Emma Bovary
I don’t read fiction often. In fact, the last novel I read was Picture of Dorian Gray…in 1997. This embargo hasn’t been by design, rather, it’s just how it happened. But for my History of Consumption course I was required to read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, so the streak was broken. It is a wonderful book!
The gist: a terrifically average, middle-class man marries a lovely, but also terrifically middle-class girl. She is happy at first, but during an evening at the ball she sees how the other half lives–namely, in lavish opulence–and becomes disenchanted with her boring life of homemaking, and begins to associate her husband–a genuinely decent man–with all her dissatisfaction. She begins imagining a different life with different men, where she has all she desires, and her disdain for her husband grows.
Flaubert so perfectly captures love’s myriad torments, and imagination’s deceit:
And all this time she was torn by wild desires, by rage, by hatred. The trim folds of her dress hid a heart in turmoil, and her reticent lips told nothing of the storm. She was in love with Léon [a character that is not her husband], and she sought the solitude that allowed her to revel undisturbed in his image. The sight of his person spoiled the voluptuousness of her musings. She trembled at the sound of his footsteps; then, with him before her, the agitation subsided, and she was left with nothing but a vast bewilderment that turned gradually into sadness.
That is a brilliant description! And throughout the book there are countless depictions of the subtle particularities of 19th Century rural France, from every imaginable household item, to cuisine, to fashion and on and on. It is all vividly brought to life. This contemporary detailing of commodities is the reason we are reading the book. But the narrative is also rich. Spoilers follow…
She has multiple affairs, which she hides masterfully. But her increasingly lavish spending–entirely outside her husband’s modest means, and knowledge–eventually catches up with her, and when the creditors that earlier encouraged her later require repayment, she is astonished by the sum demanded. With no possible way to pay–and she tries everything–her husband discovers how he has ruined him. Rather than face the music, she poisons herself. Her husband, still unaware of her infidelity, is heartbroken. To him she had always seemed perfect. So, even when he discovered the evidence of her adultery his opinion of her is unaltered. Still, his insolvency and anguish is total, and he dies.
Emma Bovary is a terrible wife and mother, but still such a compelling character when infused with so much vitality and depth. You feel sorry for her more than anything; sorry that she hadn’t been born to a better station, or sorry she ever decided to marry. Today a woman is free to live whatever life she desires, to love as many men as she likes, and to own her own possessions. But Madame Bovary is a product of her environment, where a woman’s life was hardly her own, and it all goes so terribly wrong.
Filed under: Literature and Books, School on February 14th, 2008
So, things are getting better? No personal experience here, but if your wife is a bitch, well, the rest is history. People don’t change, it’s just that most folks don’t have books, fact or fiction, written about them. I suppose in the 22nd century there will be all kind of talk about them ho’s back on the 2000′s. se la vie (sic)