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Aesthetic Distance in Madame Bovary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
AS novelists in nineteenth-century France grew more familiar with their medium through practice in handling it, it became ever more possible for them to conceive of incorporating into it many of the qualities hitherto sought only in poetry or in the theater: the grandeur of the epic, the penetration of comedy, the sublimity of tragedy. The novel, relatively new in comparison with other forms, required the development of new techniques and new understandings which force the critic regretfully to abandon many criteria made comfortable through long use; but some of the basic problems remain and carry over with them some at least of the older canons. An enquiry into the meaning of Madame Bovary may properly raise the familiar question of tragedy or pathos and, although the question is posed in terms foreign to the older forms, the criteria for them may be restated to meet the new issues. One such canon is the matter of “aesthetic distance,” which has recently been defined as “an implicit set of directions concerning the distance from the object at which the reader must stand if he is to see it for what it is.” Studied in this light, Madame Bovary shows constantly shifting distances which lead to a richness and variety prohibited in the shorter compass of most of the older forms but which also proportionately increase the difficulties for the novelist, who must bring unity and meaning into this complex.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 David Daiches, A Study of Literature for Readers and Critics (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1948), p. 63. I shall also be drawing on the analysis offered in E. Bullough, “‘Psychical Distance’ as a Factor in Art and Aesthetic Principle,” British Jour. of Psych., v (1912), 87-118. Bullough relates his suggestions for a new criterion to the older Aristotelian catharsis, precisely the sort of radical restatement I have in mind.
2 Madame Bovary (Paris: Conard, 1930), p. 51. All later references to Madame Bovary will be to this edition.
3 The quotations from the drafts are drawn from Gabrielle Leleu, Ebauches et fragments inédits recueillis d'après les manuscrits de Mme Bovary (Paris: Conard, 1936). For this passage, see i, 157-158.
4 Bouvard et Pécuchet (Paris: Conard, 1923), p. 164.
5 Illusions perdues (Œuvres complètes, Paris: Conard, 1913, xi, 214-215). I have compared these two passages more fully from another point of view in an earlier article, “Balzac and Flaubert: Energy versus Art,” RR, xlii (1951), 198-204. An excellent correction and expansion of the points there proposed was presented by W. M. Frohock in his “Energy vs. Art: A Suggested Alternative,” RR, xliii (1952), 155-156. I am glad to take this opportunity to indicate my acceptance of his objections and additions.
6 The drafts are given in Leleu, ii, 21-23. In them, the sentence which did remain had the further notation that these voices which charmed her also used to speak to her. The disappearance of this thought from the final form causes no loss; the possible reminiscence of Jeanne d'Arc could add nothing.
7 E.g., in the Conard edition (Paris: 1910), Œuvres de jeunesse inédites, ii, 193; Notes de voyages, i, 60; Par les champs, pp. 268-269. Flaubert's relation to his mistress, Louise Colet, would also be a factor; it will be recalled that she was married.
8 J. Pommier and G. Leleu, Madame Bovary, Nouvelle Version précédée des scénarios inédits (Paris: Corti, 1949), p. 101.
9 Page 392. The second sentence was far clearer in the drafts (Leleu, ii, 422-425), where it read: “Comme elle enviait alors les ineffables sentiments d'amour.” In context it is not immediately clear in the final form whether she envied them in the past or still envies them. The alors was removed when Flaubert decided that a further one was indispensable in a preceding sentence. As the deleted alors remained through most of the drafts, it is at least possible that, when Flaubert removed it, he may not have noticed the slight ambiguity which arose.
This scene, in which Emma recalls her earlier dreams in the convent, was among the earliest to occur to Flaubert as he planned his book. In the very first of the published scenarios, it is noted on the opening sheet as an interlinear addition to the fact of her being brought up at the convent: “souvenir de ses rêves quand elle repasse devant le couvent” (Pommier and Leleu, p. 3). Its intimate structural relationship to the original scene is thus further guaranteed.
10 For similar reasons, I imagine, he also deleted from his draft the further statement: “Elle les [these dreams] avait eus pourtant et les examinait à présent comme on s'amuse à tenir dans ses mains des coquilles brisées.”
11 Melodically speaking, we now return to the tempo and discordant harmonies of the fantasies which used to charm her as she lay in bed about to go to sleep beside Charles: “Au galop de quatre chevaux, elle était emportée depuis huit jours vers un pays nouveau, d'où ils ne reviendraient plus. Ils allaient, ils allaient, les bras enlacés, sans parler. Souvent, du haut d'une montagne, ils apercevaient tout à coup quelque cité splendide avec des dômes, des ponts, des navires, des forêts de citronniers et des cathédrales de marbre blanc, dont les clochers aigus portaient des nids de cigognes …” (p. 271).
12 In one of the drafts Flaubert had allowed us to understand more clearly that Emma was not committed to this view that all is vanity; in the final form the reader wonders for several pages whether Emma has perhaps now achieved a fuller understanding. The confusion was not possible in the draft, which carried: “Elle se cramponna pourtant, et de toute la force d'un désir soudain, à cet idéal d'amant qui venait de passer. Elle ne pouvait le saisir, tant il était vague et magnifique. Mais il lui en fallait un puisqu'elle ne pouvait se passer d'aimer, et que l'amour était insuffisant.” In the final version it is only some pages later (p. 399), when Emma again hopes for the realization of her dreams, that we can be sure how transitory is this mood: another typical suppression.
