Farewell, Emma, for now

Madame Bovary is for sure one of those novels I will get back to. In French the mere sound of the language will attract me over and over again, this I know. Me and my husband have read the novel side by side, but he took the Swedish translation and cannot read my essay on this perfect sample of novel, since I wrote it in French. I am therefore translating it into English here:

Emma Bovary, a not very amiable woman and the author who fell in love with his creation

Part I. Who killed the Bovarys ?

Emma seems to be a young woman with a recurring bi-polar mental illness. Her shop-o-holic  and sex addicted behaviour indicates that. For that reason it is rather difficult to pait a moral portrait of this young woman. You have to be able to distinguish the sickness from her sane and conscious behaviour. I am certain of that the fact  that Flaubert himself suffered from a  mental illness made his descriptions of Emma's recurring periods of ill health so accurate. Nevertheless Flaubert is judging Emma's moral harshly, he find few excuses for her behaviour and depicts her, at least in the beginning of the novel, as a woman deprived of morality.

However, after the indcident when Emma rejected the offers of the accountant Gullaumin, Flaubet seems to have changed his mind about Emma. She is not only a victim of her own delusions, which she found in the romantic novels she eagerly devoured, she is also a victim of a society of respectable men such as Rodolphe, Lheureux and Homais. The three of them representing each, one influential group in society which all re the culprits in this tragedy; Rodolphe the rich aristocrat with whom Emma thought she had found true love, but Rodolphe was only interested in seducing her since he was in a habit of seducing women all the time. He used the naive Emma for his pleasures without any feelings of remorse.

Lheureux represents  the greedy merchant who willingly pushes Emma over the cliff to her economic ruin. Last but not least Mr. Homais, the half-educated, faking friendlyness and kindness, hypocrisy in flesh, is the one to blame the most for this tragedy. Thus these men represents the aristocracy, the power of money and education and science standing against the helpless couple of Emma and Charles Bovary.

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

Emma and the men

Emma surrounded by her husband and suitors

Emma Bovary is most well known for her love affairs. Her love affairs made the French authorities prosecute Flaubert for being a threat to common decency. In his defence he claimed that the story is about the dangers love affairs and lavishness lead to. Emma is punished in the novel, no one would follow her example, she is there to set a BAD example, not an example which people were supposed to follow. So why punish him? Flaubert was acquitted.  

Emma and Léon

Indeed,  Flaubert and the society punished Emma severely for being a woman with more than one man in her love life. I find many faults with Emma, one is her constant strive for being better positioned in society and her following contempt for her husband who isn't status striving. On the contrary he felt most at ease when he lived in Toste and visited farms and homes of simple people.

Emma and Rodolphe

Emma, doesn't long for being the under - occupied wife of a country doctor. She longs for adventures together with a knight in shining armour, with a castle and servants and unlimited credit. So when she meets her soul-mate Léon and he falls madly and deeply in love with her she doesn't feel the same. She feels attracted to him but she doesn't recognize her feelings for the beautiful young Léon as feelings of love, she wants to be his friend. 

Whereas the seductive villain, Rodolphe, gets her full attention right from the start, since he seems to be everything she ever wanted; he has a castle and horses and he even looks like the knight she has dreamt of, and above all; he offers her to go riding with him. By this act of chivalry  he also offers Emma to be like him; Emma becomes the knight in shining armour mounting her own fiery steed.

I find Emma contradictory. Rodolphe is a middle aged man that I find disgusting, while Léon seems to be a rather interesting and kind young man. This is how Emma reacts all through the novel, she trusts the untrustworthy and cheats on the faithful friends she has, apart from Charles and Léon she never understands how much the young boy Justin loves her, or how much she lost when she lost her father -in-law. When she finally becomes the mistress of Léon she soon feels disgusted in his presence. Poor Emma, she is truly disabled by her want of ability to feel contentment. How human isn't she in that respect.

"the eternal rocks beneath"

I haven't finished my series about Emma, but I feel an urge for an interlude of more romantic qualities now, since I celebrated the anniversary of my wedding the other day. So this is a text written entirely for romantic reasons about a romantic novel intended for a romantic husband to read:

I often re-read novels. I know some people find that stupid, life is filled to the brim with interesting new acquantainces and novels to read so why re-read novels?

