Original | Li Xiaomo
[This article was originally published on the personal reading public account: Late Night Desk (ID: shenyeshuzhuo)]
It took a day to read Madame Bovary in one sitting.
In my mind, its good looks rank at least in the top three of Western masterpieces.
Flaubert is worthy of Flaubert.
In fact, I knew about this book when I was a child, and I never read it, because I thought the story synopsis was boring: a woman, cheating in marriage, borrowing money to buy things, high debts, and finally desperate, swallowing arsenic and committing suicide.
As soon as the result was opened, it did not escape the law of true incense. How could he tell the story so well, how could he tell the story of a woman's depravity so tortuous and beautiful.
Madame Bovary was selfish, vain, and debauched. Twice cheated and had adultery, betrayed her husband who loved her deeply and was obedient to her, treated her daughter indifferently, in order to satisfy her vanity, constantly borrowed money to shop, and finally became desperate and swallowed arsenic to commit suicide, causing her husband to die in pain and poverty, and her daughter was helpless, and she was sent to a textile factory at a very young age to suffer as a female worker.
It's really a good home, and it's ruined.
But the strange thing is that it is such an unchaste woman, a woman who lacks motherhood, a woman who covets vanity, a woman who is selfish to the point of almost being cold, I do not feel that she is unforgiving, and even in the end I do not despise her at all, I do not dislike her at all, I understand her, sympathize with her, watch her slide all the way down, go to the end of the road, only feel lost.
Flaubert sat in front of the house and cried after finishing Madame Bovary. When a friend asked him why he was crying, he said, "Madame Bovary is dead." ”
I understand his mood.
I think that everyone who is not satisfied with the status quo of life, every person who has suffered from unavoidable needs, has more or less the shadow of Madame Bovary, including myself.
There are too many Madame Bovary in this world, so I can't watch her life like A story that has nothing to do with myself, let alone judge her condescendingly from the moral high ground.
In this article, I want to analyze the logic of her behavior, analyze the places in her that make me sympathize and what makes me uncomfortable in her.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">01</h1>
Where does Emma's high expectations for life come from?
Emma's tragedy is that she is a person who has unrealistically high expectations of life.
She wants to live a better life.
Her ideal life consists of two parts: an elegant, exquisite life constructed by abundant materials; and a romantic love brought about by handsome, talented, well-dressed, and elegantly behaved men.
She longs to live in paris rather than in the countryside of the provinces, she longs to customize fashion in the fine tailor shops in Paris, to dress up for masquerade balls, to watch horse races, to listen to operas, to have exquisite furniture and exquisite refreshments at home, to dance waltzes with men with noble titles, medals, and bow ties, and then to have a vigorous, lingering, and romantic love.
She felt that only such a life was worth living, and only such a life was what she should live.
But neither herself, nor her father nor her husband was able to make her live such a life; her father was no more than a peasant who loved to drink a little wine, her husband was no more than a mediocre and uninteresting country doctor, and she was nothing more than a housewife who loved fantasies.
She longed for a life that was not commensurate with her family's circumstances. So whether it's before or after marriage, she's a person with low life satisfaction.
But where did all these expectations of her life come from?
Madame Bovary, whose original name was Emma, was the daughter of a kulak in the countryside of the province before marrying the village doctor Bovary Charles. Why can't she live the usual life of a peasant daughter and a village doctor's wife, but she has delusions and delusions about luxurious and high life?
A person's expectations of their own life will not arise out of thin air, a person's expectations of life, the ideal life in their minds, in fact, from her experience and experience, and based on her self-evaluation.
Emma's expectations of life were just beginning to emerge from the influence she received at the convent.
She was originally only the daughter of a peasant in the countryside of the province, but because her father had a more solid life and hurt his daughter, he sent her to receive an aristocratic education in the monastery with the middle and upper ladies, and learned a bunch of aristocratic speech and behavior and life interests.
She can dance, paint, read, and talk about the piano, but what is the use of these talents? These talents and life interests wait for her to return to her living environment and class, but they make her incompatible with her surroundings. There were no dances in the country to attend, and no one to discuss literature, poetry, or painting with her.
The good education she received in the monastery, the etiquette, manners, talents and taste of life that she had learned made her stand out among the country women, and this provocation also bred her arrogance. Living among the "vulgar" countrymen, her only feeling is that this should not be the place where she lives.
