Categorías de Diagnóstico Marco Interpretativo 2: Modelo de Salud

Fear is one of the dominant themes that emerge in Hugo’s Quatrevingt-Treize. Michelle Fléchard is motivated solely by fear for her family. The Bonnet Rouge battalion stumbles on the mother and her children in a suspected ambush, but what they actually find is a terrified woman trying to protect her family from events she does not understand. Hugo describes her as a woman surrounded by fierce soldiers: “stupéfaite, effarée, pétrifiée, regardait autour d’elle, comme à travers un rêve, ces fusils, ces sabres, ces bayonnettes, ces faces farouches.”³⁵⁸ She is completely unaware of the political turmoil raging around her, to the point that she is unable to answer even the most basic of questions about her home or where her family lines up on the political spectrum. The only thing she can understand is that her children are hungry and she is afraid and uncertain of the chaos that has destroyed her home and forced her to flee her native

358 Ibid., 35.

Bretagne. Ironically, it is this obvious innocence that leads the battalion to adopt the family, drawing the Fléchards into the political conflicts of which they had previously been unaware.

Hugo also uses fear as a defining characteristic of the novel’s leading monarchist, the Marquis de Lantenac. In the case of this character, fear is never permitted to make an appearance, creating an almost superhuman aura of impermeability. The climactic scene in the novel takes place when Lantenac is trapped in a burning tower with the very children he had been using as hostages. While almost everyone around him panics at the arrival of the Revolutionary forces, the Marquis remains calm.

Le marquis, infatigable, robuste comme un jeune homme, soulevant des poutres, portant des pierres, donnait l’exemple, mettait la main à la besogne, commandait, aidait, fraternisait, riait avec ce clan féroce, toujours le seigneur pourtant, haut, familier, élégant, farouche.

Il ne fallait pas lui répliquer. Il disait : Si une moitié de vous se révoltait, je la ferais fusiller par l’autre, et je défendrais la place avec le reste. Ces choses-là font qu’on adore un chef.³⁵⁹

His relaxed acceptance of the situation allows his to maintain control and inspire loyalty in his men. He is almost able to escape when the battle turns against him, but, somewhat against character, he chooses to save the children at the cost of his own freedom. For Lantenac, as for all the characters, what matters most is the future.

Throughout the novel, the Marquis remains a calm and authoritative presence in the face of incredible chaos and danger. The first time the reader sees Lantenac, he faces down a renegade canon that is threatening to destroy the ship carrying him to lead the Vendean revolt.

In a famous scene, the canon thrashes about the boat, like “une machine qui se transforme en monstre,” a “bélier qui bat à sa fantaisie une muraille,”³⁶⁰ while the Marquis calmly watches the struggle unfold. He is described as “un homme de pierre,” who “jetait sur cette dévastation un

359 Ibid., 325-326.

360 Ibid., 60.

œil sévère. Il ne bougeait point.”³⁶¹ The sailor who had accidentally allowed the canon to escape eventually gets the machine under control, although the ship is too damaged to continue on its mission.

The ultimate control Lantenac maintains over his mission and those around him is equally evident in what immediately follows the canon scene. The sailor who had been in charge of securing the canons does eventually redeem himself by leaping in to save the ship and to help secure the gun to its moorings. The marquis rewards his bravery with a medal, and then promptly orders the man’s execution. The crew is stunned, but Lantenac explains his actions by stating that “il n’y a pas de faute réparable. Le courage doit être récompensé et la négligence doit être punie.”³⁶² Later, when confronted by Halmalo, the brother of the man he had executed, the marquis once again states that he was not responsible for the man’s death; rather, it was “sa faute”³⁶³ for allowing the canon to become loose in the first place. As a sailor himself, Halmalo knows that nothing can be allowed to endanger the ship’s structural integrity, but what he cannot understand is Lantenac’s dual reactions to the situation. Immediately after presenting the sailor with a medal for valor, he has him executed, in keeping with his philosophy of justified rewards and punishments. Lantenac has been given command of the upcoming Vendean operations, but his background as all-powerful nobleman has also allowed him to take control of any situation in which he finds himself. Such is his position in life and his power of persuasion that the very man who had just tried to kill him will now become one of his most fervent supporters.

The fight to gain and maintain power is present throughout Quatrevingt-Treize. Hugo portrays the struggle for supremacy on multiple levels that touch all of society. The first, and

361 Ibid., 64-65.

362 Ibid., 72.

363 Ibid., 89.

most obvious, site of battle is between the Blancs, the monarchist troops, and the Bleus, the Revolutionary soldiers. When the Bonnet Rouge battalion first discovers Michelle Fléchard and her children, the sergeant quizzes her on her family’s political ties. He asks: “Es-tu des bleus ? Es-tu des blancs ? Avec qui es-tu ?,” demonstrating that there are only two possibilities in this dispute. Her inability to comprehend the questions is obvious in her response: “Je suis avec mes enfants.”³⁶⁴ It is incomprehensible to the soldiers that even a peasant woman from Bretagne could not have chosen sides. Both the Bleus and the Blancs will do everything they can to maintain the upper hand in their conflicts, although this is not readily evident until the story evolves to include the leaders of both factions. Until the commanders of both forces are described, the narrative focuses on discreet groups of soldiers who have no true individual power.

The struggle to gain ascendancy in the military battles also plays out in family relationships in Quatrevingt-Treize. The leader of the Vendean forces is the patriarch of the same family that produced his arch-rival, Gauvain, the leader of the Revolutionary forces.

Although it is was not unheard of at this time to have families split by their loyalties to the monarchy or to the Revolution, Hugo also makes the struggle that of two generations who have deeply opposing beliefs.