Book Review
Notre Dame of Paris
by Victor Hugo
Paris...a city
of glamour, art, sophistication, fine food, and passion for life.
This is not how Victor Hugo imagined his hometown in his first novel
Notre Dame of Paris. The
picture he paints of 15th
century Parisian life is, instead, one of a grim city full of
ignorant hicks, a worthless king, and an anemic Catholic church.
A
central figure in this classic French Romantic novel is La Esmeralda,
the Gypsy dancer who entrances audiences with her companion goat
Djali. The goat has gilded horns and performs tricks for the people’s
entertainment. Esmeralda is possessed of a free spirit and powerful
beauty. She is virginal and pure and has the virtues of a saint which
she freely shares with others in times of distress. Almost every man
she meets falls into a hypnotic state of infatuation for her. But
despite her charisma, she also inspires the sins of envy, lust, and
hatred in the fickle hearts of the Parisian citizens.
This
is what happens with Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon of Notre Dame
Cathedral. Frollo was once a serious student of theology, medicine,
and science but grew bored and delved into the black art of alchemy.
Incidentally, Hugo’s novel is full of references to alchemical
synbolism with references to the key that opens the red door and a
few lions here and there but
pursuing these signs may lead
you down a blind alley. But in any case, the alchemy may have been
what brought out the bad side of Dom Claude or maybe he had been
exposed to too many mercury fumes while leading a solitary life in
his secret laboratory. Or even more probable, his lifetime of
celibacy probably drove him out of his mind. When he first sees La
Esmeralda he becomes insane with lust for her and turns into a
stalker, a potential rapist, and one of the creepiest characters in
the history of Western novels. Like
a teenage boy who is obsessed with a girl that hates him, Dom Claude
Frollo can not stop his pursuit of her and when he can’t get what
he wants, things turn out the worse for Esmeralda. At least the
teenage years can be blamed for the social awkwardness of the
aforementioned boy; Frollo, on the other hand, is an old man and one
who works in the service of the church, no less, which makes him
little more than evil.
Claude
Frollo’s sidekick is
Quasimodo, the hunchbacked,
deformed, deaf, and partially blind simpleton who is most closely
associated in the public mind with Notre Dame of Paris.
After being abandoned as a baby
at the cathedral, Dom Claude takes him in as an act of charity and
teaches him how to ring the bells in the campaniles. At first
Quasimodo appears sinister but after La Esmeralda gets unfairly
sentenced to death for a murder she did not commit, he snatches her
from the mob who are about to take her away to the gallows. Quasimodo
loves her and cares for her while embodying the idea that an ugly
appearance does not signify a morally depraved soul as so many in the
novel believed.
Gringoire
and Phoebus are other important characters that drive the plot, even
though they play secondary roles to Esmeralda, Frollo, and Quasimodo.
Basically they all love Esmeralda except the cad Phoebus who only
wants to get in her pants. But Phoebus is the only one she loves and
her naive pursuit
of him is what sets the whole city on fire. Hugo’s
depiction of repulsion, desire,
and impossible love
anticipates Jean-Paul Sartre’s depiction of Hell in his play No
Exit. In
15th
century France, churches were
considered sanctuaries and what went on inside them was untouchable
by the police and the
monarchy. So when Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda, he takes her to a
secret room in Notre Dame. The judiciary decides to overrule the
sanctuary law so
a lower-class mob
forms at night and storms
the cathedral to rescue her.
This
uprising of the rabble and
riffraff bears resemblance
to the storming of the Bastille. In
fact, the story switches over to a scene of the miserable King Louis
XI holding a meeting in the
Bastille tower to emphasize
this reference. Notre Dame of Paris is
set in the 15th
century but the influence of the French Revolution on the book is
easy to see. The spectacle of public executions is present throughout
the book. The arbitrary and unjust sentences of the courts, along
with the feeble leadership of the monarchy, could fairly represent
the pre-revolutionary situation. So can the church. Notre Dame sits
at the center of Paris. The cathedral can be said to be the soul of
the city while its inhabitants, Claude Frollo and Quasimodo, could be
said to be the shriveling, weak,
and impotent soul of the
Catholic church.
It
is tempting to say that this novel is a commentary on the French
Revolution but there really is a lot more to it than that. It is also
a commentary on the art of architecture as well as an examination of
the sickness of the human soul, a malady that has no apparent cure.
Hugo’s condemnation of human stupidity and ignorance is harsh and
brutal. The city
of Paris is depicted as dark and gloomy, claustrophobic with lots of
enclosed cells, dungeons, and chambers. The open spaces, the city
squares, are places mostly used for torture and executions as
if the only escape from the urban grit is to follow the river Seine
out of town. The innocent
figure of Esmeralda is first revered then degraded by the filthy and
ignoble crowds who acre more interested
in spectacle than human
decency. Even in her purity,
her naivite is a fatal flaw. Quasimodo,
the hero of the book is a deformed monster and even his attempts at
doing good end up doing unintentional harm. On
top of all these themes, Hugo’s
novel can be read as a protest against the death penalty, a cause he
was passionate about throughout his life.
The
build-up of the plot, the atmosphere, and character development are
nearly perfect. However, three sections of this book nearly ruin what
could have been one of the greatest horror stories ever written. One
of the longest, and most useless chapters, is a description of
Medieval Paris. Another is a mid-novel essay on how literature has
overtaken
architecture as the most important art form. The third is the passage
with King Louis XI meeting with his officials in the Bastille while
the uprising at Notre Dame begins. All of these sections interrupt
the flow of the narrative without adding much of any value to the
story. It is like listening to a song where the singer stops the
music and starts giving some dull academic lectures that have only a
tenuous connection to the music that the audience wants to hear.
Victor Hugo could have benefited with some better editing and any
reader could easily skip the first two aforementioned passages
without having missed anything of importance.
Despite
those flaws, Notre Dame of Paris is
still a great book. It evokes an eerie atmosphere and leaves the
reader feeling painfully sad. A book that can really make you feel
something like that is worth reading. It can also make you wonder why
the impoverished and goofy philosopher Gringoire lost interest in
Esmeralda and ran off with her goat Djali. Maybe some questions are
better left unanswered.
Hugo, Victor. Notre Dame of Paris. Penguin Books, New York: 1978.
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