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Hands on Science Learning
An anonymous reader writes "Now that school is starting up, the perpetual challenge of making learning interesting and fun is back. The YesICan! Science project at York University has tried to help by creating activities for students which involve real-time (or recent) science experiments.
For example, the current activity involves measuring the size of the moon using measurements of the solar position from a Russian nuclear icebreaker on its trek to the North Pole. Another had a webcast from the International Space Station. Are there other such resources out there to help bring real science into the classroom?"
Mao Tse Tung, Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Pinochet, Mussolini, Marshall Joseph Tito, Slobodan Milosevic, Idi Amin, Ho Chi Minh, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Qaddafi, Juan Peron, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ferdinand Marcos, General Suharto, Pol Pot, Fransisco Franco, and certainly the worst of the bunch, SLASHDOT's editing/moderating [read: censoring] "community"(*) ALL AGREE on ONE THING:
(*)Note, the word community used often on Slashdot, this is referring to a proto communist commune.
So, you busy little plebian proletariats, get busy, you have some censoring to do! FUN! Do the bidding of your fat, undisciplined masters who never subject themselves to peer review.
Good job you little neo-commies. Don't want to hear the other side, shoot the fucker in the head as an ENEMY OF THE STATE [In this case anyone who seeks to improve the sad state of
I have a Gun and the Constitution [Not the urinated-on pissed-on hacked fucked up one WashingTOON thinks exists, I mean the real one, with Jefferson and Madison at my side], please, give me an excuse to use them both.
A few haikus to commemorate the sucktitude:
Crack Pipe Moderators
Crack smoke wafts though air
Dumb shit moderator!
Try to suck less, please
The Humorless Moderator
Crack smoke wafts through air
Humorless moderator!
Why do you hate me?
The Proletariat
Slashdotting Commie
Moderator fears new idea!
Censor him quickly
The reason China blocked Slashdot is that when Jiang Xemin saw at how good "The Editors" at Slashdot are at suppressing the community, he knew that if more of his party members saw this degree of suppressive efficacy, he would be deposed, for the good of the people, of course, in favor of Rob Malda as the all new supreme dictator and premier of China.
SAYINGS, quips et al:
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried. - Sir Winston Churchill (Especially when your democratic peers twist democracy into a reason commit cencorship, to squash dissenting or unpopular opinions, and refer to them as trolls, flaimbait overrated or offtopic when they aren't any of the said)
The reason there are two senators for each state is so that one can be the designated driver. - Jay Leno.
The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of governement. (Death to those who defile the root documents of a free nation to make economic freedom Supercede Freedom! Freedom First! Free market Second!)
Occam's Razor "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora" "Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" Translation: " "Simple explanations are preferred to complex ones" Modern fucking translation "JUST DO IT."
Reading Slashdot at anything above -1 is like trying to put a shit filter on your ass.
Get busy moderating this down, you little pack of obedient prefects of the corrupt state! You are the vanguards of purity, and dissent is not allowed!
MODERATORS Crack smoke wafts though air - Dumb shit moderator - Try to suck less, please
KAZAA Fuck R I A A - Network sold behind their backs - Stupid fucking cunts
Slashdot, Where Editors come to SUCK * * *
HAIKUS
Haiku: to the Slashfags. Fuck slash editors - The cumlicking fags they are - I shit upon them
TACO pondering GOATSE: I stare at the goat - His huge gaping ass so wide - And I want to eat
Haiku: The ancient haiku: - Flame Taco and CowboyNeal - With lame poetry.
CowboyNeal A mountain of fat, - butt cheeks jiggling like Jello. - What an odd poll choice!
CmdrTaco Watching Pokemon - With cum stuck on his goatee. - Newbie loser scum.
Stinky Kathleen Fent Cockeater Taco, - Proposing to Fent online, - I fingered her too.
Rob Malda and Kathleen Fent Chubby breasts, fat ass - Distract us from Rob's boylust. - But they both suck cock!
Taco Tuesday: Too much mexican. - Angry poo, firey hot. - Where's my antacid?
CHOAD licking Taco: Malda in the dark - Swallowing chode for profit - He rips his anus
Fuck KATZ Katz is a Jew - michael is a Mormon - Or is it Timothy?
Martini Fuck off That is fucking good. - I nearly spilt martini - On my nice trousers.
Slap my Ham, rub it off, fuck Spank fast wank it hard - Jerk that dick to Pokemon - Party at Taco's
GOAT I just came again - looking at the goat-see man - more kleenex required
Cock BIRD The Dead Penis Bird - Nailed to the member always - Never falling off
BSD Stare into the night - Sun is setting on your sys - BSD is dead
Michael Michael User Simms - Sifting through all our comments - Censoring bastard
Klerk Trolltalk hard to read - Information desires - Wideness for us all
Cobalt Really tired now - Off to masturbate to sleep - See you at the day
Humorless Moderator Crack smoke wafts through air - Humorless moderator - Why do you hate me?
^^^^^^^^^^
HERMAN MELVILLE: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
On a January morning in 1841, a twenty-one-year-old man stood
on the docks of the New Bedford, Massachusetts, harbor. Poverty
had forced him to abandon his schooling to help support his
family, but he had not found happiness as a farmer,
schoolteacher, or bank clerk. Two years before, he had shipped
out as a sailor on a merchant ship, and that job hadn't pleased
him any better than the others. Still, something about the sea
must have called him back, for here he was about to board
another ship, the whaler Acushnet, bound from New Bedford round
Cape Horn to the South Pacific.
It was a voyage that would change the young man's life, and
change American literature as well. The man standing on the New
Bedford docks was Herman Melville, and his four years at sea
provided him with the raw material for a career's worth of
books, one of them a masterpiece: Moby-Dick.
Melville was an unlikely candidate to become a sailor. He
was born on August 1, 1819, into a well-off, religious New York
family whose sons by rights should have found careers in
business or in law offices rather than aboard ships. But
Melville's comfortable childhood ended all too soon. When he
was ten his father's import business failed, and that failure
drove his father to madness and, two years later, to death. The
Melvilles sank into genteel poverty, dependent on money doled
out by richer relatives and on the earnings of Herman and his
brothers. These were the pressures that helped drive Melville,
like Moby-Dick's narrator, Ishmael, to sea.
The history of Melville's time at sea reads very much like an
adventure story. In fact, it reads very much like Melville's
own early books, and for good reason, since they are largely
autobiographical. His first year on the Acushnet seemed happy
enough, but by July of 1842 he had grown sick of his captain's
bad temper. With a companion he jumped ship at Nuku Hiva in the
Marquesas Islands, hoping to find refuge with a tribe known to
be friendly to sailors. The pair got lost; they wound up not
with the friendly tribe but with the Typees, reputed to be
cannibals. While the Typees treated their American guests well
enough, their reputation made Melville's stay a nervous one, and
after four weeks he escaped with the help of the crew of an
Australian whaling ship, the Lucy Ann. The Lucy Ann was little
improvement over the Acushnet, however--her captain was
incompetent, her first mate alcoholic--and when she reached
Tahiti, Melville and other crew members plotted a revolt. Found
out, they were thrown in jail. Eventually Melville escaped,
made his way to Honolulu, and there enlisted in the United
States Navy, serving on the frigate United States, which brought
him back to Boston in October, 1844.
Melville was now twenty-five and seemed no closer to finding
a career than four years before. Except for letters published
in a local newspaper, he had shown few signs of a gift for
writing. As he recounted his adventures for his family,
however, they urged him to write the tales down. In this way,
it is said, he discovered his calling. Later he told his friend
Nathaniel Hawthorne, "From my twenty-fifth year I date my
life."
Melville's account of his time in the Marquesas, the novel
Typee, was published in the spring of 1846. Advertisements
promised readers "personal adventure, cannibal banquets...
carved canoes dancing on the flashing blue waters, savage
woodlands guarded by horrible idols, heathenish rites and human
sacrifices." And the book was a great popular success. Today,
Melville probably would have won a place on best-seller lists
and an article in People magazine as "the man who lived with the
cannibals." Melville continued to draw on his sea adventures in
the novels Omoo (1847), Redburn (1849), and White-Jacket (1850).
Another novel, Mardi, published in 1849, was an unsuccessful
attempt to add fantasy and philosophy to sea stories.
Melville had become a popular writer, but he wasn't fully
satisfied with his popularity. On the one hand, with a wife and
children to support, he needed the money that success brought
him. But on the other, writing simple adventure stories was, he
said, no more creative than sawing wood. He had greater
ambitions. At the same time, while most popular writers of the
day tended to be optimistic about America and about mankind,
Melville was--perhaps because of his riches-to-rags
childhood--in many ways a deeply pessimistic and insecure
figure, doubtful about his nation, doubtful about man, doubtful
about the universe.
Moby-Dick is the result of both Melville's ambitions and his
doubts. When he began the book, he intended to call it The
Whale and promised his publishers that it would be another
popular sea adventure. But midway through his writing something
changed. Melville had moved to the Berkshire Mountains of
western Massachusetts and met Nathaniel Hawthorne, already
famous as the author of The Scarlet Letter. In Hawthorne,
Melville seemed to find a kindred spirit, a man who had
fulfilled himself writing the kind of dark, complex books that
Melville wanted to write. Perhaps the older author's example
gave Melville the courage to achieve his ambitions. Whatever
the reason, soon after he met Hawthorne, Melville began
furiously to rewrite The Whale. The finished product reached
his publisher a full year after it had been promised; it bore a
new title, Moby-Dick, and it was a far greater book than
anything Melville had written before.
You can see the influence of many other works of literature
in Moby-Dick--the Bible, the plays of Shakespeare, Homer's
Odyssey. But perhaps the book's real power comes from the
doubts and fears of Melville's own life. Though not as
literally autobiographical as Typee or Omoo, in many ways
Moby-Dick more truly reflects its author. While other popular
American writers saluted the nation's free-enterprise system,
Melville had seen how cut-throat competition could destroy men
like his father. And so in the memorable sermon of Fleece, the
cook, men are compared to savage sharks. While other writers
promoted the ideal of the self-reliant, strong-willed American
hero, Melville saw how easily those qualities might make a man a
dictator. And so he shows us, in Captain Ahab, how strong will
and self-reliance become madness. And while other writers
imagined a benign God smiling down upon mankind, Melville saw
the universe as at best indifferent, at worst cruel--as
indifferent and cruel as the great whale, Moby-Dick. Moby-Dick
is a book crowded with doubts and short on reassurance, the
fitting product of a man who, in Hawthorne's words, could
neither believe in anything "nor be comfortable in his
disbelief."
Moby-Dick is the greatest work of Melville's career and one
of the finest--perhaps "the" finest--works of American
literature. Tradition has it that this masterpiece was unjustly
attacked by critics and readers of its day. In fact, many
reviews were favorable, and sales were respectable, though
nowhere near the level of Typee. But Moby-Dick did not sell
well enough for Melville to support his wife and children, and
he came under increasing financial pressure. Though his wife's
family was wealthy, Melville hated taking money from richer
relatives, as his widowed mother had been forced to do.
"Dollars damn me," he told Hawthorne angrily. "What I feel most
moved to write, that is banned,--it will not pay. Yet
altogether write the other way, I cannot. So the product is a
final hash, and all my books are botches."
The rest of Melville's career seemed to prove the truth of
his complaint. His next novel, Pierre (1852)--his only novel
set on land, not water--was a failure. Some critics openly
doubted his sanity in writing it. None of the books that
followed--Israel Potter (1855), The Piazza Tales (1856) and The
Confidence-Man (1857)--though valued highly today, achieved
anything like the success of his first efforts. Worn out by
writing ten books in eleven years, disappointed in his hopes of
finding financial security through his work, Melville seemed to
be near a nervous breakdown. He tried, as other authors of the
day did, to make a living as a public speaker but failed.
Finally, in 1866, he did what his family had long been urging
him to do--he took his first steady job, a secure government
post as the Deputy Inspector of Customs of the Port of New
York.
Melville held the post until retirement, sinking into near
total obscurity. He continued to write, though at a slow pace.
Most of his time was spent composing poetry. And then, in the
last years of his life, Melville wrote the novel Billy Budd, a
gripping tale of good and evil aboard ship, that today is ranked
second only to Moby-Dick among his works. But it was not
published until 1924, more than 30 years after his death. When
Melville died, on September 28, 1891, the obituary in the New
York Post probably spoke for most when it said, "even his own
generation has long thought him dead, so quiet have been the
later years of his life."
Only in the 1920s, with the publication of the first
biography of Melville and the discovery of the manuscript of
Billy Budd, was Melville's greatness appreciated. Today he is
regarded not only as a skilled spinner of sea tales but as a
brilliant, tormented seeker of truth--and nowhere more
brilliant, or tormented, than in Moby-Dick. About this book,
the Nobel Prize-winning American author William Faulkner said,
"Moby-Dick is the book which I put down with the unqualified
thought, 'I wish I had written that.'" And the distinguished
English author D. H. Lawrence wrote, "It is a great book, a
very great book, the greatest book of the sea ever written. It
moves awe in the soul."
