The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

by

Victor Hugo

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Claude Frollo Character Analysis

Claude Frollo is the Archdeacon of Notre Dame and the adoptive father of Quasimodo. Frollo is also Jehan Frollo’s older brother and he cares for Jehan when their parents die while Jehan is still a baby. In his youth, Frollo is a naturally compassionate and caring man. He dotes on his baby brother and adopts Quasimodo because he feels sorry that Quasimodo has been abandoned. Frollo is a passionate scholar and loves all types of knowledge. As he grows older, however, Frollo becomes bitter, and his passionate nature becomes more and more obsessive and strange. Frollo is a priest and begins his career as a deeply religious man. As he ages, his belief in orthodox Christianity wavers and he begins to experiment with alchemy. Frollo is obsessed with the process by which gold is formed underground (something which philosophers and alchemists at the time did not understand and which they associated with eternal life) and he feels that, if he can discover where gold comes from, he will be able to understand God. At the same time, however, Frollo has a deeply fatalistic worldview and feels that, like the many thinkers and philosophers before him, he is destined to fail in his quest for ultimate knowledge. Frollo’s belief in fate becomes fanatical when he falls in love with Esmeralda and becomes sexually obsessed with her. Although Esmeralda does nothing to invite his attention, Frollo believes that she has bewitched him and thinks that it is his destiny to either seduce her or kill her. As Frollo’s obsession progresses and Esmeralda expresses her disgust for him, Frollo goes to extreme lengths to try and possess her. He also becomes extremely jealous of other men and even stabs Phoebus when Phoebus seduces Esmeralda. Although Phoebus survives, Frollo accuses Esmeralda of his murder and has her tried and hung as a witch. Frollo blames the destruction of his life entirely on Esmeralda and is intensely bitter that she will not be his lover, even when he threatens her with death as the alternative. Frollo eventually dies when Quasimodo pushes him off the bell-tower of Notre Dame, where Frollo stands to watch Esmeralda’s execution.

Claude Frollo Quotes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The The Hunchback of Notre Dame quotes below are all either spoken by Claude Frollo or refer to Claude Frollo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gothic Architecture, History, and Art Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

Gringoire was what today we would call a true eclectic, one of those elevated, steady, moderate, calm spirits who manage always to steer a middle course […] and are full of reason and liberal philosophy, while yet making due allowance for cardinals […] They are to be found, quite unchanging, in every age, that is, ever in conformity with the times.

Related Characters: Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, Pierre Gringoire, The Cardinal
Related Symbols: Notre Dame
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

He always went about in the midst of a small court of bishops and abbots of good family, who were bawdy, lecherous and great carousers should need arise; more than once the good worshippers at Saint-Germain d’Auxerre had been shocked, when passing of an evening beneath the lighted windows of the Bourbon mansion, to hear the same voices they had heard chanting vespers during the day intoning, to the clink of glasses, the bacchic proverb of Benedict XII, the pope who added a third wreath to the papal tiara: Bibamus papaliter.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, The Cardinal
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 3 Quotes

[…] it was lit by the harsh red light of the bonfire, which flickered brightly on the encircling faces of the crowd and on the dark forehead of the girl, while at the far end of the square it cast a pale glimmer, mingled with the swaying of the shadows, on the black and wrinkled old facade of the Maison-aux-Piliers on one side and the stone arms of the gallows on the other.

Related Characters: Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, Pierre Gringoire
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 2 Quotes

He realized there were other things in the world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne and the verses of Homerus, that man has need of affection, that without tenderness and love life was just a harsh and mechanical clockwork, in need of lubrication.

Related Characters: Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, Jehan Frollo
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes

‘No,’ said the archdeacon, seizing Compere Tourangeau by the arm, and a spark of enthusiasm rekindling in his lifeless pupils, ‘No, I don’t deny science. I have not crawled all this time on my belly with my nails in the earth, along the countless passages of the cavern without glimpsing, far ahead of me, at the end of the unlit gallery, a light, a flame, something, doubtless the reflection from the dazzling central laboratory where the wise and the patient have taken God by surprise.’

Related Characters: Claude Frollo (speaker), Louis XI/Compere Tourangeau, Jacques Coictier
Related Symbols: Gold, Notre Dame
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 2 Quotes

Firstly, it was the thought of a priest. It was the alarm felt by the priesthood before a new agent: the printing-press. It was the terror and bewilderment felt by a man of the sanctuary before the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the pulpit and the manuscript, the spoken and the written word, taking fright at the printed word; something like the stupor felt by a sparrow were it to see the angel legion unfold its six million wings. It was the cry of the prophet who already hears the restless surge of an emancipated mankind, who can see that future time when intelligence will undermine faith, opinion dethrone belief and the world shake off Rome.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, Louis XI/Compere Tourangeau, Jacques Coictier
Related Symbols: Notre Dame
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 7, Chapter 4 Quotes

