Why do I care about Jane Austen’s ordinary people but not Barbara Pym’s?

I quit on Jane and Prudence after about 50 pages. 

Some of you will probably say I’m missing the point, but Barbara Pym writes about the trivial thoughts of trivial people, and I simply don’t care. 

The novel is about Jane, a vicar’s wife who has just moved with her husband to another parish in a village, and Prudence, her younger and single friend (at 29!), who lives in London and is in love with her married boss Arthur Grampian.  

When we see Prudence in the office, Barbara Pym gives us several pages of the women talking about wanting tea, making tea, telling each other they run out of tea, discussing what to do when they don’t have tea for Dr Grampian, deciding Prudence should borrow the tin of coffee from Mr Manifold, and so on and so forth. Later Prudence goes to lunch, Pym painstakingly describes all her thoughts and actions during the lunch, then: 

“She was just walking to the cash desk to pay her bill when she noticed a young man sitting at one of the tables. It was Mr Manifold. He was eating – perhaps ‘tucking into’ would describe it better – the steamed pudding which Prudence had avoided as being too fattening. She had never seen him eating before and now she averted her eyes quickly, for there was something indecent about it, as if a mantle had fallen and revealed more of him than she ought to see. Of course the women in the office had known that he lunched somewhere – indeed, they had even speculated on where he went; perhaps the vastness of the Corner House swallowed him up or the manly security of a public-house lapped him round. Prudence hurried out of the restaurant feeling disturbed and irritated. Had he ever been there before, she wondered? She hoped he wasn’t going to make a habit of frequenting the places she went to. It would be annoying if she had to change her own routine.” (ch.4)

These are such small, trivial thoughts. 

It’s the same when Pym switches to the vicar’s wife. Because Jane has such a small mind, we don’t see her thinking about the new church, or nature, or religion, or anything interesting; she just thinks about small, mundane stuff.   

“At last Mrs Crampton emerged from behind the velvet curtain carrying two plates on a tray. She put in front of Jane a plate containing an egg, a rasher of bacon and some fried potatoes cut in fancy shapes, and in front of Nicholas a plate with two eggs and rather more potatoes.

Nicholas exclaimed with pleasure.

‘Oh, a man needs eggs!’ said Mrs Crampton, also looking pleased.

This insistence on a man’s needs amused. Jane. Men needed meat and eggs – well, yes, that might be allowed; but surely not more than women did? Perhaps Mrs Crampton’s widowhood had something to do with it; possibly she made up for having no man to feed at home by ministering to the needs of those who frequented her cafe.

[…] ‘Poor Mr Oliver,’ said Jane, scenting pathos. He certainly looked very pale reading the Lessons on Sunday evenings, but perhaps that was just a trick of the lighting. She hurried to finish her egg and bacon in case he should come in and see them at it without being able to have it himself.

[…] Mrs Crampton now returned and set down before Mr Oliver a plate laden with roast chicken and all the proper accompaniments. He accepted it with quite as much complacency as Nicholas had accepted his eggs and bacon and began to eat.

Jane turned away, to save his embarrassment. Man needs bird, she thought. Just the very best, that is what man needs.” (ch.5) 

I give you a long excerpt so you can see what I’m talking about. All these characters are boring, banal: 

“Fabian Driver, doing his pre-lunch drinking in the bar of the Golden Lion, looked out and saw Nicholas and Jane walking home. He had a confused feeling of irritation and envy as he watched them. It must have been Jane’s smiling up at her husband and the awful old coat she was wearing, the kind of coat a woman could wear only in her husband’s presence, he thought.” (ibid.)  

That’s what most people are like, you may say, but I really don’t care for all these trivial thoughts of these trivial people. I had a similar complaint about Cecilia: Frances Burney undoubtedly has great talent for capturing the characters’ voices and it could be very funny, but do I want that many pages of frivolous people talking about frivolous stuff? I do not. 

But that raises some interesting questions. Chekhov also writes about ordinary people, Jane Austen also depicts a small world, Flaubert also portrays shallow and banal people—why is it that they make me care about their characters and what happens to them? What separates them from Barbara Pym? Why do I care about what happens to Emma Bovary, for instance, when she is so hollow? 

(I’ve been thinking about this subject for some time. When I first read Jane Austen, I thought her characters didn’t have the depth or complexity of Tolstoy’s characters. And yet to me they’re alive, and many of them have lived with me over the years, like Tolstoy’s characters. I have often said my favourite Austen novel is Mansfield Park, followed by Persuasion, but over the past year or so, I’ve found myself often thinking about Pride and Prejudice, especially Mr and Mrs Bennet). 

Of course, some of you might say you don’t like Jane Austen because it’s such a circumscribed world, or you don’t like Flaubert because Emma Bovary is so shallow compared to Anna Karenina—it’s personal taste and perhaps these questions are more for myself. But Jane Austen, Flaubert, and Chekhov—regardless of personal taste—are all canonical, influential authors, whereas Frances Burney and Barbara Pym don’t quite have the same status. 

And if we broaden the question, realist novelists address the everyday and write about ordinary people—not all of them depict the whole society and not all of them write about big questions (like life and death, God’s existence, or the meaning of life)—how do they do it? How do they get us to care about their characters? 

Let’s discuss.

Thérèse Raquin: smell motif, Madame Bovary, the cat

1/ This is my first Zola. 

Thérèse Raquin, like Balzac’s Eugénie Grandet, begins with a detailed description of the surroundings. Place them side by side with the 20th century Japanese books I read last year (Soseki, Kawabata, Tanizaki, etc.)—it’s funny to see how detailed and specific the French are, and how vague and hazy the Japanese tend to be. 

2/ I picked up the novel knowing that it’s about a woman having an affair and plotting with the lover to kill the husband, but didn’t know about the marriage. I can’t be the only one grossed out by it: they are first cousins! They’ve grown up together since she’s 2! Ew. 

That’s my first wtf moment in the book.  

3/ The writing is good. 

