Lecture Notes, Gustave Flaubert:

 

Gustave Flaubert, 1821-80, brief bio.

 

• His father, and his mother’s father, practiced medicine.
• Madame Bovary took five years to write, largely because of concern over the harmony of his prose.
• Flaubert brought to trial for the novel’s “immorality.”

 

Inquiry into Realism, a developing definition for an elastic term.

 

• Regarding prose, realism is the accurate portrayal of life.
• The world is “knowable,” by scientific inquiry.
• Tends toward objectivity.
• Rejects Romanticism, particularly the subjective.
• Expands the permissible themes.

 

General inquiries to consider while reading.

 

ü      As readers are we supposed to despise Emma’s vulgarity? As readers do we have ambiguous feelings toward Emma?

ü      Why does the novel include striking pictorial scenes?

ü      What are the various social types portrayed in the novel?

ü      Does the story transcend its setting in time and place?

 

Discussion quotes.

 

“But from Monsieur Bovary, who cared little for culture, all this brought merely the comment that it was ‘useless’” (1091).

 

“He throve like an oak. His hands grew strong and his complexion ruddy” (1091).

 

“He began to go to cafés. Soon he was crazy about dominoes” (1093).

 

“The fire shovel, the tongs, and the nose of the bellows, all of colossal proportions, shone like polished steel; and along the walls hung a lavish array of kitchen utensils, glimmering in the bright light of the fire” (1096).

 

“Now, inevitably, everything came under investigation. The house in Dieppe, it turned out, was mortgaged up to its eaves” (1099).

 

“Actually, Rouault wouldn’t have been a bit displeased to have someone take his daughter off his hands. She was no use to him on the farm” (1101).

 

“So when he noticed that Charles tended to be flushed in his daughter’s presence—meaning that one of these days he would ask for her hand—he pondered every aspect of the question well in advance” (1102).

 

“The whole group sat there whispering derogatory things about their host, and in veiled language expressed hopes for his downfall” (1105).

 

“Dictionary of the Medical Sciences, its pages uncut” (1106).

 

“And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words ‘bliss,’ ‘passion,’ and ‘rapture’—words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books” (1108).

 

“Later, reading Walter Scott, she became infatuated with everything historical and dreamed about oaken chests and guardrooms and troubadours” (1109).

 

“[O]ne day he couldn’t tell her the meaning of a riding term she had come upon in a novel” (1112).

 

“He had lived at court! He had slept with a queen!” (1117).

 

“The gentleman bowed, and as he stretched out his arm Emma saw the lady toss something into his hat” (1119).

 

“Her visit to La Vaubyessard had opened a breach in her life” (1121).

 

“She bought a map of Paris, and with her fingertip she went for walks” (1122).

 

“But Charles had no ambition!” (1124).

 

“After the pain of this disappointment had gone, her heart stood empty once more; and then the series of identical days began all over again” (1125).

 

“From the other side of the fireplace a fair-haired young man was silently watching her” (1135).

 

“I go there Sundays sometimes with a book and watch the sunset” (1136).

 

“At first he had gone to her house several times with the pharmacist. Charles had not seemed too eager to have him; and Leon felt helpless, torn as he was between fear of being indiscreet and desire for an intimacy that he considered all but impossible” (1145).

 

“Nothing much. Just my wife wasn’t quite herself this afternoon. You know how women are—anything upsets them, mine especially. We’ve no right to complain: their nervous system is much more impressionable than ours” (1160).