*Written in the summer of 2015 - oldie, but goodie
Same, same Flaubert, but like, different.
At first glance, the life trajectory of Emma Bovary is bleak. She’s this smart, beautiful, well-educated, and extremely well-read young woman who had a lot of potential, but lived a less than modest lifestyle on a country farm. One day, her father gets sick and this awkward, boorish, boring doctor comes over and pretty much starts gawking at her, whilst treating her dad. Nonetheless, this then-married doctor starts coming over on the regular and would sit and watch her sew or paint or ask her for a drink…but he would never really try and talk to her or get to know her. Emma, the insightful chick she is, knew of Charles’ attraction to her, but never really showed any sort of interest in him; which, likely made Charles want her more because even in the 19th century, you always want what you can’t have.
Charles’ much-older wife found out about Emma’s existence and forbade him from going back to the country. But, she got sick and died (a somewhat common motif throughout the novel). So, Charles, being a huge dick without imagination, went back to the country to try and woo Emma. Emma remained un-woo-able. Her father, on the other hand, was all like, “OK, if you really want to marry my daughter, you can…but she’ll need to be OK with it too”. Turns out, Emma - much like myself - thought that, you know, sometimes, it’s good to try new and different things and she had read so much about how great love could be, so why not experience it for myself? So, she married the boring doctor. And hated life.
Charles would come home from work and talk about this patient and that patient and Emma would just roll her eyes because she just didn’t give a crap about her husband’s day. Instead, she would have loved to speak to him about what fantastic book she had just finished reading and her very likely insightful thoughts about the book (Emma stayed at home all day because, well, it was the 19th century and it was a misogynistic society). As much as she had tried to talk to Charles about her big ideas, her thoughts, and things that were important to her, Charles was always uninterested and/or too stupid to understand what she was saying. He never, not once, showed any interest into his wife’s interests - yet, claimed that he loved her and thought that she was the most amazing thing in his life. And, straight up, she was the most amazing thing to ever happen to Charles - he just didn’t realize to what degree because he was too selfish to engage in her interests/hopes/dreams. To Charles, Emma was the perfect trophy wife: she was beautiful, complacent (for a time), and lived to serve him and his happiness (again, for a time). He never dug deep into his wife’s mind, heart, and personality and when Emma would try and talk to him on a level she was more comfortable in, he would just fall asleep!
Emma began to resent her husband. Everything he did, everything he said started to annoy her. She hated how boring he was, how unthoughtful he was, how boorish he was…she honestly hated everything about her married life. The life she was living was neither remotely close to the life she had envisioned for herself, nor was it remotely close to what her novels had described “true love” to feel like. She couldn’t talk to her husband, she couldn’t do what she wanted, her independence became limited and she became dependent on a man whom she had grown to despise. He limited her intellectually and they just had nothing in common.
Throughout most of part 1, I have never empathized more with a fictional character than I had with Emma. I know what it’s like to feel restricted and how it feels to do things out of respect for your relationship because at that point, you don’t know any better. I know what it’s like to practice a form of forced complacency, to wait on someone hand and foot and have your actions go unappreciated. I know what it feels like to have someone want you for reasons other than what you feel makes you valuable. Emma’s mind, in part 1, was her true asset - her love for books, meaningful conversations, and big, passionate thoughts is what truly sets her apart from all of the other lame women introduced in the novel. But, her mind remained unappreciated by her husband. Her husband valued her solely for her looks; his “love” for her was superficial at best. He did for her, not out of love, but out of decency and out of marital duty. Emma knew that. And that made her hate him even more. She (and I) is SO MUCH MORE than just a pretty face - complacency and subservience is not in her (nor my own) nature - and all she wanted was for her husband to LISTEN to her, to CONVERSE with her about things other than the shit he wanted to talk about…but, unfortunately for both Emma and myself, that never happened.
Luckily for me, my own “Charles” did me a huge favour and ended things. If he didn’t, it might not be so farfetched to assume that my life would have gone down a similar moral spiral like that of Madame Bovary’s. Emma yearned for attention and passion - which, she got from that douchebag Rodolphe. She sought an intellectual companion - which, she got from Leon. She entertained herself with lavish spending in between lovers and eventually resulted to prostitution to pay off her debt, so that her clueless husband would not find out about her extra-marital affairs. Finally, when she could not take it anymore, she committed suicide.
In spite of all of her morally questionable actions, I still find it difficult to hate the “dark” heroine. She imagined a life for herself so grand, but was thrusted in to a life that did not resemble her imagination at all and was instead, disappointed with how married life turned out to be. If her relationship with her husband had been better - if he had only taken an interest in his wife that went deeper than sheer physical attraction - then I find it hard to believe that our protagonist would have experienced such a drastic fall. Personally, I think the most heartbreaking part of Flaubert’s narrative was her marrying that boring idiot in the first place. But, perhaps that’s just because I’ve been making some self-realizations of my own via classic literature and writing.
Nonetheless, I guess Madame Bovary is both me…and a story of what could have been me. But, I’m curious to know - what did you mean by that statement, Flaubert?