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: THE PLOT
"Call me Ishmael." With these words the narrator of Moby-Dick
begins the tale of how, some years before, he abandoned his
stale life in Manhattan for the excitement of a whaling ship.
It's a cold December night when Ishmael arrives in the
whaling port of New Bedford. He takes a room at the
Spouter-Inn, where he must share a bed with a Polynesian
harpooner, Queequeg--a frightening figure with tattoos and a
reputation as a cannibal, but, Ishmael soon learns, a man of
great dignity and good nature.
The next morning Ishmael visits the Whaleman's Chapel to hear
the famed Father Mapple, once a sailor himself, preach a moving
sermon on Jonah and the Whale and man's need to obey God.
Ishmael and Queequeg, now fast friends, decide to sail together
and cross to Nantucket Island to find a suitable ship. At the
Nantucket wharf, Ishmael sees the Pequod, small, weather-beaten
and wildly decorated with whalebones. Her Quaker owners, Peleg
and Bildad, agree to let the inexperienced Ishmael sign on (for
low wages) then tell him that the Pequod's captain, Ahab, has
lost his leg to an enormous white whale. For that reason Ahab
can be moody and grim, though he is still a skilled commander.
On a Nantucket street Queequeg and Ishmael are confronted by
the crazed, pock-marked Elijah, who shouts dark warnings about
their new captain. Another strange occurrence takes place as
the Pequod is being readied to set sail: Ishmael sees shadowy
figures board the ship ahead of him, then mysteriously vanish.
The Pequod leaves Nantucket on an icy Christmas Day. Ishmael
soon gets to know the ship's mates--cautious Starbuck,
easy-going Stubb, hot-tempered Flask--and the rest of the crew,
gathered from the four corners of the globe. But Captain Ahab
remains isolated in his cabin.
When at last Ahab appears, his ivory leg and the white scar
blazing down his face and neck make him look to Ishmael like a
man who was burned at the stake and survived. Something is
disturbing Ahab deeply, and in a dramatic scene on the
quarterdeck, the captain gathers the crew and discloses the true
purpose of the voyage--the destruction of Moby-Dick, the
enormous white sperm whale that cost him his leg. He nails a
gold doubloon to the mainmast, a reward for the first man who
spots the great whale. The sensible Starbuck protests that the
Pequod is not in business to satisfy Ahab's desire for revenge,
but the captain's strong will, and the liquor he supplies, win
the rest of the crew to his side.
As fond of knowledge as Ahab is of power, Ishmael acquires
stories about Moby-Dick to add to the already enormous amount of
information he has gathered about whales and whaling.
Moby-Dick's intelligence, and his apparent pleasure in harming
people make him the most feared of his kind, but what most
terrifies Ishmael is the whale's empty, deathly whiteness.
Ahab sits in his cabin, charting the Pequod's course, all his
great intelligence focused on the whale that to him represents
every evil in the universe. And the crew soon learns that Ahab
has acquired special help for his hunt. When the boats are
lowered to chase the first whale, Ahab's boat is manned by
strange dark men never before seen on the voyage. Ishmael
realizes these are the "shadows" he saw weeks earlier. Their
leader is the sinister-looking, turbaned Fedallah.
The Pequod sails round the stormy Cape of Good Hope into the
Indian Ocean. To Ishmael the voyage seems as varied and
unpredictable as life itself. He is appalled by the brutality
of whaling, and amused by its humor. He is frightened at life's
dangers, and awed by its beauties. At moments he feels very
close to the crew.
Ahab, however, has cut himself off from almost all such human
feelings. "Gams"--visits with other whaling ships--are a
friendly tradition at sea, but Ahab uses them only to seek
information about Moby-Dick. That information becomes more and
more ominous. The Jeroboam lost its first mate to the whale,
and a fanatic crewman warns Ahab that his hunt will lead to
disaster for him as well. The captain of the Samuel Enderby
lost his arm to Moby-Dick, and he is determined to avoid the
whale in the future. But the news only whets Ahab's appetite
for revenge.
Other warnings come from the young black cabin boy, Pip.
After falling from Stubb's boat, Pip was abandoned in the ocean
for hours. The experience drove him mad, but it is a madness
mixed with wisdom--and with messages for Ahab. While Ahab feels
sympathy for the boy, he refuses to alter his course.
As the Pequod sails into the Pacific, Ahab's obsession grows.
He sees the entire universe as an enemy that must be battled
before it destroys him. The quadrant that establishes the
ship's position will not locate Moby-Dick, and so he smashes it.
The Pequod moves into a typhoon, and Ahab stands on the
storm-lashed deck, daring the lightning to strike him. There is
heroism in his acts, but there is also madness, and he frightens
Starbuck so much that the first mate sneaks into the captain's
cabin contemplating--then rejecting--the idea of murder.
It's clear to everyone on the Pequod that each day is bring
them closer to Ahab's goal. They meet the Rachel, searching for
a whaleboat lost in an earlier chase for Moby-Dick. Ahab is so
feverishly intent on his own search that he ignores the Rachel's
pleas for help, even when he learns that the missing boat
carried the captain's 12-year-old son. They meet the sadly
misnamed Delight, which just lost five men to the whale. That
night Ahab sniffs the air, sensing the enemy is near, and in the
morning he's lifted to the tallest mast of the ship to see a
round, white hump in the ocean--Moby-Dick.
The chase begins. On the first day the great whale snaps
Ahab's boat in two. On the second day the whale's flukes (parts
of the tail) smash three whaleboats. As the rescued whalers
regroup on the Pequod they notice that Ahab's harpooner,
Fedallah, is missing--grim news for Ahab, because Fedallah had
predicted that the captain would die only if Fedallah met death
first. Yet when Starbuck pleads for him to stop the chase, Ahab
answers that he was fated to fight Moby-Dick.
The third day dawns fine and fair. Again three boats are
lowered. As Moby-Dick rises, Ahab sees Fedallah's body lashed
to the whale--the fulfillment of another condition for Ahab's
death. The whale's churning tail smashes Stubb's and Flask's
boats so they must return to the Pequod, it sends one man in
Ahab's boat overboard. Still Ahab steers toward the whale. But
Moby-Dick turns away. And as the men on the Pequod watch in
horror, the whale swims mightily toward them, ramming its
massive head against the bow. The ship is ripped open, and the
sea rushes in. Flask, Stubb, and Starbuck shout helplessly as
they are pulled into the water. Deprived even of a captain's
privilege of going down with his ship, Ahab hurls a last harpoon
at Moby-Dick. In fulfillment of Fedallah's prophecy, the line
wraps round Ahab's neck and yanks him, strangled, from his
whaleboat into the sea.
The sinking Pequod becomes the center of a whirlpool that
pulls every plank, oar, and man into the depths with Ahab.
Every man, that is, but one--Ishmael, the narrator, who was the
man earlier thrown from Ahab's boat. He survives by clinging to
a coffin made for (but never used by) his friend Queequeg. For
two days Ishmael floats, lost, in the ocean, until he is rescued
by the Rachel. And so he survives to tell his tale.
A number of Moby-Dick's characters are flat, one-dimensional:
Fedallah sometimes seems to have come not from a realistic sea
adventure but from a horror story; Starbuck, Stubb, and Flask
are more representatives of three different philosophies of life
than living human beings with all the complexities human beings
possess. Even Ahab, though complex, is exaggerated, hardly a
man you might meet walking down the street.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: AHAB
"A grand, ungodly, god-like man," Peleg, a co-owner of the
Pequod, aptly calls Ahab, the ship's captain. Ahab is grand
because of his enormous intelligence and ability, ungodly
because of his refusal to worship anything except his own will;
and he's godlike because his doomed fight against the universe
is in some way a nobly defiant one that lifts him above mortal
men and places him closer to the great forces of nature:
lightning, fire, the whale, even the universe itself.
When Moby-Dick begins, Ahab has been whaling for nearly 40
years. Whaling has become his entire life; though married (to a
woman much younger than himself) and a father, he seldom sees
his family. Not long before the book opens, Ahab had returned
from a voyage on which he suffered a terrible injury--the great
whale, Moby-Dick, had sliced off his leg. This injury brings on
the fierce desire for revenge that underlies Moby-Dick's basic
plot. To Ahab, the loss of his leg is not just a single crime
against him, but stands for all the evils sent down upon mankind
by a cruel God.
Ahab is a complex figure. One part of his character is
symbolized by his name: Ahab, in I Kings, was a wicked king of
Israel punished for his disobedience. Throughout the book Ahab
disobeys the rules of religion, of business, of common sense; he
ignores omens, pleas, experience. And like the biblical Ahab,
he is punished.
Yet there is a happier side to Ahab as well. As Peleg says,
Ahab "has his humanities." In the chapter "The Symphony" you
will see that even when caught up by his obsession, Ahab can be
moved, though briefly, by the world's beauty. Even more
importantly, Ahab is moved by the innocence and madness of Pip,
the ship-keeper abandoned on the ocean, recognizing in the boy
the love and humility that Ahab refuses to permit in himself.
For it is part of Ahab's tragedy that he knows better than
anyone else what his obsession is costing him. At times he
revels in his bitterness and hatred, claiming sorrow more noble
than joy. But he's always aware of simple contentments--his
pipe, a sunlit ocean--that he can seldom enjoy.
His self-awareness, along with his intelligence and
will-power, makes Ahab in many ways a genuine tragic hero.
Indeed, Melville links him directly to Greek heroes like
Prometheus and Perseus, and indirectly to Shakespearean heroes
like King Lear and Macbeth. There is something noble in Ahab's
proud defiance, something about it that most of us can
sympathize with. What human being doesn't want to fight back
against a universe that causes pain? And who doesn't want to be
in control of his or her fate? There is some Ahab in all of us,
isn't there? And so, as the Pequod is sinking and Ahab faces
death, about to be destroyed but still unbowed, we may feel the
same sense of awe before him that Ishmael felt when he first saw
the captain on the quarterdeck, the kind of awe we feel only
before nature's greatest works.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: ISHMAEL
You don't really learn much about the everyday life of
Ishmael, the man who tells the story of Moby-Dick. Apparently
he's young, but you don't find out his exact age. He was a
schoolteacher once. He served aboard a merchant ship, but has
no whaling experience before signing on with the Pequod. But
you learn a lot about Ishmael's mind and soul, and it is
filtered through them that you hear the story of the Pequod's
search for the great whale.
His name tells you something important about Ishmael. In the
Bible Ishmael was an outcast "with every man's hand against
him." And at the start of Moby-Dick Ishmael does seem alone,
going to sea to escape the "hypos" (depressions) that have
plagued him. As you follow him through the New Bedford streets,
you see that he's a sensitive young man, perhaps too ready to
see signs of death in an innkeeper's name (Peter Coffin). But
that's partly balanced by a youthful curiosity about the world,
and a sense of humor that delights especially in bad puns.
Once Ishmael boards the Pequod, other facets of his
personality become evident. One is a love for the dreamy
philosophizing he practices at the masthead. Ishmael is aware
of the dangers of such dreaming, yet is incapable of not
indulging and it is his desire to give meaning to an ocean or a
whale that lends Moby-Dick much of its power.
Closely linked to Ishmael's love of philosophizing is his
love of knowledge for its own sake. Ahab wants to control the
universe; Ishmael wants to know all about it. Whereas for Ahab
whales represent all that is hateful, for Ishmael they stand for
all that is mysterious. Ishmael's extended essays on whales and
whaling are in part attempts to make sense of a confusing
world.
For some readers, Ishmael's obsession with knowing the world
is similar to Ahab's obsession with controlling it. Other
readers, however, believe Ishmael, unlike Ahab, has a sense of
balance and is able to appreciate both the world's horrors and
its beauties. This sense of balance, perhaps, enables Ishmael
to survive the voyage and tell his story. As you read Moby-Dick
you'll want to follow Ishmael closely and figure out his
personality for yourself.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: MOBY-DICK
In some ways the most important figure in Moby-Dick isn't a
human character at all but the mighty whale for whom the book is
named. How you interpret the novel depends greatly on how you
interpret this whale.
It isn't easy to understand Moby-Dick. What do you learn
about him? He's a white, wrinkled sperm whale, the largest,
most valuable, and most feared of all creatures of the sea.
Fairly or not, he's been blamed for whaling disasters around the
world.
Beyond those facts, many of you, like the men aboard the
Pequod, will see Moby-Dick differently. To Ahab, who lost a leg
to the whale, he's an evil part of an evil universe. To
Starbuck, who maintains faith in a world ruled by a just God,
Moby-Dick is simply a dumb animal who injured Ahab out of
instinct. To Ishmael, whales represent the unknown, and
Moby-Dick is the greatest mystery of all, his whiteness
suggesting that beneath the colorful surfaces of the universe
lies emptiness and chaos.
