The Modern Black Bile — Madame Bovary — Part 3
When Charles investigated Emma’s dead body at the end of Madame Bovary, a black bile arose from her lips and ran down her face. The startling bluntness of this image in the history of literature cannot be overstated. It can be difficult to see the influence of Madame Bovary, because books published in our time stray little from the same scope and substance. The focus on provincial life, on a singular family, on a specific time period and scenes from Emma’s life as close to the end as possible, are just as likely to be experienced in Jane Smiley, Jonathan Franzen, and Alice Munro. Yet to do this in 1857 effectively began a realist genre, one of exquisite detail and reticence in exploring a theme or moral, as well as refraining from a conclusive and magical ending. Emma’s death is tragic, but it is also unromantic, a key difference from past tragedies, rendering mute many opportunities for a thematic throughline.
But we are going to try.
The best claim realist novels have is their reticence to admit one strong reading, and instead advocating for a plethora of reader responses. My interpretation is just one of an inexhaustible supply. And each generation is able to map their historical context onto the novel to breathe new life into its current meaning.
Emma dies, Charles dies, Charles’s mother dies, and Berthe is sent to live with a distant Aunt, as well as forced to work in a cotton mill. Homais continues to be successful while his bona fides remains in doubt. Rodolfe and Leon dissolve into the fog of the bourgeoise. Drawing conclusions on the novel may be redundant: the hugeness of the suffering may conjure just as obvious a moral: don’t cheat. Furthermore, do not spend money. However, the outcomes of certain characters rebukes that. Rodolfe, after disposing of Emma, seems healthier than ever, a kind of vampire preying on any commoner with dreams of high society and lacking in prospects. Leon’s tryst with Emma is just one more education on his path to renown and independence. Both men absorb Emma’s passion, youth, and naivete, and offer only an outlet in return. Perhaps it might do to meld Emma’s emotional and fiscal conflicts into one language. Because she failed to “invest” early in her life into Charles’s ambition, or in affection for her daughter Berthe, she would not receive those “dividends.” Attention is just as much a currency in its own right as the dollar, the franc, or the euro. This reading is a conservative one, an attack on Emma’s morals at an individual level. As French women did not receive the vote until 1944, this pointing the finger at female decision-making might be more systemic than what is on the page here.
If one were to expand beyond the female mind and modernize the reading to today’s society, is it any wonder that, right now, the citizens of the western world feel abandoned by their countries? No attention has been paid to our infrastructure, in training our youth, or providing equal means of home ownership. Instead, payments are made for investing in automation. We perhaps are Emma, and Rodolfe exists as the nation-state, absorbing our desires for the benefit of a consumer economy which will not return the favor. Or perhaps the nation is someone like Charles, someone ignorant of the obvious plight of those in the same household. The rich seek investments that achieve a higher return than investing in human beings could ever provide. This might be the progressive reading.
We could approach characters and their psychology individually. For Charles, it was not the known unknowns that got him in the end, like the club foot surgery which he seemed to recover from in esteem more than I would have imagined. No, it was the “unknown unknowns.” He did not know about Emma and Rodolfe, perhaps because he refused to know, similar to American and our WMD infatuation with Iraq. The level of ignorance required for Charles to maintain this illusion seems superhuman, and has existed as a plot hole in the history of Madame Bovary’s reception. I for one believe the book to be elevated by Charles’s behavior. The takeaway seems to be that Charles is culpable too, as he is satisfied with Emma’s appearance and matters of taste instead of her disposition. His lacking analysis into his wife’s obvious discontent is appalling. He does not even have the gall to chastise her, rebuke her malady by waking her up, by suggesting, “madam, this is how it is.” Charles, though he had no affair, is guilty of rose-colored glasses of his own, an innocence that everything displayed is immediately apparent. He sees the night sky like all those before Galileo, as stars existing for our benefit.
We despise people like Homais for pursuing success rather than truth, and having it work in their favor. Although he has spent his life “in service” to the community, and though he has raised a plain but industrious family, it started on rotten earth. His pompous behavior surrounding Emma’s death strikes us as uncouth, and his dogged quest afterward for higher attainment strikes us as vanity. While his output is noteworthy, his inputs feel cloying.
And Emma. Always back to Emma. Wanting “more,” whatever that means, without the opportunity to achieve it, is a problem we all share. Social mobility is harder than last century in the western world. Inheriting wealth matters as much now as it did in the 19th century. The moral of the story should be “get used to waiting.” Waiting for children to grow up, waiting for the economy to recover, waiting for your husband to notice you. Waiting instead of reaching. But there is another way to see Madame Bovary as a lesson for the poor. We must measure three times with our mind before we cut once in the world. The beauty of literature, which Emma did not see, is not in its capacity to create impossible desires, but in its ability to sharpen the intellectual knife. Had she whetted that knife, perhaps she could have cut through much of provincial life. Would she have married Charles? Would she have seen Rodolfe as a gentleman, or a predator? Would Homais have been esteemed by her, or taken as a fool? Would Charles’s mother have posed any threat to Emma’s wit? Emma expected the world to work from the outside-in, but few generations have that luxury. Unfortunately for the poor, the provincial life must be grown from the inside-out. Status is not for the buying and selling. It is earned by morality. And morality is both our tool and our prison for psychological survival.
Originally published at https://theroyleline.blog on May 28, 2021.