“All these faces drove her crazy. […] And Thérèse could not see a single human, not a living creature, among these grotesque and sinister beings with whom she was shut up. At times she would suffer hallucinations, thinking that she was buried in a vault together with mechanical bodies whose heads moved and whose arms and legs waved when their strings were pulled. The heavy atmosphere of the dining room stifled her, and the eerie silence and yellowish glow of the lamp filled her with a vague sense of terror, an inexpressible feeling of anxiety.” (Ch.4)  

I like that. 

Thérèse is not Emma Bovary, but these lines make me think of Emma’s ennui. I’m reading the Penguin edition, translated by Robin Buss, which includes Zola’s preface for the 2nd edition. His goal is to study temperament, not character, and he says: 

“Thérèse and Laurent are human animals, nothing more.” (Preface)

What animal is Thérèse? A cat, I assume.

“This convalescent life that was imposed on her drove her back into herself. She became accustomed to speaking in a low voice, walking along quietly, and staying silent and motionless on a chair, looking blankly with wide-open eyes. Yet, when she did raise an arm or take a step, there was a feline suppleness in her, a mass of energy and passion dormant within her torpid frame.” (Ch.2) 

The comparison is repeated later: 

“He was no longer his own master; his mistress, with her feline sinuosity and nervous flexibility, had gradually insinuated herself into every fibre of his body. He needed that woman to live as one needs to eat and drink.” (Ch.9) 

There is a tabby cat in the novel that she often plays with, called Francois.

4/ Here is Laurent, the lover: 

“Laurent amazed her: he was tall, strong and fresh-faced. She looked with a kind of awe at his low forehead with its rough black hair, at his plump cheeks, his red lips and his regular features with their sanguine beauty. Her gaze paused for a moment on his neck, a broad, short neck, thick and powerful. […] Laurent came of true peasant stock, with a somewhat heavy manner, rounded back, slow, studied movements and a calm, stubborn look about him.” (Ch.5) 

Excuse me for being shallow but that doesn’t sound hot, though I can see that his qualities contrast with the illness and languor of the husband (Camille). 

The stories of Laurent’s studies makes me think of K in Kokoro—did Soseki ever read Zola? I wonder.  

5/ The characters, Zola says, are no more than human animals. Here’s something I’ve noticed: smells.  

This is Thérèse as perceived by Laurent, when he goes into the bedroom for their rendezvous: 

“She exuded a warm smell, a smell of white linen and freshly washed flesh.” (Ch.7) 

The first time Thérèse meets Laurent:

“The young man’s sanguine nature, his resonant voice, his hearty laughter and the sharp, strong smells that he emitted disturbed the young woman and plunged her into a kind of nervous anxiety.” (Ch.5)  

Contrast that with the smell from Camille when he was a kid, according to Thérèse: 

“‘…I was brought up in the damp warmth of a sickroom. I used to sleep beside Camille; in the night, I would move away from him, disgusted by the musty smell of his body.’” (Ch.7)  

He’s still the same now. 

“‘… And I found a husband who was no different from the ailing little boy I used to sleep with when I was six. He was just as frail, as whining, and he still had that smell of a sick child that used to disgust me so much in the old days.’” (ibid.) 

Now look again at the passage about Laurent. Their affair is purely physical. 

See this passage in Madame Bovary, about Emma and Rodolphe at the agricultural show: 

“His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Emma, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.

Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. […] yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe’s head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals...” (Ch.8) 

The translation is by Eleanor Marx-Aveling. 

This is also about smells and their affair is also physical (though Emma likes to think herself a romantic), but the smell Flaubert writes about is the perfume of the pomade, whereas Zola seems to be writing about Laurent’s natural odour. 

Compared to Emma Bovary, Thérèse seems to be, how do I say it, less cultured and more animalistic. If Emma is morally corrupted by reading, Thérèse never reads. Zola’s book seems to be in conversation with Flaubert’s. Thérèse and Emma have a few similarities. Both of them hate their husbands. Both of them hate their lives, their surroundings. Both of them haven’t had good sex till the affairs. Laurent’s thoughts, as he wonders whether to pursue Thérèse, remind me of Rodolphe’s. 

However Thérèse makes Emma Bovary appear so much better: Emma at least has the decency to go out of the house to cheat on her husband, among other things. 

6/ While the humans are like brutes, the cat is like a human. In this scene, Thérèse is with her lover in the bedroom of her and her husband, and the cat is watching. 

“The tabby cat, François, was sitting on his bottom right in the middle of the room. Solemn and motionless, he was looking at the two lovers with wide-open eyes. He seemed to be examining them carefully, without blinking, lost in a sort of diabolical trance.” (Ch.7) 

Does Tolstoy ever write about cats? I remember him writing about dogs and horses but can’t remember any cats.  

Thérèse jokes about the cat watching everything and talking to Camille.

“Laurent looked at the cat’s large green eyes and felt a shudder run through him.” (ibid.) 

Then he picks him up and puts him outside the room. What a great scene. 

7/ Zola writes about smells again, when Laurent’s contemplating murder. 

“He felt suffocated in this narrow cage, which Thérèse had left full of the heat of her passion. He seemed to be still breathing something of her, she had been there, leaving behind a pervasive scent of herself, a smell of violets; but now all he had to press in his arms was his mistress’s intangible ghost, present all around him; he was in a fever of reviving, unsatisfied desire.” (Ch.9) 

The animal in him now takes over. In him now there’s no conscience, no morality, no sense. 

“Driven by insomnia, aroused by the pungent scents that Thérèse had left behind, he devised traps, working out what could go wrong and enumerating all the benefits to be derived from becoming a murderer.” (ibid.) 

He’s driven by the physical, by the smell.

“He grasped the material between his dry lips and drank in the faint scents still clinging to it; and he stayed there, breathless, panting, watching strips of fire cross his closed eyelids.” (ibid.) 

