The Man Who Laughs (book summary)

The Man Who Laughs

by: Victor Hugo

The action moves to an English sea coast, on the night of January 29, 1690. Hugo sets this date precisely, but nowhere in the narrative does he link it to any specific real-world historical event. A group of men, their identities unknown to us, are urgently loading a ship for departure. A boy, ten years old, is among their company, but the men are anxious to be rid of him. While the boy desperately pleads not to be abandoned, the men leave him behind and cast off.

The desperate boy, barefoot and starving, wanders through a snowstorm and reaches a gibbet, where he finds the corpse of a hanged criminal. The dead man is wearing shoes: utterly worthless to him now, yet precious to this boy. Beneath the gibbet, the boy finds a ragged woman, frozen to death. The boy is about to move onward when he hears a sound within the woman's garments: He discovers an infant girl, barely alive, clutching the woman's breast. Hugo's narrative describes a single drop of frozen milk, resembling a pearl, suspended from the dead woman's nipple.

Although the boy's survival seems unlikely, he now takes possession of the infant in an attempt to keep her alive. The girl's eyes are sightless and clouded, and he understands that she is blind. In the snowstorm, he encounters an isolated caravan, the domicile of Ursus.

The action shifts forward 15 years, to England during the reign of Queen Anne. We meet the Duchess Josiana, a spoiled and jaded peeress who is bored by the dull routine of court. A courtier tells the duchess that the only cure for her boredom is “Gwynplaine”, although he does not divulge who or what this Gwynplaine might be.

Now we are reunited with the wanderers. Ursus is 15 years older now. Surprisingly, the wolf Homo is still alive too, although the narration admits that his fur is greyer. Gwynplaine is the abandoned boy, now 25 years old and matured to well-figured manhood. In a flashback, we witness the first encounter between Ursus and Gwynplaine. The boy is clutching a nearly-dead infant, and therefore Ursus is outraged that the boy appears to be laughing. When the boy insists that he is not laughing, Ursus takes another look, and is horrified. The boy's face has been mutilated into a clown's mask, his mouth carved into a perpetual grin. The boy tells Ursus that his name is Gwynplaine; this is the only name he has ever known.

The foundling girl has grown older too. Now sixteen years old, she has been christened Dea (Latin for “goddess”), presumably by Ursus. Dea is blind but beautiful and utterly virtuous. She is also in love with Gwynplaine, as she is able to witness his kindly nature without seeing his hideous face. When Dea attempts to “see” Gwynplaine by passing her sightless fingers across his disfigured countenance, she assumes that he must always be happy because he is perpetually smiling. They fall in love.

Ursus and his two surrogate children earn a bare living in the funfairs and carnivals of southern England. Everywhere they travel, Gwynplaine keeps the lower half of his face concealed. He is now the principal wage-earner of their retinue; in each town they visit, Gwynplaine gives a stage performance; the chief feature of this performance is that the crowds are invariably provoked to laughter when Gwynplaine reveals his grotesque face.

At one point, Ursus and Gwynplaine are readying for their next performance when Ursus directs Gwynplaine's attention to a man who strides purposefully past their fairgrounds, dressed in ceremonial garments and bearing an elaborate wooden staff. Ursus explains that this man is the Wapentake, a servant of the Crown. (“Wapentake” is an Old English word meaning “weapon-touch”.) Whomever the Wapentake touches with his staff has been summoned by the monarch and must go to wherever the Wapentake leads, upon pain of death.

Josiana attends one of Gwynplaine's performances, and is sensually aroused by the combination of his virile grace and his facial deformity. Hugo makes it clear that Josiana's feelings towards Gwynplaine are erotic and sexual. Gwynplaine, too, is aroused by the physical beauty and haughty demeanour of this sensuous woman.

Suddenly, the Wapentake arrives at the caravan and touches Gwynplaine with his staff, compelling the disfigured man to follow him to the court of Queen Anne. Gwynplaine is ushered to a dungeon in London, where a physician named Hardquannone is being tortured to death. Hardquannone recognises the deformed Gwynplaine, and identifies him as the boy whose abduction and disfigurement Hardquannone arranged twenty-three years earlier.

In the year 1682, in the reign of James II, one of the king's enemies was Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone and a baron in the House of Lords. The king arranged the baron's abduction and murder. The baron, already widowed, left a two-year-old son: Fermain, heir to his estates. With the king's approval, Hardquannone gave this helpless boy to a band of wanderers called “the Comprachicos”.

“Comprachicos”: this word is Hugo's invention, make their living by mutilating and disfiguring children, who are then forced to beg for alms, or who are exhibited as carnival freaks.

It becomes clear that, after disfiguring the two- year-old Fermain and renaming him Gwynplaine, the Comprachicos kept him in their possession until they abandoned him eight years later in 1690, on the night when he found Dea. Their ship was lost in the storm at sea, with all hands, but one passenger considerately wrote out a confession and cast this adrift in a sealed flask, which now has belatedly come to the attention of Queen Anne.

Dea is saddened by Gwynplaine's protracted absence. Dea has always been frail, but now she withers away even more.

Gwynplaine is now formally instated as Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone. In a grotesque scene, he is dressed in the elaborate robes and ceremonial wig of investiture, and commanded to take his seat in the House of Lords. But, when the deformed Gwynplaine attempts to address his peers — now his peers in the literal sense — the other lords are provoked to laughter by Gwynplaine's clownish features.

Gwynplaine renounces his peerage and returns to the caravan of Ursus, and to the only family he has ever known. Dea is delighted that Gwynplaine has returned to her. The four friends (including Homo) cast off aboard a vessel to the continent, resolved to abandon England forever. During the voyage, while Ursus slumbers, Dea reveals her passion to Gwynplaine, and then she abruptly dies. When Ursus awakens, Gwynplaine has vanished, and Homo is staring mournfully over the ship's rail, into the open sea, implying that Gwynplaine has drowned himself.

N\A 29/11/2010

Ενότητα: Book Summaries part 1

Πηγή: Wikipedia