In the book "Madame Bovary", Flaubert's death of Emma is due to her mental emptiness, uneasy to keep her duties twice derailed, and ahead of consumption, becoming the victim of Lele's "routine loan" of free and then changing to Gali, accumulating debts like mountains and unable to repay, and then embarking on the road of no return of taking poison and committing suicide.
Many people feel that she is morally corrupt because of this, and that she is really self-inflicted and does not deserve sympathy at all, is this really the case? Not really:.
Madame Bovary
There are many ways to destroy love, but borrowing money is indeed a storm that has been uprooted.
First, as long as Emma is willing to fall, eight thousand francs, although more, she still has the opportunity to repay alone.
First of all, Emma is still young and beautiful, and there are many people who covet her beauty and have a chance to get money.
For example, in the seventh chapter of the third part of the book, the maid Felicity proposes to Emma to borrow money from Gijoman. In her opinion, Emma had already cheated twice, and it didn't matter if she didn't have to do it again. As long as Emmaken commits himself to the old devil, he can borrow eight thousand francs one after another and will not die. In desperation, Emma went with a hint of illusion, and in the face of Gijoman's hint, her performance was:
Madame Bovary's face flushed like a flush. She was so angry that she stepped back and shouted, "You really don't want a face, sir!" ”
Emma is lascivious in front of her lover, but not a lewd, all-impersonal and self-respecting woman — she has her own bottom line and integrity, and would rather choose to die than sleep with Gijoman.
More importantly, love is certainly not a fig leaf for infidelity, but Emma has something to sympathize with, so she is not willing to live.
Madame Bovary
01. Charles taiping mediocre, and rich and delicate feelings, well-educated, white and beautiful Emma is not a good match.
Emma always dreamed of legendary love, and finally at the Ball of the Marquis Anderville's house, she met the personable Viscount, thinking that it was the man of her dreams, and became her spiritual lover. Unfortunately, Emma also understands that there is no handover between ideals and reality, and there is no possibility between them.
The daughter of a peasant like her, becoming a rich aristocrat is undoubtedly a distant dream. So Emma was in a bad mood after breaking up with the Viscount, and when she got home, she found a stubble to fire the maid Natasi.
Later she gave Roaldorf a cigar box and a tight vest, both of which were the same as the Viscount's, which clearly told the reader that on the surface Emma was meeting Rolf, but in fact Emma was meeting with the Viscount. At a glance, Rolf, a veteran in the love field, saw that Emma was a fish on the board that was about to be dying of love and thirst, taking advantage of the void and easily succeeding.
02. Strictly speaking, Emma pursues love, not just lust, but also money.
Dancing at Wobisar Castle and the Viscount of Bovary
She can cheat for love, she can be fearless for love, but she will never sell herself. She first had a spiritual affair with the Viscount of the Castle of Wobisar— her ideal lover, and then the love between her and the intern Leon, and the end of the love between her and Rolf, and then she took the initiative to have a sexual affair with Leon, the notary, and the process of gradual degeneration was very clear.
As the French writer Proust said: "All those who are caught in the love network love not a real object, but a fictional object in their own mind, their own feelings themselves."
03. Emma She went from being a good housewife to a resentful woman and then to a depraved woman, not a natural prodigal woman.
Emma falls in love with Leon, and when she realizes that she and her intern Leon may be involved in an extramarital affair, Emma makes the choice to escape, in order to get rid of this thought, she turns to the housework, takes Little White home, and goes to church on time, trying to be a good wife and mother, and discipline herself with religion. In the end, the intern Leon retreated.
Leon
Leon had real feelings for Emma at first, when he was still a righteous person, even if she "looked at you, without any worries, with an innocent and bold look", and still chose to leave.
When he evolved into an emotional old fritter, he could instead sneak away, but Emma thought he was still an intern, Leon.
This is why Flaubert writes that after being abandoned by Rohrdorff, she rekindled her old love affair with Leon, becoming more and more desperate, unreserved in carnal desires, and not other men.
In this way, Emma pursues love, and her suicide has a tragic sense of ignorance and fearlessness like a moth to a fire.
Second, Dr. Bao is willing to pay off his wife's debts, and he is deeply in love with Emma.
The Bovarys
Emma's tears were enough to make Charles no longer hate her. When Charles learns of Emma's cheating and betrayal, he falls into deep pain, unwilling to work day by day with wine, decadent to death. But he chose to forgive, even his enemies Rolf and Leon, and blamed himself for not caring enough for his wife— but he didn't care about the damage she caused to his reputation.
In the 19th century French property system alone, marital property was not shared. As long as she was alive, if he were given a choice between losing his property and losing his wife, he would not hesitate to choose the latter.
Third, although a debt of eight thousand francs can bankrupt the Bovary family, they can still live without worry.
After paying off the debts, as well as horses, etc., with Charles's medical skills, it is not a problem to maintain the basic life of a family of three. Maupassant's "Necklace" writes about the Mathilde couple, who worked hard for ten years to finally pay off their debts.