Later, in Saint-Ouen: 

“The bitter scent of the earth mingled with the light perfume of Thérèse and seeped into him, heating his blood and arousing his lust.” (Ch.11) 

I expect that smells will still be significant in the later part of the novel. 

10 favourite novels and some other lists about books

- 10 favourite novels (updated): 
The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu 
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 

- 3 favourite writers: 
Jane Austen 
Murasaki Shikibu 
Lev Tolstoy 

- 10 novels I feel worst for not having read:  
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman 
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
Hunger by Knut Hamsun 
To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo 
The works of Emile Zola 

- 10 novels I very much want to read though won't read any time soon: 
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 
Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
Eugenie Grandet by Honore de Balzac 
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco 
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk 
The Red and the Black by Stendhal  

Compare to my lists from 4 years ago.

Update on 27/12/2020: Less than half a year later, my top 10 favourite novels have been updated. 

Idle musings on male and female writers

As I read about the relationship between a charming, dominating woman and a naïve, inexperienced younger man in My Cousin Rachel, I can’t help idly wondering: what if the stories by Daphne du Maurier, Edith Wharton, or Jane Austen had been written by a man? 
Whilst the differences between men and women are sometimes exaggerated (like the idea that men can’t write women, for example), men and women are certainly different, biologically and socially, especially if we’re talking about the 19th century and early 20th century, when women don’t have equal rights.  
I’m not talking about a difference in prose or style. I don’t really believe in the idea of masculine prose vs feminine prose, certainly not the idea that by looking at a few sentences, you can tell if the author is a man or a woman.    
In terms of scope, there are male writers who work on a small canvas, focus on one strand of story, and pay attention to every detail and nuance, such as Henry James or Flaubert, just as there are female writers such as Jane Austen or Edith Wharton; and if some male writers such as Tolstoy or Dickens work on a larger canvas and tell multiple strands of stories, so does George Eliot. 
The difference I’m talking about is that books by women have a woman’s perspective, and a woman’s sensibilities, especially when we’re talking about the context of the 19th century and early 20th century, when women have less freedom, fewer rights, and fewer options. It’s hard to explain what I mean by “a woman’s sensibilities”, but I can see that in the works of Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, etc. there is more sympathy for women, and more comment on gender inequality and women’s limited options. Even when there is a deeply unpleasant character, such as the shallow, selfish Rosamond Vincy in Middlemarch or the ignorant, frivolous, and opportunistic Undine Spragg in The Custom of the Country, the authors still let us see that, as a woman, they have limited options and narrow experience, and the men who love them, Lydgate and Ralph Marvell respectively, have a narrow, mistaken view of women and share the blame in their conflicts.   
There’s something else. In The Custom of the Country, the protagonist Undine Spragg is very ignorant, but she has social instinct and is extremely good at playing the game and using marriages to her advantage—she chews Ralph up and spits him out, then uses other men in the same way, and always gets what she wants. Now I’m reading Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, in which a naïve, inexperienced man with a sheltered experience falls prey to an older woman and gets manipulated.  
I can’t help wondering, what if the stories of The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, Middlemarch, Mansfield Park, My Cousin Rachel, or Jane Eyre had been written by a male writer—say, Tolstoy, Dickens, or Flaubert? 
Also, how do you define a woman’s sensibilities?

The protagonist and the world of The House of Mirth

The House of Mirth has an interesting premise. If Jane Austen writes about courtship and a woman’s search for the right one to marry, and George Eliot, in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, writes about bad marriages and women’s suffering, Edith Wharton’s novel is about a woman in New York who wants to marry for money but has fears and hesitates to commit herself to a husband. In her search for freedom and happiness, Lily Bart makes some blunder and gets herself tangled in scandals. 
Reading The House of Mirth, I can’t help feeling that Edith Wharton doesn’t like people very much. The world she depicts is a world of such trivial, shallow, small-minded, petty, jealous, and hypocritical people. Her own contempt can be felt on the page. 

“How dreary and trivial these people were! Lily reviewed them with a scornful impatience: Carry Fisher, with her shoulders, her eyes, her divorces, her general air of embodying a "spicy paragraph"; young Silverton, who had meant to live on proof-reading and write an epic, and who now lived on his friends and had become critical of truffles; Alice Wetherall, an animated visiting-list, whose most fervid convictions turned on the wording of invitations and the engraving of dinner-cards; Wetherall, with his perpetual nervous nod of acquiescence, his air of agreeing with people before he knew what they were saying; Jack Stepney, with his confident smile and anxious eyes, half way between the sheriff and an heiress; Gwen Van Osburgh, with all the guileless confidence of a young girl who has always been told that there is no one richer than her father.
Lily smiled at her classification of her friends. How different they had seemed to her a few hours ago! Then they had symbolized what she was gaining, now they stood for what she was giving up. That very afternoon they had seemed full of brilliant qualities; now she saw that they were merely dull in a loud way. Under the glitter of their opportunities she saw the poverty of their achievement.” (B.1, Ch.5)  

This is a world of people who have lots of money but little to do, so they spend time going shopping, going to parties, playing bridge, having affairs, watching and judging others, then gossiping and spreading rumours. These people collect books for their collection, not for reading. These people marry for money, then have affairs. These people use others for their little scheme then discard them, or get back at someone for every little thing that makes them feel slighted and insulted. It is a shallow, materialistic, and money-obsessed world, and under Edith Wharton’s pen, it is claustrophobic. 
Placed next to the narrow, gossipy world Jane Austen depicts, this one feels even more spiteful and malicious.  
Mrs Peniston, who takes on Lily after her parents’ death, isn’t kind: 

“It would have been impossible for Mrs. Peniston to be heroic on a desert island, but with the eyes of her little world upon her she took a certain pleasure in her act.” (B.1, Ch.3) 

Even Gerty Farish, Lawrence Selden’s cousin and the only one who seems nice so far in the story, is jealous of Lily. 
What about Lawrence Selden? The man that Lily loves? 

