Toilers of the Sea

Abstract

The book is dedicated to the island of Guernsey in La Manche Channel, where Hugo spent 15 years in exile. The story is is set just after the Napoleonic Wars and deals with the impact of the Industrial Revolution upon the island. It concerns a Guernseyman named Gilliatt, a social outcast who falls in love with Deruchette, the niece of a local shipowner, Mess Lethierry. When Lethierry's ship is wrecked on the double Douvres, a perilous reef, Deruchette promises to marry whoever can salvage the ship's steam engine. (The cliff of the double Douvres is not the same as the well-known and also dangerous Roches Douvres, which today has a lighthouse - Hugo himself draws attention to this in the work.) Gilliatt eagerly volunteers, and the story follows his physical trials and tribulations (which include a battle with an octopus), as well as the undeserved opprobrium of his neighbours.