“The finest girl in France” : The figure of Esmeralda, from Victor Hugo to the Disney studios
Everyone knows Esmeralda, the exotic “Gypsy” heroine born under the pen of the French literary giant Victor Hugo and popularized by the Disney studios in 1996 with their Hunchback of Notre Dame. Across time, there has been a tremendous amount of adaptations of Hugo’s classic in film, television, theater and even video games. Adding to this list, Disney has announced earlier this year the production of a live action remake of their 1996’s animated film. But the potential casting of a non-Romani actress for the role of Esmeralda has already prompted heated debates on social media. As a French woman of Romani descent, whose childhood has inevitably been marked by the reading of Hugo’s novel in school, I’m honestly quite anxious to see a new film adaptation of Notre-Dame hit the big screen. But I will argue that the casting of Esmeralda should be the least of our concern and that it is the profoundly racist and sexist narrative present in the book, as well as in most of its adaptations, that needs to be critically examined.
There has been theater adaptations of Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris almost as soon as the novel got published in 1831. But it was only in 1905 that the story appeared on the big screen with La Esmeralda, directed by French pioneer female filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché. It is so far the only interpretation that came from a female perspective, and it is unfortunate that the film is now considered lost as one may wonder how a woman director would portray Hugo’s characters — and especially his female characters. Soon after La Esmeralda, other films were released across the world : The Darling of Paris (Edwards, 1916) and two Hunchback of Notre Dame (Worsley, 1923 and Dieterle, 1939) in the United States ; Esmeralda (Collins, 1922) in Britain ; Emmei in no Semushi (director unknown, 1925) in Japan ; or Dhanwan (Atorthy, 1937) and Badshah Dampati (Chakrabarty, 1954) in India. From 1956 and Jean Delannoy’s version staring the sparkling Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida as Esmeralda, there has been many other adaptations in cinema, television, musicals and video games (the first one being developed by the company Ocean Software in 1983). After the success of Disney’s animated film in 1996 however, several new and sometimes uncanny “Hunchbacks” began to emerge : for example, René Bonnière’s TV adaptation, The Half-back of Notre-Dame (1996), takes place in a typical American high school, where the impetuous football quarterback Crazy (Quasimodo’s alter ego) falls in love with a young exchange student from France, Esmeralda de Tocqueville. If Bonnière has kept some key elements from the novel (and even honors its author by naming two of his football players Victor and Hugo), the scenario is so far away from the original story that it is actually hard to follow sometimes. Another unexpected take on Hugo’s classic can be found in the French comedy Quasimodo d’El Paris (Timsit, 1999), a loose interpretation set in a contemporary setting, where the original Roma community has been replaced, for unexplained reasons, by white red-haired Cubans. The Japanese and Indian adaptations of Notre-Dame de Paris are not easily accessible (and may have well been lost) but I have no doubt that they also offer an interesting interpretation, tailored for a local audience.
It’s not surprising that Victor Hugo’s acclaimed novel has seduced readers around the world : Notre-Dame combines some of the most universal themes : desire, love, power and injustice. For a modern reader however, Hugo’s original story can be quite problematic and the author’s vision for Esmeralda is a little different from what we know of her American better-known counterpart. Hugo’s portrayal of Esmeralda, and more generally of the Roma community, is stereotypical in many ways. In the novel, Romani women are described as “still uglier than the men. Their faces were darker, and always uncovered ; they wore a sorry kirtle about their body, an old cloth woven with cords, bound upon their shoulder ; and their hair hanging like a horse’s tail”1 ; whilst their children are said to be so ugly that they “would have frightened an ape”2 . Esmeralda is curiously — or so it appears at first — spared by these negative descriptions. Under Hugo’s pen, she is the epitome of femininity, grace and beauty : “her skirt of varied colors swelling out below her slender waist, giving momentary glimpses of her fine-formed legs — her round bared shoulders, her black hair and her sparkling eyes — she looked like something more than human”3 . But, and it is a very important fact that almost never appears in later adaptations of the novel, Esmeralda is not, in fact, a Roma : she is a gadji (a non-Roma) woman who was abducted as a baby by a group of Romani “beggars and vagabonds”4 . Named Agnès at birth, Esmeralda’s exceptional beauty is only due, according to Hugo, to the fact that although she was raised as a Roma, she is not one. The revelation of Esmeralda’s true identity is unbelievably racist given Hugo’s otherwise highly detrimental descriptions of Roma people, and it is clear that the French author could never have fathomed the idea of a “Gypsy” heroine.
