Frame Story

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

by Victor Hugo

The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Frame Story 1 key example

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!