Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo

Chapter Four. Character as Template

70 Chapter Four Character as Template Group 1: The Symbolic Type From Phoebus in Notre-Dame de Paris, to M. Myriel in Les Misérables, to Ebenezer and Déruchette in Les Travailleurs de la mer, to Dea in L’Homme qui rit, to Michelle Fléchard in Quatrevingt-treize, the characters in the first grouping of the Hugolian type are all continuously and consistently figured on the narrative level through a central composing element that radiates from them: Phoebus embodies bourgeois mediocrity, Myriel saintly goodness, Ebenezer decency, Déruchette innocence , Dea purity, and Michelle Fléchard maternal sacrifice and devotion. Defined principally by this one dominant trait, characters such as these, as E. M. Forster famously advanced, can be labeled “flat” characters because they are “constructed round a single idea or quality [. . .] easily recognized whenever they come in” (Aspects of the Novel 67–68). Such characters, as Forster specifies, are “easily remembered by the reader afterwards . They remain in his mind as unalterable for the reason that they were not changed by circumstances” (69).1 The homo duplex central to Hugo’s vision of type is tipped largely to one pole in favor of either the sublime or the grotesque, as characters belonging to this group present a condensed and amplified version of one side or the other. This is achieved both through the elevation of their principal trait above all others (as revealed through the characters’ histories and trajectories) and the characters ’ complete transparency (which is often reinforced by narrative insistence upon their clarity and by a certain amount of narrative “guidance” as to the correct way to interpret them). Conceived chiefly as an abstraction, this character fulfills above all else in Hugo’s novels a symbolic function, often reinforced 71 Character as Template by the character’s correspondingly symbolic name. For not only does the nom propre create a “référence prospective, d’horizon d’attente pour ‘prévoir’ le personnage [. . .] renvoyant à tel ou tel contenu moral, esthétique, caractériel, idéologique” (Hamon, “Pour un statut sémiologique du personnage ” 149), it also, as Roland Barthes asserts, must be “interrogé soigneusement, car le nom propre est, si l’on peut dire, le prince des signifiants; ses connotations sont riches, sociales et symboliques” (“Analyse textuelle” 34). Indeed, each onomastic selection (called “l’impératif catégorique du personnage ” by Léo Spitzer [Etudes de style 19]) must always be carefully examined in reference to its overt or covert motivation . In Hugo’s case, and for this first group of characters in particular, this motivation can be often understood in terms of a general symbolism that serves to highlight the defining trait (positive or negative) that is underscored.2 At the summit of the high end of characters who belong to this first category is the saintly Bishop Myriel from Les Misérables, whose (hi)story opens the novel. From his decision to change his residence from the Episcopal palace to the adjoining hospital so as to give more space to the sick, to his austere management of his finances to maximize contributions to those in need, to his visits to a group of mountain bandits and a dying conventionnel, everything that the reader learns about Myriel prior to Jean Valjean’s arrival in Digne is designed to reinforce his goodness and prefigure its continuation in his intersection with Valjean.3 This goodness is figured both indirectly through the actions that are recounted and directly through the complete transparency with which he is described, primarily from the inside out: “ce qui éclairait cet homme, c’était le cœur” (11: 90–91). This functioning of this type of transparency is explored by Jouve, who distinguishes between fictional characters who are “retenus” (“qui nous apparaissent [. . .] ‘de l’extérieur,’ comme dans la réalité”) and those who, as the characters belonging to this first category, are transparent or “livrés,” to whom the reader has complete access (L’Effet-Personnage dans le roman 176–77). This access, which focuses the reader’s attention on a character’s internal composition or makeup, often purposefully shrouds or neglects a character’s external characteristics. In this way, for example, 72 Chapter Four the bishop’s physical description and other concretizing details are almost exclusively downplayed by Hugo, as attention is generally drawn to the external aspects of transparent characters only...