Known as the “Chief of French Romanticism,” Victor Hugo made his mark in history as a brilliant writer, passionate lover, and controversial politician. For nearly 20 years, this champion of social justice lived in exile. He believed his contribution to the ideological landscape of his contemporaries was in restoring human rights for the “lackey, the convict, the jester, and the prostitute.”
The democratic ideals of the author of “Les Misérables,” “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,” and “The Man Who Laughs” did not go unnoticed in the heart of European revolutions. France recognized its son as a national hero during his lifetime; he was the only Parisian to spend his old age on a street named after him.
The Birth of a Reformer
The future novelist, poet, playwright, academic, and politician was born on February 26, 1802, in the French city of Besançon. However, due to his father’s military career as a general in Napoleon’s army, he spent much of his childhood away from home. From birth, the youngest of three brothers traveled with his family across cities and countries: the first three years were spent in Marseille, Corsica, and Elba; from the age of five, they lived in Italy; and from nine, in Madrid. These constant travels left vivid impressions on the boy’s soul and shaped his romantic view of the world.
The house where Victor Hugo was born
In this context, there was also his mother’s love affair with General Lahorie, which led the daughter of a Nantes shipowner to leave her husband. After his parents’ divorce, the 14-year-old student of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand moved to the French capital to live with his mother, to whom he dedicated his first unpublished works—tragedies like “Yrtatine,” “Athelie ou les Scandinaves,” the drama “Louis de Castro,” and translations of Virgil. He would also dedicate several of his early works to his father during his lifetime. From a young age, Hugo successfully wrote odes and poems, earning awards in competitions. For his first poetry collection, “Odes and Various Poems,” the 20-year-old lyrical master received a royal pension—a yearly monetary reward from King Louis XVIII.
The master of poetry was destined to become a reformer of French verse: Hugo’s verses flowed more naturally than those of his predecessors. His literary preferences and social views were influenced by his mother, a woman with an atheist stance, a reputation as a free thinker, and royalist-Voltairean beliefs. His early publications (including the satires “Telegraph” and “Ode to the Death of the Duke of Berry”) initially established Victor Hugo’s image as a monarchist. His 1827 play “Cromwell” sparked heated debates as it laid the foundations for romantic drama, rejecting the classical rules of unity of place and time and other conventions of classicism.
Victor Hugo in his youth
Attention to Slaves
Notably, Victor Hugo wrote his first book at the age of 16, not about love, but about struggle. In just two weeks (winning a bet), the young man recounted the rebellion of enslaved Africans on the island of Haiti. Later, the writer would “specialize” in calls for brotherhood and compassion, dedicating his work to the struggles of ordinary people. “In my works, I have always defended the unfortunate and the poor, pleading with the powerful and relentless,” Hugo wrote. He was among the first to empathize with the issues faced by those at the lower rungs of society, becoming a defender of the downtrodden and the despised. Born in an era of imperial glory, the writer witnessed uprisings in the name of liberation. His popularity stemmed not only from his literary endeavors but also from his advocacy for democratic values and his fight for the republic. As a leader of republicanism, he would play a significant role in politics and suffer for his beliefs.
The innovative writer personally experienced the truth of his famous aphorism: “If you have no enemies, you have never stood up for anything.” He first found himself embroiled in controversy during the staging of his play “Hernani,” which ignited battles between proponents of old and new art. His plays “Marion Delorme” and “The King Amuses Himself” were banned from production and removed from repertoires after their premieres (the latter was only revived at the Comédie-Française half a century later). The playwright himself referred to the government’s ban in a letter to the editor of Le National as “an unheard-of act of tyranny.”
In all of Victor Hugo’s dramas, the central conflict revolved around the confrontation between a titled despot and an oppressed commoner. In “Hernani,” this is depicted through the clash between the exile Hernani and the Spanish king Don Carlos. In “Marion Delorme,” the same “technology” describes the duel between the unknown youth Didier and the powerful minister Richelieu. In “The King Amuses Himself,” the antagonists are the powerful and happy King Francis and the fate-wracked hunchback jester Triboulet. “Misfortunes make a man human, while prosperity creates monsters,” the writer noted.
Life is Struggle
At the turn of the 1820s and 1830s, Victor Hugo published the novellas “The Last Day of a Condemned Man” and “Claude Gueux,” expressing his protest against public executions. These early mature works in the genre of fiction reflected the writer’s acute social consciousness and foreshadowed the epic novel “Les Misérables.” The legendary “Notre-Dame de Paris” became the first historical novel in the French language. The story, featuring the hunchback hero Quasimodo and his beloved beautiful beggar Esmeralda, drew attention to what was often overlooked: the lives of those from the social lower classes and the grandeur of antiquity.
And although the author faced caricatures depicting him with the slogan “The ugly is beautiful,” he achieved his goal. It is known that the initial purpose of the novel was to save the main Gothic cathedral of Paris, which the city authorities planned to demolish or modernize. Following Hugo’s popularization of this theme, a movement emerged in France and other European countries advocating for the preservation of historical buildings, architectural monuments, and antiquities. “We are the children of our actions,” Hugo said. “Our deeds can plunge us into the abyss or lift us to the heavens.”