Melville's varied descriptions of the whale won't make it
easy for you to understand the animal. At times he seems
beautiful, like "a snow hill in the air." At other times, with
his gaping mouth crowded with teeth, he seems utterly evil.
Perhaps Melville is suggesting that Moby-Dick lies beyond our
judgment, beyond our notions of good and evil, beyond our
understanding.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: QUEEQUEG
The harpooner, Queequeg, is a prince of Kokovoko, a
Polynesian island. Like Ishmael, he wants to see the world from
a whaling ship, specifically to learn about Christianity (which
he soon decides is sadly corrupt). At the Spouter-Inn, Ishmael
at first is terrified at sharing a bed with this tattooed
savage, but he soon sees that even though Queequeg shaves with a
harpoon and worships a small pagan idol, he is more noble than
most of Ishmael's Christian friends. "We cannibals must help
these Christians," Queequeg says after he rescues from drowning
the very man who had been rude to him moments before. And
Queequeg as helper and rescuer is a theme that continues up to
the end of the book, when the coffin made for him allows Ishmael
alone to survive when the Pequod sinks. If Moby-Dick presents
any evidence that the universe is not evil, that man is not
necessarily greedy and sharkish, such evidence can be seen most
strongly in the figure of Queequeg.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: STARBUCK
Starbuck, the 30-year-old chief mate, is sober, patient,
cautious, religious. Throughout the book he speaks out against
Captain Ahab's madness. His practical side makes him understand
that the ship's true job is to make a profit for owners and
crew; his religious side makes him understand that Ahab's fight
against God and nature is blasphemous and doomed. Despite his
strengths, Starbuck is helpless in face of the captain. Indeed,
Starbuck's very morality prevents him from avoiding
death--though he clearly sees that Ahab is leading the Pequod's
crew to certain disaster, he is unable to murder the captain.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: STUBB
The second mate, Stubb, contrasts sharply with Starbuck.
Good-humored and easy-going, he tries to see everything in a
favorable light. He's capable of cleverness and practical
jokes, notably when he swindles a French ship, The Rose-Bud, out
of its precious cargo of ambergris. Stubb's good humor,
however, can be mixed with cruelty and bullying. This side of
his personality is evident when he goads Fleece, the cook, into
preaching a sermon to the sharks and when he callously abandons
Pip, the cabin boy, to the ocean.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: FLASK
Flask, the third mate, is a short, sturdy man, prone to
fighting and lacking even a trace of imagination. His nickname,
King Post (a wooden block), fully suggests his personality.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: FEDALLAH
Fedallah, Ahab's harpooner, was hidden with his crew for
weeks in the Pequod's hold. Fedallah is a Parsee (Parsi), a
believer in Zoroastrianism. Melville links this Persian
religion to fire-worship. His turbaned figure seems to
represent the dark side of Ahab's character, though the crew
can't determine whether he controls Ahab or Ahab controls him.
It is Fedallah who prophesies the conditions for Ahab's death:
that Ahab will see two hearses on the water, one not made by
man, the other made of American-grown wood; that Ahab will see
Fedallah dead first; and that hemp alone will be the instrument
of Ahab's death.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: PIP
Pip is the young black cabin boy who occasionally entertains
the crew with his tambourine. Clever and happy, he is not a
good whale hunter, and when circumstances force him to take a
position in Stubb's boat, he is so frightened by the whale that
he leaps into the sea. The second time he does this Stubb
callously abandons him.
The inhuman isolation of the ocean drives Pip mad. But
you'll see that it is a madness mixed with wisdom. In his
isolation, Pip saw God, though he can't communicate that
knowledge to anyone else. Strangely, the person most affected
by him is Captain Ahab, who takes pity on the boy, calls him
"holiness," and allows him to stay in the captain's cabin. In
return, Pip repeatedly warns Ahab not to pursue his course of
revenge against the whale. But Ahab ignores the warnings.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CAPTAIN BOOMER AND SURGEON BUNGER
The humorous captain and surgeon of the British whaler Samuel
Enderby represent a common-sense view of the universe completely
alien to Ahab's. Captain Boomer lost an arm to Moby-Dick and
has decided to avoid the whale in the future; Surgeon Bunger
sees the whale's apparent malice as mere clumsiness.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: BULKINGTON
Bulkington is the tall, sober sailor Ishmael sees at the
Spouter-Inn and then at the helm of the Pequod as it first sets
sail. He is never mentioned again, however.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CARPENTER
The carpenter is a skilled but dull man who considers all
other men blocks of wood. He earns Ahab's anger for his lack of
wit and imagination.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: DAGGOO
Daggoo, Flask's harpooner, is a black African who voluntarily
signed aboard a whaler when a young boy.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: ELIJAH
One of the mad prophets in Moby-Dick, Elijah accosts Ishmael
and Queequeg in New Bedford, delivering dark warnings about
Captain Ahab. His name is that of the biblical prophet who
opposed Ahab in I Kings.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: GABRIEL
Another of the mad prophets in Moby-Dick, Gabriel is a member
of the Jeroboam's crew and warns Ahab that his quest for the
whale will lead to his death.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: FLEECE
The Pequod's black cook, Fleece, is forced by Stubb to preach
a sermon to the sharks.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CAPTAIN GARDINER
The captain of the ship Rachel, Gardiner placed his
twelve-year-old son aboard a whaleboat that was lost during a
hunt for Moby-Dick. He begs Ahab to help search for the missing
boat, but Ahab rejects his pleas.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: FATHER MAPPLE
Father Mapple is a robust though elderly former harpooner who
now serves as minister of the Whaleman's Chapel in New Bedford.
Early in Moby-Dick, he preaches a sermon on Jonah and the
Whale.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: PELEG AND BILDAD
Peleg and Bildad, the principal owners of the Pequod, are
both Quakers and former whalers. Peleg is loud, excitable, and
the more generous of the two, Bildad is solemn, formally
religious, and stingy.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: PERTH
Perth, the Pequod's blacksmith, lost his former livelihood
and his family through an obsession with alcohol.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: RADNEY
Radney, first mate aboard the Town-Ho, was on the verge of
being murdered by Steelkilt, but was killed by Moby-Dick
instead.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: STEELKILT
A hot-tempered seaman aboard the Town-Ho, Steelkilt led a
mutiny after being angered by Radney. For him Moby-Dick was a
blessing, as the whale relieved him of the job of killing
Radney.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: TASHTEGO
Tashtego, Stubb's harpooner, is an Indian from Martha's
Vineyard, an island near Nantucket. He is saved from drowning
by Queequeg. He is the last of the crew Ishmael sees before the
Pequod sinks.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: SETTING
The major setting of Moby-Dick is Ahab's ship, the Pequod,
and it is as vividly described a ship as there is anywhere in
literature. You'll probably find Ishmael's first description of
the Pequod unforgettable--the ship is old-fashioned,
weather-beaten, strangely decked out with whale bones. It is
noble and, in Ishmael's romantic view, a little melancholy.
But just as Moby-Dick is both a sea adventure and, on a
deeper level, a story of man's relationship with the universe,
the Pequod is both a simple ship and a symbol of something much
greater. "The world's a ship on its passage out," says Ishmael
as he listens to Father Mapple's sermon. Melville is asking you
to consider the Pequod as a microcosm (Greek for little
universe), a small world that stands for the world at large.
This is one reason the Pequod has such a varied crew--Africans,
Polynesians, French, Chinese. Melville wants these sailors to
stand for all humanity.
The Pequod represents the entire world, but on another level
it is also a symbol for one particular area of the world, the
United States. Metaphors linking countries to ships ("ship of
state," for example) were even more common in Melville's day
than in ours, and Melville wants you to remember that the Pequod
is undeniably American. Its business, whaling, is an American
business; its officers are Americans. The ship carries a crew
of 30--the number of states in the union when Melville was
writing. Perhaps the most powerful reminder of the Pequod's
origins comes at the book's very end, when Ahab, about to die,
realizes the Pequod is the hearse made of American wood
mentioned in Fedallah's prophecy.
Melville dwelled at length on the ship's American links
because he wanted Moby-Dick to communicate his mixed feelings
about the United States. Americans of his day placed great
faith in territorial expansion, in democracy, in the
self-reliance of the individual American. But Melville uses his
story in part to show the dark side of these strengths. One
people's expansion can mean the destruction of another people,
such as the Massachusetts Indians for whom the Pequod is named.
Individualism can be warped by a man like Captain Ahab. Too
much faith in self-reliance can lead to the belief that one is
the equal of God and of nature.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: THEMES
Here are major themes of Moby-Dick. We'll look at them again
in the chapter-by-chapter discussion of the novel. Some of
these themes may be contradictory--as you read, you'll have to
decide which best apply to the book. And as you gather
evidence, you may come up with other important themes.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: WHALING AS A METAPHOR FOR LIFE
Central to Moby-Dick is the idea that the Pequod's passage
through the world's seas is in many ways like mankind's passage
through life. "The world's a ship on its passage out," Melville
says.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: ALIENATION
Ishmael, whose name links him with a biblical outcast, begins
the book alienated from the society of man. Most whalemen (and
by implication most people) are cut-off, lonely, isolated.
Ishmael finds friendship with Queequeg and occasionally feels
brotherhood with the other crew members. But the book's final
word is "orphan," suggesting that Ishmael may be just as alone
at the book's end as he was at its beginning.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: FRIENDSHIP
Ishmael's friendship with Queequeg gives warmth and meaning
to Ishmael's life; in fact Queequeg (through his coffin) quite
literally saves Ishmael from the fate suffered by the rest of
the crew. This is balanced against the theme of alienation.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: MAN'S SEARCH FOR KNOWLEDGE
Ishmael wants to know things; for him the hunt for whales
becomes a hunt for knowledge, and the lengthy discussions of
whales and whaling an attempt to know a confusing universe.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: MAN'S SEARCH FOR CONTROL OVER NATURE
Ahab represents the human desire to control the universe.
It's a desire that has been around since people built the first
fire or speared the first animal, but in Melville's view it is a
particularly American desire, as Americans seek to tame a
continent, the oceans, and even Fate.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: THE NATURE OF THE UNIVERSE
There is evidence in Moby-Dick for several interpretations of
the nature of the universe.
1. THE UNIVERSE AS UNFRIENDLY
In Ahab's view, noble, intelligent people must do all they
can to fight against the universe's cruelty, even if they know
the fight will be futile. Just as God plagued the biblical job
with illness and destruction, so god plagues Ahab with
Moby-Dick: the whale is the greatest but not the only symbol of
the evil God sends down on people.
2. THE UNIVERSE AS INDIFFERENT
Moby-Dick represents the power of nature, a great blind force
that dwarfs man and his aspirations.
3. THE UNIVERSE AS FRIENDLY
Moby-Dick represents God's power, not God's hatred of
mankind. Only Ahab's madness makes him see malice in the whale;
the ultimate destruction of the Pequod and its crew is the
punishment for Ahab's pride, arrogance, and disobedience. In
chapters like "The Grand Armada," we see nature's profound
beauty; it's a sign of nature's goodness that at the book's end,
as Ishmael floats on Queequeg's coffin, the sharks swim by
without attacking him.
4. THE UNIVERSE AS UNKNOWABLE
People will never know if the universe is good or bad; it is
beyond their understanding. Ishmael's search for complete
knowledge is as doomed as Ahab's search for complete control.
Moby-Dick is a symbol of all that people can never grasp.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: STYLE
"A bold, nervous and lofty language," is the way Melville
describes a Nantucket whaling captain's speech, and many critics
think it's a good description of Melville's own style of
writing--powerful, beautiful, and sometimes strange and
uncomfortable.
Some of this strangeness may result from Melville's belief
that his great subject required a new and different style. He
often plays with the English language, as if the world of
Moby-Dick could not be adequately described by the words already
in existence. Some of the verbal nouns he uses--"leewardings,"
"domineerings"--didn't exist until he created them. He creates
adjectives and adverbs out of past participles--"last cindered
apple," for example. Many of his sentences are loping and long,
moving along like a ship on the sea. The heightened language
has echoes of the Bible and of Shakespeare.
In addition, many critics have noted echoes of the Greek epic
poet, Homer, in the descriptions of the sea, and echoes of
Shakespeare in the dialogue, particularly that of Captain Ahab.
While most modern authors attempt to write dialogue as it would
actually be spoken, Melville was not concerned with that. He
wanted Ahab and the other members of the Pequod to speak with as
much drama and impact as possible. And so they speak a language
that can be far from every-day speech but that contains an
enormous poetic power.
Shakespeare's influence can also be seen in some of the comic
scenes in Moby-Dick. Like Shakespeare, Melville knew that a
tragic story can benefit from moments of wit and humor. And so
we hear Ahab's frustrated conversations with the thick-witted
carpenter, and meet the wonderfully funny characters of Captain
Boomer and Surgeon Bunger.
