The Hunchback of Notre Dame

If you want proof of how distorted Disney movies are in comparison with their source materials, look no further than The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It should not come as a shock that Hugo, the man who brought us the criminal and whore-filled cast of Les Miserables, crafted a much grittier medieval Paris than the whimsical VHS version.

For starters, you're probably calling to mind this image of Quasimodo. So wholesome. So self-actualized despite his crippling deformities and hermit lifestyle. After all, he's got those sassy gargoyle friends, and a bedroom view other Parisians would kill for. Life's not so bad!

This is probably the biggest liberty Disney took, and for good reason: literary Quasi is kind of a fuck. Consistently described as angry, distrustful, and apt to use his brute strength on anyone who gets in his way, he's hardly the gentle mutant of 1996 imaginations. Given his inauspicious start, there is at least reason for the rage; Hugo explains that the 4-year-old Quasimodo was wrapped in a sack and deposited on a public offeratory bench where unwanted babies could be claimed by anyone who wished to take them. (What? This was a thing?) Unfortunately for Quasi, the repulsed observers were pretty sure he was (literally) the spawn of Satan, and were edging towards a mercy killing before a priest intervened. Honestly, things probably would've gone better for everyone if he hadn't, but that wouldn't be much of a book.

The priest in question is Claude Frollo, a somber scholar who entered the clergy to devote more time to his twin passions, reading and theology, and to avoid marriage-centric secular life, which he views with disdain and indifference because he's never had any sexual impulses. Yeah... that'll last.

So Frollo takes pity on the baby-bench reject and decides to raise Quasi as his own, and the child becomes the bell ringer of Notre Dame. Too grotesque to mingle much in public, Quasi forms a deep connection with his bells, to which he has assigned names and personalities. The downside: their continuous cacophony soon renders him completely deaf. And he only has one (bad) eye, so he's also nearly blind. And there are no talking gargoyles. I'm starting to get depressed.

Meanwhile, outside the cloister, some other characters are milling about. There's Esmeralda, the sexy teenage gypsy who earns money by dancing and performing tricks with her pet goat in the square outside the cathedral, and Gringoire, a penniless poet who soon falls in with her crew. There's also Phoebus, an army captain who enjoys sleeping with any girl who will stay still long enough. Over the course of the book, every major male character attempts to get into Esmeralda's pants. Surprise! It doesn't end well.

Bachleor #1: Gringoire. After Esmeralda intervenes to stop him from being murdered at the hands of a vagabond mob, the head gypsy in charge decides he'll spare Gringoire if Esmeralda marries him. She consents, on the condition that the marriage be platonic. Gringoire briefly mourns the irony of being blue-balled by the hottest exotic dancer this side of the Seine, but decides it's better than being hanged.

Bachelor #2: Phoebus. He's young, he's hot, and he's a high-ranking officer. He's also betrothed to some socialite, but that's inconsequential. Of all her suitors, Phoebus is Esmeralda's top pick. Granted, she doesn't fully realize what a womanizing dick he is, even after a disturbingly rapey scene where he very nearly succeeds in deflowering her against her will. What a catch.

Bachelor #3: Frollo. This dude wins the creeper award on like six different levels. He's a priest, first of all, and has never known the charms of a woman until he sees Esmeralda dance. A cumulative lust of 30-odd years is suddenly awakened, and Frollo finally decides to take her by force - but, his unsuccessful attempts to murder Phoebus and rape Esmeralda only fuel his sexual agony and sense of damnation. A holy man who suddenly believes himself beyond salvation is capable of anything, and Frollo becomes the most dangerous character of all.

Bachelor #4: Quasimodo. Let's face it - Quasi never had a snowball's chance in hell when it came to winning Esmeralda's affections. Like Frollo, he falls for the gypsy after watching her perform in the square outside the cathedral, but his subsequent actions prove him the opposite of his troubled master. When Esmeralda is arrested, Quasi dramatically rescues her and offers sanctuary in his own bedchamber. She's horrified by her unseemly hero, but Quasi never tries anything funny - in fact, he gives her a rape whistle to use if she is in distress, and sleeps outside her door like a protective, loyal dog. Whereas Frollo is blinded by lust, Quasimodo seems able to put Esmeralda ahead of himself: when he learns that she is pining for Phoebus, he even goes on an all-night stakeout to try to intercept the Captain and bring him to her. Now that's selflessness.

