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The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Victor Hugo
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64 pages • 2 hours read

Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1831

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Summary

Background

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Obsession and Fate

Frollo is obsessed with fate. He carves it into the wall of the private office where he practices alchemy in secret. This obsession is a matter of ego. Frollo may be modest in a priestly sense: He lives within his means and tries to help others, such as Quasimodo, Jehan, and Gringoire. However, in pursuit of intellectual nourishment, he pushes the boundaries of what might be considered moral, to the point that rumors swirl through Paris that he is practicing witchcraft in his secret office. Frollo denies himself physical pleasures not as a matter of morality but because he considers himself an intellect who is above such matters. Thus, his attraction to Esmeralda horrifies him. The idea that he could be tempted by so base a pleasure, from someone whom society has relegated to its fringes, is severely damaging to the way he views himself, so he seeks an explanation. Frollo obsesses over fate because he desperately needs to believe in a power greater than himself, a fatalistic force that is manipulating him. He cannot consider himself as weak as other people. He cannot feel as though he is tempted by the same lusts that affect others, since he considers himself above them. Fate is a balm for his injured ego.

The way that Frollo becomes obsessed with fate functions as an indicator of his moral collapse. His obsession with Esmeralda corrodes his self-identity, prompting him to perform increasingly immoral acts. Frollo sees himself as an intellectual, someone detached from the rigors of life and dedicated to intellectual pursuits such as alchemy. His obsession with Esmeralda undermines this self-identity. The tension between Frollo’s idea of himself as an ascetic, detached intellectual and the reality of his scheming, lustful, immoral actions means that he must elevate fate in his own mind. Even if he once believed that he had control over his destiny, he cannot allow himself to believe this any longer. The more he blames fate for his actions and needs to believe that fate cannot be denied, the more he surrenders himself to his immoral desires. The more depraved he becomes, the more he needs to convince himself that he is fighting a cosmic war against the armies of fate. However, the more Frollo obsesses over fate, the more he shows that he has lost the capacity to define his own self-image. This erosion of ego fuels his mania, making him even more convinced that the agents of fate have turned against him.

Fate, then, becomes the excuse for all Frollo’s behavior. He describes the metaphor of the spider and the fly, suggesting that he and Esmeralda are caught in a similar web of fate. He is unsure which of them is the spider and which is the fly, however, suggesting that he wants to position himself as the victim of the woman whom he tries to kidnap, rape, and eventually kill. Since Frollo insists that he is increasingly the victim of fate, he does not need to worry about the morality of his actions. He is the poor fly whom the spider Esmeralda has manipulated rather than a predatory, powerful man who lusts after a teenager and hates her for denying him. By completely abandoning himself to fate, Frollo washes his hands of any responsibility for his actions. He convinces himself that he is a victim of fate, a fly caught in a web, rather than a man with agency over his own actions.

Love as a Destructive Force

In The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, love is destructive. The principal characters all fall in love, but this love is unrequited. The pursuit of unrequited love is destructive, leading to death and suffering for everyone. Frollo loves Esmeralda, Esmeralda loves Phoebus, and Quasimodo loves Esmeralda. In each instance, love is unilateral but cannot be denied. The characters refuse to abandon their love, even after it is denied to them. Frollo’s love for Esmeralda is the most destructive, triggering the events that lead to the deaths of everyone around him, as well as the sacking of his church. Esmeralda’s love for Phoebus is more naive but no less destructive. She convinces herself that the captain of the guards loves her, despite all the evidence to the contrary. This delusion is so powerful that, as she is on the cusp of evading the guards, Esmeralda calls out to Phoebus. He does not even see her, but she is captured and hanged. Esmeralda’s love for Phoebus dooms her, causing her to go to the room where Frollo stabs the captain and causes her to call to Phoebus long after he has abandoned her. Esmeralda’s love is youthful, naive, and self-destructive, whereas Frollo’s love is corrosive to all those around him.