Finally, metaphors are very important to Melville, as they
were to Homer and Shakespeare. He uses them to proclaim the
importance of his story, to link Ahab to human heroes and great
works of nature, to link whales to the unknown and the eternal.
Indeed, all of Moby-Dick is built around a central metaphor:
that this voyage of a 19th-century Nantucket whaler is the
voyage of every human being through life.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: POINT OF VIEW
With its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael," Moby-Dick
begins as a straightforward, first-person narrative. Ishmael is
telling his story; you follow him to New Bedford and The
Spouter-Inn, are with him when he meets Queequeg and when he
attends services at the Whaleman's Chapel. You see only what he
sees, hear only what he hears.
Yet about one fourth of the way into the book, the point of
view begins to shift subtly. In the chapter, "Enter Ahab; to
Him, Stubb," you hear Ahab and his second mate argue. You're
then with Stubb below-decks as he thinks about the argument, and
back on deck with Ahab as he tosses his pipe into the ocean.
Clearly, Ishmael could not have been in all these places at the
same time. The book's point of view is moving from a
first-person to a third-person, omniscient narrator who is not
directly involved in the action, and who is able to go anywhere
to tell the story. From now on, while some chapters will still
obviously be told by Ishmael, others will equally obviously
describe events--like Starbuck's near-murder of Ahab--which
Ishmael could not possibly have witnessed.
This switch in point of view has advantages for Melville.
Ishmael leads us into the world of Moby-Dick and gives us a
friendly soul to identify with. But as the cast of characters
grows larger, and the story more complex, Melville needs the
freedom that a third-person, omniscient narrator can provide.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: FORM AND STRUCTURE
Moby-Dick's structure is in a sense one of the simplest of
all literary structures--the story of a journey. Its 135
chapters and epilogue describe how Ishmael leaves Manhattan for
Captain Ahab's whaling ship, the Pequod, how Ahab pilots the
Pequod from Nantucket to the Pacific in search of Moby-Dick, and
how in the end Ishmael alone survives the journey. This simple
but powerful structure is what keeps us reading, as we ask
ourselves, "Where will Ahab seek out his enemy next? What will
happen when he gets there?"
Some critics have divided the book into sections, like acts
in a play. The first, from Chapter 1 to Chapter 22, describes
Ishmael, portrays his growing friendship with Queequeg, and
serves as a kind of dry-land introduction to themes--whaling,
brotherhood, and man's relationship with God--explored in
greater detail at sea. The next section begins as the Pequod
sails and continues to Chapter 46. Here you meet both Captain
Ahab and, in description if not yet in the flesh, his great
enemy, Moby-Dick. A long middle section, from Chapter 47 to
Chapter 105, shows the Pequod at work as whales are hunted and
killed and other whaling ships met. It also shows Ishmael
pondering the meaning of these activities. The plot slows as
Melville takes time to gather and display proof of the
importance of the Pequod's voyage. Then, from Chapter 106 to
the book's end, we're caught up in the excitement as Ahab steers
his ship nearer and nearer to Moby-Dick and final disaster.
Although Moby-Dick's basic structure is simple, the book is
anything but simple, in part because Melville writes in several
literary forms. As a whole, Moby-Dick is of course a novel, but
some of its chapters are written as if they were scenes in a
play. The chapters involving Father Mapple and Fleece contain
sermons. Other chapters, notably Ishmael's discussion of whales
and whaling, resemble essays. Indeed, some readers have
compared Moby-Dick not to novels but to other kinds of literary
works. Some have noted its similarity to epic poems, such as
Homer's Odyssey. Like this epic, Moby-Dick tells of a sea
journey and a battle between men and gods. Other critics see
resemblances to Greek or Elizabethan tragedy. Still others have
abandoned literature altogether to liken Moby-Dick to a musical
symphony or even to the ocean itself. It's the richness
contained within Moby-Dick's simple structure that accounts for
such differences of opinion.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: ETYMOLOGY AND EXTRACTS
Before the story Moby-Dick begins, you're introduced to the
subject of whales and whaling in a section called "Etymology"
(the study of word origins) and a section of "Extracts"
(selections from longer works). "Etymology" lists the word for
whale in thirteen languages. "Extracts" provides 80 discussions
of whales from sources that range from the Bible to Roman
historians like Pliny, great English authors like Shakespeare
and Milton, and statesmen like Thomas Jefferson, plus letters
and newspaper accounts. Why such an enormous accumulation of
information? Melville is anxious to make his story of a whale
hunt seem as important as possible, an epic like The Odyssey, a
great tragedy like Shakespeare's King Lear. Perhaps by showing
you the long history of whales and whaling he hopes to convince
you of his subject's importance. You'll see, too, that this
love for gathering knowledge is a trait also possessed by the
character who narrates Moby-Dick.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 1: LOOMINGS
"Call me Ishmael." This is probably the most famous opening
sentence in American literature. It begins Ishmael's account of
a past adventure that started when, burdened by "hypos"
(depression), he decided to escape his stale life in Manhattan
for the sea. Why the sea? It is, he says, a longing every one
of us shares. Notice, for instance, how in Manhattan people
crowd around the docks, and how in the country people flock to
ponds; how Persians and Greeks worshipped sea-gods.
NOTE: ISHMAEL Already in these opening pages you've learned
some important facts about the man who is telling the story and
about the way Melville intends you to understand him. The first
thing to notice about the narrator is his name. Ishmael, in the
Bible, was the outcast son of Abraham, who had "every man's hand
against him." Melville fills Moby-Dick with names, objects, and
actions that are symbolic--that carry a meaning greater than
might first appear. In this case, Ishmael's name indicates that
the depression he feels is profound, and that, like the biblical
character, he is lost, and alone.
A second character trait is readily visible, too--Ishmael's
love for gathering (and showing off) knowledge. You soon learn
that he's a former schoolteacher.
Ishmael has no intention of going to sea as a passenger: he
doesn't have the money. He has no desire to be a commander
either, because he wants nothing to do with responsibility. No,
he won't go as anything but a common sailor. So what if he's
ordered around? "Who ain't a slave?" And unlike passengers, he
gets money for his trouble.
After giving us all these reasons for going to sea, Ishmael
throws up his hands and says he can't really explain his
behavior. Fate, he says, guided him on this journey, just as
fate determines who wins elections, and sends men to fight
bloody battles in Afghanistan. If he had one chief motive for
taking a whaling voyage, it was his eagerness to know the whale.
Ishmael likes the wild, the exotic, the barbaric, the horrible.
The whale, who is all these things, attracts him.
NOTE: In his question, "Who ain't a slave?" and in his jokes
about the fates sending him on his journey, Ishmael brings up a
theme you should follow closely as you read the book. How much
choice do we have in the things we do? Can we choose our
destiny, or are we predestined to meet a certain end?
At the end of this chapter, you also get an early hint of how
much importance Ishmael gives to the subject of whales and
whaling. These mysterious, mighty creatures drive Ishmael to
explore. They represent all that he doesn't know about the
world. They're contradictory: barbaric and horrible, yet "a
snow hill in the air." Perhaps you have had a similar
experience, finding yourself both fascinated and repelled by
something.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 2: THE CARPET-BAG
Ishmael leaves New York and arrives in New Bedford. Though
New Bedford is the major American whaling port, Ishmael wants to
begin his voyage from nearby Nantucket Island because that was
where American whaling began.
NOTE: Whaling, as Melville tells you, has a history that
goes back thousands of years. By the mid-19th century it was
overwhelmingly an American business, centered in New England and
especially in New Bedford and Nantucket. In 1846 (five years
before Moby-Dick was published), the American whaling fleet
numbered more than 700 vessels. Most of these ships sailed the
Pacific, which held the largest concentration of the most
valuable prey, the sperm whale. A lucky ship might return from
a three--or four-year voyage with $80,000 worth of oil.
It's a bitter cold December night as Ishmael walks through
New Bedford seeking a place to stay. The first inn he comes to,
The Crossed Harpoons, is too expensive for him, and the second,
The Sword-Fish Inn, too jolly--Ishmael is still in a bad mood
and doesn't want to be around cheerful people. At last he sees
The Spouter-Inn, whose proprietor is Peter Coffin--a disturbing
name, but (in historical fact as well as in this novel) a common
one in Nantucket. The Spouter-Inn is rundown and
windblown--though on the subject of wind, Ishmael quotes an old
writer (himself) that it makes a difference where you are when
the wind is bitterly blowing. Lazarus, the beggar, chatters his
teeth while the rich man, Dives, observes the cold night from
the comfort of his coal-warmed room. (In the Bible, Lazarus is
the poor man rewarded in Heaven while Dives is damned to the
fires of hell--which is why Ishmael says Dives will wear that
redder silken wrapper later.) Ishmael has once again lost
himself in knowledge, philosophy, and in a little self-pity.
But he shakes himself out of it with a bad pun: "...no more of
this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling and there is plenty
of that yet to come."
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 3: THE SPOUTER-INN
Ishmael enters The Spouter-Inn and sees an oil painting so
grimy he can't make out its subject. Does that black blob in
the center of the picture represent the universe? King Lear's
blasted heath? At last, Ishmael decides it depicts a whale.
NOTE: Observe, once again, how Melville takes a common
object--in this case a bad painting--and uses it to serve a
deeper symbolic purpose. The painting, Ishmael knows,
represents something, but what? What do objects, events mean?
That's a question Melville will be asking over and over again.
Even when Ishmael decides the artist has painted a whale, his
question isn't really answered--for we know that to him whales
themselves stand for the unknown.
Read my journal for more valuable informati
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 101: THE DECANTER
The Samuel Enderby, Ishmael tells us, is named for the
founder of a great English whaling house, Enderby and Sons. The
ship is a jolly one, loaded with liquor, beef and beer--the
rewards of concentrating on business and forgetting about
Moby-Dick, perhaps. At any rate, a far cry, you might say, from
the Pequod.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 102: A BOWER IN THE
ARSACIDES
So far, in describing the whale Ishmael has talked mostly
about his exterior. Now he wants to discuss the interior--but
how? Unlike Jonah, he has never been inside a living whale. He
did, however, dissect a cub sperm whale once. And his knowledge
of the skeleton comes from a visit to the (fictional) island of
Tranquo, in the Arsacides. There a great sperm whale was
beached and its bones turned into a temple for the island
religion.
NOTE: IMAGERY OF THE WHALE'S SKELETON As Ishmael describes
the skeleton, you can see connections with other parts of the
book. As in the chapter the Mat-Maker, life is compared to a
carpet woven on a great loom by an unseen hand--God, or perhaps
fate. The noise of the loom is so loud that God can't hear
man's voice, and man can't hear God's: another example of man's
inability to influence the universe, and of his inability to
understand it. Only when man escapes the loom--that is, only
when he escapes life to meet death--will he hear.
You'll notice, too, that as Ishmael continues to study the
skeleton, a trick of sunlight makes the whale himself seem the
weaver--another image linking the whale to God.
Out of scientific curiosity, Ishmael tries to measure the
skeleton, but the village priests prevent him. We see
Melville's cynical view of organized religion as the priests
then begin to fight among themselves.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: WILL HE PERISH?
According to Ishmael's calculations, a large sperm whale
might weigh ninety tons, greater than the combined weight of
1000 people. The skeleton he saw on Tranquo measured 72 feet,
but in life the whale is larger. We're reminded of the dangers
of trying to understand the meaning of life: you'll never know
the whale by timidly looking at its skeleton, Ishmael says, only
by throwing yourself dangerously near its angry flukes.
As he discusses whale fossils, Ishmael half-jokingly,
half-seriously reminds us that his subject is an epic one. To
do it full justice he would need a pen made from a condor quill
and a volcano's crater as his inkstand. Looking at fossil
whales convinces Ishmael that whales appeared on earth long
before mankind, and as he looks to their future he will predict
their numbers will never diminish. They are like all great
forces of nature, immortal.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 106: AHAB'S LEG
Ahab left the Samuel Enderby so angrily that he
half-splintered his ivory leg while jumping into his boat, then
wrenched it again on the Pequod. The damage made him nervous,
for just before sailing on this voyage, he had been discovered
lying in a Nantucket street, his smashed ivory leg piercing
him.
Now we know the cause of the illness that Peleg mentioned and
that kept Ahab in his cabin for days. The wound pained him not
only physically but psychologically; it was a fresh reminder of
the crime Moby-Dick had committed against him, further proof
that the universe is malign. Ahab has come to take pride in his
bitterness, now. To him there is something in pain and woe that
is nobler, greater than happiness.
Still, Ahab is practical enough to order the carpenter to
make a new whale bone leg, and order the blacksmith to forge any
iron attachments the leg will need.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 108: AHAB AND THE CARPENTER
The Pequod's carpenter is necessarily skilled at many crafts,
from carpentry to painting to dentistry. But despite his array
of talents, the carpenter is a dull and unimaginative man, who
considers other human beings mere blocks of wood. When Ahab
goes to talk to the man who is making his leg, his brilliance
shines all the more brightly against the carpenter's stupidity.
