The 19the century is not a period totally hostile to sexual representations. If the advent of romanticism was able to favor the representation of chaste loves and promote modesty in the representations of eroticism, many authors addressed the sexuality of their characters head-on. We can cite Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly or Honoré de Balzac, for whom extramarital adventures multiply and regularly constitute the heart of the plot.
Although the sexual act itself is not described explicitly, we understand very well that it is taking place and the characters do not hold back from expressing their desire. In a sometimes less trivial manner, romantic authors like George Sand were able to address the question of desire, both masculine and feminine, and make it an important element of relationships between characters.
In the Hugolian novel, abstinence reigns
None of this at Victor Hugo. His novels are generally dominated by male figures who are distinguished by their total absence of sexuality: Quasimodo, Jean Valjean, Javert, Enjolras, Gilliatt, Cimourdain, to name a few. Explicitly designated by the author as totally sexually inactive, like Javert, the “virgin snitch” of the Miserablethese characters sometimes feel and express thwarted desires, but not always; some appear as simply asexual.
They generally devote the energy usually devoted to pursuing love and starting a family to a cause that is bigger than themselves, for better or for worse. The tireless supercop Javert is never distracted by his personal affairs; the revolutionary Enjolras (Les Miserables) devotes herself to her political cause like a mistress; as for Quasimodo (Notre-Dame of Paris), he will be the only one to show pure and selfless love for Esmeralda and to protect her.
There are many characters who escape this epidemic of chastity, but their treatment raises just as many questions. The few representations of desire in Victor Hugo are not really desirable.
If these characters are not unilaterally good, because the sublime in Victor Hugo often coexists with a form of monstrosity, they nonetheless remain deeply idealized and resemble the superman. The absence of sexuality becomes a way of distinguishing characters from ordinary mortals, of highlighting their exceptional character.
A negative representation of desire
What about the others? There are many characters who escape this epidemic of chastity, but their treatment raises just as many questions. The few representations of desire, in Victor Hugo, are not really desirable, between Claude Frollo’s vicious and destructive obsession for Esmeralda in Notre-Dame of Paris and Duchess Josiane who, in The Man Who Laughsseems to bewitch the hero Gwynplaine with his charms and keeps him away from his true beloved Dea.
Sex always seems to be on the side of triviality and perversion, even pure and simple selfishness, in opposition to the self-sacrifice of the virgin heroes mentioned above. He also appears to be destructive for women: we think of Fantine (Les Miserables), plunged into prostitution and tormented by bourgeois who use her for their desire until causing her downfall and, ultimately, her death. Positive erotic representations are rare in Victor Hugo’s novels; the latter almost seems to feel frightened by the sexual question.
We could find exceptions in the young couples who punctuate his romantic universe: Marius and Cosette (Les Miserables), Gwynplaine and Dea (The Man Who Laughs), Ordener and Ethel (Han of Iceland)… But the sexuality of these characters is very discreet and implied, it is very similar to that found in courtly literature of the Middle Ages. In other words, young girls are praised for their virginal qualities and young boys must control their desire and go through a series of ordeals which will ultimately allow them to unite with their beloved, in a representation that is always very prudish and whose intimate details will remain hidden. Frank and truly positive eroticism is decidedly missing.
Was Victor Hugo afraid of talking about sex?
How can we explain this shyness, in an author whose eventful private life is nevertheless well known, to the point that he was in his time the subject of a sexual scandal? Hard to say.
Some literature researchers have attempted to find an explanation for this discrepancy. For some, Victor Hugo valued a quality in his characters, chastity, which seemed all the more admirable to him as he felt incapable of forcing himself to this state. For others, he writes these blank figures with nostalgia for his youthful years, during which he too was perfectly chaste and devoted to study.
It is probably impossible to settle on a definitive explanation, since the author has never, in his own name, expressed himself on the question. There is no doubt that the asexuality of its characters is as much linked to personal elements as to an external cultural context, in a 19the century torn between liberation of discourse on sexuality, political upheavals and the importance of religious culture, and which saw the foundations of our modern sexuality emerging, in novels as well as in medical treatises.
