Corruption In The Hunchback Of Notre Dame By Victor Hugo

Corruption within the church seemed to be a common occurrence throughout Medieval Europe. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo explored the concept and mixed in some well thought out realities of religious corruption through the character of Archdeacon Claude Frollo. Frollo is a very interesting example presenting the corruption within the Catholic church, though he is also very different from other examples of clergal corruption. Frollo is initially presented as a very well educated perfectionist of a holy man who generously adopted a deformed child that comes to be known as the book’s namesake Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. Later on, Frollo is shown giving in to his lustful temptations, stalking on several occasions the same

Frollo successfully maintained the image of a cleancut clergyman until the night after the Feast of Fools when he first became entranced by Esmeralda's greatly skilled and graceful dancing. He sat there creepily staring at her while she performed and he would be occasionally yelling things such as “There is witchcraft here… Sacrilege! Profanation!” (Hugo 65) Since that first night, Frollo was seen up at the top of Notre-Dame’s belfry watching Esmeralda dance in the square in front of the cathedral. (Hugo 241) Many should most certainly look at this as stalking, but most bystanders just ignore it due to his position in the church. Hugo even goes as far as to compare Frollo to that of a hawk analyzing his prey, just waiting to strike. Then, Frollo could not just leave well enough alone so he decided to kidnap Esmeralda and put her somewhere he only had to see her when he felt he wanted to, which only made him seem more stalkerish than anything else. The reason the kidnap attempt failed was because Captain Phoebus came and saved Esmeralda. If Frollo hadn’t tried to kidnap her, she may have never met Phoebus and may have never gotten a crush on him. No crush equals no rendezvous which equals no Frollo stabbing Phoebus in the throat. Everything bad seems to always come back to one of Frollo’s bad

Hugo reveals the fact that Frollo is fully aware of his feelings and what they mean. In fact, Frollo is trying to rid himself of his lustful feelings towards this gypsy that he is supposed to be frowning upon. The main difference between Frollo and Chaucer’s Pardoner is that the Pardoner embraced his greed for his own self gain whereas Frollo attempts to cleanse himself of his sin only to see his not so wonderful plans to right the wrong he has done drive him into further misfortune. (Chaucer 100, Hugo 324) The man is at least trying to fix things, although attempting to kidnap the girl that started it all may not have been the best decision. When looked back upon, things could have been handled much differently, and Frollo’s attempted kidnapping merely set up his next