“There had been a germ of truth in his declaration to Gerty Farish that he had never wanted to marry a "nice" girl: the adjective connoting, in his cousin's vocabulary, certain utilitarian qualities which are apt to preclude the luxury of charm. Now it had been Selden's fate to have a charming mother: her graceful portrait, all smiles and Cashmere, still emitted a faded scent of the undefinable quality. His father was the kind of man who delights in a charming woman: who quotes her, stimulates her, and keeps her perennially charming. Neither one of the couple cared for money, but their disdain of it took the form of always spending a little more than was prudent. If their house was shabby, it was exquisitely kept; if there were good books on the shelves there were also good dishes on the table. Selden senior had an eye for a picture, his wife an understanding of old lace; and both were so conscious of restraint and discrimination in buying that they never quite knew how it was that the bills mounted up.” (B.1, Ch.14) 

In short, he isn’t much different from Lily. At the same time, he also seems very cynical, and jokes about everything, perhaps to hide his true feelings. But maybe it’s too early to say, maybe my view of Selden will change later on. 
As I ponder over these trivial and shallow people, I can’t help wondering why I love Madame Bovary even though the characters in it are all philistines and hypocrites, but the world of The House of Mirth feels so claustrophobic, trivial, and dreary to me. Is it only because of Flaubert’s great prose? There must be something else. I suppose it’s the sense of sadness in Madame Bovary (also in Sentimental Education); in The House of Mirth, I only see disdain, there’s nothing beyond it. 
Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing—I’m on chapter 15. Things can change. Anything is possible. 
At the moment, I don’t like Lily Bart. A main character’s likeability or relatability is not a criterion of literary merit, but personally I don’t like her. I don’t like her choices, and don’t sympathise with her. 
Reviews of The House of Mirth usually talk about women as consumer items in society, and say that Lily’s trapped by rules and conventions. There’s no denying that women’s options are limited in New York in the early 20th century. But she’s not an innocent victim. Her aunt accepts her, gives her a home and an income, she chooses to play bridge and gets into debt. She wants to marry for money but looks down on everyone, and neglects Percy Pryce. She chooses to come to Gus Trenor. 
As I said quite a few times before, I have a rather strong dislike of stupid women. People generally have “rules”: a) don’t expect anything for free; b) don’t get involved with married people; c) stay away from your friend’s partner/ spouse—Lily Bart violates them all. Even if I empathise with her situation, having expensive tastes but little money, and even if I understand her need for a secure income but dislike of the prospects of a dull marriage, these are the choices she makes, and quite frankly, they are stupid choices. 
My judgment of her decisions and actions affects my reading of the book. 
This is the passage after the humiliating scene at the Trenors’: 

“But with the turn of the wheels reaction came, and shuddering darkness closed on her. "I can't think—I can't think," she moaned, and leaned her head against the rattling side of the cab. She seemed a stranger to herself, or rather there were two selves in her, the one she had always known, and a new abhorrent being to which it found itself chained. She had once picked up, in a house where she was staying, a translation of the Eumenides, and her imagination had been seized by the high terror of the scene where Orestes, in the cave of the oracle, finds his implacable huntresses asleep, and snatches an hour's repose. Yes, the Furies might sometimes sleep, but they were there, always there in the dark corners, and now they were awake and the iron clang of their wings was in her brain … She opened her eyes and saw the streets passing—the familiar alien streets. All she looked on was the same and yet changed. There was a great gulf fixed between today and yesterday. Everything in the past seemed simple, natural, full of daylight—and she was alone in a place of darkness and pollution.—Alone! It was the loneliness that frightened her. Her eyes fell on an illuminated clock at a street corner, and she saw that the hands marked the half hour after eleven. Only half-past eleven—there were hours and hours left of the night! And she must spend them alone, shuddering sleepless on her bed. Her soft nature recoiled from this ordeal, which had none of the stimulus of conflict to goad her through it. Oh, the slow cold drip of the minutes on her head! She had a vision of herself lying on the black walnut bed—and the darkness would frighten her, and if she left the light burning the dreary details of the room would brand themselves forever on her brain. She had always hated her room at Mrs. Peniston's—its ugliness, its impersonality, the fact that nothing in it was really hers. To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room may open almost human arms, and the being to whom no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours, expatriate everywhere.
Lily had no heart to lean on. Her relation with her aunt was as superficial as that of chance lodgers who pass on the stairs. But even had the two been in closer contact, it was impossible to think of Mrs. Peniston's mind as offering shelter or comprehension to such misery as Lily's. As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.” (B.1, Ch.13) 

It is superbly written. I can’t help recognising Wharton’s talent. The passage is indeed very, very good. 
But part of me thinks, why is Lily shocked? How does she expect Gus Trenor to keep giving her money, or “tips” as he calls it, without wanting anything in return? 
Maybe I’m harsh. Let’s see if I’m going to see Lily Bart differently when I’ve finished the book.

2010- 2019 in books [updated]

Soon we will enter the 2020s, so let’s talk about our reading over the past decade, shall we?  
1/ I came to Norway in 2009—before this, I only read literature in Vietnamese. Slowly I started to switch, and now read almost exclusively in English. 

2/ My years in Norway, 2009-2016, especially after I entered University of Oslo in 2012, will without doubt be seen as my formative years in reading.
(I will, forever, be grateful to HumSam-bibliotek of University of Oslo, and Deichmanske bibliotek—Oslo public library). 

3/ My favourite writers are: Lev Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Vladimir Nabokov, Herman Melville, and Gustave Flaubert. 
I also like: the Bronte sisters, especially Emily Bronte, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lewis Carroll, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, P. G. Wodehouse… 
George Eliot is a great writer I have immense respect for but don’t love. Henry James is another I struggled quite a lot with, but I’m warming to his works. 

4/ I started to have a love for literature in the English language at the IB (International Baccalaureate). 
However, most of my favourite writers from this period I’m now indifferent to: F. Scott Fitzgerald, J. D. Salinger, Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Isabel Allende…  

5/ I discovered Nabokov and Tolstoy in 2012, Jane Austen in 2013, and Melville in 2016 (before coming to the UK). 

