The Lost Daughter and The Adored Fighter: Investigating the Representation of Gypsy Women in Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris and Georges Bizet's Carmen

Abstract

This thesis investigates the representation of gypsy women in Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris and Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen by analysing the characters Esmeralda (Hugo) and Carmen (Bizet). The perspective for this literary analysis combines notions from gender studies (intersectionality, agency), postcolonial studies (Orientalism, the Other), and the context of French Romanticism to interpret the characterisations of these women. The applied methods involve close readings alternated with broader readings of the narratives, as well as tables to concretise contrasts between characters, and a comparison of Esmeralda and Carmen to draw further conclusions about their individual representations as gypsy women. The first chapter shows how prejudices about gypsies are countered in Esmeralda’s characterisation, as her magical appearance is revealed as only seeming magical. The importance of appearance is further underscored in the chapter as Quasimodo, who might also be viewed as an Other, is judged for his ugliness as Esmeralda is for her beauty, their appearances determining various factors in their lives. Chapter two shows how Carmen’s “Habanera” about love serves as a template for her characterisation, as the free nature of love and its resemblance to a gypsy child may imply that Carmen is the embodiment of the love she sings about. Carmen and her opposite Don José have different views on love, yet seem unable to change these opinions, which causes the opera’s major conflict. The third chapter compares the two gypsy women to one another and discusses Esmeralda’s and Carmen’s relations to the Romanticist themes of love and death, as these themes characterise their storylines. Where Esmeralda is novel to love, her execution underlining her identity as an innocent child, Carmen may resemble a bullfighter in the arena of love, acting according to her principles and prepared to die for them. From these characters two different views on the gypsy identity can be constituted, as Esmeralda’s ambiguous identity might plead for an interpretation of this identity as a way of life that one can adopt, while Carmen’s sharp contrast to José and the fixed nature of her character establish her more firmly as an exoticised Other. Drawing from these two texts, then, it can be argued that French Romanticism does not show one coherent image of the gypsy woman or gypsy identity, but instead might allow for polyvalent interpretations and therewith debates on this identity and on gypsy representation in this aesthetic movement.