The Man Who Laughs

The Man Who Laughs was first published in 1869, during Victor Hugo’s exile in Guernsey. Set in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England, the novel follows Gwynplaine, a young nobleman whose face has been permanently disfigured into a grotesque grin by order of the king. Travelling with Ursus, a wandering philosopher, and Dea, a blind girl he has rescued, Gwynplaine earns his living as a performer, his fixed smile concealing a life marked by cruelty and loss.

Beneath its Gothic atmosphere and extraordinary characters lies a fierce indictment of aristocratic privilege and the abuse of power. Hugo contrasts the apparent deformity of Gwynplaine with the moral ugliness of the society that made him, while exploring compassion, human dignity and the violence hidden behind social refinement. Less widely read than Les Misérables or The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, this sprawling and uncompromising novel is among Hugo’s most radical works: a dark, imaginative romance that turns the spectacle of a single face into an indictment of an entire social order.

From the book

“There is consent in a smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.”

— Victor Hugo, The Man Who Laughs

On The Man Who Laughs

“The true title of this book should be ‘Aristocracy’.”

— Victor Hugo, Preface to The Man Who Laughs