One of the little details is that on the first Friday of every month, she would pick some flowers and put them on her mother's grave, but the florist in the family did not understand her approach. The nature of this matter is almost the same as I bought flowers on a whim for a while and raised them in a vase, and my mother-in-law couldn't understand it, thinking that it was a waste of money, the same. I think my mother-in-law's ideas are very pragmatic, so it seems simple and cute, but Emma began to hate this kind of life, she hated the countryside, she hated the sheep calling, she hated the chickens in the yard, and she hated the vulgar countrymen.
What directly shaped her love ideals was the mass media she came into contact with in the monastery, including love poems, love songs, romance novels, and picture albums depicting the life of the nobility.
When the nuns admonished, they repeatedly compared the concepts of fiancé, husband, lover of heaven, and eternal marriage, which gave her a hazy yearning for love.
In the monastery, she did not learn how to serve God, but secretly read a large number of romance novels and lingering poems, listened to a large number of love songs, read the exquisite albums of aristocratic life brought by her classmates, and her mind was full of love, love for men and women, the fallen noblewoman who fainted in a remote hut, the castle lady waiting for the knight in the castle, the flat boat under the moon, the nightingale in the forest, the oath of the mountain and the sea, tears and kisses.
Just as Don Quixote was poisoned by chivalric novels, Emma was poisoned by these romance novels. These romantic novels, set against the backdrop of aristocratic life, became the blueprint for her ideal life and cultivated her unrealistic view of love. She fantasizes about hot, romantic, unwavering love, but no one tells her that the life described in the novel is distorted.
If the education of the monastery and the romance novel only gave her an abstract and hazy imagination, then the experience of visiting the earl's castle and attending the banquet made all the imagination concrete, and she had a concrete imagination of the ideal man and a concrete imagination of the ideal life.
Because her husband Charles cured a marquis's mouth sores, the two sides had a little interaction, and the marquis saw that Emma was graceful and could not see that she was a country woman in the number of ceremonies, so he invited them to the castle as a guest.
This visit profoundly changed Emma, in Flaubert's words: "Her heart is like those satin shoes, once in contact with luxurious life, leaving something indelible on it." ”
The Count's Castle, with its magnificent steps, foyer, marble floor, with large lawns, a garden with a billiard room, a stable with a pool, a garden with rare plants, and a swan in the pool. On the walls hang huge portraits with gilded picture frames with names and titles written in bold.
As soon as she entered the restaurant, Emma felt surrounded by the heat, which was filled with the smell of flowers, beautiful tablecloths, meat and shiitake mushrooms, and the table was full of candelabras, flowers, folded napkins, lobsters that could not fit on the plate, steaming quail, and was surrounded by well-served chefs. Emma drank chilled champagne and ate pomegranates and pineapples that she hadn't eaten before.
The men and women she saw inside were all exquisite and elegant.
The man in Emma's eyes looks like this:
"Although they are different in age, clothing and appearance, they all have the style of a rich man, which is different at first glance. Their clothes are particularly well-made, the material looks particularly weak, and their hair is curled backwards on both sideburns, and the oil is shiny, because the wax smeared is also particularly advanced. They have a rich complexion, white, set off by the glaze color of porcelain, the glitter of brocade, and the beautiful lacquer color of the furniture, and they look whiter, which is obviously the result of paying attention to diet and maintenance. ”
During the ball, a Viscount invited her to dance a waltz together. She was dazzled by the interweaving of time.
Reveling until dawn, Emma was still unsatisfied, and she tried to drive away the dozing and immerse herself in this luxurious life as long as possible, because after a while she would have to leave this life.
She was like a Cinderella, who by chance entered the prince's banquet and danced with the most personable prince. She was as happy as a fish. But this was not a fairy tale, the prince did not fall in love with her, and even when he left there was no impression of her, she was just a dance partner he had chosen at random, there was no story between them, she did not have the opportunity to enter the same occasion again, she wanted to return to her own life.
Emma reminds me countless times of Wang Manni in the hit drama "Thirty Only", Wang Manni came from a small town to Shanghai, worked in luxury stores, came into contact with a large number of rich people, and also had the opportunity to see the lives of rich people. These insights raised her expectations of life. She spent her credit card on the cruise to upgrade herself, and once said something like this: good things, she has seen, she wants to have, luxurious life, she has experienced once, she wants to stay.
