Emma lured me soon after she becomes Madame Bovary .But
when she was over , just like her lovers, I too began to feel disillusioned
with her. It was not that it had a bad ending or a clichéd one as you may call
it.It was because when I started to recount how good the book was, I could see
that , as a writer I cannot even try to emulate the meticulousity and conviction that characterised Flaubert’s storytelling.
The novel belonged to the 1800s and I have been fairly
acquainted with the literature that belonged to the Victorian period through
the likes of David Copperfield and Pride and Prejudice. Madame Bovary has all typical characteristics
of the literature of this era – the painstaking endeavours to find and use the perfect,irreplaceable word throughout,
the characters that are never allowed to become humans due to overemphasis of
their distinct features (Homais for instance) , the obstinacy or fear to stay
away from obscenity (inspite of the
tempting premise) , but what sets the novel apart was Flaubert’s success in
sketching Emma , the protagonist , with so much ingenuity that for never once I
could hate her as much as I could sympathise with her.
Emma is confined to her countryside as long as she is with
her dad and for obvious reasons loathes her mundane living awaiting for a Prince Charming to usher her into her dream life. Just like infants who love
strangers for the sole reason that they take them outside their boring homes
for a walk , Emma assumes Charles Bovary, the doctor , who visits frequently to attend to her ailing father,to be her dream man because he
is her only hope for freedom. Emma marries him,and is initially pleased with her new life and tries to love her husband but, is surprised to find she cannot.
She begins her quest for happiness through books and stories
and starts to believe that she still can start afresh with someone else to
satiate her desires. But she is reluctant and tries hard to resign herself to
her destiny. This resignation, as time moves, transmutes itself into a huge
sacrifice before her eyes and gives her a sense of contentment that she is able
to cling to morals and societal restrictions inspite of the cruelty of her
fate. This contentment soon emboldens her to unfetter herself at the cost of
morals and innocence , because it teaches her to feel that the good always
deserve something better. At some juncture she is of course, offered the alluring
chance to break free, in the form of young and naïve Leon but she turns it down
and this incident reinforces her sense of honesty and sacrifice. However, her
moment arrives later and she is swept off her feet by Rodolphe , a wealthy
tycoon and an unhappy husband in his 30s.
My heart , however went out for Charles Bovary who after a
first doomed marriage senses a new beginning in Emma and in fact achieves it
easily. He is an immaculate man with so much love for his wife and is extremely
happy throughout, mistakenly assuming that he is being reciprocated. Ignorance is bliss.
He never for once suspects her infidelity and is able to alienate even his
mother for his wife on a few occasions. Emma in turn cheats him, swindles all
his hard earned money ,even ignores her baby girl ,tries to earn the hatred
of Charles(but in vain) and soon descends into doom quite predictably. You can see that these are
all clichés in a typical drama based on adultery but Flaubert’s plotting of the
Emma’s character arc is impeccable that she remains human inspite of her
detestable acts.
Bovary is honest , lovable and competent but Emma cannot
love him because she cannot. How can you love someone whom you do not find
attractive at all even even though he is revered by everyone around you? How can you
be happy in a life ,however rich and opulent it could be, if you have been born
with the disease of insatiety? She does not even try to apprise him of her
unhappiness because she deems him incompetent to understand it. Whether the
caring Charles would have helped her out had he known it ,is a very difficult question to answer. Emma looked helpless and vulnerable throughout my journey with her and I admit she
could have tried other ways to reach her end. These dilemmas and imperfections
elevated the experience of my reading several notches.
I have seen a similar instance of an unhappy wife in Pirivom
Sandhippom . I expected, initially that Emma would reform after she graduates
into motherhood and the child will complement her desires, as many Indian
movies portray.Visalakshi and Emma are of course ,different women in many
aspects and, the former had a savior, but Emma, unfortunately had only masqueraded
ones.
After Emma’s death, I forgot about one inevitability in any
tale of adultery that is the event of the husband discovering the unfaithfulness of his wife. The moment arrives some time later,when Charles reads her
secret letters and I was surprised to see that he finds himself unable to hate his wife
even after the shocking revelation ,since he is so irretrievably sunk in depression
over the loss of his beloved. This was the instant it struck me that I should
write a review for the book.
I could contrast this
incident with a similar one in About Schmidt when Jack Nicholson discovers the same
uncomfortable truth about his wife after her death. He reacts violently
disposing her belongings from his house and does things which his wife had
forbidden him to. Schmidt’s was a natural reaction since he never once loved her during her lifetime , but begins to love her out of guilt and loneliness only to be hampered by the revelation that she was unfaithful. Bovary is very much his antithesis.
