Lesson Plan Madame Bovary

The usual disclaimer on spelling and grammar applies (remember, these are notes)

Nineteenth century:

A time when class barriers were weakened.  The fruition of the industrial revolution led to a rise in the middle-class.

•           One of the most important factors of the 19th c. was the decline of religion.

Realism:            these writers wanted a true representation of reality (of course, reality as they saw it).  Concentrate, not on grandly romantic heroes (who make deals with devils), or people on epic quests, but on common, everyday people -- the drama of real-life.

Naturalism:       a degree of realism with a deterministic slant -- man, as an animal, a product of his environment and experiences.  God is nowhere to be seen.

Materialism: a love of things, worldly goods as opposed to spiritual ones.

EXPLAIN BOURGEOIS

Style
What is meant by "objective" or "impersonal" style?

Notes on Madame Bovary

Quick Biographical

Brilliant correspondence

 F’s Father was a surgeon

Overview of novel: The scenes

Part One
The school
Roualt’s farm
Emma as a girl/convent
The marriage
The home and realization
The ball

Part Two
I Yonville, Houmais, Arrival of Hirondelle
II Dinner and Leon
III Emma bored and with child.  Goes with Leon to visit wetnurse (905+ - great scene)
IV Sunday’s with Houmais – increasing intimacy with Leon
V trip to flax mill: Emma realizes Leon’s in love with him: meeting with Lheureux; plays the good wife
VI Emma in Church – Abbe Bournisien – Berthe hurt
VII Leon leaves Rodolphe appears
VIII The fair
XI horse ride
X rendevous with Rodolphe
XI operation on Hippolyte
XII plans to Elope
XIII plans dashed – convalescence
XIV Lheureux – comes for the money—Emma finds religion – and loses it.
XV Opera and meets Leon again

Book three
I Leon and Emma together again – coach ride 998
II Father in law dies – Lheureux needles his way in again.
III interlude with Leon – gets power of attorney
IV More interludes with Leon – piano lessons
V Money, Emma falls deeper into depravity
VI Lheruex goes for broke: the notice
VII Frantic for money: Leon, G. – even Binet
VIII Rodolphe and suicide (1041 takes poison); final appearance of Blind man – her death 1048
IX the wait over the body – comedy
X Roualt arrives: the funeral

 Questions for Madame Bovary:

• Which character does the novel open with?  Who character does it end with?  Why?  

• Structurally, the novel moves in series: 1 chapter – a set piece/description.  The next piece, a working out of that description.

• Flaubert gives life to objects – a metaphorical meaning that is deeper than . . . what?

• (go to page ___) What symbolic role does food and eating play in the novel? 

• Symbolism of the Blind Man.  When does he occur?  Why?  Why blind?  Why disease? 

• How does the narrator feel about Emma? Does he feel she is fit only for our spite (       ), or is she worthy of sympathy (      )?

• What does the satiric rise of Houmais at the end of the novel (the triumph of mediocrity) – significantly, after Emma’s death – suggest about how we should judge Emma, v. how we should judge Houmais?  What’s better, to have imagination or to be utterly lacking?

 Charles

• “In the performance of his daily task he was like a mill-horse that treads blindfolded in a circle, utterly ignorant of what he is grinding” (855) and this is a doctor in training?
• Charles Good and bad
  • Charles the Good: 861 on his first wife’s death “Poor thing! She had loved him, after all” what does this show about Charles? GOOD HEARTED; After Leon leaves and Emma is despondent, he “shuth himself in his consulting room [ . . . ] put his elbows on the table and wept” (925)
  • Charles’s sleeping 886, 897. 909 – why?
• 864: does Charles ever propose?
• 902: on Emma’s pregnancy “Now he had everything he could ever hope for”
• Believes in fate (961)

Emma

• SENESOUSNESSFirst mention of her: “fearless candor” and “full lips” (858-9) – what do they signify? Tongue coming out to drink liquor (862); 924 “her starved sensuality”;

• That said, our first impression of her is _______?

