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.

La langue de Flaubert

Madame Bovary is an adventure to read in French, but one of the most beautiful adventures I've experienced. Flaubert's language is exquisite, every word fits like a glove, nothing stands out, nothing interrupts the smooth ride you are experiencing. Listen to this-yes listen-it's music:

«L'hiver fut rude. La convalescence de Madame fut longue. Quand il faisait beau, on la poussait dans son fauteuil auprès de la fenêtre, celle qui regardait la Place, car elle avait maintenant le jardin en anthipathie, et la persienne de ce côté restait constamment fermée(...) Cependant, la neige sur le toit des halles jetait dans la chambre un reflet blanc, immobile; ensuite, ce fut la pluie qui tombait» Flaubert, Madame Bovary p.281

Charles Bovary has the time of his life

Charles Bovary was once married to a much older wife, it was his first marriage but she was a widow, 45 years old with some money to support them (or so they thought). The short marriage ended abruptly when his wife died of a stroke after discovering that her fortune had vanished. He wasn't at all happy with her and his life changed for the better when he married young and pretty Emma.

For Emma the marriage was necessary, she had few other options, if any. Had she been of working class her life would, ironically, have been less restricted. But she was of a striving middle-class, the class that realistic novels in France were most interested in. She was a wealthy farmers daughter and her other options were waiting for  husband of som other wealthy farmer or staying with her parents to take care of them when they got old under the surveillance of one her brothers who would own the farm and sprinkle some of its incomes on her when she begged for it. 

Her poor education and social background prevented her from working as a governess or chambermaid. It seems as if she made a lucky catch when Charles Bovary fell in love with her, and Flaubert is convinced that she did. However, when you take a closer look, Emma seems to have reasons for her "malaise" which she feels even under the most perfect conditons. 

Emma is intended to be a person who becomes a victim of her own delusions. Emma is, like Don Quixjote (or in that case, Alma, herself), addicted to reading, or rather; Emma Bovary is addicted to stories. It all began when  she was a girl at a convent school run by nuns (in fact the only schools that would educate teenage girls at that time in France, public schools were for adolescent boys only). An old woman who did the laundry for the convent school, entertained her with stories and later on Emma discovered the library and sir Walter Scott.  She seems to be full of fantasy and creativity. The only use she will have of that fantasy and creativity for the rest of her life is to make the perfect home for her husband. 


When Charles comes home in the evenings after a full days work he is greeted with a fire burning on the hearth, a beautifully laid table and delicious food. If the food wasn't all that nice, Emma gave the course some interesting name. Emma herself was neatly dressed and smelled nicely, seemingly without any perfume. She took an orphaned girl to be her chamber maid and wait by the table. 

 

Charles had the time of his life. But Emma? Using all her creativity, intelligence, fantasy and energy to prepare a welcoming home for her husband? Is there any just cause for blaming novel reading for the coming tragedy?

Madame Bovary and the importance of being correctly dressed

When Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary authors normally strived for realism in literature. Romanticism had lost its status among literary cristics, although e.g. Victor Hugo still wrote romantic masterpieces like Les Misérables, a realist theme treated with his masterly  romantic touch. 

                                                      Gustave Flaubert

 

Flaubert, on the other hand, was a realist and tried to be as true to nature as possible and he closely observed human behaviour to be able to write as realistically as possible.He therefore described both physical appearances and psychological facts with utmost exactitude. 

                                                        
                                                                 Charles Bovary

Already in the first chapter, when we first meet Charles Bovary, the main character in the first part of the novel, as he comes to school in the rural hamlet where he is about to spend his life, the reader is informed of how the characters are dressed: «le proviseur entra, suivi d'un nouveau habillé en bourgeois» (the head master entered, followed by a new comer dressed in city clothes). After his entrance, the young Charles Bovary continues with fumbling with his cap in an akward manner since he doesn't want to throw it on the floor. None of the other boys cares about where their caps are dropped, so he immediately distinguishes himself both in his clothes and in his behaviour regarding his garments.