You may have guessed that unlike the Disney version, Hugo's tale doesn't have a happy ending. Esmeralda is eventually hanged for witchcraft at Frollo's behest, and in a fit of despair Quasimodo throws Frollo to his death from the tower of Notre Dame. Quasi dies, too of starvation: his warped skeleton is found in a mass grave, clutching the remains of Esmeralda.

To me, the most compelling thing about Hugo's novel was its tangled treatment of lust and love. We expect this conflict when contemplating the male characters: Phoebus and Frollo think only with their dicks, to ill effect; Gringoire hopes briefly for some action, but is harmless when he doesn't get it; and Quasi knows enough about the world to understand that any intimacy is out of the question for him, and turns his attraction into servile devotion. In this five-way love pentagon, Esmeralda is the real wild card.

It's interesting, first of all, that Hugo doesn't paint Esmeralda as more of a seductress. Perceptions of gypsy culture at the time he was writing would certainly have lent credence to her portrayal as a mystical slut. To style her as a wide-eyed virgin who defends her modesty in the presence of lusty men is to give her the same treatment as a standard heroine. I wonder if Hugo chose to depict Esmeralda this way because she is not, in fact, a "real" gypsy: we are told that she was a native Parisian stolen by gypsies and raised among them. Perhaps Hugo is making a point about incorruptibility: that propriety is an inherent trait of civilized (read: white) women, and can't even be undone through years of fraternization with more wanton ethnic groups.

In fact, I have a problem with Esmeralda's sexuality as a motif in Hunchback, overall. One of the ongoing plot threads in the book is Esmeralda's search for her birth mother; it has been foretold they will reunite someday, but only if her purity remains intact. This is one of those classic "lol wut?" 19th-century tropes. Why does virginity or lack thereof make it any more or less likely that a girl would find her long-lost mother? A woman's chastity is often her greatest power in Victorian novels, and I can never get over how lame a secret weapon that is.

Since sex is supposedly out of the picture, we're supposed to expect that Esmeralda's choices in men are based on something much more pure: true love. Nothing could be further from the truth, though, as her heart is set on jocky assclown Phoebus. Of the four men who are interested in her, he presents the least likely case for love. Gringoire and Quasimodo have actual reasons for loving her as a person rather than a piece of ass, since she effectively saved both of them from death (delivering Gringoire from the mercy of the lynch mob, and bringing water to Quasi when he was on the verge of fatal dehydration in the stocks). Even Frollo has a better case; he is willing to give up a heretofore vow of celibacy and prayer and abandon his vocation just to be with her - a rash sacrifice that no other woman has ever tempted him to make. Phoebus, by comparison, can get play anywhere he wants it, and Esmeralda is merely a more exotic conquest than usual.

The message Hugo seems most intent to deliver by the end of Hunchback is that people are rarely stereotypes. Quasimodo is the most sympathetic character, even alongside the innocent Esmeralda -- he may even be more sympathetic, in fact, because we know him to overcome a life of solitude, abuse, physical handicaps, and lovelessness. Frollo illustrates the point that even people who dedicate their lives to education and prayer can fall victim to baser human instincts, and the contrast between Captain Phoebus and the poet-cum-thief Gringoire proves that chivalry and goodness of character has nothing to do with one's social standing.

And as for Esmeralda, well, I'm not sure. Perhaps we're just supposed to be relieved that at the end of a long story driven by the caprices of men, Esmeralda has succeeded in her sole duty of safeguarding her purity. In this narrative arc set against the backdrop of the most famous Catholic church in history, the heathen gypsy girl is in fact the only character qualified for heavenly salvation after her death - everyone else is a murderer, thief, philanderer, or blasphemer. Sweet irony... now there's something Disney never delivers.