• Eyeglasses “like a man’s” (859); 867 “It was he who gave the impression of having lost his virginity overnight: the bride made not the slightest sign that could be taken to betray anything at all.”  “A Man is free, at least – free to range the passions and the world [. . . . ] Whereas a woman is continually thwarted” (902); wearing a “man’s hat” when she goes riding with Rodolphe (946); puts R’s pipe in her mouth 949; 966 vest like a man; about Leon “he was becoming her mistress, far more than she was his” 1018;

•  “forehead pressed against the windowpane, looking out at the garden” (859) why in this pose? What does it suggest about her character?  (SEE 887, 921,  FOR A LATER MANIFESTATION OF THIS) The literal reason is noted as well “in the provinces windows take the place of boulevards and theaters” (926); goes to attic and window to read letter from Rodolphe 974; While waiting for Leon who’s held up by Houmais “she stood with her forehead glued to the windowpanes of their room” (1019)

•  864 “Emma herself would have liked to be married at midnight, by torchlight”: what does this illustrate about her character?

• 870: first mention of Emma in church.  Read passage and ask – what does it seem like Emma is doing her?

·        INCIPIENT ROMANTICISM: “her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery” (871); 952 –

·        FULL THROTTLE ROMANTICISM

o       romanticism in full bloom: “Have you got your pistols?” (952)

o       1022 MUST READ and ask, What’s wrong with what she wants?

o       Read 948 “I have a lover! I have a lover!” she kept repeating to herself, reveling in the thought as though she were beginning a second puberty” (948) What does this reveal about her character?

o       Wants Leon to steal for her: tells him “Don’t just stand there like a spineless fool!” (1030)

·        Read 871-872 and then ask: what would this kind of reading do to a person’s thinking?  How would they view love?  How would they view life?

·        873: “etheral languor” what is languor?  Does this fit her character? Why include this longish passage?  What does it show about her?  What is the narrator’s position on this?  What’s Emma’s age here?

·        873 “cured of her illusions”

·        read 874: What does this illustrate about her character now? HER IMAGINATION how do we think about her?

·        887; What does this illustrate about her character? EGOTISM

·        READING 899 “Nowadays I’m crazy about a different kind of thing – stories full of suspense, stories that frighten you.  I hate to read about low-class heroes and their down-to-earth concerns, the sort of thing the real world’s full of” (899) 900 “You’re quite right” the clerk approved.  “Writing like that doesn’t move you: it seems to me to miss the whole true aim of art.  Noble characters and pure affections and happy scenes are very comforting things.  They’re a refuge from life’s disillusionments  As for me, they’re my only means of relief, living here as I do, cut off from the world.  Yonville has so little to offer!” (900)

o       On her child, Berthe “she accompanied her caresses with gushings that would have reminded anyone except the Yonvillians of Esmeralda’s mother in Notre-Dame de Paris” (913).
o       Late in the book “She would read till morning – lurid novels full of orgies and bloodshed” (1025)
o       What doesn’t Berthe, the daughter, learn to do in the story? READ

 Look at NYT article

And what, after all, leads to her downfall? Is it being discovered as an adulteress?  No, it’s money.

o       What makes her decide to go horseback riding? “It was the riding habit that decided her” (944)
o       979 Even religion involves money “She bought rosaries [ . . .] she wished she had an emerald-studded reliquary”  needs objects.
o       The elder Mme. Bovary ranting on how the young spend too much money today – sounds very similar 1016
o       1039 frightening scene in Rodolphe’s room where she catalog’s his wealth
o       **** “the cause of her horrible state – the question of money – had faded from her mind.  It was only her love that was making her suffer” (1040) IS THIS TRUE? IF SHE HAD MONEY, WOULD SHE BE SUFFERING?  Consider the following quote from Rousseau’s Confessions

“I worship freedom; I abhor restraint, trouble, dependence.  As long as the money in my purse lasts, it assures my independence [. . . .] The money which a man possesses is the instrument of freedom” (431)

o       “He waxed his mustache, and signed – just as she had – more promissory notes.  She was corrupting him from beyond the grave” (1058)

·        905-06: Why add the scenes with the wet-nurse?  Why does the wet-nurse keep going back to Emma?
·        “Love, to her, was something that comes suddenly, like a blinking flash of lightning – a heaven sent storm hurled into life, uprooting it, sweeping every will before it like a leaf, engulfing all feelings.  It never occurred to her that if the drainpipes of a house are clogged, the rain may collect in pools on the roof; and she suspected no danger until suddenly she discovered a crack in the wall” (910)

How should we feel about her?