Doctor Bovary has the support of his parents, and it is inevitable that he will become poor due to debt, but it is far from the point of exhaustion. Emma is not bad in nature, and if Emma accepts a painful lesson, living a few years of thrift and thrift, it is not impossible to live a well-off life again.
01. There is no way out of her extramarital affair.
Some people may ask why Emma does not divorce and boldly pursue happiness?
Ostensibly, Emma meets men who only want to play with her feelings, and neither Leon nor Rolf will ever bring her love and marriage. In fact, the historical reason is that Emma is a believer, and divorce is against doctrine. So she can't get a divorce, and the only way to get out is to elope and be despised by the social environment. Moreover, at the beginning of the 19th century, the backward and conservative French towns were also 02. No high-society man loved her, loved enough to risk the double danger of prospects and moral condemnation.
Emma reads the future again in Roaldorff's gentle letter of renunciation, and will be devastated. Later, the reason why she did not hesitate to borrow debt to please him with high consumption after reuniting with him was that she was afraid of losing it again, and if Leon had plans to marry her, Emma would naturally never look back.
Unfortunately, money can not be exchanged for love, and the men who play tricks on her will never marry her, and the twice stealing love has not brought her happiness, but has made herself the object of exploitation by usurers and has gone to the road of no return.
02. Emma should die of despair of love.
Byron once said that a man's love is a part of life, but a woman's love is often the whole of life.
Mourning is greater than heart death, a woman who fights for love, can not find a way out in reality, there is only one ending: death.
This is true of Hardy's poor peasant Tess, Flaubert's portrayal of Emma the Well-off, and the same of Tolstoy's aristocrat Anna.
Flaubert
Emma longs for extramarital love to save her mediocre life, the main reason is her disappointment in marriage, and she feels that she should live a luxurious life of elegance and luxury. And to realize this dream, it is a prince who rides a white horse through love, but unfortunately reality ruthlessly shatters her fantasy, which is a dead end.
The blind man in the book symbolizes Emma, which refers to the blindness of her actions and also a metaphor for each of us bystanders. Flaubert said, "I am Madame Bovary." ”
When Emma hides her husband and Leon from indulging in "love" and "happiness" in the hotel, the blind man sings at the door that "the little girl has arrived on a hot day, and she thinks of the heartache of her lover." At the time of death, the blind man's mournful song sounded outside the door again, "This day there was a strong wind, and her nepotism was missing." ”
03. Madame Bovary is a novel that bids farewell to Romanticism, and Emma must die.
Flaubert's Madame Bovary is not as simple as a secular love tragedy.
Madame Bovary is regarded as the first true realist novel in France, and Flaubert basically sees Emma as an unfortunate woman who has been poisoned by the social atmosphere and embarked on the road of perdition, in order to illustrate that Madame Bovary's death is not only her own tragedy, but also the tragedy of that era.
Emma, who loves to read romantic novels
In the gallery of figures in the history of world literature, there are two most famous readers: one is Don Quixote, and the other is Emma. Don Quixote was obsessed with chivalric fiction, and Emma was obsessed with romantic fiction.
Emma, who was deeply influenced by Romantic literature, was doomed to live out of marriage.
What is the essence of romance? It is to escape from the present, to be far from reality, to avoid reason and logic. Realism is "here" and Romanticism is "there". "There" is the ultimate goal and habitat of Romanticism.
Emma's contemptuous act of affection for her daughter is because in her view, Little White is the product of an unhappy marriage. She is still a naïve girl at heart, and she lacks the preparation to take on the responsibilities of motherhood. At the same time, people who are addicted to nihilistic romantic fantasies are naturally less practical in real life, a mother who is dedicated to raising her children, and a mother who is rigid, and has no kung fu self-pity and self-love.
Emma's reading is shallow, the beautiful words read in books, what does life mean? Madame Bovary, unable to find the answer, treats the romance novel story as a life, living in fantasy all day, waiting for the destined knight. She knows that she is not really in love with Leon and Rolf, but she is complacent about it. It is not surprising that after being abandoned, it is not surprising that you do not reflect on learning your lessons and cheat again.
The trip to Wobisar Castle is like a satin shoe that has been worn once, and once it is rubbed with luxury, it leaves no trace of passing away.
If Emma had married not charles, but the "handsome man" Rodolph, or "little fresh meat" Leon, would she still be cheating? She will, she will. Even if she successfully passes the threshold of usury, even if she marries well, lives an ideal high social life, and romanticism that does not eat fireworks, there is no place to live in the real world.
At the end of the day, Emma must die. Flaubert cruelly "wrote her to death". It is said that Flaubert wrote about the end of her desperate suicide by poisoning, and he could not help but cry bitterly.
Reference: "Madame Bovary" translated by Sun Wenzheng Jiangsu People's Publishing House (picture from the Internet, invasion is deleted)