The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

First published:Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831 (English translation, 1833)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: Fifteenth century

Locale: France

Principal Characters

• Quasimodo, the bell ringer of Notre Dame
• Esmeralda, a gypsy dancer
• Claude Frollo, the archdeacon of Notre Dame
• Phoebus de Chateaupers, Esmeralda’s sweetheart
• Gringoire, a stupid and poverty-stricken poet

The Story

Louis XI, king of France, is to marry his oldest son to Margaret of Flanders, and in early January, 1482, the king is expecting Flemish ambassadors to his court. The great day arrives, coinciding both with Epiphany and with the secular celebration of the Festival of Fools. All day long, raucous Parisians assemble at the great Palace of Justice to see a morality play and to choose a Prince of Fools. The throng is supposed to await the arrival of the Flemish guests, but when the emissaries are late, Gringoire, a penniless and oafish poet, orders the play to begin. In the middle of the prologue, however, the play comes to a standstill as the royal procession passes into the huge palace. After the procession passes, the play is forgotten, and the crowd shouts for the Prince of Fools to be chosen.

The Prince of Fools has to be a man of remarkable physical ugliness. One by one the candidates, eager for this one glory of their disreputable lives, show their faces in front of a glass window, but the crowd shouts and jeers until a face of such extraordinary hideousness appears that the people acclaims this candidate at once as the Prince of Fools. It is Quasimodo, the hunchback bell ringer of Notre Dame. Nowhere on earth is there a more grotesque creature. One of his eyes is buried under an enormous wen. His teeth hang over his protruding lower lip like tusks. His eyebrows are red bristles, and his gigantic nose curves over his upper lip like a snout. His long arms protrude from his shoulders, dangling like those of an ape. Though he is deaf from long years of ringing Notre Dame’s thunderous bells, his eyesight is acute.

Quasimodo senses that he has been chosen by popular acclaim, and he is at once proud and suspicious of his honor as he allows the crowd to dress him in ridiculous robes and hoist him above their heads. From this vantage point, he maintains a dignified silence while the parade goes through the streets of Paris, stopping only to watch the enchanting dance of a gypsy girl, Esmeralda, whose grace and charm hold her audience spellbound. She has a little trained goat that dances to her tambourine. The pair are celebrated throughout Paris, though there are some who think the girl a witch, so great is her power in captivating her audience.

Late that night the poet Gringoire walks the streets of Paris. He has no shelter, owes money, and is in desperate straits. As the cold night comes on, he sees Esmeralda hurrying ahead of him. Then a black-hooded man comes out of the shadows and seizes the gypsy. At the same time, Gringoire catches sight of the hooded man’s partner, Quasimodo, who strikes Gringoire a terrible blow. The following moment a horseman rides in from the next street. Catching sight of Esmeralda in the arms of the black-hooded man, the rider demands that he free the girl or pay with his life. The attackers flee. Esmeralda asks the name of her rescuer. It is Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers. From that moment Esmeralda is hopelessly in love with Phoebus.

Gringoire does not bother to discover the plot behind the frustrated kidnapping, but had he known the truth he might have been more frightened. Quasimodo’s hooded companion was Claude Frollo, archdeacon of Notre Dame, a man who was once a pillar of righteousness, but who now, because of loneliness and an insatiable thirst for knowledge and experience, has succumbed to the temptations of necromancy and alchemy.

Frollo befriended Quasimodo when the hunchback was left at the gates of Notre Dame as an unwanted baby; Quasimodo is slavishly loyal to him. He acts without question when Frollo asks his aid in kidnapping the beautiful gypsy. Frollo, who admired Esmeralda from a distance, plans to carry her off to his small cell in the cathedral, where he can enjoy her charms at his leisure.