1. Sympathy: the Abbe “It seems to me that to be warm and well fed . . .” (918); On Rodolphe’s compliments “It was the first time that Emma had had such things said to her” (943); “She had that indefinable beauty that comes from happiness, enthusiasm, success – a beauty that is nothing more or less than a harmony of temperament and circumstances” (967); she repulses the advances of Guillaumin “It’s shameless of you to take advantage of my distress! I’m to be pitied, but I’m not for sale!” (1034)

2.  Scorn: pushes child (919) After hurting child thinks “It’s a strange thing [ . . . ] what an ugly child she is” (919); debases herself with Binet (1036)?

·        Enjoys being part of a catalog of fallen women (948) “Now she saw herself as one of these amoureuses whom she had so envied: she was becoming, in reality, one of that gallery of fictional figures; the long dream of her youth was coming true” (948) SHE IS, INDEED, BECOMING PART OF THE GALLERY OF FICTIONAL FIGURES; after Hippolyte’s failed operation, “Adultery was triumphant” (962); but after Leon is played out, “Adultery, Emma was discovering, could be as banal as marriage” (1026)
·        After Rodolphe, “She scarcely thought of [Leon] now” (951)
·        Emma, thinking of R. “It was not an attachment; it was a kind of permanent seduction.  She was in his bondage.  It almost frightened her” (953)

·        Thoughts of suicide after reading letter 974; in book three “expressing regret that her illness had not been fatal 

Roualt

• 864 – what does this illustrate about Roualt?

 Houmais

• 892 his pharmacy – his name is all over it.
• Read 893: what characteristics are revealed in this description? THEN GO TO 895 AND READ PARAGRAPH and ask for characteristics THEN GO TO 897-98 why this long speech?  What’s its purpose?
• 896: Preaching his gospel “My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, of Beranger!  My credo is the credo of Rousseau!”  Then “As he ended, he glanced about in search of an audience: for a moment during his outburst, he had the illusion that he was addressing the village council” (896)
• Clueless – constantly stretching and coming out wrong: “She’s got class!  She’d hold her own in Le Havre, or Dieppe!” These are not known for their cultural ideals; “Your father-in-law is dead” (1001) after planning to set it up for her
• Emma’s on her death bed – what does he do? Arranges a dinner for the esteemed Dr. Lariviere. 1045
• Campaigns to have Blind Beggar committed b/c he (beggar) complains that his salve didn’t help him 1059
• To get the Legion of Honor “he sold himself; he prostituted himself” (1061)

 Lheureux

• First view of him is comforting Emma (897)

 Leon

• 897 First view of Emma by Leon; 898-99 sharing their views
• ******901: “Besides, he was talented.  He painted in water colors, could read in the key of G, and when didn’t play cards after dinner he often took up a book.”  What’s ironic about his passage? What does it show about Yonville?  What does it show about Leon? What does it show about the narrator?
• Read 920 What does this show about him?
  • Romantic ideas – but here infused with lies like R. 991
  • “She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague ‘she’ of all the poetry books.” (1010)
• Asleep – like Rodolphe – on the night of her funeral 1057

 Rodolphe

• 928 thinks about seduction, but then “how would I get rid of her later?”
• 936: at the fair talking to Emma “I have my own idea of duty.  Our duty is to feel what is great and love what is beautiful – not to accept all the social conventions and the infamies they impose on us”
  • “But there are two moralities [. . . .] The petty one, the conventional one, the one invented by man, the one that keeps changing and screaming its head off – that one’s noisy and vulgar, like that crowd of fools you see out there. But the other one, the eternal one . . . Ah! This one’s all around us and above us, like the  landscape that surrounds us and the blue sky that gives us light” (936)
• Lies through his teeth (944)
• Smokes cigar after they have sex – seems nonplussed 947
• Letter is a hoot – fake tears 973 and

