Here is the clue, it seems, to his treatment of the theme. It is
pictorial, and its object is to make Emma's existence as intelligible
and visible as may be. We who read the book are to share her sense of
life, till no uncertainty is left in it; we are to see and understand
her experience, and to see _her_ while she enjoys or endures it; we
are to be placed within her world, to get the immediate taste of it,
and outside her world as well, to get the full effect, more of it than
she herself could see. Flaubert's subject demands no less, if the
picture is to be complete. She herself must be known thoroughly--that
is his first care; the movement of her mind is to be watched at work
in all the ardour and the poverty of her imagination. How she creates
her makeshift romances, how she feeds on them, how they fail her--it
is all part of the picture. And then there is the dull and limited
world in which her appetite is somehow to be satisfied, the small town
that shuts her in and cuts her off; this, too, is to be rendered, and
in order to make it clearly tell beside the figure of Emma it must be
as distinct and individual, as thoroughly characterized as she is. It
is more than a setting for Emma and her intrigue; it belongs to the
book integrally, much more so than the accidental lovers who fall in
Emma's way. They are mere occasions and attractions for her fancy; the
town and the _cure_ and the apothecary and the other indigenous
gossips need a sharper definition.
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