Phbus is also a pretty lusty character). Frollo's lust makes him jealous,
possessive, evil, and violentyet he insists in calling his feelings for Esmeralda "love." We're not so sure, but
regardless of what Frollo calls his feelings, one thing is for sure: they drive him crazy.
But wait, what's the difference between love and lust? That's a tough one, but rest assured: Victor Hugo has some
ideas.
Is the line between love and lust immediately clear in the novel? Is there a line between love and lust at all?
2.
Frollo obviously doesn't handle lust very well. Does he act out of uncontrolled lust, or is he just an evil
person? What's the difference?
3.
How would you compare Frollo's feelings for Esmeralda with Phbus's or Quasimodo's feelings for her?
4.
According to the novel, what causes Frollo to act out his feelings for Esmeralda in such over-the-top the
ways? How do we make sense of his actions? What makes him so evil?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
Frollo's lust gets out of hand because he allows himself to use things like sorcery and fate as justifications rather than
recognizing his lust for what it is.
Frollo's lust gets out of hand because he knows that he isn't really supposed to feel lust.
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Time is not on anyone's side in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Time wears history away, it wipes away peoples'
existences, it leads to inevitable decay and change basically, time paves things over and makes way for the new.
Individual lives are placed in huge historical contexts, and they can be easily and irrevocably wiped out.
Very few things are permanent in this book. Hugo gets into several discussions about how the Paris of 1482 is so
different from the Paris of 1831and in some ways, 1482 Paris seems better than 1831 Paris. In any case, there are
two things in this novel that can withstand the test of time: a huge stone cathedral, and a printed book. It's art that has
the capacity to defeat time; maybe it's the only thing that can.
Do you think the cathedral is the sign of permanence in the novel? Why or why not?
2.
Why do you think Hugo makes a point of mentioning the "future" (things that happen after 1482)?
3.
Which side do you think Hugo (or his narrator) would take in the printing press versus cathedral debate,
seeing as how the printing press is what allows the novel to exist in the first place? Does the novel take a
side, or merely describe a change?
4.
What "artifacts" from the novel survive to the author's present day? What doesn't survive? What might this
tell us about how history endures?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
The novel argues that all evidence of history eventually disappears.
The novel argues that all evidence of history eventually disappears unless we find a way to preserve it.
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The Hunchback of Notre-Dame begins at the Palace of Justice and ends at the gallows at Montfaucon. We also get
two trial scenes, a scene of the pillory, a scene of the gallows, a scene of torture, and a few scenes of prisons
including a horrific closed-up boxthrown in for good measure.
Justiceor should we say "justice"?is all over the place in this novel, and it's not given a very flattering portrait. The
medieval French justice system, as Hugo portrays it, is lazy, inept, ineffective, cruel, and run by flippant people who
are more interested in getting to supper on time than in administering actual justice. Not surprisingly, most of our
characters don't fare so well within this justice system.
Is Hugo criticizing medieval justice alone, or he is he drawing our attention to issues that never really go away?
What do you think the novel is criticizing about the justice system? Is it saying something about the medieval
justice system specifically? Is it saying something about the current one? Is it saying something about justice
in general?
2.
Why do you think that justice plays such a big part in this novel?
3.
Which characters don't suffer at the hands of justice? Do they have anything in common? Which characters
suffer the most?
4.
Is there some sort of "divine justice" in the novel? In other words, the legal system aside, do any of the bad
characters get their comeuppance, and do the good characters get their reward?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
The novel criticizes a justice system that is all too happy to torture, imprison, and execute people for pretty much any
reason.
The novel criticizes a justice system that is run by people who are more concerned with their statuses than with
actual justice.
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In case you haven't picked up on it, people in the Middle Ages could be pretty superstitious. Satanic goats, babyeating, coins turning into leaves, some guy named "Beelzebub" people sure were imaginative back then.
Most of this superstition is attached fears about the gypsies in The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. The gypsies aren't
actually practicing all that witchcraft; everyone just thinks they are. The gypsies (along with Quasimodo) are what
you'd call "the Other" in the story, meaning that they are viewed as exotic outsiders whose customs are seen as weird
and different by your average Jacques in French society.
But hey, here's a thought: it's the two Other characters, Quasimodo and Esmeralda, who are the only really good
characters in the novel. What does this tell us about the society Hugo depicts?
What is the narrator's attitude towards the characters' general belief in witchcraft? How can you tell?
2.
3.
Why is Frollo convinced that Esmeralda is a witch? Or do you think he doesn't believe that she's a witch and
is just using that as an excuse?
4.
Why do the characters in the novel attribute all that supernatural stuff to the gypsies?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
The supernatural is used to demonize a particular group of people in the novel.
The supernatural is a convenient way for the justice system to prove people guilty in the novel.