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Foreshadowing
Book 6, Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Paquette la Chantefleurie:
Mahiette regales her companions with a frame story in Book 6, Chapter 3 as they walk towards the Gréve. Astonished that Oudarde and Gervaise don’t know of Paquette’s fate, she proceeds to share the tragedy:
Paquette la Chantefleurie was a pretty girl of eighteen at the same time as myself, that’s to say eighteen years ago, and that it’s her own fault if today she isn’t, like me, a good, plump, hale mother of thirty-six, with a man and a boy. But it was too late for that even by the time she was fourteen!
The story that follows is every bit as heartbreaking as advertised. Mahiette shares how Paquette takes up prostitution, falls into poverty, and—worst of all—loses her own daughter to gypsies. It is also a thinly veiled plot device in The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s elaborate architecture of coincidences. The reader, after all, does not take long to realize that Paquette’s “angel”-like daughter is Esmeralda. The baby with the “prettiest fine black hair” who gets abducted can be none other than Esmeralda herself. The conceit therefore allows the reader to eavesdrop on their conversation and glean pieces of Esmeralda’s upbringing. Mahiette’s frame story packages crucial exposition in the form of dialogue.
Frame story also grants the reader special knowledge, enabling the audience to piece together the clues before any of its individual characters do. In a novel with so many separate plot strands and perspectives, it provides the privilege of omniscience. In yet another coincidence, the band of women finish hearing the story and coincidentally discover that Sister Gudule happens to be Paquette herself. But only the reader—who has followed Esmeralda—can tie together the story of the lost daughter with that of the grieving mother. This frame story lays the groundwork for that crucial moment of recognition between mother and daughter.
Related Themes:
