These
conditions in which Emma finds herself will have been chosen by the
author because they appeared to throw light on her, to call out her
natural qualities, to give her the best opportunity of disclosing what
she is. Her stupid husband and her fascinating lovers will enter the
scene in order that she may become whatever she has it in her to be.
Flaubert elects to place her in a certain provincial town, full of odd
characters; he gives the town and its folk an extraordinary actuality;
it is not a town _quelconque_, not a generalized town, but as
individual and recognizable as he can make it. None the less--always
supposing that Emma by herself is the whole of his subject--he must
have lit on this particular town simply because it seemed to explain
and expound her better than another. If he had thought that a woman of
her sort, rather meanly ambitious, rather fatuously romantic, would
have revealed her quality more intensely in a different world--in
success, freedom, wealth--he would have placed her otherwise; Charles
and Rodolphe and Homard and the rest of them would have vanished, the
more illuminating set of circumstances (whatever they might be) would
have appeared instead. Emma's world as it is at present, in the book
that Flaubert wrote, would have to be regarded, accordingly, as all a
_consequence_ of Emma, invented to do her a service, described in
order that they may make the description of _her_.
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