Emma the Reader

Emma Bovary has some pleasant sides to her as well. One of those is her taste for reading. She really gets absorbed by reading novels. When she recovers from nervous illnesses reading helps her through. Flaubert suggests that reading is the beginning of the disaster for Emma, I prefer to think that her novels keeps her alive and gives her some solace when the world turns  cruel on her.

At the end of the novel she reads in a feverish haze to forget about all her creditors and the approaching disaster. She gets all her impressions from novels, of a rather doubtful character according to Flaubert. He is ardently eager to libel the romanticisme and it's constant concern with "le je", "me, myself and I". And in this I agree with Flaubert and the other realist authors, the society consists of many human beings living together.

One of Emma's mistakes is that she doesn't realize that she isn't alone in this world. Her self centered world view doesn't change although she reads a lot. And we teachers who always claim that reading novels makes you more aware of other people's feelings and improves the reader in almost every aspect of human behaviour. Flaubert seems to be of the opinion that it depends on what you read whether the reading will be good for you or not. I claim that it depends on with whom you read. 

I think it is always good to read in the company of others, if you never discuss what you read with others you spoil one of the greatest pleasures with reading as well as risking to miss a lot in your reading. There are other examples in history when reading became dangerous because it was kept in a secluded company, e.g. the murders in Kautokeino when some newly awakened followers of Laestadius murdered some of the authorities in Kautokeino after reading and misinterpreting the Bible.

Emma, Emma if you only had discussed your novels with your chamber maid or your friend Léon...

The baroque poet John Donne (1572-1631) wrote according to his Christian belief:

"All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated...As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

Devotions upon emergent occasions and seuerall steps in my sicknes - Meditation XVII, 1624