Madame Bovary’s Relevance Today
“And indeed, what is better than to sit by one’s fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?”
“What indeed?” she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him.
“One thinks of nothing,” he continued; “the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.”
– Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Yes indeed. Flaubert will encapsulate you in between the pages & your fingers will turn them until there are no more pages left to turn; the hours will slip by, you will be in the countryside of France, your thoughts will blend with that of Charles, Emma, Madame Bovary senior, Homais and the entire of Yonville and you without any doubt will find yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.
It was around last year in October, when after unable to gather myself at certain turn of events that I had started looking for books that deal with darker subjects like self-loathe, futility of human life & suicide. I wanted to understand and try to locate my feeling in between those pages and to think that I am not the only one and, that there have been many who thought like I was thinking back then. After much research, I decided to order three books and one amongst those was ‘Madame Bovary’ by Gustave Flaubert. But I got busy & could not put my hands on it back then. Reading has always given me solace and now, after some months nothing makes me as glad as going back to books and choosing Flaubert was the best decision ever.
I love classics because they take you back in time & while reading you realize that we as human race have not moved much ahead in time when it comes to dealing with central issues in one’s own lives which are beyond the purview calculable scientific equations. Madame Bovary was first published in 1856, 166 years ago; but, its relevance today can’t be denied. The book was clearly not of my usual expectations and the turn of events left me completely baffled. Flaubert will fiddle all sorts of emotions within you while you read Madame Bovary. I loved the fact how Flaubert incorporates all the characters and elucidates with the central theme the lives of those around with lucid details.
Where on one side there are these common people with meagre lives and mediocre thinking and amid those is stuck the central character, the heroine Madame Emma Bovary, who is entrapped in her ideal world and unable to tune herself to the ways of those around. She longs for a world beyond her reach, blinded by her illusions and unsatiable longings, she falters at every step. You will love her for her high ideals, for her dreams, her enchanted ways and her immaculate words; pity her for the disappointments she meets with; get furious at her for time and again effectuating indistinguishable mistakes.
“She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.”
Emma’s fallacy could be very well seen even today, where Emma could be just another woman who was raised to be a bride, but who happened to learn more than she should have, incorporated a sophistication that she wanted for herself, a life that she idolized. But alas, the tragedy is you don’t get to choose life but rather it is life that chooses for you in undesired ways, its your circumstances that hold you beneath with a thread and determine as to what extent you can tread. A woman in many ways is still tied to the circumstances offered to her and she cannot in any way be blamed for desiring more than she was offered. She wanted a life that was shown to her in books she read, she wanted to choose a ‘man’ for herself.
Flaubert highlights that, the existent idea of idolizing the ‘masculine man’, of the desire of women wanting to be in the company of powerful men & looking down upon the meek ones. The idea of finding for yourself a ‘manly man’ is very much relevant even today. A man, who would grab you by the arm, force himself upon you, make love to you violently, who would protect you, envy other men’s presence around you, who would treat his woman as his property. This thought process has evidently ruined many women & its high time we make some amends to the idea of a ‘man’. Women should seek partners (in men/women) and not protectors, not saviors. On this earth, no one but you can save yourself and none but only you can adorn your life with the sentiment of peace. Flaubert mocks the picture of the ideal man, an excerpt from the book goes:
“A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.”
Charles Bovary was the meek guy, the one always on the verge of tears, one who was all the while controlled by someone else. For me the tragedy of Charles was greater than that of Emma, for his ways were unacceptable to most. The stammering child Charles was laughed at in his classroom, the big grown up Charles was forced to take up a profession wherein he had no interest, later forced to choose a wife & finally when for once he dared to listen to his heart he was in love with a woman whose idea of love went against the calmness of his nature. The last part of the book made me sob for this unfortunate man who could never be a ‘man’ in true sense for those around.
I loved the part where Flaubert stabs romanticism in the spine.
“Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outburst and lightnings — a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are chocked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.”
Love is no hurricane, it is not what your body feels, not a surge of hormonal rush. Love is very small, often neglected and taken for granted, it presents itself in small gestures of affection, of innate respect, of unending care. Love is not about possession but growth. Love does not question you, does not make you feel small, it does not abuse you & is certainly not violent passions and lofty words. Love is mundane, so mundane that it might look boring. Love instead is finding solace in the mundane. Flaubert wants us to move ahead from the faulty romantic notions of love which cannot be realized.
Flaubert through ‘Madame Bovary’ has called our attention to the human folly of want, of unending desires, the conflict between the idealized aspirations & the real world. The book will stir your conscience, will make you question yourself & will in the end remind you that in chasing ones dreams & fantasies one must never forget the practicalities of common life. We must remember that life can’t be picture perfect akin to your favorite novel and one must, in order to live, needs to draw a line between the romanticized illusions and reality & let not the illusion consume you. Flaubert mocks the foolishness of the quest to synchronize your life with that of your illusions.
All in all, sweet and simple things in life are the real ones & preserving & valuing those is what will give you the courage to hold onto life. I would highly recommend this book to everyone & especially to those of you who are going through a rough phase in life & unable to find the solace within yourselves. Flaubert teaches a very simple lesson which we often forget that is, to look at the brighter side & that, “there is no greater delight than what you already possess”.