Ahab's speech is crowded with wit and classical references, and
displays his overwhelming desire to achieve greatness: he will
order the blacksmith to make a man with a chest as large as a
tunnel and a sky light in the head to illumine his interior.
But the carpenter understands nothing.
And that is for Ahab another insult. Here he is, "proud as a
Greek god," yet needing this blockhead carpenter to give him the
means of standing upright like any other man. Ahab wants to be
completely self-reliant, yet can't be. And as we see all his
intelligence thwarted this way, we may be hard-pressed not to
feel a bit of sympathy for him.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 109: AHAB AND STARBUCK IN THE
CABIN
The casks of oil (which you'll remember from the chapter,
"Stowing Down and Cleaning Up") have sprung a leak, and Starbuck
goes to Ahab's cabin to report the bad news. He finds Ahab
studying charts of the western Pacific.
Starbuck recommends that the ship halt for some days so that
the leak can be found, the hold pumped out, and the barrels
repaired. Ahab is aghast. Nothing can be allowed to delay the
search for Moby-Dick. When Starbuck reminds the captain that
the Pequod's owners will not look kindly on the waste of the
valuable oil, Ahab responds that he is the only true owner of
the ship. Then, seizing a musket, he points it at the amazed
first mate.
Starbuck manages to quell his anger and offers Ahab advice:
Ahab should not worry about Starbuck, but about Ahab.
Ahab ponders Starbuck's warning, and admits it contains much
truth. He apologizes to his first mate, agrees to repair the
casks. Does this moment of honesty and humility show that Ahab
even at this late date still "has his humanities"? Or is it
just a trick intended to fool Starbuck? Ishmael doesn't know.
What do you think?
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 110: QUEEQUEG IN HIS COFFIN
The crew searches deeper and deeper in the slimy depths of
the Pequod for the leaking casks. The wet chill of the hold
nearly proves fatal to Queequeg; he catches a fever and wastes
away until there is little left but bones and tattoos, though
his eyes remain bright symbols of his healthy soul.
The dying Queequeg makes a strange request: he wants a
canoe-shaped coffin so that like his Polynesian ancestors he can
sail after death into the Pacific. The carpenter measures
Queequeg then displays the finished product to the sick man for
final inspection. Queequeg takes his harpoon, a paddle, his
idol Yojo, and other items, and lies in the coffin while Pip
delivers a mad tribute to his bravery.
After all this preparation, Queequeg recovers. He remembered
a minor duty ashore, he tells his amused shipmates, and so
decided against dying. To his thinking, any man can save
himself by deciding not to die; only some violent outside force,
like a storm or a whale, can kill him against his will. Within
days Queequeg is throwing his harpoon. The coffin he converts
into a sea chest, carving it with replicas of the tattoos on his
body. Those tattoos, we learn now, were placed on Queequeg by a
prophet and represent a theory of the heavens and the earth, and
a way of finding the truth. But because Queequeg himself can't
understand what's written on him, they become another sign that
the universe is an unsolvable riddle--no wonder that when Ahab
looks at them he grows angry at the gods that placed them
there.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 111: THE PACIFIC
The Pequod sails through the Pacific, to Ishmael's eyes the
most lovely and serene of all oceans. Notice, though, how the
tone of the chapter changes as Ishmael moves from his own
thoughts of the ocean to Ahab's. To Ahab, the Pacific is only
the home of his enemy; even in his sleep he dreams of the moment
when at last he will defeat Moby-Dick.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 112: THE BLACKSMITH
After finishing work on Ahab's leg, Perth, the soot-covered
old blacksmith, doesn't move his forge back into the hold but
keeps it on deck in readiness for the work required as the ship
moves into prime whaling grounds. Perth toils away as if "the
heavy beating of his hammer [were] the heavy beating of his
heart," for he has suffered much in his life. Once a skilled
craftsman with a lovely young wife and three children, he saw
his life destroyed by alcoholism--the evil thief Melville calls
"the bottle conjurer." After the loss of his business, the
resulting impoverishment, and deaths in his family, the
blacksmith fled to the whaling ship, which is for him almost a
death without suicide.
NOTE: Melville draws many parallels between the blacksmith
and the Pequod's captain. Both limp, both married women younger
than themselves. Perth's fate is grim; is this a hint that
Ahab's will be grim as well?
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 113: THE FORGE
Perth stands at the forge, and Ahab approaches him holding a
small leather bag. The sparks from the forge surround the two
men, making them seem like brothers in the fire. Still, Ahab
says, the smith's sorrows are nothing compared to his own; for
the blacksmith to know true woe he would have to go mad, as Ahab
has. There's something genuinely moving and pathetic about Ahab
as he asks if Perth could smooth out the brow that has been
wrinkled by his obsession with Moby-Dick. But the smith answers
that those seams are the one thing he can't repair.
Ahab orders Perth to make a harpoon from the nailstubs of
racing horses' steel shoes--the strongest material blacksmiths
ever work with. Before Perth can finish, Ahab himself takes
over, working in the flaming forge while the fire-worshipping,
demonic Fedallah seems to give a curse or a blessing on the
effort. Next come the harpoon's barbs, made from Ahab's own
razors. And at last the weapon is ready to be tempered--made
stronger by sudden cooling. Most metal is tempered in water,
but Ahab's harpoon will be tempered in pagan blood. He orders
the three harpooners to cut themselves for him.
"Ego non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!"
howls Ahab blasphemously. "I baptize you not in the name of the
father but in the name of the devil." Ahab takes the weapon and
returns to his cabin, where Pip's laughter can be heard.
NOTE: A RELIGIOUS RITUAL When Ahab says he baptizes the
harpoon not in the name of the father but in the name of the
devil, he's calling attention to the fact that the forging of
the special harpoon is a hellish parody of creation itself. The
weird ceremony is further evidence that Ahab is attempting to
make himself into his own God, as Lucifer attempted in his
rebellion.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 114: THE GILDER
The Pequod sails into Japanese whale grounds, and the crew is
so busy they work 20 hours at a time. During these mild days,
Ishmael says, the ocean is so lovely that "one forgets the
tiger's heart that pants beneath it"--forgets that underneath
the serenity lie danger and death. Even Ahab feels the calm,
though for him it can never last.
Ishmael, too, knows that the calm is only temporary. Life is
as full of storms as of good weather; we grow from infancy to
old age--and then what? Where lies the final harbor? (You'll
remember that Ishmael had only "intuitions" of the heavenly.)
You should compare the three views of the ocean in this
chapter. Ishmael is full of appreciation of its loveliness yet
bothered by doubt. The religious Starbuck sees the beauty
overcoming the evil. And matter-of-fact Stubb proclaims only
that he is jolly. Looking at the ocean becomes a metaphor for
looking at all of life.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 115: THE PEQUOD MEETS THE
BACHELOR
The next ship the Pequod meets seems crowded with men like
Stubb, for "jolly enough were the sights and sounds," when the
Bachelor appears proudly loaded with barrels of oil, flags
flying from every part of its rigging, and Polynesian girls
dancing on its decks. When Ahab asks, "Hast thou seen the white
whale?" the Bachelor's commander answers that he doesn't believe
in him. "Fools," Ahab curses, and the two ships part.
NOTE: Once again a gam with another ship sheds light on Ahab
and the Pequod. The Bachelor is full of happy--and, to Ahab,
shallow and foolish--people. Does Melville take Ahab's view?
Perhaps--at least the Bachelor's reply that "no one" died on the
voyage, merely two islanders, seems extremely callous.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 116: THE DYING WHALE
The Pequod begins to enjoy good fortune, for the day after
its meeting with the Bachelor four whales are killed, one by
Captain Ahab. As he stands in his boat watching, the dying
whale does what dying sperm whales in legend always do, turn to
face the sun. Ahab identifies with the great beast he's slain,
for both are fire-worshippers. (In this way, Ahab is making the
whale his equal, something he would never do with any man.)
After it dies, the whale slowly turns away from the sunset.
This, too, has meaning for Ahab--it's a reminder that the dark
power of death always overcomes the power of life. Just as he
thinks woe more noble than happiness, he now says his dark faith
is more proud than faith in light, in life.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 117: THE WHALE WATCH
The four whales killed by the Pequod lie so far apart only
three of them can be towed back to the boat before nightfall.
Ahab's whale must wait until morning, and he and his crew spend
the night in the boat alongside it, all of them asleep except
Fedallah.
Ahab wakes up. "I have dreamed it again," he says--another
in a series of apparently recurring dreams about hearses and
coffins. Fedallah tells the captain that death will come only
in a specific way.
NOTE: FEDALLAH'S PROPHECY Fedallah, who all along has seemed
to possess dark powers, now joins the ranks of Moby-Dick's other
prophets. He tells Ahab that Ahab will die only if he sees two
hearses on the ocean, one not made by man's hand, the other made
of American-grown wood; only if Fedallah dies first; and only by
hemp.
Fedallah's prophecy seems so unlikely to be fulfilled that
Ahab is reassured. Hearses do not sail the seas, and they are
always man-made; death by hemp can only mean being hanged on a
gallows, an unlikely fate for Ahab. Many critics have noted the
similarities between Fedallah's prophecies and the equally
unlikely-sounding ones given to Shakespeare's Macbeth, and
suggest that this may be another way in which Melville tries to
show the tragic stature of his hero. Whether you agree or not,
you'll want to keep the prophecies in mind at the end of the
book.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 118: THE QUADRANT
Summer, the season when sperm whales congregate on the Line
of the Pacific (where Ahab hopes to find Moby-Dick) is
approaching. Ahab stands on the deck of the Pequod pointing his
quadrant towards the sun to determine the ship's longitude and
latitude. Like the fire-worshipper he is, Fedallah kneels
beneath him, facing the brilliant sun.
Ahab finds the ship's position, yet grows irritated. The sun
can only tell him where he is now; it can't predict the future;
worst of all, it can't tell him the location of Moby-Dick. In
rage he turns against the quadrant "Cursed be all things that
cast man's eyes aloft to heaven," he cries, and he throws the
instrument down to the deck to smash it.
NOTE: AHAB AND THE QUADRANT Ahab's destruction of the
quadrant shows how little he cares about the commercial success
of the voyage or the survival of his crew. He's being decidedly
impractical in smashing a navigational device. It also shows
how estranged Ahab is from God, that he can bear nothing that
draws his or anyone's eyes to heaven. Ahab smashes the quadrant
because, in a sense, he doesn't want to know his place--for it
would be lower than God's.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 119: THE CANDLES
The warm Japanese sea is the breeding ground for the
deadliest storm sailors encounter, the typhoon. And now the
Pequod is caught in the middle of such a storm. The sky roars
with thunder and blazes with lightning; the ship's sails are
torn to rags by the force of the wind. As Stubb and Starbuck
look on, Ahab's boat is crushed by an enormous wave.
Despite the storm, Stubb tries hard to be his usual jolly
self, but Starbuck is grim, Ahab is once again courting
disaster, steering straight into the storm because Moby-Dick
lies in that direction. The same terrible winds that are
tearing the ship apart could be used to send it safely back to
Nantucket, if only Ahab would abandon his chase.
"Who's there?" Starbuck cries.
"Old Thunder," answers Ahab. By using his nickname, Ahab
reminds us of his link with thunder and lightning, a link that
will grow even stronger in this intensely dramatic chapter.
Starbuck wants to order lightning rods made ready so the
electricity will be conducted safely to the sea; Ahab refuses to
let him. And now the masts glow with an eerie energy that
terrifies even Stubb. "The corposants have mercy on us all," he
cries. (Corposant is a mariner's name for the lightning more
often called Saint Elmo's fire.)
Fedallah kneels to worship the glow. Now you learn that
Ishmael was correct when he said Ahab's scar made him look like
something struck by lightning; Ahab received the mark when, like
Fedallah, he was worshipping lightning. Now Ahab tempts the
elements, standing with one foot on the kneeling Fedallah to
shout at the storm. The lightning will not be kind to those who
worship it reverently, he proclaims; it is better to die defiant
than loving. Such is Ahab's Promethean attitude.
NOTE: AHAB AND THE LIGHTNING Ahab's shouts to the lightning
make it clear he considers himself the equal of any force in the
universe--lightning, God, Fate, all of the things that the
whale, Moby-Dick, represents. In this parody of a religious
service, Ahab rejects the idea of obedience to anything but his
own will, and defies the universe.
On the crushed boat, Ahab's harpoon glows with its own
strange flame. "God is against thee, old man," Starbuck says.
