How The Hunchback of Notre-Dame drew on Esther
A documented line of influence: Victor Hugo demonstrably engaged Unknown’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Esther
Unknown · c. 400 BCE
BibleThe influenced
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
Victor Hugo · 1831
RomanticismRelevance
5/10
On The Hunchback of Notre-Dame’s page
- Hugo built this novel as a sly retelling of the Book of Esther — the assonance of Esther/Esmeralda is the tell
- Both heroines carry two names and two identities; Hugo borrows Esther's court-and-outsider structure to lampoon monarchy and Church the way the original lampooned a Persian king's vanity
- Read Esther first and the Festival of Fools reads as Ahasuerus's feast, the spectacle of beauty as the queen-search
On Esther’s page
- The court-and-outsider structure Hugo would borrow nineteen centuries later
- Joseph Prouser reads The Hunchback of Notre-Dame as a deliberate "midrash on Esther" — Hugo recasts Ahasuerus's feast as the Festival of Fools and the queen-search as its contests
- Even the names rhyme: Esther becomes Esmeralda, both heroines bearing dual identities, both moving from outside into a court they expose