If later adaptations of the novel in film, television, musicals and video games seldomly mention this important fact about Esmeralda’s real ethnicity, they are not deprived of racist and sexist stereotypes. As in the original story, the heroine is always portrayed in an exoticising and erotising way. The actresses who play Esmeralda in these remakes are usually fair-skinned women, yet are often ethnically ambiguous enough to pass as Roma : Italian, Armenian, Lebanese, Jewish or Latina, they embody a non-threatening yet “exciting” racial otherness. Of course, white Roma exist and it is obvious that in Hugo’s mind, Agnès/Esmeralda was nothing but a white woman “with a tan”. But the recurring use of actresses, in later adaptations, whose whiteness is portrayed as approximate points to a commodification of Romani ethnicity. As Black American feminist bell hooks reminds us in her essay Eating the Other : Desire and Resistance : “within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture”5 . Esmeralda’s long brown hair and fiery black eyes are this “spice” that differentiates her from other women while affirming her status as a mere object of desire.
In the beloved Disney film, Esmeralda is a dark-skinned woman, with thick black hair and eyebrows. Gold jewelry, a low-cut and off-the-shoulder bodice, long colorful skirts and a tambourine complete her look and have contributed to shape an image of Romani femininity that has remained popular since the release of the film in 1996. An idealized and fetishized version of what Romani women are thought to be wearing, Esmeralda’s clothing has inspired many “sexy Gypsy” Halloween costumes, completely discrediting an entire culture by reducing it to a caricature. One could argue nonetheless that the heroine remains portrayed in a positive light : for example, she’s such a beloved and important figure of the local scenery that people even call her “La Esmeralda”, underlining her uniqueness. I have ambiguous feelings towards Esmeralda, but I have to admit that, in a way, I can’t help but liking her. She is, after all, one of the least negative representation of Romani women in a world where The Gypsy Sisters and similar shows form a disastrously misleading frame of reference for most people — “Gypsy”, by the way, is considered by many Roma as a racial slur and I would strongly advise anyone who is not from a Romani background not to use it. Esmeralda is young, beautiful, kind to others (and particularly those who are outcasts and more marginalized than her) and, in the Disney version, is also a confident and courageous woman. Introduced by Clopin, the Romani self-proclaimed “king of beggars”, as the “finest girl in France”, she is also recurrently described as “beautiful and wild” (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Delannoy, 1956), “a goddess… although a Gypsy” (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Tuchner, 1982), “a beauty with big bewitching black eyes” (Notre-Dame de Paris, Plamondon & Cocciante, 1996) or “a beauty… for a Gypsy” (The Hunchback, Medak, 1997) … as if her qualities had to be automatically counterbalanced by the shame of her ethnicity — a “problem” that Hugo solves by his final narrative twist about Agnès/Esmeralda’s true identity. Esmeralda is in fact a tragic heroine : she is an undocumented migrant, living in poverty, rejected by the man she loves because of her social status but sexually harassed by pretty much every men she encounters (and remember that she’s only sixteen in the novel). Eventually, in the original story, she is punished by death for a crime she did not even commit. More generally, the Roma community is always portrayed negatively in most adaptations : in Disney’s 1996 animated film, Roma are compared to cockroaches, are associated with crime, witchcraft, evilness and are said not to be “capable of love” — which is to say that they are, in fact, not worthy of love either. In many countries, Roma still face social exclusion, lack of access to quality health care services or education, as well as issues in finding employment and proper housing. Romani women are statistically more likely to experience sexual assault and abuse than non-Roma. Carelessly portraying Roma as, on the one hand, beggars, thieves and criminals, and on the other as care-free and sexually promiscuous individuals in a world where rising far-right politics and increasing attacks against women’s rights are threatening their mere existence — which is especially true for Romani women — is not anecdotal.
