French Literature Archives - A Geography of Reading

Madame Bovary: Flaubert’s Symphony

May 6, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

There are many beautiful phrases in Madame Bovary as Gustave Flaubert uses the world around the characters to evoke something greater about their condition, but his similes are some of the most melodious description.

He uses simple similes, often about natural phenomena, such as: “Then, like two scissors, they would cut him with their comments and their observations,” “she responded as do tightly reined horses; she stopped short and the bit slipped from her teeth,” “The patch splintered into an infinity of stars and their silvery light seemed to slither all the way down like a headless snake covered with luminous scales,” “On Emma’s satin dress, as white as a ray of moonlight, the watered texture shimmered.” These images turn the tune of the story into a harmony. Even more powerfully he uses similes that are later echoed by other similes or by occurrences or objects. These echoes give importance to seemingly simple parts of the story and bring all instruments of the story together in a symphony.

Flaubert uses rare plants as symbols of Emma and of love. Of Emma, he writes: “She felt that certain places on the earth must produce happiness, just as a plant that languishes everywhere else thrives only in special soil.” Emma sees herself as such a plant and when next she thinks of plants: “Didn’t love, like the Indian plants, need cultivated land, a special temperature?” I understood she is thinking about her own need for special cultivation. Emma blooms at the moment when she is first ready to cast her husband aside: “her continually youthful illusions had nurtured her gradually, as fertilizer, rain, wind, and sunshine nurture a flower, and she finally blossomed forth in all the fullness of her being.” The cactus Léon brings is a rare plant like Emma that dies before they can consummate their love.

Flaubert relates music to strong emotions: “[Emma] felt herself vibrating with all her being, as if violin bows were being drawn over her nerves” and “Her heart filled with the melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double basses, like the cries of the drowning amid the tumult of a storm.” In the beginning, Emma is a pianist and at the end she pretends to take up piano again in order to have time to see Léon. Chillingly, the argument that is brought forth to convince Charles Emma should go to piano lessons, is so that she can teach her daughter about music.

Sometimes the similes speak more directly to later actions of the characters: “There were no illusions left now. She had gradually spent them in all the adventures of her soul, in all her successive conditions, in her virginity, in her marriage, and in love; losing them continually as she grew older, like a traveler who leaves part of his money in every inn along the highway.” Of course Emma does eventually in fact also spend her money in the adventures of her soul, first on Rodolphe and then on Léon. The moral connotations of the passage are astounding. Each of the three “successive conditions” is sexual in nature. By referencing the “traveler” who visits “every inn along the highway,” Flaubert is alluding to a likeness between a prostitute and Emma who “visits” by at the very least flirting with every willing man she comes upon. The illusions Emma has “spent” refer to the idea that she can gain a sense of worth through her interactions with men. She starts out as a pretty young thing, men are attracted to her, and it makes her feel special that they take notice. She grasps at the very brief attentions paid her by the marquis and begins to believe she could aspire to his social milieu. While Rodolphe is having a bit of fun, Emma is having a love affair. She again thinks she has found the love of her life when she meets Léon, although for him she becomes a complication. It is Lheureux who ultimately shows Emma exactly what her beauty is worth. She can prostitute herself to pay off her debt, but he will offer her no sweet words beforehand. She finally sees herself as a commodity and starts to realize that her “love affairs” are in fact the object of ridicule. She has spent her reputation along with her fortune and she is ruined financially as well as idealistically. Her last illusion spent, Emma takes her own life.

Also regarding actions of the characters, Flaubert makes a great deal about people watching situations from the outside: “[Mother Bovary] observed her son’s unhappiness with a sad silence like a ruined person who watches, through the windowpanes, people sitting around the table of his former home.” When the Bovarys are at the ball at Vaubyessard, Emma sees “some peasants, their faces pressed to the window, staring at her from the garden.” The simile introduces an idea that is carried throughout the book as Emma strives for a life that is other than hers, a pursuit that leads to her ultimate ruin.

From houses: “He felt sad, like an abandoned house,” “her life was as cold as an attic with northern exposure,” to eyes: “Her eyes, filled with tears, sparkled like flames under water,” “her eyes were beginning to disappear under a viscous pallor, as if spiders had spun a web over them,” to horse hoofs: “In the dim light of the studio the white dust flew off from his tool like a shower of sparks beneath the hooves of a galloping horse,” “[he] remounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it flew off,” Flaubert revisits images throughout Madame Bovary. Each time he addresses the subject, he adds a layer of nuance to the image, a melody to the harmony, and reminds me of where the characters have been and how that speaks to where they are.

