In Madame Bovary, we see Emma, a newlywed woman, who, when first married,
believes she is very much in love with her husband, Doctor Charles Bovary, but
soon discovers that her love for him was merely an illusion and that her true
desires lie with other men. As explained early on, “Before her marriage, she
had believed that what she was experiencing was love; but since the happiness
that should have resulted from that love had not come, she thought she must
have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out just what was meant, in life, by
the words “bliss,” “passion,” and “intoxication,” which had seemed so beautiful
to her in books.” After first being married, Emma is enchanted with her new
life, the respect her husband holds in the community, and the servants who are
at her disposal. But it doesn’t take long for Emma to realize that “the calm
life she was living the happiness of which she had dreamed.” The temporary cure
for the monotonous days was the couple’s first child. While still pregnant,
Emma reflects on her preference on the sex of the baby, “she wanted a son; he
would be strong and dark, she would call him Georges; and this idea of having a
male child was a sort of hoped-for compensation for all her past helplessness.
A man, at least, is free; he can explore every passion, every land, overcome
obstacles, taste the most distant pleasures. But a woman is continually
thwarted. Inert and pliant at the same time, she must struggle against both the
softness of her flesh and subjection to the law. Her will, like the veil tied
to her hat by a string, flutters with every breeze; there is always some desire
luring her on, some convention holding her back.” Emma’s desire to have a baby
boy is almost paralleled in a parents ambition to live vicariously through
their child. Emma wanted for her baby what she could not have herself which is
the ability to live freely and with whomever he chose. Emma and Charles instead
had a baby girl. And with the addition to their young family, Emma found some
temporary ease to her melancholy state. After giving birth to the child, “her
talk, her manner, everything changed. She was seen to take her housekeeping to
heart, return to church regularly, and manage her servant more strictly…. When
Charles came home, he would find his slippers placed next to the embers to
warm. Now his vests no longer lacked a lining, nor his shirts buttons… She no
longer sulked, as she once had, at taking a walk in the garden; whenever he
proposed was always agreed to, even though she might not understand the wishes
to which she submitted without a murmur.”
Despite this seemingly drastic change from a boring life of a doctor’s
wife, Emma is far from happy. In fact, she found it hypocritical that she
pretended to be the perfect happy housewife but hated her life and wished to
run away with a lover “somewhere far away, to try out a new destiny.” But
pretending isn’t Emma’s only problem, “what exasperated her was that Charles
seemed unaware of her suffering. His conviction that he was making her happy
seemed an idiotic insult, and his certainty of this, ingratitude. For whom,
then, was she being so good? Wasn’t he himself the obstacle to all happiness,
the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp –pointed prong of that
complex belt that bound her on all sides?” But still the reputation held
through as she was still describes as “’a woman of great capacity. She would
not be out of place as the wife of a sub prefect.’ the village housewives
admired her thrift, the patients her courtesy, the poor her charity. But she
was filled with desires, with rage, with hatred.” But internally, Emma is
broken, depressed and “what she was feeling and what she was imagining, her
sensuous desires, which were dissipating, her plans for happiness, which were
cracking in the wind like dead branches, her sterile virtue, her disappointed
hopes, the litter of her domestic life – she gathered all of it up, took it,
and used it to rekindle her sadness.” Here we see Emma fully acknowledge the
fact that she will never get out of this marriage unless something traumatic
and life altering happens. Her desires will always remain merely desires.
It doesn’t take long for Emma to get restless in her marriage despite the
addition of a baby girl to keep her busy. Instead, she finds herself consumed
with desires for other men. It begins subtly, just needing someone (Leon) to
walk and support her on her way to pick up her daughter a ways down the road.
Leon, a clerk, becomes the new object of her desires when they become
acquainted when she asked him to go with her. “By evening, it was known
throughout Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor’s wife, declared in her
maid’s presence that Madame Bovary was compromising herself.” It doesn’t take
long before Leon falls in love with Emma but feels rejected every time he sees
her because she feels as though it is her duty to refrain from adultery but
still retain the desire she has for Leon. For this reason, she exhibits signs
of rejection that actually mean the opposite. Little does he know, “when he
left her house in despair, that she would rise immediately after he went, in
order to watch him in the street. She would concern herself with his comings
and goings; she would study his face; she would invent an elaborate story to
have a pretext for visiting his room…. But the more conscious Emma was of her
love, the more she suppressed it, to keep it from being visible and to diminish
it. she would have liked Leon to suspect it; and she imagined chance events,
catastrophes, that would have made that possible.” But as much as she wished
she could someday publicly and officially be with Leon, she knows she could
never act on these desires without disgracing herself and her husband and
allowing herself to become a social pariah. As soon as Emma realizes she’ll
never be with Leon, she grows more depressed and begins to show it outwardly,
in fact, “Emma did not look happy, and the corners of her mouth were usually
marked by those stiff creases that line the faces of old maids and people of
failed ambitions. She was pale all over, as white as a sheet; the skin of her
nose was stretched tight around the nostrils; her eyes stared at you vaguely.
