Victor Hugo's Le Rhin and the Search for Identity

The letters that constitute Victor Hugo's Le Rhin are much more than the account of the poet's three trips to the Rhineland (1838-1840), which were combined into a single narrative. The late 1830s were very stressful years in Hugo's life, and as he approached the age of forty, he felt obscurely the need to examine who he truly was. In key episodes of his narrative he projected aspects of his inner being into characters and places that he met along the way, which revealed the many, often hidden facets of his being to his readers, if not, one suspects, always to himself. (RBG)