The Voyeur

1. What is it?

Voyeurism is the watching of another, usually secretly and including their private moments.

Psychologically, voyeurism is labelled as a sexual-psychological condition, with people interested in or sexually aroused by the actions of others.

In literature, especially when dealing with unrequited love, there can be ambiguity between a character being too shy to express emotions and being a voyeur

2. How is it made?

One character is secretly watched through the eyes of another.Detailed descriptions of another’s actions.
Obsessions and fantasies about a character.A shy lover watching the source of infatuation rather than daring to speak.
 A creepy horror character choosing a victim from afar.

3. Examples in literature

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame 
by Victor Hugo

Know Your Book

Title: Notre-Dame de Paris (*trans: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
Author: Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Published: 1831
Language: French
Genre: Fiction; novel; Gothic novel
Plot: Archdeacon Frollo, of Notre-Dame cathedral, asks hunchbacked bellringer Quasimodo to kidnap Romani girl Esmeralda. When Quasimodo is caught by Cpt. Phoebus and publicly punished, he gains Esmeralda’s sympathy. This kindness is dramatically returned when Phoebus later sentences Esmeralda to death. However, although briefly safe, the law and people of Paris are unforgiving towards the condemned and a ‘monster’.
Setting: Paris, 1482
Characters: Quasimodo; Claude Frollo; Esmeralda;  Cpt. Phoebus

Excerpt from Book 7, Chapter 3 (translated from French):

He was wholly absorbed in goading on his bells, which were all six leaping, each better than the other, and shaking their shining haunches like a noisy team of Spanish mules urged forward by the apostrophisings of the muleteer.
All at once, letting his glance fall between the large slate scales which cover, at a certain height, the perpendicular wall of the belfry, he descried on the Square a young girl fantastically dressed, who stopped, spread out on the ground a carpet on which a little goat came and placed itself, and around whom a group of spectators made a circle. This view suddenly changed the course of his ideas, and congealed his musical enthusiasm as a breath of air congeals melted rosin. He stopped, turned his back to the bells, and crouched behind the slate eaves, fixing on the dancer that thoughtful, tender and softened look which had already astonished the archdeacon on one occasion. Meanwhile, the forgotten bells died away abruptly and all together, to the great disappointment of the lovers of chimes who were listening to the peal in good earnest from off the Pont-au-Change, and who went away dumbfounded, like a dog who has been offered a bone and given a stone.

Skimming, Scanning and Basic Comprehension

1. The first paragraph describes Quasimodo’s (the hunchback) job. What is it?
2. Where does Quasimodo hide?
3. What is the girl doing when Quasimodo sees her?
4. What does Quasimodo forget about? 
Identifying Techniques

5. In what narrative voice is the story being told?
6. What similes are used in the passage?
7. Which of the three persuasion techniques – ethos, logos, and pathos – is being set-up in this passage, to be used later in the story? 
Text Analysis

8. Compare the location in which Quasimodo is situated to the place in which the girl is.
9. What medium is used to connect the hunchback to society? Which sentence or phrase confirms this connection exists?
10. Which words tell the reader of Quasimodo’s joy in music and sound? Highlight these.
11. Which phrase or sentence relates the idea of Quasimodo’s focus shifting? 
Theme Exploration

12. In what way is the hunchback (‘he’) acting as a voyeur in this scene?  
Provoking Opinion

13. In your opinion, is Quasimodo’s voyeurism innocent or not?
14. In Disney’s animated version of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, the ending of the book is changed for younger audiences. Should cartoon versions of texts change the tone or plot in order to appeal to younger audiences?
15. At the heart of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is Esmerelda’s romantic choice between a sympathetic but ugly outcast, and a good-looking but egotistical success. If you were given this choice, which would you choose?

Death in Venice 
by Thomas Mann

Know Your Book

Title: Der Tod in Venedig (*trans: Death in Venice)
Author: Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
Published: 1912
Language: German
Genre: Fiction; novella
Plot: Gustav von Aschenbach is a successful author in his fifties on holiday in Venice. Whilst there, he becomes obsessed with a beautiful 14-year old boy, Tadzio. Aschenbach happily begins to contemplate the nature of beauty, but then worries about his own aged appearance. As his obsession deepens, and his health weakens during the hot summer, Aschenbach cuts an increasingly pathetic figure.
Setting: Venice
Characters: Gustav von Aschenbach; Tadzio

Excerpt from Chapter 3 (translated from German):

The young men from Pola had come on deck, no doubt also patriotically attracted by the military sound of bugle calls across the water from the direction of the Public Gardens; and elated by the Asti they had drunk, they began cheering the bersaglieri as they drilled there in the park. But the dandified old man, thanks to his spurious fraternization with the young, was now in a condition repugnant to behold. His old head could not carry the wine as his sturdy youthful companions had done, and he was lamentably drunk. Eyes glazed, a cigarette between his trembling fingers, he stood swaying, tilted to and fro by inebriation and barely keeping his balance. Since he would have fallen at his first step he did not dare move from the spot, and was nevertheless full of wretched exuberance, clutching at everyone who approached him, babbling, winking, snickering, lifting his ringed and wrinkled forefinger as he uttered some bantering inanity, and licking the corners of his mouth with the tip of his tongue in a repellent suggestive way. Aschenbach watched him with frowning disapproval, and once more a sense of numbness came over him, a feeling that the world was somehow, slightly yet uncontrollably, sliding into some kind of bizarre and grotesque derangement. It was a feeling on which, to be sure, he was unable to brood further in present circumstances, for at this moment the thudding motion of the engine began again, and the ship, having stopped short so close to its destination, resumed its passage along the San Marco Canal.

1. Aschenbach views the old drunk in the passage with

a) sympathy
b) revulsion
c) hilarity
d) concern
e) fear

Answer
b
2. The state of the drunk is seen by Aschenbach as symbolic of

a) increasing general social malaise
b) Aschenbach’s own self-doubt
c) the joys of hedonism
d) Europe’s problematic drinking culture
e) the depressing truth of ageing

Answer
a
3. The relationship between the old man and the younger passengers could be described as

a) symbiotic
b) co-dependent
c) mutually destructive
d) amorous
e) pitiful

Answer
e
4. Aschenbach’s role in the scene is

a) antagonistic
b) comic relief
c) narrative
d) voyeuristic
e) peacemaker

Answer
d
5. Which of the following best describes the contrast between the observed subjects in the passages from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and Death in Venice?

a) The fast and the furious
b) Beauty and the beast
c) The brave and the bold
d) The quick and the dead
e) Dumb and dumber

Answer
b