The crew seems ready to turn against their captain. Yet Ahab,
with his great power of personality, regains control. The
crewmen have sworn an oath; he will keep them to it. They run
from him in fear.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 122: MIDNIGHT ALOFT--THUNDER
AND LIGHTNING
As the typhoon continues, Starbuck warns Ahab that the sails
must be taken down, but Ahab refuses. They will lash everything
tight to the deck and fight the storm bravely.
While Stubb and Flask follow Ahab's orders, Stubb claims that
despite the fear he showed during the lightning storm, he always
knew their situation wasn't that dangerous. Even though Ahab
seemed to be tempting the lightning, it was never likely that
the lightning would strike him. Stubb seems anxious to regain
his jolly view of the world.
Later that night we hear another crewman insensitive to
whatever dangers Ahab and the storm represent. Tashtego wants
to forget the thunder and drink a glass of rum.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 123: THE MUSKET
The typhoon has lost enough of its strength for Starbuck and
Stubb to replace the torn sails with new ones; the Pequod's
course by the compass is east-south-east; the wind is strong and
fair; and the crew sings that all the bad omens seen during the
storm have proven wrong.
Starbuck, though, remains disturbed. The new, fair wind will
force them to continue Ahab's mad hunt. He goes to notify the
captain of the change in weather, but stands in the cabin
silently for a few moments. Before him is a rack of loaded
muskets, one of them the weapon that Ahab threatened him with.
Starbuck reaches for it. The fair wind he's come to report, he
knows, will bring only death and destruction to the crew. Ahab
is mad: shall he be allowed to drag thirty men to death with
him? If Starbuck does not shoot him, Starbuck will never
survive to see his wife and child again.
"Shall I? Shall I?" he asks himself. But at last he puts
the musket back in its rack.
NOTE: STARBUCK For chapters now we've seen that Starbuck is,
with Queequeg, perhaps the noblest member of the crew, and the
man with the best chance to successfully stand up against Ahab.
Yet remember what Ishmael said about him: Starbuck's courage
could withstand "winds or whales or any of the ordinary
irrational horrors of the world," but not the worse horrors
which come from "an enraged and mighty man." Clearly, the first
mate has met that man in Captain Ahab. He knows that Ahab's
survival means doom for everyone, yet is unable to kill his
captain. Is this morality or weakness?
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 124: THE NEEDLE
At the height of the typhoon we saw the needle of the ship's
compass spin round wildly. But afterwards the compass seemed to
repair itself. The next morning Ahab notices the sun shining
brightly behind them, while the steersman insists they're
heading east-south-east. Ahab is enraged--if they were sailing
east, the sun would be ahead of them, not behind. Yet the
compass shows an easterly course. Before the ominous news can
disturb the crew, Ahab makes a joke of it: the typhoon has
turned the compass, an accident that can occur during an
electrical storm.
NOTE: THE COMPASS Ahab has received another warning. Even
the compasses, symbols of order and direction, are attempting to
force the Pequod to sail away from Ahab's chosen destination.
Do you think the universe is seeking to thwart Ahab or to
protect him from himself?
Compasses once turned are forever useless, so Ahab decides to
impress his crew by constructing a new compass, acting almost
like a magician as he makes one out of a lance, a needle, and
thread. Once again he's proven that he's master of the
universe, "lord of the level lodestone." The ignorant,
superstitious crew believes in him, though not happily. "In his
fiery eyes of scorn and triumph you saw then Ahab in all his
fatal pride."
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 125: THE LOG AND LINE
Some ships use a more primitive method of determining their
speed and direction, the log and line. The Pequod has neglected
its log and line in favor of compass and quadrant. But Ahab,
remembering his vow to steer "by dead recking and log and line,"
orders the device to be used.
Two seamen prepare to throw the line into the water behind
the ship. But the Manxman warns that the wood and rope have
been so neglected during the voyage they will break. And he's
correct.
NOTE: ANOTHER WARNING Ahab has smashed his quadrant and seen
his compass made worthless. Now another means of determining
location (and so of continuing the quest for Moby-Dick) has been
ruined. Clearly this is a warning to Ahab--but another one that
he refuses to follow. He orders a new log and line made.
As the men are hauling in the broken line, Ahab sees Pip
approaching. When the old Manxman pushes the boy aside, Ahab
grows angry. "Hands off that holiness," Ahab says.
NOTE: AHAB AND PIP Here we see that Ahab still possesses
human feelings. He's genuinely touched by Pip, understanding
that Pip's madness somehow connects the boy to God. He
announces that Pip will stay in Ahab's cabin from now on. Many
critics have compared the bond between Pip and Ahab to that
between the Fool and Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear: both Pip
and the Fool have a madness that contains much wisdom; both Ahab
and Lear are touched by these madmen and allow them liberties
they would never allow any other person; and both Ahab and Lear
ignore the wise advice of these madmen till they themselves go
mad.
Notice, though, that even in this generous moment, Ahab takes
pains to blame God and the universe (not Stubb) for Pip's
plight. The gods are supposed to be good, yet they've abandoned
the poor boy; men are supposed to be evil, yet here is Pip, full
of goodness and love.
Read my journal for more valuable informati
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 127: THE DECK
The Pequod steers a lonely path toward the Equator, and the
ocean's calm seems like the calm before a storm. Early in the
morning Flask is startled by an unearthly cry, which the Manxman
interprets as the cry of newly drowned sailors.
Shortly after sunrise one of the crew climbs to the masthead
to begin his watch. Suddenly what Ishmael feared would happen
to him happens to the sailor. He falls into the sea. The
life-buoy is thrown to him, but the sailor doesn't rise to grasp
it, and the life-buoy is so old that it sinks, too.
Ishmael notes that some people would see in the death a
warning: "the first man to look out for the White Whale on the
White Whale's own grounds has died." But the crew is relieved,
because they believe this was the death foretold by the strange
cries of the night before.
When no cask light enough to make a replacement life-buoy can
be found, Queequeg offers his unused coffin. The carpenter
grumpily makes the necessary alterations, annoyed that Queequeg
didn't die and use the carpenter's work for its intended
purpose.
As the carpenter works, Ahab comes out of his cabin to watch.
He wittily calls the carpenter "unprincipaled as the gods, and
as much of a jack of all trades" because the carpenter deals
both with life (Ahab's leg) and death (the coffin). But the
carpenter doesn't understand the joke, or any of Ahab's other
remarks. Disgusted, Ahab shouts at the workman, then ponders
the meaning of a coffin converted to a life-buoy.
NOTE: From the opening pages of Moby-Dick, we've seen
coffins used as ominous symbols of death, but throughout the
book, symbols are ambiguous. Here a symbol of death is made
into a symbol of life. You'll see the coffin play an important
role at the end of the book.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 128: THE PEQUOD MEETS THE
RACHEL
As a large ship, the Rachel, bears down on the Pequod,
something about it indicates bad news to the superstitious
Manxman. Ahab asks his question: "Hast seen White Whale?"
"Yes," the answer is, followed by another question: "Have ye
seen a whale-boat?"
The Rachel's captain climbs aboard the Pequod.
Ahab, fearful that the Rachel may have killed Moby-Dick
before he gets his chance, learns instead that while chasing the
whale one of the Rachel's boats was lost. For a full day the
ship has been searching for its missing craft. The Rachel's
Captain Gardiner asks Ahab to join the search, for Gardiner's
own twelve-year-old son is aboard the missing boat. But Ahab is
deaf to the captain's pleas, and orders the Pequod to sail on.
NOTE: THE RACHEL "She was Rachel, weeping for her children,
because they were not." Melville ends the chapter with a
reference to the biblical mother of the Jewish people. The
themes of isolation and loss are brought up as they were at the
start of the book. We'll see them again, along with the Rachel
itself, at the novel's end.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 129: THE CABIN
Ahab is leaving his cabin to go up on deck when Pip takes his
hand to follow. Ahab tells him to remain behind. His human
sympathies for the boy may cause him to lose his inhuman
obsession with Moby-Dick, and Ahab now loves his madness too
much to want that. When Pip begins to weep, Ahab tries to
smother his own feelings of sympathy with anger: "Weep so and I
will murder thee." He leaves Pip to talk madly to himself.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 130: THE HAT
The Rachel's news that it encountered Moby-Dick only a day
before has added new fire to Ahab's obsession. He paces the
deck day and night, taking his meals there, never seeming to
sleep. His grim determination has infected the rest of the crew
as well. Only Fedallah seems immune to Ahab, though in some
strange way he seems at the same time to be Ahab's slave.
When four days go by without sight of the whale, Ahab decides
that Moby-Dick will never be found by a Christian watcher, only
by a pagan or by Ahab himself. He raises himself to the
masthead by means of a special line, ordering Starbuck to see
that the line remains secure. Does Ahab think that despite
Starbuck's rebellion, the first mate is the most trustworthy of
all the crew? Or does he wish to force Starbuck to commit
himself to the hunt for the White Whale?
As Ahab stands in his perch, a screaming sea hawk flies away
with his hat and drops it into the ocean: clearly another bad
omen, yet another omen that Ahab ignores.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 131: THE PEQUOD MEETS THE
DELIGHT
The Pequod's last meeting with another ship is with the
"miserably misnamed" Delight, which carries a whaleboat newly
shattered by Moby-Dick. "The harpoon is not yet forged that
will kill the whale," the Delight's captain says, and when Ahab
presents his blood tempered harpoon, he only warns "God keep
thee, old man." The whale has killed five of his men, and the
body of only one was recovered and given a proper burial. The
burial service resumes with the words "may the resurrection and
the life-" but Ahab interrupts with orders to sail on. He wants
no part of resurrection, or of life.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 132: THE SYMPHONY
The next day dawns with sky so blue that it can hardly be
distinguished from the ocean; the sun is like a bright bride to
the ocean's groom. Even Ahab is moved enough by this beauty to
shed a tear for it. Starbuck, sensing the captain's mood, goes
to talk with Ahab.
Ahab reminisces about his solitary years of whaling and about
his wife and child whom he has hardly seen. Out of a genuine
concern to keep Starbuck safe, he tells the first mate to remain
on the Pequod when Ahab lowers for Moby-Dick.
Starbuck, moved by the captain's humanity, begs him to give
up the chase so they can return to their families in Nantucket.
Even as he describes the joys of a wife and a child, however,
Ahab's bitterness is regaining its power. Something within Ahab
is forcing him to continue his quest. What is it? God or Ahab
himself? Fate or the Devil? Starbuck, discouraged, leaves, and
Ahab abandons the sanity Starbuck represents by going over to
talk with a symbol of his madness, Fedallah.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 133: THE CHASE--FIRST DAY
That night Ahab senses a sperm whale is near, and the next
morning he orders the three harpooners to the mastheads. When
they see nothing, he climbs to his own perch. There, at last he
spies "a hump like a snow hill." It is Moby-Dick.
The boats are lowered, Starbuck remaining as promised on the
Pequod. As the whaleboats approach the great beast he seems
gentle and unsuspecting, lovely, and mighty as Jove. But when
he sounds--disappears into the water--his gaping, terrifying
mouth becomes visible.
Moby-Dick resurfaces almost directly under Ahab's boat, all
cruel teeth and malicious intelligence. The whaleboat shatters
as the whale bites through it, his jaw reaching within six
inches of Ahab's head. Ahab, in a combination of madness and
bravery, fights with his bare hands to save the boat, but falls
from the shattered craft into the ocean. Moby-Dick swims
furiously around the wreckage, seemingly readying himself for a
final attack, but the Pequod drives him away.
Yet Ahab is undaunted; as soon as he's taken on board ship,
he orders it to continue the chase until nightfall.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 134: THE CHASE--SECOND DAY
By the second day of the quest, all the crew share some of
Ahab's determination to kill the whale, their fears swept aside
by their awe of Ahab. Moby-Dick breaches--leaps almost
perpendicular into the air. This time the battle begins at
once. Stubb's, Flask's, and Ahab's boats are soon dangerously
tangled in harpoon lines, with loose harpoons and lances flying
around the crews' heads. Stubb's and Flask's boats smash
against each other, and Moby-Dick dashes his forehead against
Ahab's boat, knocking it sideways and shattering Ahab's ivory
leg. Then the whale vanishes.
The Pequod rescues the men from the shattered boats. As they
gather on deck Stubb notices that one man is not with them:
Fedallah. Stubb thought he saw the Parsee caught in the tangle
of line and dragged under the water.
Starbuck insists to Ahab that to continue the chase is
madness, but, though Ahab feels sympathy for the first mate, he
refuses to stop. He has no choice, he says; from the beginning
of time this was his fate. He still expects victory tomorrow,
though Fedallah's disappearance is ominous: the Parsee's death
was one of the preconditions for Ahab's own.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: CHAPTER 135: THE CHASE--THIRD DAY
The third day dawns so fair it might seem to some a newmade
world, but not to Ahab. From his perch on the mast-head he
takes a long look at the sea as if it might be his last.
Starbuck begs him once again to halt the chase, but for the
third time Ahab says, "Lower away." As a final warning, his boat
is surrounded by sharks, sharks that feed on the dead. Yet Ahab
speeds confidently on.