Romani women have always been the subject of various myths and have inspired writers to “idealize their sensual beauty and muse over their supernatural powers”6 . The 19th century English author and “Gypsylorist”7 George Borrow even went as far as affirming that “the Gypsy women and girls are capable of exciting passion of the most ardent description, most particularly in the bosoms of those who are not of their race, which passion of course becomes the more violent when the almost utter impossibility of gratifying it is known”8. In Notre-Dame, it seems that Esmeralda has to pay for this fragile masculinity : if Disney wraps up the story with a romantic happy-ending, in the original version and several of its adaptations, Esmeralda is punished by death for her refusal to “gratify” men’s desire. In Hugo’s book, the author adds a second female character that does not often appear in later adaptations but complicates this all idea of unfulfilled desire. Fleur-de-Lys, a 14 years old white and socially privileged young girl, brings an interesting dynamic into the relationship between Esmeralda and her crush Phoebus — who, in the Disney film, appears as the typical blonde “knight in shining armor”. In the novel, although Fleur-de-Lys and Phoebus are engaged, the latter clearly shows a strong interest in Esmeralda’s “slender waist [and] fine-formed legs”. Although she is of higher social status than Phoebus (who, after all, is a simple soldier), Fleur-de-Lys is, by virtue of her gender, inferior to him. Because of her whiteness and wealth however, she can mock Esmeralda — and, later, even requests her death sentence out of jealousy. On the few occasions Fleur-de-Lys appears in musicals or film adaptations, she is always presented as Esmeralda’s nemesis, preventing any possibility of female solidarity between both women to appear. Both characters are penciled in to please the male gaze and if Fleur-de-Lys’ story knows a more favorable ending thanks to her whiteness, she is similarly oppressed because of her gender. In many adaptations, Fleur-de-Lys’ disappearance from the scenario contributes to single out Esmeralda even more, making her the only female character in an entirely masculine world.
I will argue that most representations of Esmeralda are not detrimental per se, but that it is the scarcity and whitewashing of Romani female characters within popular culture that contributes to deny the most basic humanity of Romani women. Roma should not be defined by dominant society solely in association with exoticism, sexual promiscuity and “free-spirited” lifestyles. Romani women are diverse and multifaceted : not only does their identity lie at the intersection of ethnicity and gender, but a full spectrum of characteristics such as nationality, class, education, way of life (whether sedentary or not), sexuality or age greatly complexify their position within society. Many Romani women have, for centuries, made their mark in disciplines as varied as the arts, politics, STEM or fashion. Panna Cinka, the Hungarian 17th century virtuoso violin player ; Soraya Post, who in 2014 sat at the European Parliament representing the first feminist party of Sweden ; the Pankova sisters, who were esteemed members of the Romani intelligentsia in Russia and, in the 1950s, excelled in the fields of biology and chemistry ; or Erika Varga, currently one of the most original fashion designer are but a few names in a long list of inspiring Romani women who constantly challenge the stereotypes of the illiterate and care-free Roma. It is their stories that need to be told and celebrated : regardless of who will eventually land the part of Esmeralda in Disney’s live action remake, Hugo’s heroine is simply not a good role model for the community. More importantly, she cannot remain one of the only filter through which many non-Roma will probably gain their knowledge of Romani culture. Disney’s Hunchback will bring one of the most beloved story of all time back to the screen. But it won’t help reflecting the diversity of Romani women’s experiences if it remains stuck in the racist, fetishizing narrative most adaptations have shown us so far. Maybe it is time to ditch Esmeralda altogether and create new, alternative and empowering representations of Romani femininity in all its complexity and wealth. Maybe it is time for Romani women to be allowed, for once, to be the subject of their own story, rather than the object of someone else’s fantasy.
1 Hugo, Victor. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, London : Collector’s Library, 2004 [1831], p. 275.
2 Ibid., p. 276.
3 Ibid., p.81.
4 Ibid., p.275.
5 hooks, bell. “Eating the Other : Desire and Resistance”. In Black Looks : Race and Representation, Boston : South End Press, 1992, pp. 21–39.
6 Esplugas, Celia. “Gypsy Women in English Life and Literature”. In The Foreign Woman in British Literature : Exotics, Aliens and Outsiders, eds. Button, Marilyn ; Reed, Toni, Westport : Greenwood, 1999, pp. 145–58
7 A “Gypsylorist” is a member of the Gypsy Lore Society, an organisation founded in Great-Britain in 1888, which brings together international scholars interested in Romani and Travellers Studies. The GLS has been criticised for its early tendencies to construct Roma as “exotic Others” and for encouraging “bedding a Gypsy woman” as a qualification for membership.
8 George Borrow cited in Hancock, Ian. “The “Gypsy” Stereotype and the Sexualization of Romani Women”. In “Gypsies” in European Literature and Culture, eds. Glajar, Valentina ; Radulescu, Domnica, New York : Palgrave MacMillan, 2008, pp 181–191.