Sense and Sensibility

I really want to love Jane Austen. I do. Perhaps not with the fervor of uber-dedicated "Janeites," if only because I'm summarily opposed to fangirl behavior of any kind. And it's not excusable just because you're in the realm of "fine literature." I don't care if it's Fitzwilliam Darcy or Edward Cullen that makes your heart race, ladies; raving obsession just doesn't become you. (With that said, though, I think we can all take a minute to queue up Colin Firth's pond-diving scene from the Pride & Prej BBC miniseries. Brooding never looked so good.)

If nothing else, the Austen oeuvre is not a lot to get through. The sum total of her life's work is a very manageable six books, so it would be sort of shameful to aspire to the ranks of the literati without having plodded through them. And yet.

It just seems to take such... effort.

Including the novel I just finished today, I've read a grand total of two Austen books. I made my way through Pride and Prejudice in eighth grade, and although I frequently quote (and/or mock) the more famous lines (I don't know about you, but I can name several single men in possession of a good fortune who are ~not in want of a wife), I'm pretty sure I don't remember many of the details. Now, with Sense and Sensibility likewise under my belt, I may have discovered the reason why: Austen's characters, at least by 21st-century standards, are hopelessly unrelatable.

Like P&P, Sense and Sensibility derives its title from the defining characteristics of two main characters: sisters Elinor (the sense) and Marianne (the sensibility). Elinor, with all the considerable sagacity of her 18 or so years of life, has the unenviable task of keeping her mother and sisters from floating away in a sea of their own hysteria. Everything she does and says is governed by logic, propriety, and politeness, right down to her choice of beau: the dignified, if somewhat lackluster, Edward Ferrars.

Predictably, Marianne presents a constant foil: whereas Elinor is calm and collected, her sister is impetuous and passionate. In Marianne's mind every event is either infused with the wildest joy or steeped in the deepest despair - and for the most part, it is her would-be lover Willoughby who supplies fuel for both. (Needless to say, neither sister fully supports the other's choice in man candy. Elinor thinks Willoughby flakey and insubstantial, and Edward's reserve is too off-putting to spunky Marianne.)

There's also a third sister, Margaret, who is apparently too lame to attract a man or merit virtually any mention after page 5. And since Elinor and Marianne spend 90% of their time dealing with boy drama and the remaining 10% reading, dickin' around on the pianoforte, and pwning each other in games of whist, it's difficult to imagine where such pitiable normalcy leaves Margaret. I like to imagine that while the elder girls are scheming and swooning around the English countryside, Margaret is holed up in a room somewhere developing advanced mathematical theorems before sneaking out at night to assemble clandestine meetings of Britain's first powderpuff football league, "The Genteel Juggernauts." But probably not.

Anyway, I wanted to expand on why Elinor and Marianne drive me batshit crazy. I'll start by saying that as a storytelling device, I get it. Contrasting people on two ends of a personality spectrum is an obvious way to plumb the depths of human experience and examine how different our worldviews can be. The problem isn't that the sisters are opposites in a lot of ways - it's just that in real life, nobody cares.

My friend Diane and I have terms for the two main types of girls we can't stand: overenthusiastic "woo girls" (you've heard the sound, I promise. Think Girls Gone Wild. "I'm essentially blackmailing myself against any credible future employment! WOOOOO!"), and insufferably mild-tempered "basic bitches." A basic bitch is the girl you knew in high school who married her first boyfriend and now fills your Facebook newsfeed with nothing but ruminations on the bliss of a low-key life in a podunk hometown. A woo girl wants desperately to be interesting, but gets lost in a crowd of nondescript, boozy skanks. A basic bitch doesn't even know what interesting is.