Victor Hugo (1835)
In 1841, the writer was elected to the French Academy, and four years later, he received the title of peer. After the February Revolution of 1848, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly. The founder of the anti-radical newspaper L’Événement demanded universal suffrage, opposed national workshops, defended freedom of the press, and advocated for copyright. In 1851, Hugo personally fought on the barricades and fled to Belgium after the defeat, from where he was exiled to the Channel Islands. In exile, he opposed Napoleon III and contributed to fundraising for Garibaldi. After returning to France in 1870, Victor Hugo was elected to the National Assembly, but he soon left in protest against the peace treaty with Prussia. In 1876, he was elected senator. Over time, he received letters addressed to the shortest address in Paris: “To Victor Hugo on his avenue.”
Under Church Ban
Until 1959, Victor Hugo stood alongside heretics Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno on the list of prohibited literature, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. In 1834, due to the writer’s anti-religious sentiments and the plotline involving the priest Frollo, who was willing to break his vow of celibacy for the sake of a seductive beggar, the Roman Catholic Church placed Hugo’s novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame” on the “Index of Forbidden Books.” Those caught reading, publishing, or distributing the heretical work faced excommunication. The spiritual censors were outraged by lines about “the cries of a prophet who hears the roar of humanity breaking free and foresees the time when reason will shake faith, free thought will dethrone religion, and the world will shake off the yoke of Rome.”
The second novel, “Les Misérables,” found itself on the censorship list in 1864. The republican writer, who participated in the revolution of 1848, defined monarchy as the antithesis of freedom. The Church determined that the writer’s hostility toward absolute power extended to both the king and the Pope, claiming that the novel “Les Misérables” was written by Satan himself. The clergy were particularly incensed by Hugo’s comparison of monastic life to “a drought for civilization.” He likened monastic vows to castration and considered monastic imprisonment “the burial of souls alive.” The writer spoke of “the imprisonment of minds” and “the vow of silence” for the dissenters.
In a sign of the Catholic Church’s renewal, the Second Vatican Council renounced the prohibited list, shifting its focus from outdated dogmas to the realities of the modern world and embarking on a course of modernization of moral and cultural values. Notably, Victor Hugo forced the Church to acknowledge that atheism “often contains a protest against the prevailing evil in the world.” The writer envisioned solutions to problems as follows: “By creating the United States of Europe, we will transform the spirit of conquest into the spirit of discovery. In place of the fierce brotherhood of emperors will come the noble brotherhood of peoples. The future belongs to a homeland without borders, a budget without parasitism, trade without customs, education without intoxication, youth without barracks, justice without the scaffold, the plow without the sword, word without a gag, God without a priest.”
Victor Hugo with political figures of France
C’est la vie
Victor Hugo’s personal life was anything but simple. After his wife, Adèle Foucher, had a five-year affair in 1832 with his friend, literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve, Hugo himself entered into a relationship with actress Juliette Drouet. Eventually, all three lived on the island of Guernsey, where the wife and mistress became close friends.
Victor Hugo and Adèle Foucher
In his marriage to Adèle, Victor Hugo had five children, four of whom he outlived: his son Léopold died in childhood, his 19-year-old daughter Léopoldine drowned with her husband and family members during a river outing on a yacht, his 44-year-old son Charles died of a stroke, and his son-writer François-Victor passed away from tuberculosis at the age of 45. The fate of his youngest daughter, Adèle, was equally tragic: a talented pianist and beautiful woman, she went mad due to unrequited love for an English officer. Her life ended in an asylum, where, after the death of an 85-year-old patient, doctors found a pile of undelivered letters to her beloved lieutenant Albert. The story of this tragic love was adapted into a film by director François Truffaut titled “The Story of Adèle H.” The name of Victor Hugo’s unfortunate daughter was immortalized by psychiatrists, as the condition of love madness was named “Adèle’s syndrome.”
Few know that Victor Hugo was also a unique artist and graphic designer who illustrated his own works. He loved to accompany his writings with either satirical caricatures or gloomy landscapes. It is known that the writer created nearly 4,000 drawings featuring fantastic fortresses, turbulent waves of nature, and more. Hugo’s artistic talent was inherited by his descendants—his grandson Georges (son of Charles Hugo), great-grandson Jean, and great-great-granddaughter Marie (daughter of Jean).
The funeral of Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo passed away on May 22, 1885, at the age of 83. The writer had previously refused a funeral service, bequeathing 50,000 francs to the poor and requesting to be taken to the cemetery in a pauper’s hearse. However, the authorities could not fulfill the last wish of the celebrated Frenchman: nearly a million people wished to pay their respects, and the funeral ceremony had to be extended over ten days. For a day, the coffin with the beloved writer’s body stood under the Arc de Triomphe, draped in mourning colors. After a grand national farewell, the writer’s remains were laid to rest in the Panthéon.