6/ I love British literature and Russian literature. 
The most important reading challenge I did on this blog was Russian Literature Challenge in 2014. Here’s the wrap-up: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/01/russian-literature-challenge-2014-wrap.html

7/ Here are some top 10 lists about books, from 2016: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/08/some-top-10-lists-about-books.html
The list of favourite books is now different (what do you expect? It’s been 3 years!), but the other lists remain more or less the same. 

8/ My new list of 10 favourite novels: 
Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte 
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens 
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner 

9/ My favourite Jane Austen novel is her least popular and most misunderstood work, Mansfield Park: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/12/reading-misreading-mansfield-park.html
This is a book about which I often fight with people. The blog post above is a collection of my writings and arguments about Mansfield Park, from 2014 and before. 
I wrote a bit about Mansfield Park on Jane Austen’s 244th birthday: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/12/jane-austens-birthday-16121775-16122019.html 

10/ Another novel about which I also often fight with people is Lolita. Here are my final arguments when I reread the book in 2017: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/lolita-chapter-29.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/lolitas-tears.html
I also wrote about motifs in Lolita that I didn’t notice earlier, such as: 
Dogs: https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-dogs-in-lolita.html 
Birds and butterflies: https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/butterflies-and-birds-in-lolita.html
In 2019, I read The Enchanter, which is known as the proto-Lolita, and compared the 2 here: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/from-enchanter-to-lolita.html 
Also, if anyone accuses Nabokov of plagiarising Henz von Lichberg’s short story, here’s my response:  
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-other-lolita.html 

11/ On my blog, the label “writers and readers” is devoted to discussing the art of reading, good readers vs bad readers. 
Some important posts are: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2013/08/3-wrong-attitudes-in-reading-novels.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/02/poshlost-according-to-nabokov.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2014/05/philistines-and-philistinism-vladimir.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/on-idea-of-relevance-and-relatableness.html 
Nabokov, as you can see, has huge influence on my thinking and reading. 
Also, this is a post about top 10 “Are we reading the same book?” moments: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/08/top-10-are-we-reading-same-book-moments.html 

12/ I have written a few times about feminist literary criticism, especially The Madwoman in the Attic:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-madwoman-in-attic-george-eliot.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-madwoman-in-attic-on-middlemarch.html

13/ 1 of my best series on my blog is about George Eliot’s Middlemarch: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/characters-in-middlemarch-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/get-out-of-way-will-you-or-george-eliot.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/lydgate-sexist.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-paintings-and-miniatures.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-taking-wife.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/chapter-42-and-casaubon-or-how-i-learn.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/experience-and-growth-dorothea-brooke.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-2nd-plot-of-middlemarch-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/george-eliots-moral-lessons-in.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/middlemarch-each-unhappy-family-is.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/on-fred-vincy.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/06/last-thoughts-on-middlemarch-tingle.html 

14/ Another good series is about Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/09/experience-and-reading-p2-readers-in.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-signs.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-time.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-characters-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-portrait-of-lady-more-on-time-and.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/metaphors-in-portrait-of-lady.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/10/silence-in-portrait-of-lady.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-greatness-of-portrait-of-lady.html 

15/ Here’s my series about Charles Dickens’s Little Dorrit, from earlier this year: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/starting-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-houses-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/repetition-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-story-strands-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-character-of-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/little-dorrit-rivals.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-themes-in-little-dorrit.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/07/on-amy-dorrit-or-how-dickens-improves.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/little-dorrit-some-random-observations.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/08/on-finishing-little-dorrit.html 

16/ I think my recent series about Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is not bad. 
However, I’ve noticed that I’ve not written any good series of blog posts at all about Tolstoy or Jane Austen or Melville. 

17/ Here I explain why I don’t use the star rating system: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2019/04/why-i-dont-use-star-rating.html 

18/ To lots of people, 2010- 2019 is just another decade, but to me, it has been an important decade: I read a lot more than before, switched to reading in English, discovered Russian literature, discovered writers who shaped my taste and thinking and who would most likely remain in my personal canon, learnt to read a literary work, learnt to analyse and write about it, shaped my views and aesthetics in literature, got a degree in language and literature, created a blog that focused mostly on literature, and got blogger friends. 
Here’s to another good decade in reading!


__________________________________________

Update: 
In the earlier version of this post, I didn’t link to any of my writings about Moby Dick, because at the time of reading and writing about the book, I was in awe and had nothing intelligent to say. The posts were more like notes for myself than finished and polished blog posts to share with the world. However, it’s not really fair to go on and on about Lolita and Mansfield Park but not say a word about Moby Dick, a book of genius, a book that I’m sure will always remain in my top 3 (together with Anna Karenina and War and Peace). 
Here’s a blog post in which I stated why Moby Dick is a book about everything: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/moby-dick-is-book-about-everything.html
Some of my posts were about the whale chapters:
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/03/moby-dick-chapter-32-cetology.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-whales-skin.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-whales-eyes-structure-of-moby-dick.html
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-noble-sperm-whale.html
My view regarding Moby Dick is an “extreme” view: the book is perfect as it is and does not “need an editor”; it is several books in one, it is about everything, and therefore it is the way it should be; readers should not skip the whale chapters and should not read for only the story, but should read Moby Dick with the right mindset, i.e. with curiosity and a sense of wonder; an abridged War and Peace might still be War and Peace, but an abridged Moby Dick is not Moby Dick.
When will I again experience the aesthetic bliss of reading something incredible like Anna Karenina or Moby Dick?

