Everyone will see their own shadow in Madame Bovary.
Madame Bovary is the heroine emma of the novel of the same name by the French writer Flaubert.
Although Emma was born in the countryside, she is proficient in talent, beautiful and charming, and not willing to be mediocre.
Throughout her life, she hopes to obtain a vigorous romantic love and a happy life of exquisite elegance.
In order to pursue the direction of her heart, she did everything she could, desperately.
In the end, the whole family fell into darkness overnight because Emma had to take poison and kill herself.
What is it that makes a person who passionately pursues love and happiness end up in such a tragic tragedy?
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Don't understand what true love is
When Emma was thirteen, her father sent her to a convent for education, where she fell in love with reading, books that always told romantic love stories.
In the book, the love she sees is a long-lasting affection, a sincere vow of many lovers looking at each other with tears in their eyes, and a gentle murmur like water in the same boat under the moon.
The image of the man is either a knight with white feathers on his helmet or a viscount of honor. They are noble, beautifully dressed, and affectionate and single-minded.
The image of the heroine is always a lady with a slender waist and a delicate face. With the most fashionable dresses, he lives in a luxurious and magnificent castle and lives a beautiful and elegant life every day.
So Emma thought she understood love, she was desperate to get this beautiful and happy splendid love, and at this moment, the doctor Charles appeared.
Soon, she agreed to marry him, and she felt that the romantic love life she had dreamed of was coming.
But after getting married, she found that she did not get the happiness, intoxication and endless romance that love should bring.
None of the beautiful words in the book that depict love appear in her real life.
She recited love poems to him in the garden under the moon, and Charles was indifferent after listening to them, and her own heart did not have the ups and downs of imagination.
It was not the love she wanted, and for it she was sad and melancholy, and she was seriously ill.
Later, after moving, she met a young man, Leon, who was handsome, clean-tempered, and more importantly, like-minded.
They love musical novels of their kind, the same sunsets by the sea, and the latest performances and popular social dances in Paris together.
But because of Leon's cowardice and Emma's remaining sanity, the first two did not cross the line. Not long after, Leon moved out of the town where the two knew on the pretext of studying.
But Leon's departure makes Emma regret it, and her desire for love grows stronger.
Then Emma's true first lover appeared. His name was Rodolph, he was humorous and charming, and he owned a castle and two farms in the local area.
This is exactly the image of the lover Emma imagined, but he decisively abandons Emma after she proposes the idea of eloping. He was just trying to be fresh with her, and how could he leave everything for her.
Emma fell seriously ill again. It wasn't the love she wanted, romance and passion were there, but there was still a lack of affection and vows.
To distract herself, Charles takes Emma to town to see an opera, only to meet leon unexpectedly at the theater.
At this time, because Leon and Emma have experienced a lot, both of them have changed a lot, and this time they don't want to refrain from it anymore.
They began secret weekly rendezvous, but as the number of times increased and the content of each rendezvous was much the same, Emma began to feel bored and discouraged.
This time, romantic, passionate, and affectionate vows were made, but later Emma felt the emptiness and boredom in her heart.
These three relationships, each time at the beginning Emma is full of good expectations, but in the end with a sad and disappointed background.
The problem with all this is that Emma doesn't really understand what true love is.
"True love is a step up." Luo Xiang, a teacher of criminal law, once said this when interpreting Socrates' concept of love.
True love, based on the attraction of the body, is layer by layer in the direction of the soul, and is step-by-step.
If, like Emma, you only like the beauty that floats on the surface, and only indulges in the love of the flesh. In the end, there will only be endless emptiness and tedium.
A long-term love, both parties in the spiritual world must have a deeper common pursuit.
And because of this love, both people will strive to perfect their own world, for the sake of the other person to complete a more complete world of their own.
Two people because of the driving force of love, step by step to the level, this is the real love, and only such love, can be happy and happy, long-term whitehead.
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Caught in the vortex of desire
Throughout Emma's short life, in addition to the profound influence of romantic romance novels on her thinking, something unusual happened to her and affected the direction of her life.
Just when she was disappointed in her married life, a marquis invited her and her husband to a dinner party. Because Charles miraculously healed the sores on the corners of his mouth.
Ancient and magnificent castles, ornate candelabras, exquisite silver tableware, glittering polyhedral crystal ornaments, well-trained servants, uniformed cooks.
The guests of the dinner were dressed up in a fashionable and elegant manner, talking about either the thermal waterfalls in Italy, the May roses in southern France, or last week's British horse race.
Emma looked at everything in front of her, her mind was slightly dizzy, her mood was urgently agitated. It turns out that all the good things in the book are real in real life.
