The book is not really written at
all unless it shows her view of things, as the woman she was, in that
place, in those conditions. For this reason it is essential to pass
into her consciousness, to make her _subjective_; and Flaubert takes
care to do so and to make her so, as soon as she enters the book. But
it is also enjoined by the story, as we found, that her place and
conditions should be seen for what they are and known as intimately as
herself. For this matter Emma's capacity fails.
Her intelligence is much too feeble and fitful to give a sufficient
account of her world. The town of Yonville would be very poorly
revealed to us if Flaubert had to keep within the measure of _her_
perceptions; it would be thin and blank, it would be barely more than
a dull background for the beautiful apparition of the men she desires.
What were her neighbours to her? They existed in her consciousness
only as tiresome interruptions and drawbacks, except now and then when
she had occasion to make use of them. But to us, to the onlooker, they
belong to her portrait, they represent the dead weight of provincial
life which is the outstanding fact in her case. Emma's rudimentary
idea of them is entirely inadequate; she has not a vestige of the
humour and irony that is needed to give them shape. Moreover they
affect her far more forcibly and more variously than she could even
suspect; a sharper wit than hers must evidently intervene, helping out
the primitive workings of her mind.
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