Familial love is likewise important in the novel, though it often leads to similar instances of self-destruction. Quasimodo falls in love with Esmeralda after she takes pity on him during his public humiliation. This love, he knows, is unrequited, but it leads to his rescuing her from her first attempted execution. Quasimodo helps Esmeralda claim asylum in Notre-Dame, but there he is forced to confront the reality of his love. Esmeralda can barely look at him and—still obsessed with Phoebus—unfairly blames Quasimodo for the guard’s not wanting to see her. Esmeralda rejects Quasimodo and reminds him of his alienation from society, yet he cannot do anything but protect her because he loves her so intensely. He loves Esmeralda because she is the only person to ever show him anything resembling affection. Ultimately, he perishes beside her corpse, expressing his love for her in a moment of self-destruction. Quasimodo becomes bound to Esmeralda in death. Similarly, Paquette’s love for her daughter is destructive. When her daughter is kidnapped, Paquette devotes her life to a pious hatred of Romany people. She is more devoted to this hatred than to God, despite her religious circumstances. Hatred, a lust for destruction of the entire people she blames for her daughter’s disappearance, becomes her motivation in life. She is kept alive by her hatred for the people who supposedly kidnapped the daughter she loved so much. When she is reunited with Esmeralda, the hatred she has felt for so long immediately turns to love. As she tries to prevent Esmeralda’s execution, she is thrown to the ground and killed. Her life (and her rathole) are destroyed in the moment that her obsessive hatred becomes obsessive love.

Jehan’s debauchery is a form of self-destruction that reframes love as a physical act. His brother, Frollo, loves him and enables him by giving him money. Jehan pursues every hedonistic pleasure, abusing his brother’s love through indulgences with sex workers. This self-destruction through physical love culminates in Jehan’s being ostracized to the Court of Miracles, then to the attack on Notre-Dame, and then to Quasimodo’s throwing Jehan from the cathedral, ironically foreshadowing Frollo’s death, which occurs several hours later. Jehan’s death brings shame and horror to Frollo, exemplifying how Frollo is punished even when he tries to act righteously. Jehan’s refusal to acknowledge his brother’s love is destructive to them both, destroying their reputations and—ultimately—their lives.

The Spectacle of Public Punishment

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is set in Paris in Medieval times, an era in which punishments are often performed in public. Acts of penitence are carried out in front of the church, and people are placed in the stocks or harried in public squares. Executions—especially hangings—are carried out in full view of the Parisian public, thereby dragging the secret shame associated with the crime into the public sphere. The public often treats these punishments as entertainment; the crowd’s attitude differs little whether it is attending Gringoire’s play, a church sermon, or a hanging. The novel thus presents public punishment as performance. Justice is performed, and this performance is an integral to the daily routine of Parisian life. Justice is carried out publicly as a means to assure the people that laws are being followed and that the state is operating in accordance with expectation.

The performative nature of punishments is therefore intrinsic to the idea of punishment itself. The crimes—blasphemy, witchcraft, or repudiation of the state—are crimes against the moral integrity of Parisian society. Since the crimes offend the society itself, the society must assure those in the city that the balance of morality is being restored by publicly condemning the offenders. The people of Paris jeer Quasimodo shortly after cheering him because his crimes ostensibly offend society itself. The bodies of the condemned become forums on which the public can project their outrage, vengeance, or even admiration, turning punishment into a public spectacle that is separate from contemporary notions of discipline and retribution. The public nature of these punishments is the point, rather than the punishment itself.

The importance of the public performance of punishment is evident through the contrasting examples of state violence that are kept hidden from the public. When Esmeralda refuses to confess in court, she is led away and tortured. The torture elicits a false confession and abhors everyone in the room; this deployment of private, hidden violence horrifies people. It is shameful, ineffective, and hidden, while public punishments are spectacles of social cohesion. Importantly, however, the king condones the use of torture. When he reviews the state budgets, the only line items that do not offend him are the funds dedicated to instruments of torture. He takes particular pleasure in showing an expensive cage to the Flemish ambassadors, in which a man has been imprisoned for 14 years. The king performatively refuses to acknowledge the man’s pleas for mercy. Not only is the man condemned to solitary confinement, but his punishment is made private.

The novel condemns this shameful wielding of state power; since it is private, it is free from the social regulation of the crowd. In private, the state wields a terrifying power that is kept hidden from the public and from the recrimination of the social sphere. These private punishments deny the public the spectacle, repudiating the idea that society itself, rather than the monarch as an individual, has rectified a moral outrage. Private punishments reinforce the idea of the monarch as the sole arbiter of state power, which offends the society’s beliefs in social individualism and liberty. By contrasting public and private punishments, the novel illustrates how punishments performed in public fulfill a social function that is occluded and denied by the monarch’s authoritarian demands for personal vengeance.

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