Suddenly, Moby-Dick rises to the surface. Maddened by the
harpoons already in him, he smashes Flask's and Stubb's boats.
And when he turns around, he displays, lashed to his side, the
body of Fedallah.
NOTE: FEDALLAH'S PROPHECIES Two of the conditions for Ahab's
death have now been met. Fedallah has died, and Ahab has seen a
sea-going hearse not made by man: the whale itself. Two more
remain unfulfilled: that Ahab see another hearse made of
American wood, and that Ahab die by hemp.
Stubb and Flask and their crew have returned to the Pequod,
leaving Ahab's boat to fight the whale alone. Out of tiredness,
or perhaps out of malicious deceit, the whale seems to slow down
to allow Ahab's boat to catch up with it. Ahab is about to
throw his harpoon when the whale writhes sideways, tipping the
boat. Two oarsmen are knocked to the gunwhales and a third is
thrown into the sea.
Then Moby-Dick sees the Pequod. And instead of turning to
continue its fight with Ahab, it advances toward the ship.
Stubb and Starbuck see the whale swimming mightily towards them.
Starbuck wonders if his lifetime of goodness and piety has
brought him only to this cruel end. Stubb realizes his
jolliness will not help him as the whale smashes his enormous
head vengefully against the ship's bow.
NOTE: THE MATES The mates retain their personalities to the
very end, and their different ways of looking at life. Starbuck
asks if after a lifetime of conventional piety he must still
meet death at the hands of the whale. Stubb hopes he will be
remembered as a jolly fellow. And the materialistic Flask can
only hope that his mother has collected part of his pay.
Melville seems to be saying that against the mightiest forces of
nature no ordinary philosophy is enough.
Ahab now sees the second hearse, made of American wood: the
Pequod. He's cut off even from the "last fond pride of meanest
shipwrecked captains," that of going down with his ship. His
hate unceasing, he throws a harpoon at the whale; it stabs
Moby-Dick, but the line tangles and catches Ahab around the
neck, and, in fulfillment of Fedallah's prophecy, pulls him,
strangled, into the water.
The topmost masts of the Pequod, with the harpooners still
watching from the mast-heads, disappear beneath the waves. The
sinking ship has become the center of a whirlpool that is
carrying every bit of wreckage, every human life into the
depths. As Tashtego defiantly nails Captain Ahab's flag to the
masthead, a hawk lands there and is pulled down with the ship, a
bit of heaven dragged into hell. And the sea rolls on
unchanging.
NOTE: AHAB'S DEATH This last chapter shows us both the
madness and the glory of Ahab. Hatred has taken him completely
over, yet there is a nobility in that hatred, and a greatness in
his defiance. He is destroyed, but not conquered.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: EPILOGUE
Ishmael explains how he survives to tell the story. After
Fedallah's disappearance he is moved into Ahab's boat, and fate
further ordains that he be the man tossed out when Moby-Dick
smashes against the craft. Drawn more slowly into the whirlpool
than were the rest of the victims, he is saved when Queequeg's
coffin-turned-life-buoy shoots up from the sinking Pequod. He
clings to the coffin for nearly a day. The sharks for some
reason don't bite him, and the sea hawks don't attack. The
Rachel, still searching for its lost boat, finds him, "another
orphan."
NOTE: In this somber postscript, Melville repeats a number
of the questions that run through the book: Is the universe
good? Evil? Is it possible to know?
The question is raised by the quotation, "And I only am
escaped alone to tell thee," which comes from the Book of Job in
the Bible. Pious Job was tormented by God as a test of faith,
losing his livelihood, his health, his family. Job's faith
endured, and God rewarded him with a new life. Yet to some
readers of the story, the God of Job is an awful God, one
deserving defiance not respect. Is this quotation a signal that
Melville feels Ahab is essentially correct--that Moby-Dick is an
evil representative of a universe fully as evil? Perhaps. If
so, the last word of the novel, "orphan," can be taken to mean
that Ishmael, too, has lost whatever faith he possessed at
points in the novel, and is once again as alone as he was at the
book's beginning.
But some readers take another view. The fact that Ishmael
survives, and survives using Queequeg's coffin, is for them a
sign of Melville's belief that, although the world can be cruel,
in brotherhood with one or two other people we can find
salvation. Perhaps there even is a force for good in the
universe, for the sharks glide by Ishmael as if they have
padlocks on their mouths.
Or perhaps the mixture of beauty and ugliness, cruelty and
generosity, life and death, that we see in the epilogue as we
see in the rest of Moby-Dick, is a sign that the universe will
be forever a mystery to man.
^^^^^^^^^^
MOBY-DICK: GLOSSARY
AMBERGRIS A grayish, waxy substance secreted in the whale's
intestine and highly valued for use in the production of
perfume.
BREACH The whale's spectacular, near-vertical leap out of the
water into the air.
BRIT A yellowish substance (probably tiny crustaceans)
favored as food by the right whale.
CETOLOGY The scientific study of whales.
CUTTING-IN The initial butchering of a whale.
DEAD RECKONING A system of determining a ship's location
without the use of instruments other than a compass.
DRUGGS Wooden blocks tied to the whale-line to tire a fleeing
whale.
FAST-FISH A whale held "fast" to the boat that harpoons it,
and by whaling custom the property of that boat.
FORECASTLE The compartment where common sailors sleep, in the
bow of the ship.
GAM A meeting between two whaling ships to exchange news and
mail.
IRON A harpoon; generally each harpooner carries a first and
second iron.
JONAH In the Old Testament book, the son of Amitai who
disobeyed God's orders to preach to Ninevah and was punished by
being swallowed up by a great whale; the subject of Father
Mapple's sermon.
LARBOARD The left or port side of a ship.
LAY A percentage of the profits of a whaling voyage; Ishmael
is signed on for the 300th lay, or 1/300th of the profits of the
Pequod's voyage.
LEEWARD The side of a ship away from the direction the wind
blows from.
LEVIATHAN An enormous sea-beast mentioned in the Bible, often
assumed to be a whale and used by Ishmael to mean a whale.
LOG AND LINE A rope and wood device which, when dragged
behind a ship, can aid in determining the ship's location and
speed.
LOOSE-FISH A harpooned fish that has broken free of a line
and is fair game for other ships.
PARSEE A follower of the religion of Zoroastrianism.
Fedallah is a Parsee.
PARMACETI A sperm whale.
PEQUOD A Massachusetts Indian tribe, exterminated by the
Puritans; Ahab's ship is named for them.
PITCHPOLE A light whale lance that can be hurled long
distances.
QUARTERDECK The upper part of the deck behind the mainmast.
RAMADAN The Muslim month of fasting, used by Ishmael to mean
Queequeg's day of fasting.
SKRIMSHANDER Intricate carvings made by whalemen from whale
bone, also called scrimshaw.
SOUND The whale's dramatic, near-vertical plunge from the
ocean surface into its depths.
SPERMACETI The Sperm whale's oil, valuable as a lubricant and
for lighting.
STARBOARD The right side of a ship.
TRY-WORKS A brick oven on board a whaling ship, used to melt
whale blubber into oil.
YOJO The small black wooden idol worshipped by Queequeg.
In the end, as one reflects on the book, one is aware that
one must reckon with the most comprehensive of all its
qualities, the quality that can only be called mythic.... Like
a truly myth-making poet's, Melville's imagination was obsessed
by the spectacle of a natural human scene in which the
instinctive need for order and meaning seems mainly to be
confronted by meaninglessness and disorder; in which the human
will seems sometimes to be sustained but oftener to be thwarted
by the forces of physical nature, and even by agencies that lie
behind it; in which goodness and evil, beneficence and
destructiveness, light and darkness, seem bafflingly
intermixed.
-Newton Arvin, Herman Melville, 1950
Queequeg's love redeems Ishmael from the fatal isolation
which has led him to choose Ahab's ship for his journey away
from his self. He must lose himself to find himself. His love
for Queequeg makes this possible, and qualifies Ishmael alone of
Ahab's oath-bound crew, to dissever the bonds of hatred and
vengeance and so qualify for survival from the annihilation that
Ahab willed for all the rest.
-Daniel Hoffman,
Form and Fable in American Fiction, 1961
Ahab... is a hero; we cannot insist enough on that.
Melville believed in the heroic and he specifically wanted to
cast his hero on American lines--someone noble by nature, not by
birth, who would have 'not the dignity of kings and robes, but
that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture.' Ahab
sinned against man and God, and like his namesake in the Old
Testament, becomes "a wicked king." But Ahab is not just a
fanatic who leads the whole crew to their destruction; he is a
hero of thought who is trying, by terrible force, to reassert
man's place in nature. And it is the struggle that Ahab
incarnates that makes him so magnificent a voice, thundering in
Shakespearean rhetoric, storming at the gates of the inhuman,
awful world. Ahab is trying to give man, in one awful, final
assertion that his will does mean something, a feeling of
relatedness with his world.
-Alfred Kazin,
Introduction to the Riverside Edition of Moby-Dick, 1950
A hunt. The last great hunt.
For what?
For Moby-Dick, the huge white sperm whale: who is hoary,
monstrous and swims alone; who is unspeakably terrible in his
wrath, having so often been attacked; and snow-white.
Of course he is a symbol.
Of what?
I doubt that even Melville knew exactly. That's the best of
it.
-D. H. Lawrence,
Studies in Classic American Literature, 1927
Melville did not achieve in Moby-Dick a Paradise Lost or a
Faust. The search for the meaning of life that could be
symbolized through the struggle between Ahab and the White Whale
was neither so lucid nor so universal. But he did apprehend
therein the tragedy of extreme individualism, the disasters of
the selfish will, the agony of a spirit so walled in within
itself that it seemed cut off from any possibility of
salvation.
-F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance, 1941
As Ahab in his whaleboat watches the Pequod founder under the
attack of the whale, he realizes that all is lost. He faces his
"lonely death on lonely life," denied even "the last fond pride
of meanest shipwrecked captains," the privilege of going down
with his ship. But here, at the nadir of his fortunes, he sees
that in his greatest suffering lies his greatest glory. He dies
spitting hate at the whale, but he does not die cynically or in
bitterness. The whale conquers--but is "unconquering." The "god
bullied hull" goes down "death glorious." What Ahab feels is not
joy or serenity or goodness at the heart of things. But with
his sense of elation, even triumph, at having persevered to the
end, there is also a note of reconciliation: "Oh now I feel my
topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief." This is not
reconciliation with the whale, or with the malice in the
universe, but it is a reconciliation of Ahab with Ahab.
Whatever justice, order, or equivalence there is, he has found
not in the universe but in himself.... In finally coming to
terms with existence (though too late), he is tragic man; to the
extent that he transcends it, finds "greatness" in suffering, he
is tragic hero.
-Richard B. Sewall, The Vision of Tragedy, 1959
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^^^^^^^^^^GUSTAVE FLAUBERT: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
Already disappointed with humanity by the age of twenty-two, Gustave Flaubert abandoned the outside world and retired as a hermit to his family's estate in the small town of Croisset, France. It was in this provincial Normandy setting that he created one of the world's great novels, Madame Bovary, and in which he spent most of his life almost mystically devoted to literature. Since he was deeply affected by stress and believed that a life of activity would damage the creative process, he wanted to shut the door, close off all distractions, and bury himself in work.
Yet Flaubert was not an altogether unsocial man. He kept an apartment in Paris for the winter months, entertained friends, traveled periodically, and enjoyed being a favorite of Princess Mathilde, cousin of the Emperor of France. He never wrote for fame or money, but nonetheless enjoyed the glory his success brought--and if you see this as a contradiction to his need for seclusion, then you've already spotted one of several major conflicts within this talented writer.
Born on December 12, 1821, Flaubert was the son of a prominent surgeon in Rouen, France. Having spent much of his childhood in the grim environment of the hospital where his father worked, he had an idea of the gruesome pain and suffering that plagued the sick. He also had a good idea of the incompetence that plagued the medical profession. This early exposure to human frailty and professional mishaps no doubt contributed to Flaubert's general pessimism about life, but it also provided the solid background of medical and scientific information he drew upon to describe the middle-class medical practitioners in Madame Bovary. The bungled clubfoot operation on the stable boy, for example, resembles incidences of malpractice he had encountered in real life.
Another result of Flaubert's familiarity with medicine (his brother Achille was also a doctor) was his awareness that middle-class lip service to science and progress could be mere pretentious nonsense. While he believed in true science, he was wary of people, like the pharmacist Homais, who invoked the spirit of progress to justify their own comfortable positions in society.
Flaubert's youth coincided not only with the rise of the bourgeoisie during the reign of King Louis-Philippe (1830-48), but with the period of Romanticism. This literary and artistic movement, begun in the late eighteenth century, rejected the predominant view of that century's thinkers that "reason" was the guiding principle of life and man's most important attribute. French education was still grounded in the previous century's ideals, so that its models of art and literature were from the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome--a world that glorified the rational. The Romantics reacted by "rediscovering" other sides of life. They looked to nature and indulged in colorful, often excessive, explorations of human emotions.