 Justin

• Goes to her graveside 1057

 Thanatos and Eros

• 1040-41: thoughts of despised love makes her commit suicide

 Structure/construction of the novel

·        page 859 – double connection of body/backs

·        Contrasting paragraphs show the dangers of appearances – also shows inability of language to convey all emotions/thoughts:

o       870: love for Charles, love for Emma;

o       910 Emma’s view of Charles, Emma’s view of Leon;

o       914 – she’s acting all good, but inside “torn by wild desires, by rage, by hatred”;

o       919 pushing child then loving it, appearances;

o       965 Emma’s love and Rodolphe’s boredom;

o       READ 968 hilarious contrast of the domesticity of Charles and the romantic flights of fancy of Emma;

o       1005 Read description of voyage to restaurant on island – then their attitude

·        Great reminder: Brings in Rodolphe to L’s and E’s tryst in a the boat. (1006)

·        “That was how she obtained her husband’s permission to go to the city once a week to meet her lover.  By the end of the first month everyone found that her playing had improved considerably” (1008)  TOO FUNNY

·        How/when does Flaubert use comedy? (See 1050-51 argument b/t houmais and Abbe while emma’s corpse lies there)

·        Why does the beggar appear in the Third Book (1011)?

 Satire of manners and pretensions

·        865 set piece on the dress of the wedding guests

·        866: the wedding cake

·        RELIGION 888 plaster priest falling apart; Abbe going to Hippolyte at the worst moment and trying to scare him into going to church (958); “She conceived the idea of becoming a saint” (979);

o       “When she knelt at her Gothic prie-dieu she addressed the Lord in the same ardent words she had formerly murmured to her lover in the ecstasies of adultery” (980)

o       While waiting for Emma, Leon “The church was like a gigantic boudoir, suffused by her image” (995)

o       On her deathbed “The priest stood up and took the crucifix; she stretched out her head like someone thirsting; and pressing her lips to the body of the God-Man, she imprinted on it, with every ounce of her failing strength, the most passionate love-kiss she had ever given” (1047)

In his "A Simple Heart," the main character ends up confusing a stuffed parrot with Jesus.

·        Dr. Connived – not most caring man. 960

 Objectivity

·        read 866: what doesn’t he say? THAT THE VIOLIN SOUNDS BAD.

·        911: flames at mention of Leon’s love

 Death/marriage

·        ****IMPORTANT FORESHADOWING 869 “the other bride’s bouquet!  She stared at it.  Charles noticed, picked it up, and took it to the attic; [. . . Emma] wonder[ed] what would be done with it if she were to die

 irony – but does the narrator show it?

·        876: discrepancy b/t Charles’s and Emma’s feelings. What does the narrator say about this?  And note the pictures on the plates of the convent; COMPARE THIS WITH END OF PART I

·        879: read description of old man who had lead a romantic life.  Now how would you react to such a person? READ DESCRIPTION OF EMMA’S REACTION

·        Church incident with Abbe’ – works on two levels: yes, he’s rude, doesn’t help her, but he also reminds us of the real people who need help “farmers have plenty of troubles [ . . . .] Workingmen in the cities, for instance” (917) Also shows people can’t communicate

·        Why mix the speech with the seduction 936+? Why mix rewarding of the prizes with Rudolphe expressing his love 939?

·        940 Is the medal presented to the old woman ironic? How do the townspeople feel about it?

·        What does the following suggest about politics? 941 “now that the speeches had been read everyone resumed his rank and everything reverted to normal.  Masters bullied their servants, the servants beat their cows [ . . .] (941)

·        The press report of Houmais on the agricultural show that nothing can be trusted 942

 inability to communicate: connected to the weakness of language

·        Emma wants to talk about her dreams, but “She could find no words, and hence neither occasion nor courage came to hand” (874)

·        The press report of Houmais on the agricultural show that communication is always doubtful 942

·        961 – both Emma and Charles sitting while Hippolyte is operated on – Emma thinks that Charles is not thinking about anything.