There are two kinds of people in this world, one is Emma and Wang Manni.
After seeing good things, I want to have them, experience a luxurious life once or twice, and after opening my eyes, I try my best to stay in that life. They had a certain conceit, Wang Manni was conceited about beauty, taste and insight, and Emma was proud of her graceful posture and good manners, which were stronger than the bloated and mediocre duchess she saw at the banquet. They use the life they have to benchmark the best life they have ever seen, and they always feel a kind of regret, they feel that they are a person who has been wrongly placed by the unfair God, they despise their own class, they desire to be more superior, and they are eager to become part of the upper class.
The other is the Shire-style, a life that is too much beyond their standard of living, but makes them afraid, they will only feel uncomfortable and burdened, they would rather retreat to their comfort zone and live a life that they are familiar with, within their reach, and matching their spending power.
As can be seen in many details, Emma has spent almost the rest of her life trying to get closer to this life.
As soon as the banquet was over, she fired the original maid, and then trained the new maid according to the habits and standards of the nobility, such as serving tea on a tray and talking to the master in the third person, trying to train her to be a maid by the side of the noblewoman.
He named his daughter "Whitenet", only because when he was visiting the Count's Castle, he heard a marquise call a young woman Whitenet, and thought it was a name belonging to the nobility.
Even in the end, she was forced into debt, desperate, went to the notary Guillauman to help, saw Guillauman's beautiful restaurant, she was actually distracted: "This is called a restaurant!" How I wanted a restaurant like this. ”
The conceit of herself is different from the elegance of ordinary country women, the high expectations for life and the huge gap in actual life, which is the source of Emma's tragedy and the key to understanding Emma's role.
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Through stealing and borrowing
A fool who realizes his love ideals and material ideals
But Emma's ideals of love and materiality were completely shattered in the body of her husband, Charles Bovary.
Soaked in romance novels, for the young girl Emma, love is like a big bird with rose-colored feathers, flying in the poetic brilliant sky. She married Charles, and thought she had the wonderful love she had written about in the novel. But she didn't experience the slightest sense of "happiness," "fascination," and "intoxication" that the book calls.
Charles disappointed her.
When Charles was a student, he was the kind of obedient and stupid student who did not slip away from studying hard, listened to the teacher's words extremely, and did not even dare to his feet when listening to the lecture. Adulthood is also extremely mediocre and tedious.
"Charles, a man who talks as plainly as a sidewalk on the sidewalk, whose opinions are vulgar just like passers-by, and whose clothes are ordinary, cannot arouse your passion, laughter or reverie... He can't swim, he can't fencing, he can't shoot... Shouldn't a man be the exact opposite of him, doing everything, omnipotent, and good at leading you to appreciate the power of love, the meaning of life and the mysteries of understanding? But he, as a man, cannot teach you anything, knows nothing, and asks for nothing. ”
Emma had tried to cultivate her own love at first, and on moonlit nights, in the garden, she read to Charles the love poems she remembered, and sang sad little tunes, but there was still no confusion between them that she wanted.
The mediocre shire brought mediocre marriage.
After returning from the Marquis's castle, her dissatisfaction deepened.
Under the background of the personable, dashing and elegant Viscount, the husband of Bai Yibai is more stupid and impatient, how to look stupid, Emma looks more and more unpleasant to see her husband Charles.
The same is true for the material side, and the honeymoon she is looking forward to should go to places with loud names, such as Switzerland, such as Scotland. It should be: standing by the bay at sunset, smelling the aroma of lemon trees, night falls, two people sit on the veranda of the villa and clasp their hands together, looking at the stars together.
"Why can't she lean on the balcony of a Swiss mountain chalet, or lock her worries in a Scottish hut?" Her husband wears a velvet tuxedo with live cuffs and a long tail, soft leather boots and a pointed hat. ”
No, after the lively wedding, she plunged into the ordinary middle class life in the province, and she followed her husband home to find that the house was dilapidated and simple, the living room was facing Charles's small clinic, and the coughing of patients could be heard in the kitchen.
She couldn't afford much of what she wanted, and when she gave birth to her daughter, "she couldn't afford a hanging cradle, a little pink silk tent, and an embroidered baby hat because of her family's poverty." The mother-in-law thought that she was "too big and not commensurate with their family situation", and the firewood, sugar, and candles were used too quickly, like a large family.
