This is a book that I believe most folks are aware of and probably have some inkling of the story. I would also hazard a guess it is a book that most folks have not read and the story is not really what they think.
I was interested in movies that may have been made based on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There are several. The list is not complete.
- From 1923 starring Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, Brandon Hurst and others
- From 1939 starring Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien and others
- From 1956 starring Gina Lollobrigida, Anthony Quinn, Jean Danet, Alain Cuny, Robert Hirsch and others
- From 1976 made for TV movie starring Kenneth Haigh, Michelle Newell, Warren Clarke and others
- An animated Walt Disney version from 1996
- From 1997 made for TV version that can be found on YouTube starring Mandy Patinkin, Richard Harris, Salma Hayek and others
The one that surprises me the most is the Disney film. I have not seen it, but I cannot imagine Disney remaining true to the story and it still be a Disney film. The only character in the book with any sort of redeemable qualities is Quasimodo. La Esmeralda was basically an innocent, but in the end her obsession kills her.
Say what you will about numerable top 100 novels lists that float around on the Internet, but I use them to get ideas on classical literature to read. As I read this book I wondered if it was on any of the lists. I wondered this because it is so well written and the story line leads the reader on at such a quick pace. Surprisingly it was not. I attribute this to two possible causes. First, there are few chapters in the novel that are basically history lessons about Paris. I found them interesting, but some readers may find them a bit tedious. Secondly, the ending of the books leaves the reader with a sense of the futility of life.
The book is set in Paris at the tail end of the medieval period, the 15th century. It is a time of superstition, over religiosity, absolute power of the establishment, and little concern for human life or the humanity of individuals. It was a time of huge class distinctions, with the lower classes considered to have little or no value. It was a time when there were gibbets and machines for public torture practically in ever square of the city.
One of the principles characters is Quasimodo. Quasimodo is a monstrously deformed hunchback who was left on the foundling bench in front of Notre Dame.
“Sixteen years previous to the epoch when this story takes place, one fine morning, on Quasimodo Sunday, a living creature had been deposited, after mass, in the church of Notre-Dame, on the wooden bed securely fixed in the vestibule on the left, opposite that great image of Saint Christopher, which the figure of Messire Antoine des Essarts, chevalier, carved in stone, had been gazing at on his knees since 1413, when they took it into their heads to overthrow the saint and the faithful follower. Upon this bed of wood it was customary to expose foundlings for public charity. Whoever cared to take them did so. In front of the wooden bed was a copper basin for alms.”
Another one of the principle characters, the Archdeacon Claude Frollo, claimed the foundling and named him Quasimodo in honor of the religious holiday. Frollo raised Quasimodo, educated him the best he could, and eventually made him the bell ringer of Notre Dame. In many ways Quasimodo is a vile creature operating at a primitive level. Due to his deafness, a result of being so close to ringing big bells of the cathedral, he is isolated beyond the isolation created by his grotesque appearance. In the end he is as close to a hero as the book has. He and Claude Frollo both “loved” La Esmeralda, but in much different ways. Quasimodo loved her in a self-sacrificing manner that did not make demands on her.
Archdeacon Claude Frollo is wonderful argument against the celibacy of the priesthood. Here is a man of remarkable intellect and drive who suppresses basic human passions. He does so to adhere to the teachings of the church. He sublimates these desires into his pursuit of knowledge. He is a man who many ways wants to do Good. However, when the physical urgings can no longer be ignored they overwhelm him with disastrous results for a large number of folks. The unfortunate object of his obsession is La Esmeralda, a gypsy street dancer. In the end he orchestrates her death rather than allow someone else to have her. The novel in many ways is a tale of this obsession and others obsessions gone astray.
The pivot around which the novel turns is La Esmeralda, the gypsy street dancer. It turns out she was actually kidnapped by the gypsies as a baby and raised by them. Before she died, a gypsy woman told La Esmeralda of her real mother. This became her obsession in life, to be reunited with her mother. Excluding that here is a person that lived in the moment, plying her street dancing trade. She also had a trained goat, Djali, with which she entertained crowds with feats of his ability to mimic haughty personages, tell time, etc. She lives in a section of town full of gypsies, pickpockets, beggars and other assorted outsiders. Her beauty is admired by all who see her, and she is revered by these people. Her obsession with a soldier, Phoebus de Chateaupers, leads to her downfall and death.