It would do Elinor and Marianne a disservice to lump them into these categories without considering a few of their merits - both sisters are, at least, eloquent, well-read, compassionate, and moderately accomplished in a hobby (Marianne plays piano and Elinor draws). And to be fair, they're middle-class women coming of age in the early 1800s. It's not like they have a plethora of options. If these suitors fall through, they're back to darning socks with Margaret. Shit is bleak.

But... I'm gonna go ahead and judge. Elinor, with her nonchalant affection towards a generically boring dude, is committing a crime worse than settling down too early: she's just settling. And when said boring dude inexplicably jumps ship and she learns he's been secretly engaged to the Austen universe's equivalent of Regina George, Elinor shrugs and takes it all in stride. "No use crying over a spilled fiance" seems to be her motto, and I just don't find it plausible. Her stoicism comes in handy when a similar fate befalls woo-girl Marianne, who suffers the indignity of discovering that the rascally Willoughby has not only toyed with her affections, but is also the baby-daddy in some hushed-up pastoral scandal. Weeks of hysterical despair turn into months of grief, and Marianne threatens to waste away on more than one occasion, tended primarily by her steadfast sister.

Elinor, at least, deserves commendation for her accurate douche radar. She secretly predicts that Willoughby will pull a dick move long before it happens, even while Marianne and the girls' mother are busy fawning over him. Elinor mounts a small-scale investigation into the character of the man who would be her brother-in-law, sniffing out the intelligence afforded by mutual friends. She finds nothing to confirm her suspicions, at first, and is invariably described as "pleased" at the lack of dirt. This was the point, in my reading, when I first had to call bullshit. People just don't think like that. There's no doubt that Elinor loves her sister and wants the best for her, but if anything, her failure to dig up scuttlebutt on Willoughby should be met with grudging acceptance. People like to trust their hunches, especially when they're negative; there's a thirst to prove yourself right, even if it'll mean raining on someone else's parade. In a way, it would be more satisfying for Elinor to show her love by dissuading Marianne from making a bad match, than it would be to accept a flawed suitor into their family just because everybody else thinks he's awesome.

The jig is up when Willoughby's wanton ways are revealed, and everyone gets to join in the badmouthing. Again, though, Elinor misses even the smallest opportunities to gloat. There is, of course, no need to rub it in when your sister's in pain, but given that the book is written in omniscient third-person, it would be easy enough for Austen to throw in a line or two about any secret "I told you so" thoughts that may be dancing through Elinor's mind. Their complete absence, as well as Elinor's resolute determination not to augment Marianne's distress by mentioning her own problems with Edward, smacks of too much saintly restraint. Show me a mild, selfless teenager and I'll show you a lobotomy patient.

The finale of Sense and Sensibility avoids complete triteness only because (spoiler alert) Willoughby doesn't come back. Or at least, he doesn't come back after the tell-all conversation with Elinor, wherein he moves himself practically to tears over how much of an assclown he was to his laundry list of hos and sighingly resigns himself to a marital future that will forever be compared to the theoretical happiness of life with Marianne. (Even this strikes me as false. Does everyone have to be redeemed? Can't a villain remain a villain? Sometimes I worry that Austen wants us to love everyone, and takes too many pains to show that the bad guys are really good guys, underneath - although it does provide some satisfaction to see Willoughby reaping what he's sown.) Elinor, presumably as a reward for having the emotional range of a hamster, lures Edward back against all odds and enters into a blissfull covenant of what is probably very boring married sex.

But wait! Marianne gets a lovely consolation prize in the form of Colonel Brandon, a middle aged friend of the family who never had a chance while the dashing Willoughby was around, and who, in fact, has an adopted daughter Marianne's age, which makes the whole attraction more than a little pervy. As an honorable, even-tempered man who bumbles around in the background of the entire book, the Colonel is clearly primed for some sort of triumph, and it might as well be the newly single Marianne (though Lord knows that Margaret is still hanging around in the library or something, so even if the "hot" sister doesn't want him there's still another underage girl to marry off). Colonel Brandon is a genuinely warmhearted character, though, and it's considerate of Austen to at least leave us with a cliche we can stomach: nice guys don't always finish last.