All she has is her
romantic dream and her plain, primitive appetite; but these can be
effective arms, after all, and she may yet succeed in getting her way
and making her own terms. On the other hand the limitations of her
life are very blank and uncompromising indeed; they close all round
her, hampering her flights, restricting her opportunities. The drama
is set, at any rate, whatever may come of it; Emma marries her
husband, is established at Yonville and faced with the poverty of her
situation. Something will result, the issue will announce itself. It
is the mark of a dramatic case that it contains an opposition of some
kind, a pair of wills that collide, an action that pulls in two
directions; and so far Madame Bovary has the look of a drama. Flaubert
might work on the book from that point of view and throw the emphasis
on the issue. The middle of his subject would then be found in the
struggle between Emma and all that constitutes her life, between her
romantic dreams and her besetting facts. The question is what will
happen.
But then again--that is not exactly the question in this book.
Obviously the emphasis is not upon the commonplace little events of
Emma's career. They might, no doubt, be the steps in a dramatic tale,
but they are nothing of the kind as Flaubert handles them. He makes it
perfectly clear that his view is not centred upon the actual outcome
of Emma's predicament, whether it will issue this way or that; _what_
she does or fails to do is of very small moment.
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