The Hunchback and Disney

Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is undoubtedly, due to Disney, one of the books with the most misconceptions surrounding it. A French classic from 1831, Hunchback the novel does deal with many of the same characters from the Disney movie, but in a radically different way. While everything is simple black and white in Disney, Hunchback deals with the characters as they would have lived as people in seventeenth century Paris. From priests to gypsies to the aristocracy and the guild of thieves, the characters of Paris are presented as realistic people with flaws, secrets, desires and idiosyncrasies. Esmeralda, Claude Frollo and Phoebus are all given pasts, and while there is a cruel judge, it is not Claude Frollo. Claude is rather the strange alchemist priest who goes through journey of self discovery that covers theology, science and love.

It is not only the characters who do not fit with the Disney idea of Hunchback either. The novel deals extensively with seventeenth century Paris, to the extent that the central “story” is marginalised in sections. At times this can become trying with extensive descriptions of Parisian buildings designed for those that lived there, not those that come hundreds of years after. However in this way Hunchback is reminiscent of classic music, it has layers and is best when it is enjoyed in sections and for its atmosphere, style and subtlety rather than its electric guitar riffs. While there is nothing wrong with the later, there is also nothing wrong with the former if you give it the time it needs.

However, not the entire book is academic analysis, and the chapters that are can be skipped without much harm being done to the story that it contains. The story is definitely worth time though as it builds masterfully through all the characters and the situations they are put in. Like a train as a reader you watch the different tracks take them in certain directions until a confrontation is essential, and when it comes it is masterfully played out. A great dramatist Victor Hugo certainly is.

Rosalind for dotdotdash.

Image by spjwebster (http://www.flickr.com/photos/spjwebster/)