Because she had discovered three gray hairs at her temples, she talked a good
deal about growing old. She often had dizzy spells. One day she even spat
blood, and when Charles fussed over her, she showed his concern ‘bah!’ she
answered, ‘what does it matter?’” This lack of caring for her own health causes
Charles to panic and bring in his mother for help.
Emma’s abundant time spent with the clerk did not go unnoticed by the
townspeople and rumors begin to fly, putting Emma and her husband’s reputations
at risk. Questions start arising such as, “why was the doctor’s wife being so
generous to the clerk? It seemed odd, and they formed the definite opinion that
she must be his sweetheart.” Society’s reaction to Emma and Rodolphe’s social
endeavors (and can be applied to Emma and Leon as well) upset them and Rodolphe
muses, “doesn’t it revolt you, the way society conspires is there a single
feeling it doesn’t condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies, are
persecuted, maligned, and if at least two poor souls should find each other,
everything is organized to prevent their coming together. They’ll try, all the
same, they’ll beat their wings, they’ll call out to each other. Oh, even so! –
sooner or later, in six months, in ten years, they’ll come together, they’ll
love each other, because fate demands it and they were born for each other.”
Meanwhile, Leon was falling head over heels in love with Emma and, “he
tormented himself searching for some means of making his declaration to her;
and always torn between a fear of displeasing her and the shame of being a
coward, he would cry with discouragement and desire. Then he would act with
energy and decision; he would write letters, which he would tear up, give
himself deadlines, which he would then extend.” Emma’s views on love differed
drastically as, “she never questioned herself to find out if she loved him.
Love, she believed, must come suddenly, with great thunderclaps and bolts of
lightning, - a hurricane from heaven that drops down on your life, overturns
it, tears away your will like a leaf, and carries your whole heart off with it
into the abyss.” On many occasions, we see Emma leading on a man and then
reminding him that she cannot take up another hobby because she so busy keeping
up with household chores, despite their servants, and caring for her husband.
It’s rather surprising the men who go after her despite knowing that she is
married and has a child in a time when adultery was even more frowned upon than
it is today. On page 140, Rodolphe, another potential lover, professes his love
to Emma and assumes that their destinies are now bound together, which she
violently rejects but immediately snaps back into a loving mindset so not to
lose his interest. Just a couple pages later, on 142, the reader sees that Emma
is in fact in love with Rodolphe as her love is described as almost a second puberty
or major milestone and “ordinary life appeared only in the distance, far below,
in shadow.”
Apart from the general story line, three unrelated things stuck out
relating to how religion is perceived, sexism and what was seen as socially
acceptable.
In a conversation between Madame Lefranncois and the pharmacist Monsieur
Homais, Lefranncois call the pharmacist ungodly for having no religion but
Homais disputes this saying, “I do have a religion, my own religion; …Unlike
them, I worship God! I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whoever he
may be, I don’t really care, who has put us here on earth to perform our duties
as citizens and family men; but I don’t need to go into a church and kiss a
silver platter and reach into my pocket to fatten a pack of hambugs who eat
better than we do! Because one can honor him just as well in a forest, in a
field, or even by gazing up at the ethereal vault, like the ancients. My own God
is the God of Socrates, Franklin, Voltaire, and Beranger!” Additionally, they
had to throw in a Jew comment: “a mere trifle; but there’s no hurry; whenever
you like; we’re not Jews!”
And, what’s an 1800’s novel without some sexism!? Charles says, “only,
this afternoon, my wife was a bit upset. Women, you know – the least little
thing troubles them! Especially my wife! And one would be wrong to oppose it,
since their nervous systems are much more impressionable than ours” as if to
say that women are biologically different such that they cannot handle any sort
of trauma without having a nervous breakdown or being having fainting spells,
which they assume most women of the time do. On page 110, we see Charles
speaking to his mother, the Senior Madame Bovary, as they contemplate how to
get Emma out of her depression. Madame insists that Emma just needs something to
do with her hands, something to keep her busy and feel as though she has some worthwhile
things to do during the day. But that wasn’t enough; they had to prevent her
from being exposed to such evil and unholy things as books, especially because
Emma has no religion and therefore can probably be easily influenced by dark
subject matter. For this reason, Madama Bovary had Emma’s library subscription
terminated without her knowledge.
Finally, again with the 1800’s, the issue of alcohol consumption comes up
and instead of taking the route of “his body, his business,” the apothecary
says that “drunkenness ought to be severely dealt with! I’d like to see them
list on the door of the town hall, every week, on a special board, the names of
all those who have intoxicated themselves with alcohol during the week.”
One last thing that struck me but that I don’t have the best explanation
for occurred on page 130. Rodolphe is attempting a conversation with Emma in
which he explains “that these irresistible attractions had their source in some
previous existence.” He goes on to tell her how much she means to him but that
he assumes that while he will carry his memories of her everywhere, he will
probably be forgotten in her memories when their time together is up. Emma
never disputes this argument. During this entire conversation, there are
interjections every other line from Monsieur Derozerays’s speech. In order to
fully understand what Rodolphe is trying to say, you must read every other
line. Is the purpose of this writing style to literally make the reader read
between the lines or is it used to show Emma’s disinterest by allowing the
speech to come through to steal some of the reader’s attention?