I say that there is no end to the number of books worth reading and people worth knowing in this cruel, crazy, beautiful world, but I am not an infinite person and since I cannot read all good books in the world during my life time, and I'm not going to meet all interesting people in this world before I die, I might as well discover those I happen to have close by, much deeper.

One of the novels I get back to is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, an intriguing mixture of Flaubertian realism and romanticism of the most heart breaking, windswept kind. The story of Cathy and Heathcliff, two orphaned and abused children who find comfort in each other's company on the wily moors of Yorkshire. None of them is amiable or charming, on the contrary, they are selfish and rude as are most of the characters in this breath taking novel.

One passage of the book that comes to my mind when I'm thinking about my marriage and husband is when Cathy says about Heathcliff :

”If all else perished and he remained I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he was annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it.[...] My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath — a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff – he's always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being — so, don't talk of our separation again.”

Although my husband is of great pleasure to me, all the rest fits in perfectly. We met each other when we both were young, we are «high school lovers», and we have shared the toils and tribulations of life together. When I look upon his dear face I see myself, or at least one part of me– the best one – at the same time as I see a person that I don't know half as well as I would wish to. I know there still remain depths to be discovered deep down below his lovely surface — «the eternal rocks beneath».

Kate Bush

Here is ” Wuthering Heights” with Kate Bush for you, husband, friend and lover (she dances like me, don't you agree?):

Emma and Berthe

One of the most heart breaking passages in any novel I've read so far, is the passage in Madame Bovary where Emma, despite all customs, health precautions and traditions, visits her infant daughter Berthe where she is kept for the first months of her life. The baby is not with Emma and Charles, she is entrusted to an impoverished wet-nurse. Emma can't stand being alone without her daughter and rushes to see her at the nurse's, mère Rollet, house.

The house is not very tidy but little Berthe seems to have a rather good time there, being breast fed by a semi-starving woman. She vomits when Emma picks her up from her cot, so she must have some milk inside her. This seems to have been common among the middle class in France at the time period, for Flaubert doesn't hint at Emma doing something peculiar in sending her infant away like that. 

Small wonder Emma becomes more and more alienated from herself when she is not even allowed to bond with her own baby daughter. The rebellious act of seeing her daughter before the six weeks of seclusion after the delivery was over, shows that Emma had some common sense after all. Sadly she didn't bring her baby girl home. Instead she promises to buy some extra soap and coffee for the wet-nurse who have troubles getting enough sleep at night with the new born by her side.

When the baby moves back to her parents Emma shoves her away and shows her precious little attention and no affection at all. The little girl tries to reach for her absent minded mother:

«la petite Berthe était là, qui chancelait sur ses bottines de tricot et essayait de se rapprocher de sa mère pour lui saisor, par le bout, les rubans de son tablier.

- Laisse-moi! dit celle-ci en l'écartant avec la main.
La petite fille bientôt revint plus près encore contre ses genoux; et, s'y appuyant des bras, elle levait vers elle son gros œil bleu, pendant qu'un filet de salive pure découlait de sa lèvre sur la soie du tablier.

- Laisse-moi! répéta la jeune femme tout irritée. Sa figure épovanta l'enfant, qui se mit à crier.

-Eh ! laisse-moi donc! fit-elle en la repoussant du coude.

Berthe alla tomber au pied de la commode, contre la patère de cuivre; elle s'y coupa la joue, le sang sortit. Madame Bovary se précipita pour la relever [...]appela la servante de toutes ses forces, et elle allait commencer à se maudire [...]Berthe, en effet, ne sanglotait plus. Sa respiration, maintenant, soulevait insensiblement la couverture de coton. De grosses larmes s'arrêtaient au coin de ses paupières à demi closes, qui laissaient voir entre les cils deux prunelles pâlés, enfoncées;le sparardap, collé sur sa joue, en tirait obliquement la peau tendue.

- C'est une chose étrange, pensait Emma, comme cette enfant est laide!» p.180-181

Poor Berthe and poor Emma. What will become of them?