Book #11: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo

When I was little, my two favorite Disney movies were Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast. They still are. I loved Aladdin because it was an adventure story and the tale of an underdog who got everything he wanted. I loved Beauty and the Beast because I am a sucker for a good love story Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast when you should be talking about The Hunchback of Notre Dame?” Slow down people. Let me get there…    

and saw myself in Belle. But I also loved the Beast; the misunderstood “monster” who hid his feelings under a mask of cruelty. You may be thinking, “Why are you talking about

            Victor Hugo’s French novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame is dark and slightly (well, maybe not slightly) inappropriate. It is not the happy Disney movie. The novel is a study of several underdogs (i.e. Aladdin); specifically, the misunderstood “monster” (i.e. Beauty and the Beast). However, this character is not even the main character of the novel. Hugo wrote this book as a love letter to Notre-Dame, the building, and to the city of Paris. He spends numerous pages describing the architecture and layout of Paris and how it has changed throughout the centuries. This part was not the most interesting part of the novel to me. It’s interesting for someone who is interested in architecture, but that is not me. I prefer to focus on characters and how they develop throughout a story.

            If there was a common thread throughout the characters, it would be that they are all outsiders. Quasimodo for the obvious reasons. He is deformed and cannot express his emotions and this makes him frightening to others. Esmeralda, the beautiful gypsie, looks exotic and walks around with a pet goat (my dream by the way) and no family to recall. These two characters are at the core while other characters such as Claude Frollo and Pierre Gringoire also fit this description. They are all alone in the world, but they are all eventually joined together by this loneliness.

            There are a lot of aspects of the relationships in the novel that I could talk about, but I

want to focus on Esmeralda and Quasimodo. In the Disney movie, the relationship between these two characters is prominent. However, in the novel, the two don’t even meet until the last third of the book. At this point, Quasimodo is in all of her beauty and goodness. He wants to protect her to make up for scaring her and not being good like her. Therefore, he makes her his “master.” He gives her control over their friendship because he knows that he is not good enough for her. He sees her as “perfect” while he sees himself as innately flawed. Esmeralda never thought of Quasimodo this way. She never thought that he was not good enough to be her friend nor that was scary. These were thoughts that plagued him because that is how he saw himself. While the relationship between the two was never meant to turn romantic, it is still heartbreaking to see that one party never saw themselves as equal to the other or good enough for the other. Oftentimes, we focus on how we think others see us and this, in turn, impacts how we think of ourselves. Quasimodo knew that most people were scared of him and thought of him as a monster. Because of this, he thought of himself that way.

Please, please, please let me have a pet goat!

Other Thoughts

 - Lorelei references this novel when she and Rory pull up to Chilton for the first time. Lorelei gives the ancient building a strange look and says she is checking for a hunchback. Not a direct reference to the novel, but a reference nonetheless…so it goes on the list.

- Hugo pulls from Shakespeare with some of the major plot points of this novel including the multiple cases of mistaken identity and the death confusion (Romeo and Juliet anybody?) Of course, you could make the case that all texts pull from Shakespeare. Most texts do. He is the master at what he does and Hugo chooses some of his most entertaining techniques in his novel. You all will hear how much I love Shakespeare soon, trust me.

 - The ending was far from the Disney movie; definitely, a tragic ending. I won't spoil it for those who will read it. The final image, though, is very touching and would have been very scaring to put in a children's movie.

- The novel is much more inappropriate than I expected. Because I spend my days surrounded by 10th graders, I chuckled to myself every time Hugo called a character a "boobie." I have the sense of humor of a 15 year old...

Pictures

Book Cover 1 http://h-france.net/fffh/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Hugo1.jpg  (cover of the version I read)

Book Cover 2 http://cdn3.volusion.com/jtoq7.b7owf/v/vspfiles/photos/HUNCHBACK_OF_NOTRE_DAME-2.jpg (Quasimodo looks kind of attractive in this cover)

Goat https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/3b/cc/9e/3bcc9e9cb6b22bb4f886cf41ea9e853a.jpg

Book #10: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

               It’s pretty astonishing that after four years as an English major and years of reading for pleasure that the only Charles Dickens novel I have read is A Christmas Carol. Somehow, Dickens never made it onto the required reading lists and was always something that I told myself I would “get to later.” Lucky for me, this reading challenge has a lot of Dickens. Now that we are on to episode two and Rory’s first day at Chilton, we are also introduced to an abundance of high quality literature. In a short exchange between one of Rory’s teachers and Paris, several Dickens novels are mentioned and David Copperfield is the first.

            David Copperfield is Dickens’ semi-autobiographical novel about a young boy growing up through poverty and adversity. It was Dickens’ favorite of his novels and many critics consider it the greatest of his novels. As I have not read all of his novels, I cannot say I agree with this. I have to read more to decide this. However, I would not sing the praises of this novel as others have. Personally, I found it long and tedious. I can appreciate this novel from a literary standpoint, but it followed the structure of a biography and therefore the plot was lacking. David was presented with challenge after challenge, villain after villain, but other than the character itself, there was not a common thread. Now, I know in life there is not always a common thread and, well, things just happen as they happen. BUT, when I read a book, I want there to be some semblance of a plot and storyline. The character needs to be going somewhere. Maybe it is because I could not really connect to David Copperfield the character that I felt this way.

            While I admire David’s tenacity and his ability to overcome any challenge he faces, I did not always like him. I found him a little self-centered, especially in how he viewed the women in his life. David is quite the flirt and has several love interests throughout the novel (Emily, Agnes, Dora). I suppose in the span of one’s lifetime that is acceptable because God knows I have flirted with more than three guys in my twenty-four years. But he spends his time bouncing between the three and he views all in a similar manner. David had a childhood crush on Emily and he was more intrigued by her childlike innocence than anything else. At one point, Dickens wrote that it be “better she die innocent and young” in reference to Emily. This bothered me because 1. It came out of the blue so it is a bit creepy, and 2. Why is a woman less appealing when she is aware of the world? This is a common theme with David. Along with Emily, he views his first wife Dora as a child. Dora is a grown woman, but David treats her as if she is breakable and often refers to her as his “child wife.” More so, he encourages Dora to view herself in this way. Agnes, David’s second wife, is a little different. While she does not act like a child in the way Dora does, Agnes is presented as an “angel” and “perfect.” She is good and selfless and…well…boring. Agnes has very minimal character development and it’s frustrating that she is presented as the ideal wife. I also find it irksome that a good woman is presented as boring. You can be good and interesting and exciting at the same time.

            I suppose some of the issues I have with this novel are because it was written in 1850, but that is no excuse for how boring I found it! I’m sorry; I’m getting sassy here. I will give Dickens another chance. Maybe I read this book during the wrong time of year. Reading a long, tedious novel with many depressing story elements is not always the most fun in the middle of winter. Oh well! On to the next one!