{"id":2205,"date":"2025-03-25T02:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T02:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/?p=2205"},"modified":"2025-03-25T02:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T02:44:06","slug":"kyrie-eleison-i-really-like-disney-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/2025\/03\/25\/kyrie-eleison-i-really-like-disney-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyrie Eleison (i really like disney movies)"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1996, Walt Disney Pictures released their animated adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel <\/span>The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/span><\/i> to widespread critical acclaim. Though Disney’s take on the classic deviates in several major ways from its source material, Claude Frollo\u2014in the film, the Parisian Minister of Justice\u2014is consistently driven to madness by his attraction to Esmeralda, a young Roma woman. This desire culminates in Frollo’s primary sung number, “Hellfire,” in which he laments his attraction to Esmeralda and claims she has sown these sinful thoughts within his mind. Mona Caird’s 1892 short story “The Yellow Drawing-Room” similarly follows a self-proclaimed man of virtue in conflict with his own desire for the transgressive Vanora. As the two grow to see each other more often, the narrator grows nearly mad with desire, believing her to be exerting some sort of influence over him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHellfire\u201d places Frollo\u2019s confession within the larger framing device of a prayer: “Beata Maria, you know I am a righteous man \/ Of my virtue, I am justly proud,\u201d he sings, \u201cBeata Maria, you know I’m so much purer than \/ The common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd,” (Hulce 2:19). Frollo is framed as possessing moral authority and \u201cpurity\u201d compared to the public, whose attitudes he deems \u201clicentious.\u201d <\/span>The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/span><\/i> has the privilege of being a long-form work, and by this point in the film adaptation, it has been established that Frollo is ostensibly villainous despite his claims. \u201cThe Yellow Drawing-Room,\u201d on the contrary, works within the confines of its length and also through the narration <\/span>of<\/span><\/i> its morally-superior protagonist. He often skirts around directly addressing his broader perspective on morality beyond conservatism, but in his first exchange with Vanora, he claims that “‘people don’t know what is good for them,'” (Caird 107). He creates a dichotomy between himself, the moral authority, and the rest of society. Within these parameters, it is impossible for either Frollo or Caird\u2019s narrator to be incorrect in their persuasions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frollo and Caird\u2019s narrator are similarly quick to blame the object of their affections for their emotions and deny all responsibility. Frollo is more direct: “It’s not my fault \/ I’m not to blame,\u201d he argues, \u201cIt is the gypsy girl, the witch who sent this flame,” (Hulce 3:26). Esmeralda is labeled a \u201cwitch\u201d (and later a \u201csiren\u201d at 3:48), a dehumanized being with undue influence over her perceived targets. Caird\u2019s narrator is marginally more subtle, instead entreating that Vanora \u201cmust release him\u201d as he is \u201cled away by qualities which ought to repel [him],\u201d (107). Neither woman has, until and in this moment, suggested to either man that she is romantically interested in him, but as they cannot admit their own agency, they instead label these women as villains searching to dispel their moral purity.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though <\/span>The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/span><\/i> was written by a Frenchman and during the Georgian era (while Caird wrote in the Victorian), the larger theme of blaming women for men’s moral failings runs throughout both works and profoundly influences the audience’s readings of morality as it relates to gender. In learning that Frollo and the narrator\u2019s moral authority is built upon their incrimination of innocents, it is firmly established that such authority is nothing more but a facade.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1996, Walt Disney Pictures released their animated adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame to widespread critical acclaim. Though Disney’s take on the classic deviates in several major ways from its source material, Claude Frollo\u2014in the film, the Parisian Minister of Justice\u2014is consistently driven to madness by his attraction to … Continue reading Kyrie Eleison (i really like disney movies)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5330,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135984],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5330"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/victorianlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}