·        ****on the praise that Emma showers Rodolphe with: “He had had such things said to him so many times that none of them had any freshness for him.  Emma was like all his other mistresses; and as the charm of novelty gradually slipped from her like a piece of her clothing, he saw revealed in all its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion, which always assumes the same forms and always speaks the same language.  He had no perception – this man of such vast experience – of the dissimilarity of feeling that might underlie similarities of expression.  Since he had heard those same words uttered by loose women or prostitutes, he had little belief in their sincerity when he heard them no: the more flowery a person’s speech, he thought, the more suspect the feelings, or lack of feelings, it concealed.  Whereas the truth is that the fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars” (963).

o       The dangers of language: at the opera, she first realizes “the true paltriness of the passions that art painted so large” (986) What is this realization?  But Flaubert isn’t finished yet: “Her resolution not to be taken in by the display of false sentiment was swept away by the impact of the singer’s eloquence” (986) – what does this show?

o       On Leon and Emma making up lies to show their romanticism: “Speech is a rolling machine that always stretches the feelings it expresses” (991)

 Dreams and longing (Romanticism?)

·        The husband Emma didn’t get “handsome, witty, distinguished, magnetic – the kind of man her convent schoolmates had doubtless married” (876)

·        Emma thinks “Didn’t love, like Indian plants, require rich soils, special temperatures? Sighs in the moonlight, long embraces, hands . . .”

·        Contrasting dream o

 Ennui – contrast with Candide

·        After the return home from the ball: “The next day was endless” (883)

·        886 READ AND ASK WHAT THIS SHOWS: “She longed to travel; she longed to go back and live in the convent.  She wanted to die. And she wanted to live in Paris” (886).  WHAT DOES THE “AND” AFTER DIE DO?

·        PAGE 887 – “she was waiting for something to happen”

·        891: Yonville – why describe the town in this manner?  Which words are important in this description?  Why?

·        893: “Since the events which we are about to relate, absolutely nothing has changed in Yonville” why this paragraph – it goes into the future – what purpose does it serve?

·        “Leon was tired of loving without having anything to show for it, and he was beginning to feel the depression that comes form leading a monotonous life without any guiding interest or buoyant hope” (920)

·        CANDIDE Charles’s mother on Emma “She needs to be put to work – hard, manual work.” (925)

·        Houmais and the Abbe “They sat opposite one another, stomachs out, faces swollen, both of them scowling – united, after so much dissension, in the same human weakness; and they stirred no more than the corpse that was like another sleeper beside them” (1052)

 Sexuality

·        881 THE WALTZ: what has Flaubert transformed a supposedly stiff and formal dance into?

 On the wealthy and money

·        “There was an air of indifference about them, a clam produced by the gratification of every passion; and though their manners were suave, one could sense beneath them that special brutality which comes form the habit of breaking down half-hearted resistances that keep one fit and tickle ones vanity – the handling of blooded horses, the pursuit of loose women” (880)

·        Lestiboudois – making money off of the church: potatoes, and renting chairs (933)

 Symbolism

• 963: the mud on her slippers; her beauty, once she commits herself to Rodolphe is “like a flower nourished by manure and by the rain” (967);
• R. writes letter to Emma under a “stag’s-head trophy” (971);
• 971-972 inundated with letters from other women; humorous bit at the church with the verger telling them to “Take a look at the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the souls of the damned in the flames of hell” (997)
• 1021 what sound does the lace in her corset make? Why?
• 1040 “Night was falling; crows flew overhead”

 Fate

• Like Charles, R. looks to fate – but it is an excuse (972)
• To Rodolphe, Charles says “No one is to blame. It was decreed by fate” (1062) WHAT DOES THIS DO TO THE ACTIONS OF EMMA? TURNS THEM INTO A TRAGEDY – FATE.

 Notes from

Brombert, Victor.  The Novels of Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques. Princeton UP, 1966.

 Brombert argues the novel contains patterns of ennui (55). Argues that the “liquid images” and flatness of landscape support this (56, 57).

