If I had thought the Diary of a Nobody devoid of plot points, Madame Bovary positively butchered my understanding of plots by magnifying every minutiae of a simple country love affair equivalent to an eager yet indecisive male in front of a contraceptive counter. Written by the masterly Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary exemplifies every aspect of the late romantic movement of which I disapprove of. And I liked it.
To start off with, Madame Bovary is and is not your typical Victorian romance. Sure there is the adulteress affair, the scheming, the day-dreaming, the secrecy and the potency of love. But it all takes place in a gritty, rustic setting. There is no great château looming at land’s end, no trenchant emotions striving to surface, no exotic pleasures to savour upon and certainly no indolent aristocratic charm swirling through l’air du soir. In its place, we find the accessory like descriptions of iron black pots and copper tongs in the kitchen, we find the cold enumerations of streets and alley ways, the tonal cantillations of sparrows chirping, and finally the vulgar discharge of beggars and ignorant country pumpkins.
By now you might regard Madame Bovary a romance without its glamour, a love affair without its colours and scents. You would be wrong. Madame Bovary is ever recounted as the perfect fiction precisely because of the contrast its rudimentary background provides. Enchantingly weaved in Monsieur Flaubert’s ever so delicate pen strokes, this simple, rural village is transformed and pulsates with Emma as she is plunged into the depth of passion. Where a simple riverside bench serves as a luxurious satin divan for the reclusive lover; where a vapid horse ride quickly gallops into an alluring chase of love; where the humdrum country fair is performed with the finesse of the finest comedy; and Charles’ surgery, the trepidations befitting of a tragedy.
Between Flaubert’s carefully arranged stops and pauses, his choice adjectives and his fine compositions, we find ourselves cleaving unto Emma as if we ourselves were falling in and out of love. The base world of which Emma lives in, is alternatively the tender garden of Eden; and the Hades of betrayal and suffering. Despite the lack of progression enclosed within each chapter, every experience is heightened, and every moment compelling. It is as a traveller returning from a hazardous journey in the desert, for him, every drop of water is precious and every gulp delightful. Think of Charles’ despair after the surgery, or Emma in the heat of passion, and it is no surprise to recount the classic status prescribed to Madame Bovary in the romance genre.
However, to write off Madame Bovary as such would be a little premature. Beneath the country ramble of the Bovary household, there lay hidden many gems of glimmering vicissitudes. Witness the highly amusing yet deeply profound debates staged between the priest and the chemist; the pompous air of the bureaucracy in contrast with the hysterias of the country folk at the agricultural fair; the subtle exposition of the inequitable distributions of wealth as Emma’s post-chaise pulls away from the downtrodden beggar. If nothing else, the sheer emptiness that is the feminine life reflected in Emma’s despondency serves as a stark reminder of the importance of the feminism movement since the 19th century.
For me, Madame Bovary was like a country stream . Surfaced with serene, poetic romance, adorned with enchanting prose. But underneath the subtle ripples, lies deep reflections and delicate reserves waiting patiently for the observant reader, willing to take a plunge amidst the sifting flow that is the Bovary story.
The 26th Dimension 