Weighing every
word and calculating every effect so patiently, he could not have been
casual and careless over his method; he would not take one way rather
than another because it saved him trouble, or because he failed to
notice that there were other ways, or because they all seemed to him
much the same. And yet at first sight it does seem that his manner of
arriving at his subject--if his subject is Emma Bovary--is
considerably casual. He begins with Charles, of all people--Charles,
her husband, the stupid soul who falls heavily in love with her
prettiness and never has the glimmer of an understanding of what she
is; and he begins with the early history of Charles, and his
upbringing, and the irrelevant first marriage that his mother forces
upon him, and his widowhood; and then it happens that Charles has a
professional visit to pay to a certain farm, the farmer's daughter
happens to be Emma, and so we finally stumble upon the subject of the
book. Is that the neatest possible mode of striking it? But Flaubert
seems to be very sure of himself, and it is not uninteresting to ask
exactly what he means.
As for his subject, it is of course Emma Bovary in the first place;
the book is the portrait of a foolish woman, romantically inclined, in
small and prosaic conditions. She is in the centre of it all,
certainly; there is no doubt of her position in the book.
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