Book Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

I have a good track record with 19th century French classics - or rather: they have a good track record with me. I enjoy the sort of epic high-adventures and the intense romanticism of the stories that authors like Hugo and Dumas frequently wrote. There is something about the combination of slightly old, sometimes intractable writing with the simple, modern themes that makes literature from this period truly embody the feeling of a classic. They are to literature what black and white films are to cinema.

And so it was for The Hunchback of Notre Dame. This book was another enjoyable French adventure, a romance of epic proportions set in a painstakingly-rendered 15th century Paris. Hugo spends a significant portion of the first 300 pages describing the historical geography of paris over the centuries between 1300 and 1800, the history of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and just context-setting in general for the rest of the book. Unfortunately the details are so lovingly specific to the 18th century Parisian audience of this book that even armed with google maps and wikipedia, I frequently had no idea what Hugo was talking about (and even if I was able to look everything up, doing so would have been an endeavour worthy of a PhD thesis). This made the first 300 pages a drag, but fortunately there was just enough narrative advancement to keep me reading. There are almost four love stories within this book: Esmeralda -> Phoebus (boo), Claude Frollo -> Esmeralda, Quasimodo -> Esmeralda, and Hugo -> Paris.¹

This book was sadder and more frustrating than I expected (which I guess makes sense, given that I have only seen the Disney adaptation out of the 16 film adaptations that exist). Most of my frustration came from Esmeralda, who was an absolute dunce in the book. She couldn’t stop loving/calling out for the totally indifferent Captain Phoebus even for a second in order to save herself, not when Claude Frollo offered to save her and sneak her out of the city if she would only say a kind word to him, and not when she had almost managed to succesfully hide from the executioner who was hunting her. Equally frustrating was her poor treatment of Quasimodo. This frustration is somewhat tempered by the fact that Esmeralda was younger and more immature than I expected: a mere 15 years old when she is left dangling at the end of a noose, disbelieving in her fate until the end.

One part of this book shines above all others in my eyes: the chapter Lasciate Ogni Speranza², in which Claude Frollo finally confesses his love to the imprisoned Esmeralda. The febrile intensity with which Claude Frollo confesses that he knows he is damned by loving her, but chooses to love her still; the way he uses his obsession almost as a way of self-flagellation. A fantastic chapter which I consider to contain the heart of the story.

“Oh!” said the priest, “young girl, have pity upon me! You think yourself unhappy; alas! alas! you know not what unhappiness is. Oh! to love a woman! to be a priest! to be hated! to love with all the fury of one’s soul; to feel that one would give for the least of her smiles, one’s blood, one’s vitals, one’s fame, one’s salvation, one’s immortality and eternity, this life and the other; to regret that one is not a king, emperor, archangel, God, in order that one might place a greater slave beneath her feet; to clasp her night and day in one’s dreams and one’s thoughts, and to behold her in love with the trappings of a soldier and to have nothing to offer her but a priest’s dirty cassock, which will inspire her with fear and disgust! To be present with one’s jealousy and one’s rage, while she lavishes on a miserable, blustering imbecile, treasures of love and beauty! To behold that body whose form burns you, that bosom which possesses so much sweetness, that flesh palpitate and blush beneath the kisses of another! Oh heaven! to love her foot, her arm, her shoulder, to think of her blue veins, of her brown skin, until one writhes for whole nights together on the pavement of one’s cell, and to behold all those caresses which one has dreamed of, end in torture! To have succeeded only in stretching her upon the leather bed! Oh! these are the veritable pincers, reddened in the fires of hell. Oh! blessed is he who is sawn between two planks, or torn in pieces by four horses! Do you know what that torture is, which is imposed upon you for long nights by your burning arteries, your bursting heart, your breaking head, your teeth-knawed hands; mad tormentors which turn you incessantly, as upon a red-hot gridiron, to a thought of love, of jealousy, and of despair! Young girl, mercy! a truce for a moment! a few ashes on these live coals! Wipe away, I beseech you, the perspiration which trickles in great drops from my brow! Child! torture me with one hand, but caress me with the other! Have pity, young girl! Have pity upon me!”

I was a bit confused by some parts of the book. It almost seemed like Hugo had more side-characters than he knew what to do with. What was the point of Jehan Frollo’s firecracker of a life? Why did Grignoire randomly run off with the goat? What was the point of Jacques Coictier’s search for the secrets of Alchemy? The Flemish ambassadors? While I hope there are reasonable answers to these questions, I got the sense that these oddities (and the weird pacing with which they randomly break up the main narrative) were more a result of poor writing than of some obscure feature of 18th century romantic literature.

Overall I liked this book, and would consider it worth reading just for the intense expressions of love. However, I think this is a rare case where the abridged version might be a better read than the original.

¹ Five, if you count Grignoire and Djali the goat.

² Translated as Abandon all hope, ye who enter here as inscribed above the Gates of Hell in Dante’s Inferno