Timeline of Madame Bovary

Do you wonder about how much time passes between events or how long something lasts in Madame Bovary? I did. It’s not always clear, but I’m trying to piece together the timeline of the story.
1/ Charles Bovary moves to Tostes to practise as a doctor (P.1, ch.1), and lives there for 4 years before moving to Yonville (P.1, ch.9). 
It’s not said how long after he moves to Tostes that he gets married to his 1st wife Heloise, but the marriage lasts 14 months (P.1, ch.5). 
Charles meets Emma whilst still married, and about 5 months after the 1st wife’s death, he sees Emma again. Because of mourning, I think the wedding is about a year later. 
2/ Part 1 of the book is about Emma marrying Charles, becoming Madame Bovary, moving to Tostes, meeting and fantasising about the Vicomte. At the end of Part 1, before leaving Tostes, she becomes pregnant. 
Part 2 is about Emma in Yonville, her 1st meeting with Léon, and affair with Rodolphe. 
Part 3 is about Emma’s affair with Léon and her financial troubles. During this time, she travels back and forth between Yonville and Rouen for her affair. 
3/ In Part 2 chapter 12, during the affair with Rodolphe, and soon before they plan to elope, Emma tells him that she has suffered for 4 years. That most likely means that at that point she has been married to Charles for 4 years. 
4/ In Part 3 chapter 1, Flaubert tells us that Léon sees Emma again after 3 years. That means that Part 2 is at least 3 years, could be 3 years and a half, depending on when Léon moves away. I’m not sure about that point. 
5/ Emma has an affair with Rodolphe for 2 years (P.3, ch.8).  
6/ In Part 3 chapter 6, when Emma has had an affair with Léon for some time and is now starting to have financial troubles, Flaubert tells us that 2 years have passed since her illness (after Rodolphe’s abandonment). 
I’m not sure how long the illness lasts, nor how much time passes between it and her meeting with Léon in Rouen. However, in Part 2 chapter 14, Flaubert says that it’s a hard winter and Emma takes a long time to recover, so I assume that her illness lasts a few months. During this time she re-discovers, then drops, religion, then Homais brings up the idea of going to the theatre in Rouen, where she meets Léon. The whole thing would be a few months. 
7/ In Part 3 chapter 8, when Emma comes to Rodolphe for help, we are told that he has been avoiding her for 3 years. I would guess that Emma has an affair with Léon for about 2 years and a half. 
An easy way Flaubert could have done to mark time and help the reader keep track of time is by mentioning Berthe’s age, which he never did. By my calculation, she’s about 6 when Emma dies.
What do you think? 

The tragedy of Madame Bovary

Let’s look at this passage, after Rodolphe dumps Emma: 

“As for memories of Rodolphe, she stored them away in the depths of her heart, and there they stayed, more stately, more motionless than a mummy in its crypt. From this great embalmed love came a fragrance that, touching everything, scented the world of purity where she wanted to live with tenderness. When she knelt at her Gothic prie-dieu she spoke the same honeyed words to the Lord that she had once whispered in her lover’s ear during their adulterous outpourings. She did it to instil faith, but no delight descended on her from heaven, and she would get up aching, with the obscure feeling that she was the victim of an enormous hoax. Yet this quest, so she believed, was just one more good deed, and in her proud devotions Emma likened herself to the great ladies of the past, whose glory had once inspired her in a painting of la Vallière, and who, trailing the rickly bedecked trains of their long dresses with such splendour, withdrew into seclusion to wash Christ’s feet with the tears of a heart wounded by life.” (P.2, ch.4) 

Such a magnificent passage. 
Now look at this one, when Emma’s getting bored with Léon:

“They knew each other too well to marvel at the sense of possession that makes pleasure all the more intense. She was as repelled by him as he was weary of her. In adultery Emma was confronted with the mediocrity of marriage. 
[…] She didn’t write him any fewer love letters, on the principal that a woman should always write to her lover. 
Yet in writing she discovered another man, a shadow born of her most impassioned memories, the most beautiful books she had read, her fiercest desires, and eventually he became so real, so attainable, that her heart raced in wonder, despite being unable to picture him clearly—because like a god he was almost invisible beneath his manly attributes. He lived in that blue-tinted land where silken ladders hang from balconies in the sweetly scented breath of flowers in the moonlight. She felt him nearby, he would come and sweep her away body and soul with a kiss. But then she came crashing down again; for these obscures transports of love exhausted her more than the wildest debauchery.” (P.3, ch.6) 

Emma’s tragedy is her yearning for something grand, exciting, and romantic. Her tragedy is her inability to reconcile with the fact that life isn’t like the books she reads. Her tragedy is her delusions and thwarted dreams. Emma moves from religion (during the time at the convent), to marriage, to affair with Rodolphe, back to religion, then to affair with Léon, forever chasing something unattainable, forever dissatisfied and disappointed.  
Emma is stupid, deceitful, reckless, and self-centred. She is shallow and has no depth of feeling, and doesn’t care about anyone, including her own child. She is self-destructive and hard to like. But as I reread Madame Bovary, I sometimes felt for Emma. Her marriage with Charles is an awful mismatch, and the answer to anyone who is against (the right to) divorce or against premarital sex. Compatibility, including sexual compatibility, is important. 
Emma, in addition, doesn’t have a profession or hobby to keep herself from daydreaming and acting out her fantasies. She doesn’t seem to understand finances.
This time, I’ve also realised something I didn’t notice before: Charles too shares his part in Emma’s tragedy. They lack communication—Emma doesn’t express her feelings, he doesn’t understand her and even foolishly believes she’s happy; on his turn, he doesn’t tell her about money problems either, so it is partly his fault that she becomes spoilt and careless with spending.  
Look at this passage: 

“… Lheureux redoubled his efforts and, first threatening then whining, he so contrived things that Charles ended up by singing a promissory note that fell due in 6 months. But no sooner had he signed the agreement than he had a bold idea: to borrow 1000 francs from Monsieur Lheureux. So looking slightly embarrassed, he asked if there was a chance of getting it, adding that it would be for a year and at whatever rate of interest he liked.” (P.2, ch.14) 

Note that: “at whatever rate of interest he liked”. Isn’t that rather dumb?

