Hugo's Purpose in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

A post or two ago, I was musing on the insensitivity, the political incorrectness of making stories where one helps identify the bad guys by giving them physical infirmities.

Fascinating, I now see at The CyberStones blog, a description of Hugo's purpose in introducing such a character.

Actually, it isn't "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" - the name of the novel is "Notre Dame of Paris." At the time Hugo writes the book, Notre Dame was falling into disrepair. Hugo was a Romanticist, and here was this beautiful landmark that was crumbling - so he wrote a story with Notre Dame as the setting to generate interest in Notre Dame - that way funds could be more easily raised to restore it.

It's just funny how debilitating sometimes political correctness can be. Getting ourselves too hung up in the perceived insensitivies of certain protected classes can itself provide a crippling of the spirit (sorry for the pun, I actually let that sentence sit for a while before finding that word), and may not due those who are disABLED any favors.