Madame Bovary

I meant to write about each book upon completion but I neglected writing about Humanity, and I'm delayed in writing about Madame Bovary. At least this time I took unusually diligent notes (though still a scattered mess) because I wanted to ensure that I'd remember enough of my thoughts for a later discussion of the novel with a friend.

A side note: I just noticed that my sister wrote "LOSER!!" at the bottom of one of my Bovary pages in my notebook. Apparently boredom lead her to take advantage of one of the instances when I left it unattended during our stay in Boston. Such encouragement! I'll get her back.

Anyway, I was surprised by not only how much I enjoyed the novel overall but how much I related to Emma (as neither of which I was anticipating). One note I jotted down, which simplifies just one aspect, was "how uselessly I daydream just the same to make the present circumstances bearable and although I am not limited as obviously by the social decorum of her day, I remain just as naive and wishful." I'm really interested to hear what my friend found so deplorable about Flaubert's characterization of Emma. (We haven't discussed it yet as she is still reading it, though she's read it before.) I didn't find it the least bit demeaning or ill-conceived, but rather honest and even considerate.

My friend has tried to get me to read the works of Jane Austen, which she feels she connects with so deeply, but I feel that I wouldn't connect with them beyond a shallow, underdeveloped sense of feminine romanticism. This assumption however is based off the numerous Austen film adaptations I've sat through since I've never actually read anything of hers, so I am perhaps speaking in ignorance. I'm not saying I would dislike them as stories per say but that I wouldn't find her characters' plights portrayed with the same realism. Perhaps that's more my affinity for Flaubert's cynicism talking than for his interpretation of the feminine psyche. Then again, I can't relate to most all women in real life, so why shouldn't I relate more to a male's rendering! *sigh* I know the novel was criticized for obscenity and although I don't have any depth on the case, what struck me as "obscene" for its time was not the sexuality in itself but rather Flaubert's detailing of Emma's frustrations, giving her outbursts justification instead of demonizing them.

Some of my more abstract blog entries while reading Madame Bovary dwelled on one reoccurring thought: the vile yet enduring female fantasy that prince charming will come and save everything, a fantasy I succumb to in certain aspects of my own. Emma found her life dull and clung to naive beliefs to continue living her given life: she thought she would love Charles upon marrying him, that her wedding day would be her happiest day, but such was not the case. To escape the dullness of her husband she clung to the fantasy that wealth guaranteed happiness and although this fantasy was never stomped out by actualization like her marriage, it drove her into debt and ruin. She thought an affair would bring passion and love but she was deceived by a pro and hence corrupted irreversibly. And even when there was mutual love in her second affair, it was only ephemeral. Perhaps that was in part because Rodolphe stole an innocence from her that would have been necessary for her love for Leon to endure, or at least for it to last longer than it did, but I can't imagine it lasting either way. Her passions in general seemed insatiable that ruin was practically inevitable.

All these pursuits were to escape the mundaneness of her bourgeois life, a desperate pursuit of which her husband, lovers, and everyone else remained completely oblivious to. Her affairs didn't strike me as inspired by the hedonistic, selfish, gratifications of a nympho but that of a woman trying to liberated herself from a suffocating environment but only further oppressing herself in her attempts to escape. (Sounds too familiar.) Not her husband nor her lovers could save her. When she realized that financial ruin was at hand, exasperated, she ran from one male to the next for help but not a finger was lifted nor an ounce of sympathy granted. Arsenic was her last desperate solution and even her death was ill-fated and arduous. What seemed the most horrific to me was her looking upon Charles in the last hours of her painful death and seeing the deep, impassioned love in his eyes that she was so incapable of ascertaining herself.