The lustful Emma Bovary

Discussing Madame Bovary, people tend to write about Emma’s sentimentality, silliness, and extravagance, and the way she foolishly expects life to be grand and exciting as in books, and feels disillusioned when it isn’t. I forgot, since the last read about 5-6 years ago, that Emma is actually very sensual, with lots of appetite for sex. 
Just look at these passages, when Emma’s falling for Léon: 

“… she was full of lust, anger, hatred.” (P.2, ch.5)  

(For friends who haven’t read Madame Bovary: the hatred is for her husband, for being mediocre and boring, but not beating her up or giving her some other reason to hate him). 
Later: 

“The desires of the flesh, the lust for money and the melancholia of passion all merged in a single agony—but instead of turning her mind away she bound herself to it even more closely, stimulated by pain and looking everywhere for opportunities to indulge herself.” (ibid.) 

2 chapters later, Flaubert also uses the phrase “carnal desires” (in Christopher Moncrieff’s translation).     
At this point, Emma hasn’t had an affair yet, but today her behaviour would most probably be called micro-cheating, whatever that means. 

“She could make out tiny gold flecks in his eyes, fanning out round his black pupils, and could even smell the pomade that made his hair shine. Then suddenly she felt weak, she remembered the Vicomte who had waltzed with her at La Vaubyessard, and whose beard gave off the same scents of vanilla and lemon, and instinctively she half-closed her eyes in order to breathe it in. But as she did so she sat up in her chair, and saw the old stagecoach Hirondelle on the horizon, coming slowly down Les Leux hill trailing a long plume of dust. It was in that same yellow carriage that Léon had so often returned to her; and it was on the same road that he had left forever! She thought she saw him at his window opposite; then everything became confused, the clouds passed; it was as if she were still waltzing in the Vicomte’s arms in the light of the chandeliers, and Léon wasn’t far away, he was coming… and yet she could still sense Rodolphe’s head beside her. The sweetness of the sensation found its way into her old desires, and like grains of sand in the wind they whirled round in the delicate waft of perfume that was spreading through her soul.” (P.2, ch.8) 

All the men blur together. It’s obvious that what Emma needs, and wants, is some good sex, which she doesn’t get from her husband. 
Just go back to the beginning and look at this scene of Emma and Charles before they get married:  

“She got a bottle of curacao from the armoire, reached down 2 small glasses, filled one to the top, put almost nothing in the other and then, having clinked it with his, lifted it to her mouth. Since it was virtually empty she had to tip her head back to drink; and in that position, with her lips extended, neck craning, she laughed because she couldn’t taste anything, while between her shapely little teeth the tip of her tongue gently licked the bottom of the glass.” (P.1, ch.3) 

Her sensual nature has been hinted from the start. 
It becomes clear that Emma craves sex. She fantasises about the Vicomte, then falls for Léon; after Léon, she quickly succumbs to Rodolphe’s seductions, then she also gets over him, and starts a new affair with Léon. 
With Rodolphe, she has sex with him the 1st time they ride horses together, and during the affair, sneaks out of house several times a week to be with him. 

“1 morning when Charles had left before dawn, she was seized by a sudden desire to see Rodolphe that very second. […] The thought made her breast heave with lust…” (P.2, ch.9) 

And then: 

“All winter, 3 or 4 times a week, he came to her garden when it was completely dark. Emma had taken the key out of the gate, and Charles thought it had been lost. 
[…] To let her know he was there, Rodolphe always threw a handful of sand at the shutters. She would jump up; but sometimes she had to wait, because Charles had a habit of chatting by the fire and would go on ad infinitum. She would be consumed with impatience; if they would have done, her eyes would have leapt out of the window.” (P.2, ch.10) 

Note: “consumed with impatience”. 
Later, when Emma meets Léon again, after 3 years, she has “an irresistible urge to put her lips to” his cheeks (P.3, ch.1). She arranges a meeting in a church, which leads to the famous carriage scene: 

“Among wagons and barrels at the harbour, in the streets and at the marker stones, local people stared in amazement at this unheard-of thing for a provincial town, a carriage with its blind pulled down, and which kept reappearing, more tightly sealed than a tomb, pitching and tossing like a ship at sea.” (ibid.)

What a scene indeed. Subtle, but masterfully suggestive.   
Later, Flaubert is plain about Emma’s high libido. Just look at these lines: 

“… she came back more voracious, more impassioned than before. She would undress violently, ripping the laces of her corset, which slipped over her hips like a snake. Tiptoeing in bare feet she would check the door was locked then throw aside her clothes in a single movement—and pale, silent, serious, she collapsed into his arms with a shudder.” (P.3, ch.6) 

The detail I find interesting is the effort Emma makes to see Léon: “she never lost the distinct sensation of having a long way to go.” (P.3, ch.5) Emma lies about taking music lessons, in order to see Léon every week. So how far does she have to travel? The Bovarys live in Yonville, Léon lives in Rouen—the distance, Flaubert says, is 24 miles, or 38.6 km. That is about the distance from Leeds, where I live, to York—I’m lazy to travel to York by train (for the Aesthetical Short Film Festival, for instance), Emma travels by carriage. Imagine the time and effort. 
Note that Emma is the one travelling to see Léon, much more the other way around, when it is easier for a man to travel (19th century). That shows how much she craves sex.

Motifs in Madame Bovary: the cigar cases

“As Charles was giving the harness a final check he noticed something on the ground between the horse’s legs; he picked up a cigar case edged with green silk which had a coat of arms in the middle, like on a carriage door. 
‘There are even 2 cigars in it,’ he said. ‘They’ll do for this evening after dinner.” (P.1, ch.8) 

This is the 1st time Flaubert uses the motif of the cigar case in Madame Bovary. It is after the Marquise’s ball. 

“Snatching up the cigar case, Emma threw it at the back of the armoire.” (ibid.)  

It is only a cigar case, but to Emma, it becomes a symbol.