Originally, Emma also once hoped that Charles would learn difficult surgery, become a famous doctor, fame and fortune, and her wife as a famous doctor could live a more decent and beautiful life, but the mediocre Charles operated on the originally healthy cripple, and finally the victim had gangrene and had to amputate his leg.
Emma's expectations were shattered.
Some people take Emma against Pan Jinlian, I remember feng Xiaogang's movie "I am not Pan Jinlian", the English translation is "I AM NOT MADAME BOVARY", that is, "I am not Madame Bovary", in some ways these two people are indeed very similar, Pan Jinlian wants a husband of comparable character, but married to a three-inch Ding Wu Dalang who everyone despises, Emma wants a handsome husband like a knight, but only marries the mediocre honest Shire. They have the same material vanity, the same exuberant desires, what they want, their husbands can not give.
What to do?
Emma embarked on the path of depravity.
She uses secret love to achieve her love ideals, and borrows money to shop to satisfy her materialistic desires. As the heat intensified, she was completely dominated by lust and materialism.
She had struggled, and had just started with apprentice Leon, only to have a mental outrage. In order to control her restless desires, she deliberately alienated Leon, and tried to play a more conscientious wife and mother and a more devout believer, she took the housework more seriously than before, went to church on time every day, and controlled the maid more strictly, took her daughter back from her mother's house, and also took good care of her husband.
After Leon left, she met Rodolph, a veteran in the wind and moon field, he was a rich landowner, a master of playing with feelings, he saw at a glance that Emma longed for love like a fish longed for water, he knocked Emma's heart with sweet words, but deliberately did not appear for 6 weeks after winning the hand, and used means to pinch Emma to death.
Emma lost her shame little by little, and lost her moral struggle little by little.
She wanted to elope with Rodolphe, and Rodolphe agreed while plotting to get rid of her. After being abandoned by Rolf, she meets Leon, who is no longer simply shy, and Leon becomes her lover.
Do they love Emma? No love, when Emma was desperate, no one reached out. Does Emma love them? I'm afraid I don't love either, but the stimulation of stealing love is very close to her ideal of vigorous love.
Emma looked for the viscount's shadow in them, trying to transform them more into the viscount, the lover she had ideally been. Although Roaldorff had money, Emma never asked him for materials, but instead gave him expensive gifts, and she gave Roaldorf four gifts: a gilded silver-handled horse whip, a coat of arms, a scarf that could be used as a bib, and a humidor, all of which Emma had seen in the Viscount.
She and Leon are secretly in the city, obviously already in debt, but want to live in luxury hotels, unwilling to change to cheap hotels, Leon can not afford the cost, she will make up for it herself.
This is where Emma is naïve, she never asks for love in men, not material transactions, and never thinks of taking men as a shortcut to a good life, and later she borrows money from the old notary Guillauman, who wants to take advantage of her, she angrily refuses, she is not a prostitute, she has not degenerated into a prostitute.
So where did her money come from?
From the sinister businessman Le Le.
He deliberately showed Emma those beautiful things, then told her that "don't worry about giving money, you can borrow it on hand", and then tricked Emma into spending in advance, and tricked Emma into owing high-interest loans.
He was the spokesman of consumerism in the 19th century, whispering in Emma's ear like a poisonous snake in the Garden of Eden, "Elegant women like you, only good things are worthy of you", he is the 19th century flowers, borrowing, credit cards, small loans, consumer loans, "don't worry about giving money, you can borrow on hand."
It wasn't until Le Le judged that she had no value to continue to squeeze, and he showed his fangs, and he transferred the debt to the fierce debt collector, and all the valuable things in Emma's house would be auctioned off, just like a credit card owed a certain amount, and if it was not returned on time, the bank would call to inform you that criminal proceedings would be initiated.
Madame Bovary is a novel completed in 1856, but it reads as if it were a story that takes place at this moment.
A girl may be inspired by Korean dramas and romance novels and begin to outline her ideal love: romantic and golden, dashing and handsome, love me to the point of no return, and the man who can give me a full sense of security is my ideal type.
A girl may have watched "Let's Go to See the Meteor Shower" when she was a child, thinking that she had to go to Metersbonway to buy clothes, and when she grew up, she found that Metersbonwe was a domestic pseudo-imported product, not only untaxtisy but also very dirty. Watching the novels and movies of "Little Times" again, I got to know a lot of famous brands, which produced a cult of luxury goods. There are also overwhelming advertisements, and the demonstration effect of the celebrities she chases.
