An Ordinary Existence
What I really enjoy about the selected readings for this class, and great literature in general, is that the texts and the characters we encounter generate endless talking points. I find this especially the case with Madame Bovary. I've reached the point in the book where the positively diabolical Rodolphe Boulanger succeeds in his seduction and conquest of Emma. Flaubert has been inspiring humorous snorts from us up to this point with every flailing conceit of his self-absorbed heroine and every ridiculous flourish of Roldolphe. I found the scene at the agricultural fair that preceded the consummation of the lovers' affair, biting. The way Flaubert intersperses quick portraits of yawn-worthy pompous town officials and stupid livestock between Monsieur Boulanger's obvious advances, makes for something almost absurd--and virtuosic. Flaubert is a bit of a ventriloquist. Then, far that matter, so is Roldolphe. He talks to Emma using phrases that seem to come directly from her romance novels.
But Flaubert is in this for more than the laughs (if perhaps the same can't be said of Roldolphe). Moments of stirring beauty are his other forte. As Emma luxuriates in her passion for Boulanger in a country meadow, Flaubert's attention to Emma's perceptions, like everything he writes, gleams with exquisite, flawless, detail: "Here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as if humming-birds flying about had scattered their feathers." (130). Later he writes, "A blue space surrounded her and ordinary existence appeared only intermittently between these heights, dark and far away beneath her." (131). By despising her ordinary existence, Emma makes what I fear might be a tragic mistake-- a rejection of a life that for all purposes is a good life, a life that many would consider a blessing. All of the unassuming, harmless, honest mundanities of life-- of which Charles numbers the sorriest-- strike Emma, in her illness, as things she can not enjoy and can not endure. As she basks for the first time in the fulfillment of her romantic dreams, we feel a small ache for the plain, true gifts that are being overlooked, at the exact moment that a world that is sensationally gorgeous and dazzlingly false is being discovered.
The cast of characters in Flauberts work is interesting and the way he makes them all work together and become dependent on each other to tell the story is impressive. I agree with you that Emma is a tragic character who is never fully able to realize her potential as a woman because of her trapped surroundings.
ReplyDelete