"The Smiley Man" is a novel written by Hugo in 1869, which is based on the social background of the time and describes the protagonist Gwen Puran still facing life passionately under the tragic fate. In contrast, the English aristocracy, who enjoyed the fruits of the labor of the poor people of the lower classes, lived a life of luxury, but more cruelly squeezed the poor people.
Gwenplain was originally the son of the British nobleman Sir Clonchard, but because of the court struggle, he was only two years old and was secretly sold to child traffickers by King Charles II at the time. After he fell into the hands of the child trafficker, the child trafficker performed a terrible operation on him, cut his face open, performed a disfigurement operation, and from then on, no emotion could be seen from his face, because in any case, he was always laughing, and it was a strange laugh, like a monster.
With this face on his face, he wandered around with the child traffickers until King James came to power and ordered the expulsion of all child traffickers in England and the death penalty for those who returned, who abandoned the ten-year-old Gwenpland on the Cornish coast in order to escape, while the child traffickers escaped by boat.
Lonely Gwynplain, in front of the surging sea, behind it is an endless desolation, the sky has darkened, the sky has begun to drift snow, a cold, wearing thin clothes of Gwenplain is frozen and shivering, there are no shoes on the feet, there is no bread in the pocket, I don't know how far I have to go to see the people.
The thrown Gwenplain did not despair or give in, he turned around and walked toward the desolate place behind him, walking aimlessly like a fugitive, and in the process of marching, he encountered a mother who had frozen to death in the snow, and the little girl in her arms was still alive.
Gwenplain looked at the little baby but suddenly had a sense of mission, a sense of responsibility to protect the little girl, and with nothing he took a little girl and began to live. Luckily, he met the wandering entertainer Yusus, who took him in and the little girl as well.
From then on, Gwen Puran and the little girl named Ti followed Yu Sus wandering around, selling art to make a living, and fifteen years later, Gwen Pulan became a famous smiley person in the township.
Ti Chang is very beautiful, but she is a blind woman, but in the blind girl Ti's heart, Gwen Puran is like a light, illuminating her life, and is the most important person in her life. For Gwenplain, Thi is his sister, his responsibility, and his destiny, and the two of them fall in love with each other during the days when they are snuggling up to each other.
The depth of their love, the intensity of their love, and the simplicity of their love, each other is the only one of the other, the fate of the other. In fact, as Hugo described it, their love was each other's need, each other's salvation.
Gwenplain has a clown face, very inferior, does not dare to stand up to face others, often uses a scarf to block the lower half of his face, does not want others to see his ugly face, he is even afraid of others to see his face. But Ty couldn't see his face and still liked him and loved him, which was a consolation for him.
Ti, from a young age, was a blind woman, could not see anything, could not see any color, her life has been spent in the green car of Yuss, and the people she can contact are basically Yusses and Gwynplain, who live like a family and rely on each other.
Their love is both mutual dependence and mutual redemption, they are each other's spiritual salvation, they are the light of each other's lives, and they illuminate each other. Tee lives hard every day and performs every performance, and Gwenplain is a hard-working performance, hoping to earn more money and let Tee live a better life.
Their lives were bland and happy, but that happiness was shattered by a gourd that had been drifting at sea for fifteen years.
It all started fifteen years ago, when the child traffickers had abandoned Gwenplain and escaped by boat, but they had a storm on the sea, and it was a tornado, and before they died in the shipwreck, they remembered the child they had abandoned, wanted to atone for their sins, wanted to alleviate the uneasiness of their conscience, so they wrote down everything about Gwenplain's life and experience on a piece of parchment, and everyone signed it on the parchment, and then put the parchment in a gourd, stuffed it with a cork, and soaked the gourd in tung oil. Thrown into the sea, I hope that one day, Gwenpran's life will be known to the world.
Fifteen years later, the gourd was picked up by the British Navy and delivered to Queen Anne, who was thinking about how to deal with Josephine, her half-sister, whom she particularly hated, and Gwenplain's life gave her an opportunity.
It turned out that Gwynplain's father had a lover, and that lover had a son named David Tilimoe, who inherited the title of Sir Cloncharlie after the disappearance of Gwynplatz, and the premise of the succession was to marry Josephine, so that Josephine had both her own title and a knight of the House of Lords, preserving her status and wealth.
Now that the true heir of Sir Cloncharlie has appeared, Anne finds the doctor who operated on Gwenplain, proves Gwenplain's identity, then discloses his identity, allows him to re-inherit Sir Kronecharlie's title, and orders josepha, whom she hates, to marry Gwenplain.
Anne was overjoyed to think that her hated sister had married such a clown as Gwenpran, and that her behavior was entirely to satisfy her own lusts, regardless of the slightest sisterhood.
After Gwenplain regained his knighthood, he did not forget the poverty of the people at the bottom, and at the congress, Gwenplain objected to an increase in the annual salary of the queen's husband for one hundred thousand pounds a year, and complained about the harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes of the time, asking the nobles to face up to the lives of the poor at that time, describing to the nobles the lives of the people at the bottom of England, the sufferings of the people, and hoping that the lives of the people could be improved.
His statement was so forceful, so heartfelt, but the nobles did not hear his description, nor did they see the misery of the people at the bottom of England, they only saw a clown become a member of the House of Lords, a knight, and they laughed at him with all their might, and they tried their best to ridicule him.
Although Gwenplain became a knight and became a nobleman, he hated such a life, hated the faces of the nobles, especially Joseph anna, whom Queen Anne had ordered him to marry. Josephanna lived the extravagant life of nobility, and a noble fiancé, but did not marry for the sake of a life of free debauchery, looking for the pleasures of depravity. When she sees the smiling personality Winplain at the market, she tries to seduce him and be happy to have a clown lover. But when she learned that Gwynplain was her real husband, she ruthlessly chased him away and said that she hated him, a fairy-looking woman with a heart like a snake and scorpion.
Unable to live such an aristocratic life, Gwenplain finally left a note renouncing his knighthood and letting his brother David Tilimoe continue to inherit Sir Cloncharlie, and he returned to Ursus and Ti. At this time, Ty, who had lost Gwenplain, was already dying of illness, and finally died in the arms of Gwenplain, and the grief-stricken Gwenplain committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea.
Hugo describes the social reality of the time through a small person with a tragic fate like Gwenplain, on the one hand, he is in misery, but he is kind, and after being abandoned, he picks up Ti, takes care of her wholeheartedly, and raises her as an adult. Later, he had the opportunity to become a knight, but his heart was bent on changing the lives of the toiling people, and finally, powerless, he returned to his lover, and after the death of his lover, he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea, ending his tragic life.
On the other side are the most extravagant aristocrats, living a life of debauchery, squandering the fruits of the labor of the inferior people in their eyes, and oppressing them to the utmost, completely disregarding their lives or deaths.
Through such a comparative description, Hugo shows us the social reality of England at that time, which not only attacks the social elite at that time, but also exposes the social contradictions of the time.