13 I should wish here to depart from the analysis suggested by Bullough, in which he appears to me to lay too great emphasis upon consistency of “distance.” A subject such as Emma seems to lend itself to constant variations in the distance; it is only Flaubert's practice at the end of the book that I shall wish to challenge and call vacillation rather than enrichment.
14 This was deliberate on Flaubert's part and thereby—in terms of his aesthetic of impassivity—dangerous. Long before he came to the actual drafting of these paragraphs, he wrote to Louise Colet: “Dans ma 3e partie … je veux qu'on pleure” (letter of 9 Oct. 1852). Cf., much later in connection with Félicité of Un Cœur simple: “Je veux apitoyer, faire pleurer les âmes sensibles, en étant une moi-même” (letter to George Sand, 19 June 1876). Félicité's death scene, however, is in marked contrast to Emma's; the method of portrayal, serene and dignified, leaves the reader always sufficiently close to be deeply moved, yet sufficiently distant for an aesthetic, not a personal, feeling of loss.
15 His sister, to whom he was devoted, had died in childbirth in 1846. My hypothesis cannot be categorically proved, but the Correspondance does offer some confirmation: Flaubert wrote to Du Camp on 20 March 1846, speaking of his sister on her death bed: “Quelle grâce il y a dans les malades, et quels singuliers gestes!” So far as I know, he never described these gestures more closely.
16 It is delicate for both author and reader. No critic can escape being subjective in this matter and my remarks should be read in this light.
17 “ … vous m'avez fait mal aux nerfs,” cited by Sénard in his plaidoirie and reproduced in the Conard edition of Madame Bovary, p. 588.
18 Ibid., p. 618.
19 This fusion of passion and religion Flaubert understood as characteristic of Emma. His intentions are most obvious in the scenarios. In one of them he defines the inner quality of her religious experiences while still in the convent: “Catholicisme amoureux mais en tire plus de propension à l'amour qu'à la religion, car n'est pas mystique mais po-é-tique (et sensuelle plus tard),” Pommier and Leleu, p. 42; see also p. 45. Po-é-tique or pohétique is a familiar term of opprobrium in his vocabulary.
20 Cf. Daiches, loc. cit.
21 Note how her visions have twisted from “béatitude éternelle” to “ténèbres éternelles.” Flaubert's efforts to find the adjectives to convey the meaning of the Aveugle are further evidence of his attempt to capture the overtones of his symbol. One of the drafts has “un rire atroce, strident, enragé” (Leleu, ii, 533). The “strident” remains too close to the physical sound; “enragé” is less strong than “frénétique.” Neither has the force of “désespéré.”
Flaubert had not originally envisaged this return of the blind man. In a long succession of the scenarios it is the coach (the Hirondelle) which is to pass under Emma's window (e.g., Pommier and Leleu, pp. 19 and 32). The greater emotive and symbolic power of the blind man is the obvious explanation of Flaubert's later preference for him. The new idea seems to be mentioned first in a letter of 20 Sept. 1855. to Bouilhet.
22 Page 494 of the Conard edition (Paris, 1924).
23 If this meaning is ultimate, as I have suggested, it is not thereby total. Flaubert's religion of art offered him a haven and salvation; this, however, he explicitly denied to Emma (e.g., “Il fallait qu'elle pût retirer des choses une sorte de profit personnel; et elle rejetait comme inutile tout ce qui ne contribuait pas à la consommation immédiate de son cœur—étant de tempérament plus sentimental qu'artiste …” (p. 50; italics mine); for similar notations in the scenarios, see Pommier and Leleu, pp. 6, 8, and 23.
24 A possible difficulty arises in the contrast between this aura or mood which I have been suggesting and an earlier categoric statement of Flaubert's in 1853: “La hideur dans les sujets bourgeois doit remplacer le tragique qui leur est incompatible” (letter to Louise Colet, 29 Nov. 1853; italics present in the original). In line with this dictum, the adjective hideux occurs twice in these last pages (“geste hideux,” “face hideuse”). The final test, however, must be the tone of the novel itself. Significantly, the letter considerably antedates the writing of the conclusion; it is quite common to find Flaubert gradually drawing closer to his heroines as he came to know them better through long creative association (e.g., his change of attitude during the writing of the final Education sentimentale). I should maintain that when writing the end of the Bovary, he had markedly altered his point of view and was striving for tragedy: he was no longer trying to treat it as merely a sujet bourgeois. At most the letter would point to a possible ambivalence in his attitude, which might underlie some of the conflict to which I have been drawing attention.
25 Flaubert felt no opposition between irony and pathos. Speaking of his scène d'auberge, he wrote to Louise Colet: “L'ironie n'enlève rien au pathétique; elle l'outre au contraire” (letter of 9 Oct. 1852). I cannot agree. A similar question, though with other characters, arises over the common, almost stupid irony applied to Bournisien and Homais in these same pages. The tone here, which sets the “distance,” is one of contempt: we are above them, but are forced to look down and see them. They remain so true to themselves as to bind us to their individualities and to seem petty and out of place, if tragedy is our mark. We lose by having to observe them. Their prominence could indicate that Flaubert was not striving for tragedy in Madame Bovary; against this argument it may be urged that they mirror a flaw in Flaubert's taste and could, in him, easily coexist with an intention to portray tragedy.