Esmeralda Character Analysis

Gringoire was what today we would call a true eclectic, one of those elevated, steady, moderate, calm spirits who manage always to steer a middle course […] and are full of reason and liberal philosophy, while yet making due allowance for cardinals […] They are to be found, quite unchanging, in every age, that is, ever in conformity with the times.

It is comforting, as I say, that today, having lost all the pieces of her armor one by one, her superfluity of torments, her inventive and fantastic punishments, the torture for which, every five years, she remade a leather bed in the Grand-Châtelet, this old suzeraine of feudal society has been almost eliminated from our laws and our towns, has been hunted down from code to code and driven out town-square by town-square, until now, in all the vastness of Paris, she has only one dishonored corner of the Grève and one miserable guillotine, furtive, anxious and ashamed, which always vanishes very swiftly after it has done its work, as if it were afraid of being caught in the act!

Around her, all eyes were fixed and all mouths agape; and as she danced, to the drumming of the tambourine she held above her head in her two pure, round arms, slender, frail, quick as a wasp, with her golden, unpleated bodice, her billowing, brightly-colored dress, her bare shoulders, her slender legs, uncovered now and again by her skirt, her black hair, her fiery eyes, she was indeed a supernatural creature.

[…] it was lit by the harsh red light of the bonfire, which flickered brightly on the encircling faces of the crowd and on the dark forehead of the girl, while at the far end of the square it cast a pale glimmer, mingled with the swaying of the shadows, on the black and wrinkled old facade of the Maison-aux-Piliers on one side and the stone arms of the gallows on the other.

Such voluntary abdication of one’s free will, such a subjection of one’s own fancy to that of some unsuspecting other person, has about it a mixture of whimsical independence and blind obedience, a sort of compromise between servitude and freedom which appealed to Gringoire, whose mind was essentially a mixed one, both complex and indecisive, holding gingerly on to all extremes, constantly suspended between all human propensities.

In this city, the boundaries between races and species seemed to have been abolished, as in a pandemonium. Amongst this population, men, women, animals, age, sex, health, sickness, all seemed communal; everything fitted together, was merged, mingled and superimposed; everyone was part of everything.

He realized there were other things in the world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne and the verses of Homerus, that man has need of affection, that without tenderness and love life was just a harsh and mechanical clockwork, in need of lubrication.

When one does evil one must do the whole evil. To be only half a monster is insanity. There is ecstasy in an extreme of crime.

Gringoire was what today we would call a true eclectic, one of those elevated, steady, moderate, calm spirits who manage always to steer a middle course […] and are full of reason and liberal philosophy, while yet making due allowance for cardinals […] They are to be found, quite unchanging, in every age, that is, ever in conformity with the times.

It is comforting, as I say, that today, having lost all the pieces of her armor one by one, her superfluity of torments, her inventive and fantastic punishments, the torture for which, every five years, she remade a leather bed in the Grand-Châtelet, this old suzeraine of feudal society has been almost eliminated from our laws and our towns, has been hunted down from code to code and driven out town-square by town-square, until now, in all the vastness of Paris, she has only one dishonored corner of the Grève and one miserable guillotine, furtive, anxious and ashamed, which always vanishes very swiftly after it has done its work, as if it were afraid of being caught in the act!

Around her, all eyes were fixed and all mouths agape; and as she danced, to the drumming of the tambourine she held above her head in her two pure, round arms, slender, frail, quick as a wasp, with her golden, unpleated bodice, her billowing, brightly-colored dress, her bare shoulders, her slender legs, uncovered now and again by her skirt, her black hair, her fiery eyes, she was indeed a supernatural creature.

[…] it was lit by the harsh red light of the bonfire, which flickered brightly on the encircling faces of the crowd and on the dark forehead of the girl, while at the far end of the square it cast a pale glimmer, mingled with the swaying of the shadows, on the black and wrinkled old facade of the Maison-aux-Piliers on one side and the stone arms of the gallows on the other.

Such voluntary abdication of one’s free will, such a subjection of one’s own fancy to that of some unsuspecting other person, has about it a mixture of whimsical independence and blind obedience, a sort of compromise between servitude and freedom which appealed to Gringoire, whose mind was essentially a mixed one, both complex and indecisive, holding gingerly on to all extremes, constantly suspended between all human propensities.

In this city, the boundaries between races and species seemed to have been abolished, as in a pandemonium. Amongst this population, men, women, animals, age, sex, health, sickness, all seemed communal; everything fitted together, was merged, mingled and superimposed; everyone was part of everything.

He realized there were other things in the world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne and the verses of Homerus, that man has need of affection, that without tenderness and love life was just a harsh and mechanical clockwork, in need of lubrication.

When one does evil one must do the whole evil. To be only half a monster is insanity. There is ecstasy in an extreme of crime.