 Emma is usually at the window – which signals both repression (i.e. locked in a prison) and freedom (a means of escape and reverie) (57-58)

 “Confusion, whether due to oppressive monotony, moral drowsiness or spiritual anesthesia, is one of the leitmotifs in Madame Bovary.” (Brombert 62-63)

 “In Flaubert’s world, life is not fought out and lost, but spent.” (Brombert 66)

 “The entire value of my book . . . will have been the ability to walk straight on a hair, suspended between the double abyss of lyricism and vulgarity (which I want to fuse in a narrative analysis)” (Brombert 79)

 irony comes from double view in the novel: a depiction of a scene where the narrator reveals a discrepancy b/t what the character thinks v. what we think.

 For Flaubert “adultery was a magic word.  Ever since his adolescence the notion of adultery was endowed with a poetic and a tragic meaning.  His own life-long dream of an adulterous relation with Elisa Schlesinger had much to do, no doubt, with this poetization of illegitimate love.  But there are other reasons, in addition to the obvious autobiographical echoes.  To the entire generation reared on Romanticism – and Flaubert is as much a ‘victim’ as Emma – adultery, because of its officially immoral and asocial status, acquired a symbolic value: it was a sign of unconventionality, rebellion and authenticity.  But more important still [. . . ] adultery holds out the promise of beauty precisely because it is the forbidden happiness, the inaccessible dream, that which always eludes: the Ideal.” (Brombert 82-83)

 “A curious symbiotic relationship exists between Flaubert and his heroine.  The novelist, despite his practice of a double perspective, draws his fictional creature toward himself, and discovers himself in Emma even more than he projects himself into her” (Brombert 83)

 “It is not her intellect, but her capacity to dream and to wish to transform the world to fit her dreams, which sets her apart” (Brombert 85)

 “Baudelaire insists that despite his zeal as a ‘comedian,’ Flaubert, being unable to divest himself of his sex and to turn himself into a woman, infused his own ‘virile blood’ into the veins of his fictional creature, and thus raised Emma to the rank of a superwoman embodying all the qualities of ‘ideal man’: energy, ambition and above all that ‘supreme and tyrannical faculty,’ imagination” (Brombert 88).

 In a letter to Louise Colet, Flaubert’s mistress, he says “there comes a moment when one needs to chastise oneself and to ‘hate one’s flesh’” (Brombert 16)

 As a young man, Flaubert wrote to Ernest Chevalier “If ever I take an active part in the world, it will be as a thinker and demoralizer. I will only state the truth; but it will be horrible, cruel and naked” (qtd. in Brombert 16)

 F. believed that “The truly great artist's ‘superhuman impersonality’ is part of his attempt to lose himself in a reality larger than the self.  His life matters not at all” (Brombert 22)

 “In a letter to George Sand in which he denied himself as novelist the right to hate or love his characters, he proclaimed unequivocally the importance of sympathie, for that was another manner: ‘One never has enough of that’” (Brombert 22)

 To Ernest Feydeau “books are not made like babies, but like pyramids, with a premeditated plan, by placing huge blocks above the other” (qtd. Brombert 44)

 Flaubert had an earlier novel/tale, Passion and Virtue, with a similar plot (woman engages in affair and then kills self (Brombert 39-40)

In a note to himself about the novel, F. wrote that Charles “ADORES his wife, and of the three men who sleep with her, he is certainly the one who loves her most [ - This is what has to be stressed].” (qtd. in Brombert 42-43)

 Group questions, Madame Bovary

 1.     Why does the novel open with Charles?  Given the title, why not start with Emma’s childhood first?

2.     How does Flaubert suggest, just from the first glimpses we get of Emma, that she enjoys sensuousness? (quotes from text are needed here, of course)

3.     The Blind man of the third section of the novel definitely grabs our (and Emma’s) attention – but what is he doing in a novel of adultery?  When does he come into the novel?  Why?  Why blind?  Why so infested with disease? 

4.     Given our list of the “I”s of romanticism discussed last week, find passages in the novel that connect to Emma, Leon, and Rodolphe to specific categories.

5.     The biggie: is Emma a character to be scorned, or a character to be sympathized? Arguments for both with examples from the text to support your points.

6.     Ask question of your own from your body paragraph