He, who wore his heart on his sleeve, who observed none of the world’s laws except the law of nature, who allowed his passions to escape through his inclinations, and in whom the reservoir of strong emotion was always dry, so many fresh drains did he dig for it each morning, he had no idea of how the sea of human passions rages and ferments and boils once it is refused all outlet, of how it accumulates and increases and flows over, of how it scours the heart and breaks out into inward sobs and dumb convulsions, until it has torn down its dykes and burst its bed. Jehan had always been deceived by Claude Frollo’s austere and icy exterior, that chill surface of precipitous and inaccessible virtue. That this seething, raging lava bubbled deep beneath the snowclad brow of Etna had never occurred to the cheerful student.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, Jehan Frollo
Related Symbols: Gold
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 8, Chapter 4 Quotes

When one does evil one must do the whole evil. To be only half a monster is insanity. There is ecstasy in an extreme of crime.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo (speaker), Esmeralda
Page Number: 329
Explanation and Analysis:
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Claude Frollo Quotes in The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The The Hunchback of Notre Dame quotes below are all either spoken by Claude Frollo or refer to Claude Frollo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gothic Architecture, History, and Art Theme Icon
).
Book 1, Chapter 3 Quotes

Gringoire was what today we would call a true eclectic, one of those elevated, steady, moderate, calm spirits who manage always to steer a middle course […] and are full of reason and liberal philosophy, while yet making due allowance for cardinals […] They are to be found, quite unchanging, in every age, that is, ever in conformity with the times.

Related Characters: Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, Pierre Gringoire, The Cardinal
Related Symbols: Notre Dame
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

He always went about in the midst of a small court of bishops and abbots of good family, who were bawdy, lecherous and great carousers should need arise; more than once the good worshippers at Saint-Germain d’Auxerre had been shocked, when passing of an evening beneath the lighted windows of the Bourbon mansion, to hear the same voices they had heard chanting vespers during the day intoning, to the clink of glasses, the bacchic proverb of Benedict XII, the pope who added a third wreath to the papal tiara: Bibamus papaliter.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, The Cardinal
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 2, Chapter 3 Quotes

[…] it was lit by the harsh red light of the bonfire, which flickered brightly on the encircling faces of the crowd and on the dark forehead of the girl, while at the far end of the square it cast a pale glimmer, mingled with the swaying of the shadows, on the black and wrinkled old facade of the Maison-aux-Piliers on one side and the stone arms of the gallows on the other.

Related Characters: Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, Pierre Gringoire
Page Number: 83
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 4, Chapter 2 Quotes

He realized there were other things in the world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne and the verses of Homerus, that man has need of affection, that without tenderness and love life was just a harsh and mechanical clockwork, in need of lubrication.

Related Characters: Esmeralda, Claude Frollo, Jehan Frollo
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 1 Quotes

‘No,’ said the archdeacon, seizing Compere Tourangeau by the arm, and a spark of enthusiasm rekindling in his lifeless pupils, ‘No, I don’t deny science. I have not crawled all this time on my belly with my nails in the earth, along the countless passages of the cavern without glimpsing, far ahead of me, at the end of the unlit gallery, a light, a flame, something, doubtless the reflection from the dazzling central laboratory where the wise and the patient have taken God by surprise.’

Related Characters: Claude Frollo (speaker), Louis XI/Compere Tourangeau, Jacques Coictier
Related Symbols: Gold, Notre Dame
Page Number: 184
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 5, Chapter 2 Quotes

Firstly, it was the thought of a priest. It was the alarm felt by the priesthood before a new agent: the printing-press. It was the terror and bewilderment felt by a man of the sanctuary before the luminous press of Gutenberg. It was the pulpit and the manuscript, the spoken and the written word, taking fright at the printed word; something like the stupor felt by a sparrow were it to see the angel legion unfold its six million wings. It was the cry of the prophet who already hears the restless surge of an emancipated mankind, who can see that future time when intelligence will undermine faith, opinion dethrone belief and the world shake off Rome.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, Louis XI/Compere Tourangeau, Jacques Coictier
Related Symbols: Notre Dame
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 7, Chapter 4 Quotes

He, who wore his heart on his sleeve, who observed none of the world’s laws except the law of nature, who allowed his passions to escape through his inclinations, and in whom the reservoir of strong emotion was always dry, so many fresh drains did he dig for it each morning, he had no idea of how the sea of human passions rages and ferments and boils once it is refused all outlet, of how it accumulates and increases and flows over, of how it scours the heart and breaks out into inward sobs and dumb convulsions, until it has torn down its dykes and burst its bed. Jehan had always been deceived by Claude Frollo’s austere and icy exterior, that chill surface of precipitous and inaccessible virtue. That this seething, raging lava bubbled deep beneath the snowclad brow of Etna had never occurred to the cheerful student.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo, Jehan Frollo
Related Symbols: Gold
Page Number: 275
Explanation and Analysis:
Book 8, Chapter 4 Quotes

When one does evil one must do the whole evil. To be only half a monster is insanity. There is ecstasy in an extreme of crime.

Related Characters: Claude Frollo (speaker), Esmeralda
Page Number: 329
Explanation and Analysis: