You Can Never Hide What You've Done From The Eyes Of Notre-Dame

I admit, I have a certain love of the classics, probably because I was homeschooled and as such, discovered them on my own rather than having to read them for a class and The Hunchback Of Notre-Dame is my first foray into Victor Hugo.

Characters: Pierre Gringoire, Captain Phoebus, Quasimodo, Esmerelda, and the Frollo brothers, Jehan and Archdeacon Claude.

Premise: Lust, obsession, and jealousy lead to murder and tragedy in Notre-Dame. 

From the title, you would think Quasimodo the hunchback is at the center of the novel, but is actually Esmeralda, the Romany woman who is the main focus.  The original title of the novel is Notre-Dame De Paris 1482 (Our Lady Of Paris 1482) which is a better telling of the tale, and as stated, our main focal is Esmeralda, who is a Romany woman (the novel uses the word "gypsy", however this has fallen out of favor as it is a racial slur and as such I'll be using the word "Romany") who makes her living performing in the streets with her pet goat Djali who could do tricks such as dancing and telling time as she searches for her mother and catches the attention of Pierre Gringoire, Captain Phoebus, Quasimodo, and an archdeacon, Claude Frollo.

Let me tell you right now, this is not the Disney movie.  Phoebus isn't a good guy and Claude doesn't start out as a villain.  In fact, he is revealed to have raised his younger brother Jehan who grew up to be a reprobate and a no-account and he actually adopted Quasimodo and cared for him because he had compassion for him.  However, he becomes obsessed with Esmeralda despite his church standing and it's this lust and obsession that leads to his ultimate downfall.

Pierre Gringoire is a playwright and in the prologue, I felt for him.  Dude's putting on a play for the Festival of Fools and he doesn't even get past the prologue because it keeps getting interrupted.  Dude just wants the play to get off the ground.  Is that really so much to ask? 🤣 He then ends up "married" to Esmeralda when she keeps him from being killed in the Court Of Miracles.  Not that he's that great of a husband.  He goes off to do his own thing after she refused to touch him (she did not fancy him and had no intentions of consummating the "marriage") and honestly, I didn't really care about him and I honestly wouldn't have minded if he died, though he was definitely better than Phoebus.

Captain Phoebus.  What can we say about him? Ladies' man.  That's the sense that I got from him.  He was engaged to one woman and flirted with Esmeralda who ended up hopelessly in love with him, which is how she eventually dies while he goes on to get married. (I hope his wife was a big old shrew and he ended up henpecked, the jerk).

I honestly felt for Esmeralda.   She faces prejudice for her ethnicity----a woman who has been locked up for years hurls racial epitaphs at her---and she's a woman in the thirteenth century, which means that she doesn't really have a lot of options.  And then she later discovers that the woman who has spoken to/about her so hatefully is actually her mother.

 I haven't forgotten Quasimodo.  The bellringer of Notre-Dame.  Unlike the Disney movie, he's deaf and only has one eye.  The deafness happens because he broke his eardrum.  Like the rest of the men in the book, he falls for Esmeralda and he tries valiantly to save her and it almost works.  Alas, it's not meant to be and he dies of a broken heart.

The best way to describe this book is half-story, half rant/lecture about architecture and history as Hugo often added chapters and pages about the buildings and the yester-years of Paris, which I found a bit boring and my mind wandered during those parts.  Like, my dude, nobody cares!  I am glad I read the story as I enjoyed it and I'd give it a 5.