Statue depicting the iconic image of Cosette carrying the water bucket

In Paris, the class went to the “Maison de Victor Hugo”, or the Victor Hugo house. This is a museum located in the house that Victor Hugo lived in from 1832-1848, shortly before he was exiled from France. Walking through the museum led us through several recreations of what the rooms of his apartment would have likely looked like, and the walls were completely filled with mostly paintings that depicted Hugo’s works throughout the years that were made by other artists, but also some paintings by artists Hugo admired and some pieces of art that were made by Hugo himself.

I mentioned in one of my earlier blog posts that the class had gone to the Charles Dickens Museum while we were in London. This is a very similar museum, a recreation of one of Charles Dickens’s homes, in a house he used to live in, filled with items related to him. As you may recall, I didn’t have many great things to say about that experience. It felt almost violating in a way. The museum was filled with not just items related to Dickens’s works throughout his life, and they were not just recreations of the rooms he used to live in that gave us an insight into how he lived and what he was interested in while he was writing his many famous novels. Instead, the Charles Dickens Museum was filled to the brim with deeply personal items and insights into the less flattering parts of Dickens’s personal life. In the recreation of his dressing and personal grooming room, there was a collection of items like razors, combs, etc., and there was a locket with a real strand of Dickens’s hair on display. In other rooms, there were letters he had written and received on display regarding his divorce, his relationships, his affairs. I’m sure a historian, or someone with an extreme interest in Dickens, would read all of this and think that the Dickens house is a goldmine for interesting exhibits, and not understand my uncomfortability with the whole thing. But to me, the Charles Dickens Museum felt like I was looking at a lot of things that I wasn’t meant to see.

By contrast, the Victor Hugo house didn’t feel like that at all. It’s strange, since the museum is essentially an identical concept to the Charles Dickens Museum, but I didn’t feel any of the same uncomfortability with it that I did with Dickens’s house. To me, the Victor Hugo house felt like it was more specifically focused on Hugo’s works and the interests and tastes that influenced them, rather than the nitty gritty of his personal life and affairs. As I mentioned before, the walls were lined with works by many artists depicting scenes from novels Hugo had written. There were plenty of paintings depicting The Toilers of the Sea, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and most famously and relevant to this class, Les Misérables. There were tons of depictions of Jean Valjean’s plight, along with depictions of characters like Marius and Cosette. Of these works, the painting that stood out the most to me was one that depicted one of my favorite scenes from Les Misérables, the moment when Jean Valjean turns himself in and reveals his true identity in court. It was interesting to see moments like these from the novel depicted by skillful painters in this medium, as it gave a visual representation of significant scenes from the novels that was not held back by the limitations of a film or a stage show, they were depictions of moments from the novel exactly as the artists pictured them.

Jean Valjean revealing his identity to the court

The pieces of art that didn’t depict scenes from Hugo’s novels were generally pieces that Hugo had owned which were created by artists he enjoyed. This gave us a more personal glimpse into Hugo’s tastes and the artists that would have influenced him, as well as his psyche when writing his novels. There were some quite dark and disturbing paintings on some of these walls that showed some insight into Hugo’s interesting taste and where his mind could have been in different parts of his life. Still though, in contrast to Dickens’s house, these displays felt focused on a celebration and depiction of the art Hugo enjoyed that influenced his works.

All of these pieces of art centered around Hugo’s works made the museum feel less like an uncomfortable look into Hugo’s private life, and more like a celebration of the famous and influential works he created during his life. This is the main distinction between the Victor Hugo House and the Charles Dickens Museum, at least in my mind. The Hugo House feels like it was created with fans of Hugo’s work in mind, and it feels like a museum that Hugo would have approved of and wanted people to visit if he were alive. The focus was on his works, and most of the more personal parts of the museum were shown not to shine light on Hugo’s personal affairs, but to show how his life influenced the way he wrote. The Dickens House, on the other hand, felt like it focused in far too closely on the small, personal details of Dickens’s life, and it was filled with things Dickens probably would not have wanted displayed to the public. At least, if I were him I wouldn’t want them displayed.

There is one large elephant in the room as I write about how there is nothing too personal in the Victor Hugo Museum. That is, of course, the recreation of the bedroom that Victor Hugo died in. Hugo did not die in the home in which the museum lies, but there is a faithful recreation of the bedroom he died in, which is the last room in the museum. Somehow, although this is of course a deeply personal view into Hugo’s final moments, it felt very tastefully done, and it was quite touching to stand in that room. On the wall, there were some paintings of the room and of Hugo’s final moments, showing that shortly after he died these moments were shown to the public, which made it feel tasteful as the look of his room in his final moments was always on public display, it was not something that was uncovered for this museum. It felt like a very tastefully done, respectful end to the exhibit, an exhibit that showed how Hugo may have lived, celebrated his works, displayed his artistic influences, and handled the more personal aspects of Hugo’s life with respect and care.