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courtneydoss 's review for:
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
by Victor Hugo
From what I've read, Victor Hugo had quite a time writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
First, he made an agreement with his publisher to write the book within a certain deadline -- which he missed due to neglecting the work for other projects. Eventually, the publisher told him to get his act together or face financial consequences. From that point, Victor Hugo worked day and night trying to finish this novel.
While his face was buried in his manuscripts, though, his wife went off and got with his friend. I'm not sure if Hugo noticed while he was writing or not, but regardless that has got to be one hell of a time.
In my quest to learn more about him, I also learned that he was also a big ole' cheater himself, and an erotomaniac which I today learned means someone who is deluded into thinking everyone wants to do them. So, as you can see, I had about as much fun researching this author as I did reading the actual book.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is far from the slightly disturbing Disney movie of my childhood. This book is dark and there is not a single happy moment in the entirety of the novel. Although written in the 1830s, the story is actually set in the 1480s, and if you thought life was tough in the 1800s for people with disabilities, you should see what it was like in the 1400s!
Quasimodo, the titular hunchback, is not very significant to the story for the vast majority of it. Instead, the story follows a teenage girl named La Esmeralda and the religious pervert Claude Frollo. Seeing La Esmeralda dance in the streets, Frollo is obsessed with her in the sexually repressed way of a priest and hates and lusts for her in equal measure. In walks classic playboy and overall jackass Phoebus, with whom the silly little girl protagonist immediately falls in love, and there we have the set up for a truly depressing outcome.
Contrary to the powerful woman that the Disney cartoon depicts her to be, La Esmeralda is just a little girl. Sixteen years old, inexperienced, and full of compassion, she easily falls for the handsomeness of a man who doesn't deserve her and allows herself to be carried off down a river of bullshit because of her naivete and inability to speak out.
Quasimodo, too, is a tragic figure. Being disabled as he is, people view him as so ugly and unworthy of common decency that even when he shows himself to be the only person willing to do something kind for La Esmeralda, she can't even bear to look at him most of the time. He's not a saint, by any means, but for him to fall in love with someone who is in her heart kind but who is unable to show him the same love and respect that he gives her is really sad.
One thing about this book that makes it really difficult to get through is that Hugo spends an incredible amount of time simply describing the architecture. Like, thirty plus pages the first time around and I don't even know how long the next few times. I spent the entire time annoyed because I assumed, like most people probably would, that he was getting paid by the page and so wanted to pad it with whatever he could.
While that might be true, apparently the architecture of Paris was the whole point of even writing this book. Hugo's point was that the architecture of Paris, as old as it was, had born witness to countless stories and lifetimes, and that it deserved to be preserved. Knowing that, I can accept the extreme amount of architectural description much better than I would had I not known this. However, be forewarned that you may want to skip certain chapters entirely if descriptions of Paris don't interest you.
First, he made an agreement with his publisher to write the book within a certain deadline -- which he missed due to neglecting the work for other projects. Eventually, the publisher told him to get his act together or face financial consequences. From that point, Victor Hugo worked day and night trying to finish this novel.
While his face was buried in his manuscripts, though, his wife went off and got with his friend. I'm not sure if Hugo noticed while he was writing or not, but regardless that has got to be one hell of a time.
In my quest to learn more about him, I also learned that he was also a big ole' cheater himself, and an erotomaniac which I today learned means someone who is deluded into thinking everyone wants to do them. So, as you can see, I had about as much fun researching this author as I did reading the actual book.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is far from the slightly disturbing Disney movie of my childhood. This book is dark and there is not a single happy moment in the entirety of the novel. Although written in the 1830s, the story is actually set in the 1480s, and if you thought life was tough in the 1800s for people with disabilities, you should see what it was like in the 1400s!
Quasimodo, the titular hunchback, is not very significant to the story for the vast majority of it. Instead, the story follows a teenage girl named La Esmeralda and the religious pervert Claude Frollo. Seeing La Esmeralda dance in the streets, Frollo is obsessed with her in the sexually repressed way of a priest and hates and lusts for her in equal measure. In walks classic playboy and overall jackass Phoebus, with whom the silly little girl protagonist immediately falls in love, and there we have the set up for a truly depressing outcome.
Contrary to the powerful woman that the Disney cartoon depicts her to be, La Esmeralda is just a little girl. Sixteen years old, inexperienced, and full of compassion, she easily falls for the handsomeness of a man who doesn't deserve her and allows herself to be carried off down a river of bullshit because of her naivete and inability to speak out.
Quasimodo, too, is a tragic figure. Being disabled as he is, people view him as so ugly and unworthy of common decency that even when he shows himself to be the only person willing to do something kind for La Esmeralda, she can't even bear to look at him most of the time. He's not a saint, by any means, but for him to fall in love with someone who is in her heart kind but who is unable to show him the same love and respect that he gives her is really sad.
One thing about this book that makes it really difficult to get through is that Hugo spends an incredible amount of time simply describing the architecture. Like, thirty plus pages the first time around and I don't even know how long the next few times. I spent the entire time annoyed because I assumed, like most people probably would, that he was getting paid by the page and so wanted to pad it with whatever he could.
While that might be true, apparently the architecture of Paris was the whole point of even writing this book. Hugo's point was that the architecture of Paris, as old as it was, had born witness to countless stories and lifetimes, and that it deserved to be preserved. Knowing that, I can accept the extreme amount of architectural description much better than I would had I not known this. However, be forewarned that you may want to skip certain chapters entirely if descriptions of Paris don't interest you.