Hot Gypsy Girls 2: Esmeralda - Trope Codifier and Fraud

Maureen O'Hara as Esmeralda 

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Esmeralda is the teen Gypsy in Victor Hugo's famous Gothic novel, Notre Dame de Paris (1831). Able to bewitch men of every description, including handsome soldiers, lecherous priests, and hunchbacked bell-ringers with her dancing, she is rarely seen without her faithful goat Djali by her side.

Despite being the codifier for the trope of the Hot Gypsy Girl (i.e., a kind of template that all other examples of the type then follow), Esmeralda is actually something of a fraud. The illegitimate child of a prostitute and a handsome young nobleman, she was of French origin, not Romani. Christened with the name Agnès when born - meaning pure or chaste - she was kidnapped by Gypsies who left the hideously deformed infant Quasimodo in her place.

This explains why even after having grown up amongst the Gypsies, Esmeralda retains an innocence about her; she is more the sweet-natured, kind-hearted ingénue than the worldy young pricktease that her suitors might have expected and hoped for. Her swaggering, hand-on-hip sluttishness is always countered by her innate virtue.

And, ironically, as with Sade's Justine, it's her virtue that leads to her misfortune and an untimely death upon the scaffold for a crime she didn't commit. A canny young Gypsy girl would never have got herself into such a compromised - and fatal - situation; never have allowed herself to be the hapless victim of men and circumstance (even if, as a Romani, she'd happily be a lover of fate). And a true Hot Gypsy Girl would never go the gallows wearing a white dress; she'd be defiantly dressed in gold and scarlet for sure!

No wonder then that Disney were able to so easily co-opt the figure of Esmeralda and turn this faux-Gypsy girl into a caring-sharing social justice warrior, whose greatest wish was to see social outcasts like Quasimodo and persecuted ethnic minorities like the Romani accorded equal rights (something almost guaranteed to make male viewers lose their erections). 

To read part one of this post - On the Racial and Sexual Stereotyping of Romani Women - click here.

To read part three of this post - On Carmen and Her Seduction of a Famous German Philosopher - click here. 

Hot Gypsy Girls 1: On the Racial and Sexual Stereotyping of Romani Women

I feel her, I see her, the sun caught in her raven hair 

is blazing in me out of all control!

It would not be unreasonable to argue that the pornographic imagination is founded upon, circulates, and sustains a wide range of racial and sexual stereotypes, including that of the Hot Gypsy Girl ...

With her dusky complexion, fiery dark eyes and loose black hair, wearing a low-waisted long skirt split to the thigh that she hitches up flamenco style to dance barefoot in public pieced with a low-cut, midriff-baring blouse that invites more than just navel-gazing, she is not only exotic in her sultry good looks and colourful appearance, but animal-like in her wild and overt sexuality.

Many men desire her, but most would be too scared to approach her. For like the true temptress, she spells trouble and threatens danger as well as offering the promise of unbridled passion; the Hot Gypsy Girl knows how to use a knife - and I don't mean in table-mannered conjunction with a fork.

This porno-romantic construction of free-spirited and strong-willed femininity that is found in much of the art, music, and literature of the 19th century, stands in direct opposition to the Victorian ideal of buttoned-up womanhood that held sway across Europe at the time; white-skinned, fair-haired, mild-mannered, kind-hearted, chaste and - above all - submissive to the male authority of their husbands and fathers.

Puritanical commentators who dislike stereotypes, will point out that there's very little empirical evidence to support this fantasy of the Hot Gypsy Girl. But, even if not based in actual fact, she's a real figure nonetheless with her own alluring truth and there are numerous examples to be found within modern popular culture.

Two names, however, immediately present themselves: Esmeralda and Carmen ... 


Notes

The image used above is of the Gypsy assassin Mejai, from the Franco-Belgian comic book series Le Scorpion, written by Stephen Desberg and illustrated by Enrico Marini. It's taken from the main page of the Hot Gypsy Woman entry on TV Tropes: click here. 

Those interested in reading further on this subject should see Ian Hancock, 'The "Gypsy" Stereotype and the Sexualization of Romani women', in Gypsies in Literature and Culture, ed. V. Glajar and D. Radulescu, (Palgrove-Macmillan, 2007), pp. 181-91. This essay can also be found on the RADOC site: click here.

To read part two of this post - Esmeralda: Trope Codifier and Fraud - click here. 

To read part three of this post - On Carmen and Her Seduction of a Famous German Philosopher - click here.  

Why Was I Not Made of Stone Like Thee? (Notes on the Hunchback of Notre Dame)

Charles Laughton as Quasimodo in 
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

It's interesting to recall that when Victor Hugo wrote his great Gothic novel, Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), he was - as the title indicates - more concerned with celebrating the Cathedral and preserving medieval architecture from modern redevelopment, than with the romantic story of poor Quasimodo, a deaf, half-blind, inarticulate hunchback and Esmeralda, a beautiful young Gypsy with a heart of gold and the power to enchant handsome soldiers, lecherous clergymen, and monstrous bell-ringers alike.   

But modern movie-going audiences didn't give a damn about the work's magnificent setting or Hugo's views on the aesthetics and politics of building design; they paid to see a freak crowned King of the Fools and swing down on a rope in order to save the sexy Gypsy girl as she is being led to the gallows for a crime she didn't commit ...

As most readers will be aware, there've been many adaptations for the cinema over the years, including, for example, the 1923 version starring Lon Chaney as Quasimodo and Patsy Ruth Miller as the lovely Esmeralda - a production that became Universal's most successful silent movie. But probably the most famous film version was released in 1939, starring the classically trained English actor Charles Laughton and the Irish-born beauty Maureen O'Hara. It's certainly the case that whenever I think of Quasimodo, it's Laughton's pug-ugly mug that comes to mind.

Mention should also be made of the 1956 Franco-Italian version starring Anthony Quinn as a far less monstrous Quasimodo and Gina Lollobrigida as a far more voluptuous Esmeralda than previously imagined. It was the first film adaptation of the story to be made in colour and also one of the very few that remains faithful to Hugo's original ending set in the graveyard where Quasimodo goes to be with the body of his beloved Esmeralda - joining his corpse bride in a deathly embrace (an ending that the 1996 Disney version unsurprisingly chose not to go with).

For me, however, the attempt to downplay Quasimodo's deformity and disability in this production is fundamentally mistaken. For as Zarathustra says, if you taketh the hump from the hunchback, you rob him of his soul.       


See: Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book II, section 42.