Literary question

July 13, 2008 9:04 PM

In Madame Bovary, who is the truer romantic? Emma, for her unending quest for the romantic ideal? Or Bovary himself, for refusing to believe anything bad about his wife?
posted by Afroblanco to media & arts (10 comments total)

I always considered them two sides of the romantic coin: Emma represented the wanderlust side of the romantic who could never be satisfied by married life, and Bovary the patient husband (which I also liked as a counterpoint to the archetype of the patient and neglected housewife) whose love for his wife never failed. Even though Emma always longed to be swept off her feet, a week or two later you get the impression he'd drop a fart in bed, even if by accident, and she would have to move on.

On the other hand, IIRC Flaubert deliberately tried to write a satire of the romantic novel, so I kinda just got the impression he was trying to come up with a snarled, Melrose Place-esque ending.
posted by burnfirewalls at 9:29 PM on July 13, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

What intrigues me the most about Madame Bovary is how it is at the same time a romantic novel and an indictment of romanticism. Kind of like Love in the Time of Cholera in that regard.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:38 PM on July 13, 2008

I really, thoroughly disliked Emma, and felt bad for Bovary. I don't know if that's really justification for a vote for Bovary, but that's my vote. I always thought that you can't really be romantic if you're leaving shattered, broken husks behind you; true romance isn't as incredibly selfish as Emma.

Though, burnfirewalls' answer is probably the most accurate one.
posted by Caduceus at 10:28 PM on July 13, 2008

I really, thoroughly disliked Emma, and felt bad for Bovary. I don't know if that's really justification for a vote for Bovary, but that's my vote.

My vote is for Emma for kinda the exact same reason. If we call the novel an indictment of romanticism (which I'd agree with), it follows that the least sympathetic character is the one most indicted. <handwavy>or something like that</handwavy>
posted by juv3nal at 12:13 AM on July 14, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'm going to say that "truer romantic" is the wrong question to ask of this book. Every sweeping emotion is undercut by the crush of ordinary life.

Charles is the one decent person in the book. One of my favorite sentences of all time -- which I have to paraphrase 'cuz the book is in our bedroom and my wife is asleep -- "Charles' conversation was as flat and dull as a sidewalk, with other people's ideas parading across it in common dress."
posted by ferdydurke at 1:18 AM on July 14, 2008

I'm with ferdydurke on this one ... the most human (and perhaps most romantic by that vulnerability) character is Charles . And after all, Flaubert begins ("Charbovari!") and ends his novel with Charles.

Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart.
posted by grabbingsand at 5:53 AM on July 14, 2008

Ugh...I don't think either of them is particularly sympathetic or romantic. Emma is pathologically self-centered, but I feel that Charles is actually much the same, although he expresses it differently. He does stand by his wife, true, but he doesn't even know his wife. And doesn't even know that he doesn't know her. Charles doesn't believe anything bad about Emma not because of a real devotion to who Emma is, but because Emma's betrayal doesn't square with his idea of love. Both of them use other people as "types" rather than people. They are both using people to fulfill their preconceived notions of love, rather than falling in love with a person. Both of them are looking to fit other people into their ready-made narrative, which makes them both destructive (see club foot incident) and easily manipulated.

Thanks for reminding me to read this again.
posted by LittleMissCranky at 6:15 AM on July 14, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

I like LittleMissCranky's assessment, though I would say they are both precisely romantic.
posted by xod at 9:50 AM on July 14, 2008

Emma's no noble romantic like, say, Anna Karenina, if that's what you mean by "romantic." Flaubert also posits that Emma was infected with notions of romance after reading cheap novels smuggled into her convent, indicting how he felt about treacly sentimentalism. Nabokov makes a side note in his (fantaaaastic) book, Notes on Russian Literature, that at the bottom of Madame Bovary lies the notion that Emma is ultimately punished for being an adulterer. I'd take that one step further and say that she's punished for living a life utterly disconnected to reality. She's a romantic all right, but her violent illness and death are her comeuppance, not a tragic aftermath for a woman we're really rooting for.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:13 PM on July 14, 2008

Wow, what a great thread. There are times when I really love the community, and this is one of them.

I've tried not to demonize Emma too much; in many ways, she was a product of her time. Women in early 19th-century rural France weren't allowed to pick their husbands, and I'm sure that many of them wound up in truly awful marriages. However, Emma was a terrible mother, and that's pretty hard to forgive.

In the end, I probably agree the most with burnfirewalls' assessment - both Emma and Charles represent different faces of romanticism. However, I also agree with LittleMissCranky - although I would consider both characters to be romantic, that doesn't negate Emma's extreme self-centeredness or Charles' utter obliviousness.
posted by Afroblanco at 9:32 PM on July 14, 2008