Mass media, whether it is novels, movies and television series, or advertisements, or celebrities, seems to provide a standard answer to what is an ideal life and what is a happy life.
Man has the illusion that man's value is equal to the value of his appendages, and that one buys an expensive thing and becomes another.
What if I can't afford it? The flower borrowers, the institutionalized Mr. Le le, are mass-creating debts for Madame Bovary.
But I was never willing to criticize Emma fiercely, because I was reluctant to pretend that class did not exist, that people were completely equal.
Who wouldn't want a better life? If you can travel richly, why should you travel poorly? If you can live in a spacious and bright house, who wants to study storage in a small space? If there is a condition to send children to participate in a training camp abroad for tens of thousands of yuan, who wants to let their children watch TV at home? Having more money means a higher quality of life and more resources.
So it's hard to say that a person is wrong in desire too much.
If I come to this world for a while, why do others live rich and comfortable but I have a hard time? Why do I have to cut my desires to suit my economic position? If it is the same starting point, because of the difference in ability and distance, that is my incompetence, then I recognize, but, no, but because of the origin, because the factory configuration is not the same. The more we live, the more we find that there are too many people in the world who are in good fortune, and there is no talent and virtue to match. The bloated and vulgar duchess, born aristocratic, was born superior and lived the life emma dreamed of.
Thinking of this, we are more or less unwilling. Every unwilling person has more or less the shadow of Madame Bovary.
Emma's fault is not in her desires, in not knowing how to deal with the gap between ideals and reality, in always putting the hope of life on others, and in using the wrong way of stealing, lying and borrowing to achieve her own unquenchable desires.
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What makes me uncomfortable with Emma
I sympathize with Emma more than I hate, but there is still a place in her that makes me extremely uncomfortable.
That's how she treats her daughter and husband.
Her husband, Charles Bovary, was the typical honest man.
But is mediocrity wrong? His origin and upbringing are so mediocre, his intellect and talent are so mediocre, is a mediocre person, his love is worthless?
I'd love to ask Emma in the book:
When you are sick, your husband stays by your side for 43 days, for your health, he leaves the place where he has established himself and moves to another place to practice medicine from scratch, in order to satisfy your desires and make you happy, he is in debt to buy you the same thing that is beyond your family's circumstances. You told so many lies that he believed them all, and he believed them because of blind love for you. Even after you die, the debts you leave behind make him poor and ruined, he sells everything that can be sold, but he is reluctant to buy your things, and your bedroom still remains the same.
For the ordinary man, "the size of heaven and earth is no bigger than the size of your skirt", he is also the only one of all men who loves you sincerely, consistently, without regret, without regret.
Isn't such love worthless?
And your daughter, how can it be? When you want to be a good wife and mother, take her back to your side, love her, and when you don't want to do it, you will foster her at your mother's house. You go into debt to spend the day drinking, you go into debt to buy yourself everything you want, and your daughter is dressed in rags. When she wants to get close to you, you push her away, just don't want her saliva to drip on your pretty skirt. You and your lover indulge in lust, don't return all night, your daughter thinks of her mother at home, and cries until her voice is dumb.
I vaguely feel in my heart that every woman should not be required to be full of motherhood, and every woman should not be required to put the needs of children and the needs of the family in front of their own needs. But now that we are born, the basic responsibilities and obligations need to be fulfilled.
I can't bear this little girl, I can't bear my husband who is so kind that he is stupid and loves blindly.
So if I were to outline my attitude toward Madame Bovary, all I could say was that she had a sympathetic side, that her desires were our desires, that she suffered so much that we had more or less suffered, that she wanted a romantic love, that she wanted a decent restaurant, and that there was no essential difference between her and the three-tier pencil case that we wanted to be like classmates when we were children. She embarked on this road of no return, and vampires like Le Le and Guillaumin were also responsible.
However, she was not innocent.
Books are still good to read in person, and others are second-hand after all
- The End-
About the Author:
Li Xiaomo
Former Hainan Special Administrative Region Reporter, professional reader, has published the best-selling book "Please Stop Invalid Socializing".
Personal reading public number: late night desk (ID: shenyeshuzhuo)
Personal diary public number: Li Xiaomo's diary (ID: lxmmovie)
I believe that a person's reading history is often the history of his ideological growth and ability development.
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