The
thing is "scenic," in the sense in which I used the word just now; we
are concerned, that is to say, with a single and particular hour, we
are taking no extended, general view of Emma's experience. But though
it is thus a _scene_, it is not dramatically rendered; if you took the
dialogue, what there is of it, together with the actual things
described, the people and the dresses and the dances and the
banquets--took these and placed them on the stage, for a theatrical
performance, the peculiar effect of the occasion in the book would
totally vanish. Nothing could be more definite, more objective, than
the scene is in the book; but there it is all bathed in the climate of
Emma's mood, and it is to the nature of this climate that our interest
is called for the moment. The lords and ladies are remote, Emma's
envying and wondering excitement fills the whole of the foreground.
The scene is pictorially treated.
But then look on to the incident of the _comices agricoles_, the
cattle-show at Yonville, with the crowd in the market-place, the
prize-giving and the speech-making. This scene, like the other, is
rendered on the whole (but Flaubert's method is always a little mixed,
for reasons to be noted presently) from Emma's point of view; she sits
beside Rodolphe, while he makes his advances to her under cover of the
councillor's eloquence, and she looks out upon the assembly--and as
she sees it, so the throng and the glare are imparted to the reader.
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