He is making an effect and an impression, by
some more or less skilful method. Contemplating his finished work we
can distinguish the method, perhaps define it, notice how it changes
from time to time, and account for the novelist's choice of it.
There is plenty of diversity of method in Madame Bovary, though the
story is so simple. What does it amount to, that story? Charles
Bovary, a simple and slow-witted young country doctor, makes a prudent
marriage, and has the fortune to lose his tiresome and elderly wife
after no long time. Then he falls in love with the daughter of a
neighbouring farmer, a pretty and fanciful young woman, who marries
him. She is deeply bored by existence in a small market town, finds a
lover, wearies of him and finds another, gets wildly into debt,
poisons herself and dies. After her death Bovary discovers the proof
of her infidelity, but his slow brain is too much bewildered by sorrow
and worry, by life generally, to feel another pang very distinctly. He
soon dies himself. That is all the story, given as an "argument," and
so summarized it tells us nothing of Flaubert's subject. There might
be many subjects in such an anecdote, many different points of view
from which the commonplace facts might make a book. The way in which
they are presented will entirely depend on the particular subject that
Flaubert sees in them; until this is apparent the method cannot be
criticized.
Pages:
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74