ABSTRACT
Suicide is so widespread in Victor Hugo's novels that it can be considered a defining feature. With the exception of Le Dernier our d'un condamné each of them has a major character who takes his own life: Han in Han d'Islande, Habibrah in Bug-Jargal, Quasimodo in Notre-Dame de Paris, Gilliatt in Les Travailleurs de la mer, Gwynplaine in L'Homme qui rit, Cimourdain in Quatrevingt-Treize and Javert in Les Misérables, which features also the quasi suicide of Jean Valjean. The extraordinary frequency of the phenomenon no doubt has its origins in the dark recesses of Hugo's troubled biography, dictated not just by the exigencies of the plot, but by the complexes and phobias that marked his psyche, and it may well be that the mental suicide of his brother was the most demonstrative manifestation of an obsession in Hugo that could find expression only in a work of fiction and imagination.