As Quasimodo and Frollo hurry back to the cathedral, Gringoire continues on his way and finds himself in a disreputable quarter of Paris. Captured by thugs, he is threatened with death if none of the women in the thieves’ den will marry him. When no one wants the pale, thin poet, a noose is lowered about his neck. Suddenly Esmeralda appears and volunteers to take him, but Gringoire enjoys no wedding night. Esmeralda’s heart belongs to Phoebus; she rescued the poet only out of pity.

In those days the courts of Paris often picked innocent people from the streets, tried them, and convicted them with little regard for justice. Quasimodo was seen in his role as the Prince of Fools and was watched as he stood before the gypsy girl while she danced. There is a rumor that Esmeralda is a witch, and most of Paris suspects that Frollo, Quasimodo’s only associate, is a sorcerer. Consequently, Quasimodo is brought into a court, accused of keeping questionable company, and sentenced to a severe flogging and exposure on the pillory. Quasimodo endures his disgrace stoically, but after his misshapen back is torn by the lash, he is overcome with a terrible thirst. The crowd jeers and throws stones. They hate and fear Quasimodo because of his ugliness.

Esmeralda mounts the scaffold and puts her flask to Quasimodo’s blackened lips. This act of kindness moves him deeply, and he weeps. At that same time Frollo happens upon the scene, catches sight of Quasimodo, and departs quickly. Later Quasimodo remembers this betrayal. One day Phoebus is entertaining a lady in a building overlooking the square where Esmeralda is dancing. The gypsy is so smitten with Phoebus that she teaches her goat to spell out his name with alphabet blocks. When she has the animal perform this trick, the lady calls her a witch and a sorceress. Phoebus, however, follows the gypsy and arranges for a rendezvous with her for the following night.

Meanwhile, Gringoire happens to meet Frollo, who is jealous of the poet because he is rumored to be Esmeralda’s husband. Gringoire, however, explains that Esmeralda does not love him; she has eyes and heart only for Phoebus. Desperate to preserve Esmeralda for himself, Frollo trails the young gallant and asks him where he is going. Phoebus says that he has a rendezvous with Esmeralda. The priest offers him money in exchange for an opportunity to conceal himself in the room where this rendezvous is to take place, ostensibly to discover whether Esmeralda is really the girl whose name Phoebus mentioned. It is a poor ruse at best, but Phoebus is not shy at lovemaking and agrees to the bargain. When he learns that the girl is really Esmeralda, Frollo leaps from concealment and wounds Phoebus with a dagger. Esmeralda cannot see her lover’s assailant in the darkness, and when she faints, Frollo escapes. A crowd gathers, murmuring that the sorceress slew Phoebus. They take the gypsy off to prison.

Now tales of Esmeralda’s sorcery begin to circulate. At her trial, she is convicted of witchcraft, sentenced to do penance on the great porch of Notre Dame and from there to be taken to a scaffold in the Place de la Greve and publicly hanged. Phoebus is not dead; he escaped the night of the attack and kept silent rather than implicate himself in a case of witchcraft. When Esmeralda is on her way to Notre Dame, she catches sight of him riding on his beautiful horse and calls out to him, but he ignores her completely. She then feels that she is doomed.

When she comes before Frollo to do penance, he offers to save her if she will be his, but she refuses. Quasimodo suddenly appears on the porch, takes the girl in his arms, and carries her to sanctuary within the church. Esmeralda is safe as long as she remains within the cathedral walls.

Quasimodo hides her in his own cell, where there is a mattress and water, and brings her food. He keeps the cell door locked so that if her pursuers do break into the sanctuary, they cannot reach her. Aware that she will be terrified of him if he stays with her, he enters her cell only to bring her his own dinner.

Frollo, knowing that the gypsy is near him in the cathedral, secures a key to the chamber and steals in to see Esmeralda one night. She struggles hopelessly, until suddenly Quasimodo enters and drags the priest from the cell. With smothered rage, he frees the trembling archdeacon and allows him to run away. One day a mob gathers and demands that the sorceress be released from the cathedral. Frollo is jubilant. Quasimodo, however, bars and bolts the great doors. When the crowd charges the cathedral with a battering ram, Quasimodo throws stones from a tower where builders were working. When the mob persists, he pours melted lead upon the crowd below. Then the mob secures ladders and begins to mount the facade, but Quasimodo seizes the ladders and pushes them from the wall. Hundreds of dead and wounded lie below him.