Obviously, Flaubert’s language is beautiful and I’d love to emulate it in my own writing. Not every simile recurs, but they all enhance my understanding of the novel. Several similes surprised me with the obscurity of the comparison, but those were the strongest because the items compared were in fact alike. In my own work, I tend toward metaphor rather than simile, but the lesson I can take from Flaubert is how carefully placed these images are and how strong they can be if they recur “naturally” throughout the novel.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Madame Bovary from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Embodiment and Disembodiment in The Lover

May 6, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Marguerite Duras throws the reader into the memory of her narrator in The Lover. By switching narration between the first person and third person limited, Duras embodies the experiences of a fifteen and a half year-old girl who takes on a Chinese lover in Saigon. She also conveys the sense of the girl as object which allows the reader to both sympathize with the character and subject her to judgment. This mimics the way the narrator is simultaneously reminiscing about a specific period in her adolescence and also judging herself.

Because the narrative voice doesn’t change when the narrative point of view does, the reader has the sense that the same first person narrator is relating the story from two angles. In one section the narrator describes her shoes: “These high heels are the first in my life, they’re beautiful, they’ve eclipsed all the shoes that went before.” This is followed by a section break and then the very next sentence is: “It’s not the shoes, though, that make the girl look so strangely, so weirdly dressed.” Three sentences later in the same section the narrator is back to first person in describing the provenance of the hat she was wearing: “How I came by it I’ve forgotten.” In each of these sections, the narrator is talking about the same girl and her possessions but the reader is encountering her as both separate and part of the narrator.

Switching back and forth between narrative points of view could be maddening for a reader, but the switch is seamless and gives the reader a much fuller picture of the narrator’s recollections than one viewpoint or the other could have done. The ease of transition is accomplished by zooming in to look at one object (here the shoes and the hat) and then zooming back out to show the same object from a different vantage point.

The key to the reasons behind the shift in perspective is in the following passage: “He answers my mother, tells her she’s right to beat the girl…The mother hits her as hard as she can.” I was struck by the poignant disassociation in the shift here as the narrator transitions from “my mother” to “the girl.” Moments before, the narrator used the first person to describe the beginning of the incident: “My mother has attacks during which she falls on me…punches me.” “Has attacks” is habitual, not of the moment, and not in scene. But as the description progresses, the specificity of the action as the other brother flees and the mother calms down and the girl lies about her relationship with the Chinese man, makes the description seem like one particular instance. The narrator is separating herself from the girl who is the center of this action. She sets herself apart from the chaos and pain of these relationships as though it happened to someone else. This disembodiment is characteristic of someone who has undergone trauma and is particularly poignant because the character is at an age where one internalizes this type of experience and blames oneself for it.

Shifting back and forth between these narrative points of view is tricky, but Duras managed it well. As a reader, I was able to engage with the character on a deeper level and could feel the shift into third person almost as the narrator’s wince. I don’t think this could be prudently imitated except in the rarest of circumstances because it creates a very specific effect. However, it is important to keep in mind that our characters, being the astute little observers that they tend to be, are likely aware of how they are perceived. There are other ways to view even a first person narrator from the outside, e.g. conveying anxiety at how they are being perceived. In my novel, Polska, 1994, being seen and the perceptions of others is an important part of Magda’s world and I work to show this through how she thinks others are seeing her. Duras reminded me that it is important to consider how my character views herself.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of The Lover from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Paul Verlaine en Français

April 26, 2012 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

Though neither my French nor my understanding of poetry are good enough to honestly rate Poésies by Paul Verlaine, this book, the rhythm of Verlaine’s stanzas and lines, is fantastic and he has created some truly beautiful images. I have a decent enough comprehension of French that I was able to read the book aloud to myself and to capture Verlaine’s incredible cadences. I used his rhyme scheme to learn to pronounce some words I hadn’t encountered before.

Reading Like a Novice

I’m afraid of poetry. I don’t know the structures and the rules and I’m always certain it’s supposed to mean something that I’m missing. But reading poetry in French was freeing. Once I relaxed into the idea that I was not going to understand every word (I refuse to take a dictionary to bed), I was able to also relax into the idea that I would not understand every nuance and reference in the poems. There would be no essay at the end about the Panzer-man signifies.

Inventing a Language

What was most interesting for me is how carefully reading in French made me pay attention to language. Sometimes I made up my own interpretations based on cognates. “Quand le soleil…dorait la vie” does mean “When the sun…gilded life,” but it also made me think of the verb dormir (to sleep) and so I added layers of meaning to the sentence for myself. This made me think harder about the words I am using and their etymologies and homonyms and how all of that enriches the words and the sentences they inhabit.

I picked out the words I knew and fell in love with the sounds of others. I found myself responding to the simplest phrases like “Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et penetrant” (I have often this strange and penetrating dream) that I would be embarrassed to underline in English because they aren’t deep or new enough. Actually that sentence may be a bad example, because whether or not my translation is accurate, it is kind of beautiful. Sometimes I underlined things simply because of their sound as in “Des violons / De l’automne / Blessent mon coeur / D’une langueur / Monotone.”

I made it all the way through the book, reading each page aloud, and I haven’t picked up the dictionary yet, but I am happy with the meanings I brought to Verlaine and the meanings Verlaine brought to me. I am happy with the way looking at a language from the outside will help me look at my language from the inside.

If this review made you want to read the book, pick up a copy of Poésies from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.