Movies - The Man Who Laughs

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	Movies - The Man Who Laughs

The Man Who Laughs is a novel by Victor Hugo, originally published in April 1869 under the French title L'Homme qui Rit. One of Hugo's least known works, it is now much less well-known than the 1927 film version, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt.

Background

Hugo wrote The Man Who Laughs, or the Laughing Man, over a period of fifteen months while he was living in the Channel Islands, having been exiled from his native France due to the controversial political content of his previous novels. Hugo's working title for this book was On the King's Command, but a friend suggested The Man Who Laughs.

This work is Hugo's nearest attempt at an English novel: the story takes place almost entirely in England, and nearly all of the major characters are British. Although The Man Who Laughs has many positive qualities, its depiction of England during the reigns of James II and Queen Anne of Great Britain is not very convincing. Throughout this work, Hugo shows a great deal of discomfort with English customs and the English language, although he does attempt a bold pun on the English place name Chatham and the French phrase “je t'aime”.

Hugo intended to give British names to several of the characters in this novel, but his efforts at British nomenclature are only partial successes at best. The novel's protagonist is called Gwynplaine, a name that sounds authentically Welsh only if the reader does not understand Welsh. Indeed, although “gwyn” is the Welsh word for the colour white, “plaine” is not a Welsh word at all.

Synopsis

The first major character whom we meet is a mountebank who dresses in bearskins and calls himself Ursus (Latin for “bear”). His only companion is a large domesticated wolf, whom Ursus has named Homo (Latin for “man”). Ursus lives in a caravan, which he conveys to holiday fairs and markets throughout southern England, where he sells folk remedies. In one of the least plausible passages of the novel, Hugo claims that Homo pulls this caravan.

The action moves to a sea coast somewhere on the European continent, on the night of January 29, 1690. Hugo sets this date precisely, but nowhere in the narrative does he link it to any specific real-world historical event. A group of men, their identities unknown to us, are urgently lading a ship for departure. A boy, ten years old, is among their company ... but the men are anxious to be rid of him. While the boy desperately pleads not to be abandoned, the men leave him behind and cast off. In a bizarre authorial decision, Hugo continues to devote many pages to the plight of these nameless men in a storm at sea, even though their fate is of only minor importance to the story.

What follows is one of the most powerful scenes in all of Hugo's work. The desperate boy, barefoot and starving, wanders through a snowstorm and reaches a gibbet, where he finds the corpse of a hanged criminal. The dead man is wearing shoes: utterly worthless to him now, yet precious to this boy. Beneath the gibbet, the boy finds a ragged woman, frozen to death. The boy is about to move onward when he hears a sound within the woman's garments: he discovers a girl infant, barely alive, clutching the woman's breast. One of the most vivid images in all of Hugo's fiction is found here, as his narrative describes a single drop of frozen milk, resembling a pearl, suspended from the dead woman's nipple.

Although the boy's survival is unlikely, he now takes possession of the she-infant in an attempt to keep her alive. The girl's eyes are sightless and clouded, and he understands that she is blind. In the snowstorm, he encounters an isolated caravan, which we know is the domicile of Ursus.

The action erratically shifts forward 15 years, to England during the reign of Queen Anne. We meet the Duchess Josiana, a spoilt and jaded peeress who is bored by the dull routine of court. A courtier tells the duchess that the only cure for her boredom is “Gwynplaine”, although he does not divulge who or what this Gwynplaine might be. Among the many flaws of The Man Who Laughs is that we are a third of the way through the novel before we first encounter the protagonist's name, and this name is introduced in a context which does not immediately make its meaning clear.

Now we are reunited with the wanderers. Ursus is 15 years older now. Surprisingly, the wolf Homo is still alive too, although the narration admits that his fur is greyer. Gwynplaine is the abandoned boy, now 25 years old and matured to well-figured manhood. In a crude flashback, we witness the first encounter between Ursus and Gwynplaine. The boy is clutching a nearly-dead infant, and therefore Ursus is outraged that the boy appears to be laughing. When the boy insists that he is not laughing, Ursus takes another look ... and is horrified. The boy's face has been mutilated into a clown's mask, his mouth carved into a perpetual grin. (It never seems to occur to Hugo that a person with this deformity would have difficulty speaking clearly or eating easily.) The boy tells Ursus that his name is Gwynplaine; this is the only name he has ever known.

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