Warning: There are spoilers from the beginning of this review.
WHAT AN astonishing novel Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is. I finished it recently & it still haunts me like a dream. Published in 1857, in essence, it tells the story of Emma, the daughter of a farmer who attends school at a nunnery, becomes a dreamer due to her reading of religious texts & trashy romantic novels, marries a doctor she meets called Charles, discovers that she loathes him & finds marriage to him boring & stifling, has two passionate affairs that both end badly, gets herself into a mountain of debt, & hounded by unscrupulous money-lenders & the twittering classes, finally kills herself. But although Emma is often a furious character to witness, I found it pretty much impossible to not find her intriguing, complex, and, in the main, a character full of vital energy who because of her situation (being a woman in 19th century France), simply had no suitable outlet for the ambitions, drives & flames that raged within her heart. On the surface, it would be easy to diagnose Emma as suffering from that curiously modern phenomena, Chronic Dissatisfaction, but I believe this would be far too simple an explanation. For really she is a woman of vigour, intelligence, & she also has a restless, hungry spirit. She also possesses a rare beauty, which enchants those that she meets. But all around her, she finds her dreams & desires limited, not only because of her social/financial status, but also because she is a woman. When she meets Charles, she hopes that marriage will bring her true happiness, but she soon realises that this will not be the case. For Charles is a crashing bore. Flaubert describes him as completely commonplace. Someone who has never uttered anything individual or outside of popular thought in his entire life. He is a bad doctor, & when he bungles an operation on a boy who has a club foot in the village, which then requires amputation, Emma's hatred for him knows no bounds. She gives birth to a daughter but is indifferent toward her, leaving her in the main to the nanny. Her dreams of him becoming a famous, respected doctor lie in tatters. They attend a ball - the first she'd ever been to - and she is dazzled by the glamour & the beauty & the magic of it all. A dashing Vicomte dances suggestively with her, opening her mind to a host of other possibilities. Dreams of romance & intrigue flood her mind. She then meets Rodolphe, a rich womaniser with whom she begins a passionate love affair. But at the height of their affair, on the eve of their long planned secret departure to Italy to live together, he abandons her. She has a complete breakdown & although she recovers, she starts to dislike Charles even more. She despises him for being naive, as if the fact that he does not even notice that she had been in love with another man & had an affair with him makes him even more ridiculous & pathetic. But denial is strong in this novel. For example, on her recovery, she is plagued by guilt, so she suddenly becomes hugely charitable to the poor & less fortunate, to the point that the local gossips wax lyrical about her. But in reality it's all a mere show. Deep down she hates herself, her husband, the local people she knows, & feels like a bird trapped in a cage. She then meets a former friend & almost lover, Leon, at the theatre. He starts to court her again, & although she desires him fiercely, she is still wracked with guilt at her previous affair with Rodolphe. Leon tries to convince her. Under his amorous caresses he urges her to give in to their mutual desire. "I don't know if I ought to... it's highly improper, you know." she tells him. "In what way?" he replies. "Everyone does it in Paris!" This remark settles the matter. Because Paris, for Emma, is the beacon of civilisation, so unlike the provincial backwater she is forced to live in, with their dated, ridiculous views & narrow-minded morality. And if the Parisians do it, then that is the done thing & that's what she'll do too, she reasons. And so begins her dazzling affair with Leon. They have a blissful time at first. Meeting weekly at a snazzy hotel in Rouen, she lends money at an alarming rate so as to purchase all the things she has ever dreamed of. Silk scarves, beautiful clothes, lingerie, gifts for Leon, she feels alive again. But soon, things start to get stale. She worries he is losing interest in her. They have a few close shaves where gossiping neighbours almost catch them in the act. She gets angry with him when he neglects her one day. He realises he can't pay the price for the nice hotel any longer & suggests they get a room in a cheaper establishment instead. She is horrified at this suggestion & says she will pay half so they can stay at the same hotel. The debt increases. Finally, the debt collector hounds her & threatens to tell her husband. In desperation she approaches Rodolphe, the wealthy man who had abandoned her on the day they were supposed to run away together. He refuses. In absolute desperation & with all roads seemingly closed to her, she consumes arsenic & dies a few days later.
Her husband, Charles, who she came to loathe, is devastated, & finally learns that she had been intimate with Rodolphe in the past when he finds a love letter she had written to him. At first, he is in denial, but eventually accepts the truth, A few weeks later he bumps into Rodolphe in the street. Rodolphe suggests they should have a drink together. The scene that followed was one of the most moving in the novel. Rodolphe is everything that Charles isn't. Rakishly handsome, stylish, witty & suave. He is almost a dandy, although he isn't artistic enough to be a proper dandy. But he is elegant & confident. And although Charles feels like he ought to kill this man, what actually happens is heartbreaking. Flaubert writes that "Charles drifted off into a daydream as he gazed at this face that his wife had loved. He felt like he was seeing some part of her again. He was filled with wonder. And with a great sigh of the soul he realised that he would have liked to be that man." (p.310) Following this heartbreaking revelation, he tells Rodolphe that he bears him no malice for what happened between him & his wife. And Flaubert tells us how for the first time in his life, Charles uttered a memorable phrase: "Fate is to blame."
Flaubert's novel had me rapt throughout. And as well as Emma's story as I have tried to condense it above, it deals with so many subjects. Flaubert hated the petty middle class & saw through their vile hypocrisy as though he had an x-ray machine through which he could see their inner souls. Most of the other major characters are repulsive. Under the respectable masks that they show to the world, they are utterly selfish, conniving, crude, two-faced, heartless, resentful, money-grabbing individuals. They are a sordid collection of commonplace utterances & cliches made flesh. And it is against this sea of petty reality that Emma becomes a hero for everywoman & everyman who dares to imagine that they want more than this from life. For what she really represents is the battle of the imagination against the limitations of reality. For all her faults, her mind can imagine a better future, it is an active force trying to build a reality she can be happy with. But she wants so much more than society is willing to give her. Although she is increasingly annoying in her quest for material things, her creaturely self-assertion is supremely admirable. She is an unashamed sensual being, a sexual being, a force of nature who is only too aware of of her own mortality up against the limitations of a petty, hypocritical middle class society with their suffocating morals & rules. She is clever, quick-witted & beautiful, struggling against the mundane world whilst attempting to live up to the motto: Be all you can. The philosopher Jules De Gaultier sums up his thoughts on the novel with these glorious words:
"Indeed, when we lay down Madame Bovary, or any great novel & face the business of life, we are left with the usual question: How can one succeed in living an imaginative, creative life? Many of us do not conform to the conventional, bank-account idea of success. We instead look to the exceptions for examples, the creative artists, & many of them seem to be disturbed people who are actually rebelling against THE COLLECTIVE ILLUSION OF REALITY, against the conventional beliefs that safeguard the herd."
Emma Bovary is such a one. And likewise the author Gustave Flaubert, who although he created a heroine with many irritable flaws, through her, encourages any one who is held back by society or hypocritical morality to use whatever means they have to try & get the things they dream of, & who felt such great affection for his human, all too human heroine that one of his best known remarks was, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!"
'Be What You Can.'
Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 (1960)
Works Cited:
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners. Tr by Margaret Maulden. Oxford World's Classics (2004 [1857])
Gaultier, Jules De. Bovary & Bovarysme