“When Charles was out, she would often take the green silk cigar case from among the folded linen in the cupboard where she had put it. 
She would look at it, open it, even sniff the scent of its lining, a mixture of vervain and tobacco. Whom did it belong to?... To the Vicomte. Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been worked on some rosewood embroidery frame, a pretty little possession that was kept hidden from prying eyes, and had taken many long hours, with the soft curls of the musing female head bent over it. A breath of love had blown through the fine net of the canvas; every stitch of the needle had woven a hope or memory into it, and the intertwined silk threads were all inseparable from that same silent passion. And then one morning the Vicomte had taken it with him.” (P.1, ch.9) 

Flaubert, like Jane Austen, is a master of the free indirect speech. Such a short passage is enough to reveal the ennui, sentimentality, and melodramatic tendencies in Emma Bovary. To someone else, a cigar case is a cigar case is a cigar case. To Emma, she imagines that it belongs to the Vicomte and comes from a mistress, and attaches meaning to it. 
This moment, after the Marquise’s ball, is when Emma becomes disillusioned, regrets her marriage, and dreams of a life of luxury, excitement, and passion that her husband cannot provide. This is also when she starts betraying Charles, for Emma betrays him and their marriage long before she has sex with Rodolphe. 
In the structure of the novel, the cigar case becomes part of a pattern. But it’s not the only one. Look at this passage: 

“The conversation flagged, Madame Bovary kept breaking off every few minutes, while he seemed rooted in self-consciousness. Sitting in a low chair by the fire he turned an ivory cigarette case round in his fingers; she carried on with her sewing…” (P.2, ch.5) 

A cigarette case appears in this moment, around the time Emma realises she and Léon are in love (well, that’s what she thinks—I think they just want to bang). 
Later on, there’s another cigarette case, when Rodolphe enters the story. 

“… At this the peasant dropped the cigarette case he was holding.” (P.2, ch.7)

In this scene, Emma doesn’t feel anything yet, but on Rodolphe’s side, the 1st time they meet, he already wants sex with her. And they would become lovers. 

“As well as the whip with a silver gilt handle, Rodolphe had been given a seal with the motto: Amor nel cor, plus a muffler and a cigar case exactly like the Vicomte’s that Charles had picked up on the road years ago, and which Emma had kept.” (P.2, ch.2) 

As Rodolphe becomes Emma’s lover and therefore the embodiment and subject of her fantasies, she gives him a copy of the green silk cigar case.
In short, Flaubert creates a motif of a cigar or cigarette case to link with the 3 men whom Emma fantasises about and/or cheats on Charles with. 
Interestingly, the passages in this blog post come from the copy I’m reading, translated by Christopher Moncrieff. In the Eleanor Marx-Aveling translation, Léon plays with a thimble-case, and Rodolphe’s peasant drops a lancet-case. Can anyone who reads French please check? But even if the Moncrieff’s translation is inaccurate and the cases of Léon and the peasant have no meaning, the original green silk cigar case and the one Emma gives Rodolphe are still part of an important pattern.

Emma Bovary’s boredom

Look at these lines—Flaubert describes the people at the Marquis’s party that Emma Bovary looks at: 

“Their clothes, of better cut, seemed to be of softer material, and their hair, gathered in curls at their temples, had the sheen of finest pomade. Their complexion was that of wealth, the shade of white that enhances the pallor of porcelain, the watered shimmer of satin, the shine of beautiful furniture, maintained in the peak of health by a simple and exquisite diet.” (P.1, Ch.8) 

It has been quite some time since I read a Flaubert novel, I forgot how rich, how thick with details Madame Bovary was. He doesn’t describe everything a character does, the way Tolstoy would, but like Tolstoy, he describes everything there is to see in a scene. But this is not a neutral, objective description, it is description of the rich people through Emma’s eyes. 
Madame Bovary is about boredom, but it’s never boring. I love the metaphors and similes. 

“... deep down she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, her desperate eyes stared out across the isolation of her life, searching for a white sail in the mist on the distant horizon. She didn’t know what this stroke of fate would be, which wind would blow it towards her, what shore it would carry her to, whether it would be a rowing boat or an ocean-going ship, filled with worries or enough bliss to make it sink. But each morning when she woke up she hoped it would be that day, and would listen to every sound, leap out of bed, be amazed that it hadn’t come, and then at sunset, unhappier than ever, she would wish it were tomorrow.” (P.1, Ch.9) 

Isn’t that such a wonderful passage to describe boredom? 

“But nothing ever happened to her: it was God’s will! Her future was a long dark corridor, and the door at the end was locked.” (ibid.) 

And then this bit: 

“But it was at mealtimes particularly that she thought she couldn’t bear it any longer, in the little dining room on the ground floor with its smoky stove, squeaky door, walls that streamed with damp, its dank flagstones; all life’s bitterness seemed to be heaped on her plate, and along with the stream from the boiled beef it rose from the depths of her being like so many other insipid odours.” (ibid.) 

Delicious. 
Now and then I can understand. I know boredom—when we moved to Norway, it was Kristiansand that we first lived in, for some time, so imagine moving from Saigon to Kristiansand. The quiet and uneventfulness could have driven me mad if not for the IB. Being busy helps. Still, we moved to Oslo after a few years. 
But Madame Bovary is not only about boredom. As I reread the novel, it’s amusing to think about the readers who see Emma as a heroine who is stifled by marriage and constrained by the patriarchy and defies social conventions and breaks free by having affairs. It is obvious from the start that she is doomed and would cause her own downfall. Her main fault is that she identifies with characters in books and expects life to be like books—she wants luxury and romance, she wants something grand, romantic, and tragic, she is sentimental and needs something to fill the hollowness of her own soul. In a sense, Madame Bovary is a book about a bad reader, and the book itself becomes a test for readers. 


About 2 years and a half ago, I read Effi Briest. These were my blog posts comparing the 3 adultery novels: 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/01/effi-briest-anna-karenina-emma-bovary.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/01/effi-briest-anna-karenina-emma-bovary-2.html 
https://thelittlewhiteattic.blogspot.com/2017/01/effi-briest-anna-karenina-emma-bovary-3.html