And so we have the early episodes of Charles's youth and his first
marriage, all his history up to the time when he falls in Emma's way;
and Flaubert's questionable manner of working round to his subject is
explained. Charles will be needed at the end, and Charles is here
firmly set on his feet; the impression of Emma on those who encounter
her is also needed, and here it is; and the whole book, mainly the
affair of Emma herself, is effectively framed in this other affair,
that of Charles, in which it opens and closes. Madame Bovary is a
well-made book--so we have always been told, and so we find it to be,
pulling it to pieces and putting it together again. It never is
unrepaying to do so once more.
And it is a book that with its variety of method, and with its careful
restriction of that variety to its bare needs, and with its scrupulous
use of its resources--it is a book, altogether, that gives a good
point of departure for an examination of the methods of fiction. The
leading notions that are to be followed are clearly laid down in it,
and I shall have nothing more to say that is not in some sense an
extension and an amplification of hints to be found in Madame Bovary.
For that reason I have lingered in detail over the treatment of a
story about which, in other connections, a critic might draw different
conclusions. I remember again how Flaubert vilified his subject while
he was at work on it; his love of strong colours and flavours was
disgusted by the drab prose of such a story--so he thought and said.
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