When I first started this blog, Youkali proposed that I write something about her. But I hadn't met her yet. My friend CK had also told me to read this book, too. So after stealing it from a Topshop with Youkali (long story) or as another friend said "I rescued the book from being a stupid decor in a stupid shop", I finally read it.
I am usually crap with classic books, I find them too boring and outdated, and eventually I never finish them. But Madame Bovary was great. It would not be advisable for me to enumerate the benefits of the book. It suffices to say that it is a book about boredom where everything is slow and unimportant but it manages to be... erm... a page turner?
My biggest disagreement about MB is that, contrary to what CK thinks, I think that she is not hysterical. I find it thoroughly unimpressive if this is a book about a person with a personality disorder. I don't care about this book, if the story of this woman cannot be generalized. Even if she is hysterical, this is not the point. The point is how people can become hysterical in such situations. Emma Bovary is a woman who leads an unimportant existence, she is married with a man she does not love and has a child she never manages to love. She has no job and no interests in life either. She reads some books and cares about decorating and being fashionable, but not with intensity. She only does that to kill her time.
She takes up one lover after the other and debts accumulate but without any change in her. She is not affected by the love she (never manages to) share with these men or by the beauty that surrounds her. She is an empty woman and stays like that. She dies empty, having committed suicide like the ultimate drama queen.
And the circle of emptiness goes on.
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2 comments:
I agree.
I would restate the above in a slightly different way.
MB is about emptiness. The emptiness created by difference. Difference between imagination and reality, between can and do.
She is a woman in love with her creations, creations that are of course not totally hers. They are products of the books she reads as much as hers. Those creations, unfortunately, bear small resemblance to actuality and this inevitably sinks in.
When it does, she falls in despair and eventually moves on. When this course of action becomes impossible, she makes the ultimate move.
In a sense it is a ladder of a book. Each step, identical in structure with the previous, is nevertheless higher than the previous one.
I agree.
Beautifully restated.
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