So everything at this dinner party quietly planted a seed called desire in Emma's heart. As the book says, "Once her heart has been stained with wealth, she will never fade again." ”
Emma began to study the latest fashion magazines, and she asked the maid to call her "Mrs." in the future, she changed the elaborate paper cuts on the tray from time to time, and placed exquisite silver-plated jewelry in her home.
She painstakingly imitated the life of an aristocratic lady to satisfy her vanity, but Charles's medical income could not satisfy her series of extravagance, and she began to borrow on credit.
She first eloped on credit with Rodolfo, which did not succeed, but she had already experienced the joy of instant gratification brought to her by borrowing.
She became more and more extravagant as she spent money, she pursued material pleasures more and more, and later every secret meeting between her and Leon must also stay in a high-end hotel with a high price.
Whenever Leon couldn't afford the high expenses, she always filled the vacancies with no care.
She borrowed unscrupulously, demolished the east wall to make up for the west wall on the day of repayment, and pawned her dowry if she still could not turn around.
It wasn't until the final amount of debt accumulated was so large that she couldn't repay it, and the court's judgment ordering 24-hour repayment was delivered to her home, that she began to panic.
Regarding Emma's debt, her husband Charles was kept in the dark from beginning to end, and it was not until the recipient came to the house to assess the value of the property and prepare for bankruptcy liquidation that he learned that his property was lost.
But by this time Emma had swallowed a lot of arsenic in desperation. Why is it that a home that was originally beautiful and perfect suddenly has nothing and falls apart? Throughout, Charles didn't get a single explanation from Emma.
The Egyptian writer Yusuf Sibay once said, "Desire can bring joy and happiness to man; but when all desires are fulfilled, disaster is inevitable." ”
Desire is something that everyone is born with, and proper desire can push us to be better, while excessive desire brings only destruction.
In the book, Emma is lost in the vortex of desire, and she mistakenly believes that the extravagant enjoyment of the senses is the true fullness and satisfaction of the soul, and the elegant style and affectionate secret language are the sincerity of feelings.
Because of desire, Emma herself and the whole original warm home were destroyed.
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Cognition is confined to a narrow range
Emma's tragedy lies in not understanding what true love is, being carried away by desire, and not knowing how to discover another goodness of real life.
So what caused her to be confused and irrational? What makes her so paranoid about pursuing romanticism that seems unrealistic to others?
Flaubert once said in the book: "In Emma's heart, the dull fields, the stupid little citizens, the vulgarity of life, these are the anomalies of the world, the special circumstances into which she is unfortunate to fall, beyond which the world is unfolding, vast, full of happiness and enthusiasm." ”
It turns out that in Emma's world, she has always had such a understanding: funny dances, elegant jazz, beautiful ladies, luxurious life is synonymous with happiness in the world.
In her perception, those who are glamorous and beautiful people and lives are the majority. Looking at the environment that you are in a very different environment from "most people", all that is left is full of unwillingness.
And these have a lot to do with Emma's reading habits, because she likes romance by nature, so the books she reads are romantic works, and then her cognition is limited to a narrow range.
In her cognition, only sweet vows are the most affectionate, and she cannot understand that in fact, Mune's husband's staying together all night in front of her hospital bed is another kind of wordless affection.
She thought that she was happy only by eating the food on the exquisite plate, but she did not realize that in fact, the most heartwarming thing to eat was the domestic turkey that her old father, who loved her, bothered to entrust someone to bring her.
She thought that talking to other ladies every day about fashion clothes and cozy hot springs was the fun of leisure time, and she did not find that the patient kindly gave her a puppy to relieve her boredom, and her every move was so cute.
Little did she know that there were many different forms of a happy life, and that true joy and contentment existed only in the full soul.
In fact, these different ideas are integrated into the words of various books.
If Emma had not confined her reading to the realm of romanticism, her thoughts would have been nourished, her cognitive range would not have been so narrow, and perhaps it would not have ended in tragedy.
Hegel once said: "A deep and broad mind always extends the field of interest to countless things." ”
The long road of life, we need a variety of interesting ideas to constantly nourish and expand our personal world.
Only the fullness of the personal world can bring true satisfaction and peace to our hearts.
It can be seen that we can have our own interests and hobbies, but we cannot completely exclude things other than preferences. Otherwise, so-called personal preferences will only become a wall that closes the world we know.
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Throughout Emma's short life, this is a woman who can be hated and pitied.
All she had asked for was a romantic love and a happy life.
But because of her misunderstanding of the connotations of these two, she went step by step into the abyss.
Once in a lifetime, we all aspire to a romantic love, and we have all been dazzled by the glamorous world of luxury.
In this regard, only by forming a deep and abundant inner world can we understand the true meaning of romantic love and happy life, and can we strive to pursue in the right direction.
Throughout his life, he can be happy and calm, full of tranquility.