Phoebus de Chateaupers is a self-centered soldier and general bon vivant. There is a kidnapping attempt on La Esmeralda. He and the soldiers under his command prevent this. When La Esmeralda first sees her rescuer, she is smitten beyond any degree of sanity. He later on sees her as just another female conquest. He is a cad to her, and a cad to his finance, Fleur-de-Lys de Gondelaurier. It is he who is the proximate cause of La Esmeralda’s troubles with the authorities.
Sister Gudule aka the sacked nun who self-imprisoned herself in a small cell opening onto a square of the city of Paris. She had been in there for 15 years feed and mocked by the citizens of Paris. It comes out at the end of the novel that she is really La Esmeralda’s mother.
There is Jehan Frollo the brother of Archdeacon Claude Frollo and a thorn in his side. He is ostensibly a student, but his primary activities are carousing and drinking. In the end he dies in the riot outside of Notre Dame meant to free La Esmeralda.
Another character that ties many parts of the book together is Pierre Gringoire, a supposed playwright. His play on at the beginning of the book fails due to the dignitaries showing up late, and perhaps it being too esoteric for the masses. Not being paid he has nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. For various reasons he follows La Esmeralda, disrupts her kidnapping by Quasimodo and an unknown assistant. Then he loses her path. He ends up in the Cour des Miracles which is basically the bad section of town. “The King” of this domain is about to hang Gringoire when La Esmeralda intervenes.
“You are going to hang this man?” she said gravely, to Clopin.
“Yes, sister,” replied the King of Thunes, “unless you will take him for your husband.”
She made her pretty little pout with her under lip. “I’ll take him,” said she.
Gringoire firmly believed that he had been in a dream ever since morning, and that this was the continuation of it.
The change was, in fact, violent, though a gratifying one. They undid the noose, and made the poet step down from the stool. His emotion was so lively that he was obliged to sit down.
The Duke of Egypt brought an earthenware crock, without uttering a word. The gypsy offered it to Gringoire: “Fling it on the ground,” said she.
The crock broke into four pieces.
“Brother,” then said the Duke of Egypt, laying his hands upon their foreheads, “she is your wife; sister, he is your husband for four years. Go.”
But the marriage is never consummated. La Esmeralda must remain virginal in order for the search for her mother to be successful. Gringoire disappears for a while in the novel to reappear towards the end. He is somewhat friendly with Claude Frollo and hatches a plot to allow the Claude Frollo to kidnap La Esmeralda. The plot results in 100s of the vagabounds of the Cour of Miracles being slaughtered by the Louis XI’s soldiers.
Besides the obsessions of Claude Frollo, Quasimodo and La Esmeralda the novel deals with the human insanity that was the middle ages. The courts are basically the whim of the magistrate without any rules of evidence. The first chapter of Book 6 is absolutely hilarious as the deaf magistrate is questioning the deaf Quasimodo. It is a scene worthy of Monty Python. Then at the end of the trail after Quasimodo has been sentenced one of the clerks tries to intervene for a little clemency.
However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne was reading the sentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk felt himself moved with pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and, in the hope of obtaining some mitigation of the penalty, he approached as near the auditor’s ear as possible, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, “That man is deaf.”
He hoped that this community of infirmity would awaken Master Florian’s interest in behalf of the condemned man. But, in the first place, we have already observed that Master Florian did not care to have his deafness noticed. In the next place, he was so hard of hearing That he did not catch a single word of what the clerk said to him; nevertheless, he wished to have the appearance of hearing, and replied, “Ah! ah! that is different; I did not know that. An hour more of the pillory, in that case.”
And he signed the sentence thus modified.
Victor Hugo is a wonderful writer. For a while I wondered how he was going to tie all the pieces together, but in the end he does so neatly. I’m not sure the book could have had a different ending, but I did so want it to. One of the reasons that this book is a classic is that the story stays with you long after you quit reading.
This book is in the public domain and can be downloaded for free.
Audio book from LibriVox.org : The Hunchback of Notre Dame
e-Book from Gutenberg.org: Notre-Dame De Paris by Victor Hugo