Read ‘Madame Bovary’ some time back. No wonder it is truly a classic and many splendoured, works at many levels simultaneously. While the major focus is on a sad, almost a moral, story recounted realistically, the novel weaves a tale with extraordinary attention to the physical, emotional and cerebral elements of details relating not just the central characters but a goodly ensemble of other memorable characters populating the canvas. And despite the clinical, almost, godly detachment characterizing the presentation the empathy of the author for all their failings and limited humanity shines through. Brings to mind the story of Anna Karenin and how Tolstoy dealt with her story. But that will be for another time.
This is also perhaps an example of a work of art that is of such uncommon beauty depicting certain essential and universal characteristics of life in elemental and bare bones simplicity that it bears revisiting more than once emphasizing one or the other features of interest.
There are many facets of the craft of story telling that is perhaps worth recounting and even deconstruction and in this process certain artifacts, loose ends, lack of full causal resolution of events, observations may be discovered (it may be surprising to find these even in such a well-regarded classic).
The novel almost exclusively concentrates on the character of Emma and the destiny inexorably it inscribed as a fall out. The other characters, situations are assembled by the author in a way that directly and indirectly goaded her along this path in a slow, deliberately meandering progression. The reader is given hints quite early in the novel about Emma’s basic disenchantment with the way her personal life post marriage had shaped up and the limited scope of fulfilling her aspirations (still not quite articulate or chanelised) in her immediate surroundings. A rather innocent and docile and almost foolish (shall we say say naïve) country doctor husband, the elusive viscount (whom she met and danced with during her visit to La Vaubyessard) who served to fan her latent ambitions (in a first of several turning points in the plot), an opportunist playboy seducer Rodolphe, a hesitant lover boy Leon turned a desperate seducer (who himself was no less seduced and almost manipulated later by Emma, in an amazingly insightful delineation), wicked tailor-usurer Lheureux – all pivotal chracters from the story’s plotline. While all these characters served to help push Emma onto a slippery decline, reader is never left in doubt that they merely aided and complemented the destructive instincts of the heroine herself. The path she was inclined to choose was always bound to provide her with the company of such characters.
The author’s selection of these characters and the development of their individual behaviour, while largely consistent with the logic of the story, their obvious instrumentality might occasionally come across as a bit of a contrivance, though this is not to detract from the apparently brilliant construction of the characters and the plotline, slowly and inexorably brewing an eventual tempest.
There is nothing wrong with the conception of Charles Bovary as an unsuspecting husband, his characterization as not-very-intelligent, country bumpkin of a doctor, easily satiable, charmed (almost overwhelmed) by his beautiful wife (whose sense of unfulfilment was much too difficult for him to understand). His characterization was carefully built up so as to create a basic condition for Emma to look beyond her marriage though this was never quite articulate, her disaffection with Charles not measuring up to her expectations, even professionally, notwithstanding. During the Yonville period also Emma’s disenchantment with marriage took almost a natural path of development (the author allowed sufficient time for germination of the poisonous plant in her fertile mindplot). And in this process Charles’ indolence, docility, mediocrity and incompetence (especially evidenced in making a mess of the daring surgical operation on the clubbed feet of the ostler and the helping hand Hippolyte in the Golden Lion inn).
It is not difficult for the reader to rationalize Charles’ behaviour towards Emma all through the novel (even long after her death) fashioned on the basis of his blind love, admiriation, indeed, almost awe or even reverence for her apparently finer sensibilities. However, it somewhat stretches one’s credulity to accept that even a henpecked husband would find it easy to continue pulling wool over his eyes when Emma’s mild flirtations with Leon at his home, graduated later to love-trysts with Rodolphe within the village and even later to fairly long escapades with Leon in Rouen. In the latter case there was an early occasion where the ruse of Emma’s going to Rouen for music lessons came almost unstuck. But Charles eventually believed the explanation provided by Emma. Surprisingly, within a small village setting with an otherwise extremely nosy friend of the family like Homais the pharmacist, Charles remained blissfully unaware of his wife’s prolonged unfaithfulness.
There may be a question whether Charles being completely oblivious of Emma’s infidelity provided an essential rationale for her descending into increasing depravity (it certainly facilitated). It is not impossible to imagine that even if Charles gradually woke up to the growing malady that his wife was getting afflicted with and tried to persuade, warn or actively tried to obstruct her in her chosen path, Emma’s descent might not have been possible to prevent. But of course then her last act of desperation and the tragic denoument for the entire family would not have been so starkly brought about. And of course that would be another story !