Meanwhile, Frollo gives Gringoire the key to Esmeralda’s chamber and leads the poet through the cathedral to her cell. She is persuaded to flee, since the church is under siege. She follows Gringoire trustingly, and he leads her to a boat where Frollo is waiting. Frightened by the violence of the priest, Gringoire flees. Once more, Frollo offers to save Esmeralda if she will be his, but she refuses him. Fleeing, she seeks refuge in a cell belonging to a madwoman. There the soldiers find her and drag her away for her execution the next morning at dawn.

Meanwhile, Quasimodo roams the cathedral searching for Esmeralda. Making his way to the tower that looks down upon the bridge of Notre Dame, Quasimodo comes upon Frollo, who stands shaking with laughter as he watches a scene far below. Following the direction of the priest’s gaze, Quasimodo sees a gibbet erected in the Place de la Greve, and on the platform is a woman in white. It is Esmeralda. Quasimodo sees the noose lowered over the girl’s head and the platform released. Her body sways in the morning breeze. Then Quasimodo picks up Frollo and thrusts him over the wall on which he was leaning. At that moment, Quasimodo understands everything that the priest did to ensure the death of Esmeralda. He looks at the crushed body at the foot of the tower and then at the figure in white upon the gallows. He weeps.

After the deaths of Esmeralda and Frollo, Quasimodo is not to be found. Then, during the reign of Charles VIII, the vault of Montfaucon, in which the bodies of criminals are interred, is opened to locate the remains of a famous prisoner who was buried there. Among the skeletons are those of a woman who is clad in white and of a man whose bony arms are wrapped tightly around the woman’s body. His spine is crooked, one leg is shorter than the other, and it is evident that he was not hanged, for his neck is unbroken. When those who discover these singular remains try to separate the two bodies, they crumble into dust.

Bibliography

Blain, Nancy Marie. "The Picaresque and the Grotesque: Two Beauties and Their Beasts." Romance Notes 51.2 (2011): 161–70. Print.

Brombert, Victor. Victor Hugo and the Visionary Novel. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984. Print.

Frey, John Andrew. A Victor Hugo Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood, 1999. Print.

Grant, Richard B. The Perilous Quest: Image, Myth, and Prophecy in the Narratives of Victor Hugo. Durham: Duke UP, 1968. Print.

Grossman, Kathryn M. The Early Novels of Victor Hugo: Towards a Poetics of Harmony. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1986. Print.

Houston, John Porter. Victor Hugo. Boston: Twayne, 1988. Print.

Maurois, André. Olympio: The Life of Victor Hugo. Trans. Gerard Hopkins. New York: Harper, 1956. Print.

Minott-Ahl, Nicola. "Nation/Building: Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris and the Novelist as Post-Revolutionary Historian." Partial Answers 10.2 (June 2012): 251–71. Print.

Porter, Laurence M. Victor Hugo. New York: Twayne, 1999. Print.

Raser, Timothy. The Simplest of Signs: Victor Hugo and the Language of Images in France, 1850–1950. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2004. Print.

Robb, Graham. Victor Hugo. New York: Norton, 1998. Print.

Roche, Isabel. Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2007. Print.

Seshadri, Krishna G. "Hunches on Hunchbacks." Indian Jour. of Endocrinology & Metabolism 16.2 (Mar. 2012): 292–94. Print.

St. Martin, Jan. "Victor Hugo." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Carl E. Rollyson. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. Print.

Swanson, Roy Arthur. "The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Magill's Survey of World Literature. Ed. Steven G. Kellman. Pasadena: Salem, 2009. Print.