As a boarder at the College de Rouen, a secondary school similar to the one Charles Bovary attends at the beginning of Madame Bovary, Flaubert devoured the Romantic writing of Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott (among others), writers who extolled sentiment, feeling, and beauty, often in exotic historical settings. As with other young Frenchmen, Flaubert's turn toward Romanticism led him to reject as coarse, ugly, and unfeeling the middle-class culture that had increased its influence steadily since the end of the Napoleonic era (1815). The very symbol of this culture was the king himself, Louis-Philippe (called the "Citizen King"), who along with his supporters, became the targets of the cartoonist Honore Daumier (1809-1879) and the novelist Honore de Balzac (1799-1850). Flaubert and a school friend created their own fictional target, called "le Garcon" (the boy), who represented everything they disliked about middle-class life--its obsession with money and politics, its intellectual pretenses, its vulgarity, and its sexual hypocrisy. Their feelings about this hypocrisy were confirmed somewhat humorously when the respectable vice-principal of the school was discovered in a local brothel.
Flaubert's own attitudes toward love and sexuality, which were to occupy a good part of his later work and correspondence, found their first expression when he was fifteen and fell in love with Elisa Schlesinger, a married woman eleven years his senior. Although she became a friend throughout his later life, Flaubert's obsession with this unattainable "perfect" woman set the tone of later relationships and literary themes. This type of unfulfilled yearning is typical of Romantic love relationships. In Madame Bovary, young Justin, the chemist's assistant, longs for Emma in the same way, and Emma's unfulfilled longing for the perfect love echoes this relationship. Even though Flaubert depicts Emma's desires as the product of an excessive addiction to Romantic ideals, it is possible that he himself was equally their victim. It may also explain in part why Flaubert devoted himself primarily to the search for perfection in his writing rather than in personal relationships. His later relationship with Louise Colet, a poet, confirmed the pattern set by the earlier Schlesinger experience. Colet was also considerably older than Flaubert. Although in love with her, Flaubert carried on their affair primarily through letters; they only saw each other six times during the first two years. In Madame Bovary, Emma's romances with Rodolphe and Leon rely heavily on letter-writing.
In 1841, at his father's insistence, Flaubert went to Paris in order to study law, but for two years he led a rather aimless existence, traveling, socializing, and writing. He resumed his friendship with Elisa Schlesinger and became close friends with Maxime DuCamp, a writer and editor. He finished (but did not publish) November, a Romantic work about a man's love for a prostitute. Although Flaubert would eventually create a more objective and realistic style, this early novel was typical of the emotional intensity of Romantic literature.
Though he finally began to study law in 1843, he hated every moment of it and felt tremendous stress, possibly the result of a conflict between his literary interests and the pressure to learn a respectable profession. In January 1844, while returning to Rouen for a vacation with his family, the twenty-two-year-old Flaubert suffered a seizure that marked the beginning of a lifelong nervous disorder. On his parents' advice, he gave up the study of law and settled in at the family estate in Croisset, which would become his permanent home. Flaubert became very familiar with provincial living and would draw on this to describe the small, boring towns of Tostes and Yonville in Madame Bovary.
Though solitary, Flaubert traveled and kept the apartment in Paris. But when his father and sister died within a few months of one another in 1846, his hostility toward the world intensified and he became even more of a loner. He eventually became known as the "hermit of Croisset."
Avoiding interruptions, he started work on a long historical novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony. His style, marked by attention to detail and tightness of construction, began to take shape. Over the next few years he would become a perfectionist, spending days writing and rewriting a single page, researching his material, or searching tirelessly for the famous mot juste, the "exact word." This belief in the precision of language would become a permanent obsession and would characterize his style more than any other technique or device. In Madame Bovary, Emma's search for the perfect romance might be said to parallel Flaubert's quest for the mot juste.
After spending three years on Saint Anthony, Flaubert was shocked that his close friends didn't like it. They suggested he tackle a more realistic subject from daily life that would take him farther beyond his Romantic roots. He shelved the book and went to the Middle East, a setting that was hardly likely to suppress his Romantic tendencies. Ironically, however, the book that he began upon his return was based not on the attractions of exotic locales, but on the everyday life he knew so well.
Madame Bovary parallels the true story of Eugene Delamare, a former student of Flaubert's father who had practiced medicine as an army officer and had married an older woman. After her death, he married a young woman named Delphine Couturier and took up residence in the town of Ry, not far from Rouen. Delphine was unfaithful to him, ran up many debts without his knowledge, then died, leaving him with a young daughter--all of which Emma does in Madame Bovary. After a few months, Eugene, like Emma's husband Charles, died in despair.
Flaubert insisted that Madame Bovary was entirely fictitious, and when asked about Emma's identity, he would argue, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("I am Madame Bovary," or "Madame Bovary is my creation"). His intention was to create a type of character, not a specific individual, and he claimed that Emma was "suffering and weeping at this very moment in twenty villages in France"--that is, there were women everywhere in France who were stifled and bored like Emma.
The writing of Madame Bovary dominated Flaubert's life from 1851 to 1856. On completing the novel, he made no effort to publish it. But at his friends' insistence, he sent it to the prestigious Revue de Paris, which published Madame Bovary in installments in 1857. The editors suggested he cut certain "offensive" passages, but the author refused. He might have reacted differently if he had known what lay ahead. Both Flaubert and his publishers were thrown into court on grounds that the novel was morally and religiously offensive to the public. Ironically, when the defendants won their case, Madame Bovary became a national best-seller.
The book was also recognized as marking a turning point in the history of the novel. The combination of realistic detail, objective narrative technique, harmony of structure, and language chosen to reflect the characters' personalities created a realistic, yet beautiful, picture for the reader. Drawing on both the Romantic emphasis on inner feelings and the Realist's concern for truth, Madame Bovary serves as a bridge between Romanticism and the modern novel.
In Flaubert's next book, Salammbo (1862), he returned to an exotic setting and attempted to recreate the civilization of ancient Carthage. In the mid-1860s, he began his most autobiographical novel, Sentimental Education, which centered on Frederic Moreau's failure in an impossible love affair. During this period, he went back to The Temptation of Saint Anthony, but his solitude was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). After the war, Flaubert finally finished Saint Anthony (1874) and in 1877 published a group of three short stories (Trois Contes). In May 1880, while hard at work on his comic novel Bouvard and Pecuchet, Flaubert collapsed and died.
Readers note that few outward events of importance occur in Madame Bovary, and the same can be said of Flaubert's life. His concentration on the inner lives of his characters--their memories, dreams, and fantasies--might be said to reflect his own obsessions with love, sexuality, and art. The next generation of French novelists--Emile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Guy de Maupassant--considered themselves disciples of this man who has been called "the novelist's novelist." Shortly afterward, in the early twentieth century, the innovative work of the French writer Marcel Proust and the Irish writer James Joyce would be deeply influenced and inspired by Flaubert's techniques of depicting the realities of inner experience.
^^^^^^^^^^MADAME BOVARY: THE PLOT
It's 1830 and fifteen-year-old Charles Bovary is about to enter a new school in the French city of Rouen. The son of a doting mother and a strict father, he has no idea what he wants to do with his life. Urged on by his mother, he eventually enters medical school, passes the exam on his second try, and establishes a practice in the small town of Tostes. His mother arranges a marriage for him with Heloise Dubuc, an ugly widow with a modest dowry.
Charles is a hard-working doctor who enjoys a good reputation among the people of Tostes. One night he's called to set the broken leg of Monsieur Rouault at a nearby farm. He meets Emma Rouault, the daughter of the farm owner, and is captivated by her. Heloise is jealous, but after she dies of a stroke, Charles asks Emma to marry him.
After a big wedding, Charles and Emma return to Tostes. Charles is infatuated with his young wife, who is desperate to experience the passionate love she has read about in romantic novels during her years as a convent student. She has an image of what an ideal marriage should be, but neither Charles nor her life in Tostes lives up to this expectation.
When Emma and Charles are invited to a ball at La Vaubyessard, the estate of a marquis, Emma experiences the kind of life she feels she was born for. This one night--when she dances with a Viscount and mingles with the rich--leaves a lasting impression on her and makes her even more restless with her life at Tostes. As her unhappiness increases, she grows ill. Charles, in consultation with another doctor, decides that a change of scenery might be good for her. By the time they are ready to move to the town of Yonville to start life anew, Emma discovers that she is pregnant.
Yonville isn't much different from Tostes. The only diversion for Emma is Leon Dupuis, a notary's clerk who shares her interest in art and literature.
When Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, it's another disappointment since she was hoping for a boy. In order to compensate for the monotony of her life in Yonville, Emma borrows money from Lheureux, a dry-goods merchant, and treats herself to luxurious items that she feels she deserves.
As time passes, Emma becomes more miserable. Emma and Leon realize that they're in love, but neither is ready for an affair. Finally, Leon moves to Paris, leaving Emma even more unhappy than before.
Rodolphe Boulanger consults Charles over a minor ailment and is sexually attracted to Emma. Deciding that it would be fun to add her to his list of conquests, he makes plans to seduce her. He succeeds, and they become lovers. Every morning Emma rushes to Rodolphe's estate where they make love passionately. Some evenings, after Charles goes to sleep, they meet on a bench in the garden in front of Emma's house. Emma is satisfied for a while, but when Rodolphe begins to take her for granted, she turns back to Charles for satisfaction. Wishing he would do something to make her proud of him, she encourages Charles to perform an experimental operation on Hippolyte, the stable-boy. The operation turns out to be a disaster and another doctor is called in to amputate Hippolyte's leg.
Her husband's failure makes Emma despise him even more. It rekindles her love for Rodolphe whom she asks to take her away from Yonville. For Rodolphe, however, the novelty of the conquest has worn off and he ends the affair. Emma sinks into a depression and stays in bed for two months. When she recovers, Charles takes her to the opera in Rouen, where they happen to meet Leon. After the opera, Charles goes back to Yonville, but Emma stays an extra day and Leon seduces her.
Emma tries to cover up her affair with Leon by telling Charles that she's going to Rouen to take piano lessons. Once a week, she meets Leon in a hotel room. Meanwhile, her debts to Lheureux are mounting, and she's forced to borrow more money in order to repay him.
One day, Lheureux tells her that unless she pays him 8000 francs, all her property will be seized. Desperately, Emma attempts to raise the money, but no one will help her--not even Leon. Emma is slowly losing her mind and can see no solution but to take her own life. She persuades a young pharmacist's assistant who is secretly in love with her to give her a supply of arsenic. Emma swallows the arsenic, writes Charles a letter of explanation, and dies. Charles dies of a broken heart sometime later, and Berthe goes to live with an aunt who sends her to do menial work in a cotton mill.
^^^^^^^^^^MADAME BOVARY: EMMA BOVARY
Emma Bovary is one of the most interesting women characters of world literature. But most readers agree that her character can be interpreted in many different ways. One of the major challenges of Madame Bovary is to figure out what makes her tick.
During Emma's youth in the early nineteenth century, the literary and artistic movement of Romanticism was in full swing. Romantic novels were the rage, and young girls everywhere read about romantic heroines being swept off their feet by dashing young heroes who carried them away to imaginary lands of love. (Romance novels have made a comeback today, and when you see the rows of them in bookstores, you get an idea of their popularity in Emma's time.)
Flaubert loathed the romantic novels which had fed Emma, because their characters indulged in emotional excesses and behaved idiotically. He knew that the women of his time would recognize themselves in Emma, so he used his character as an example of what can result from such excesses.
Since Emma grew up on an isolated farm with few friends, she began life as a lonely child. Then, upon entering the Catholic convent school, she was completely shut off from the external world and turned inward for excitement. During this time, she read dozens of romance novels and formed an image of the "perfect" lover, who would be strong, handsome, athletic, and artistic. Despite her fantasies of this ideal lover, Emma would be happy only in her dreams. Her pleasure lay in the dreaming, not in the reality of having a lover. One of Flaubert's reasons for creating Emma Bovary is to show the wreckage that such dreams can bring when the person tries to impose these dreams on reality. When a character like Emma despises the life around her and tries to live her life as she fantasizes it "should" be, the process can destroy both her and her family. At the end of the novel, not only do Emma and Charles die, but their daughter is condemned to a life in the factories.
Yet there is a difference between Emma Bovary--a woman of romance--and the romantic heroines of the novels. The romantic heroines' lives were rigidly structured, whereas Emma rather naively follows her instincts. The romantic heroines were a swooning, passive lot, while Emma is an aggressive, energetic woman. If the romantic heroines give gifts to their lovers, Emma does this because she thinks one "must" do it, not because she enjoys it. Much of Emma's sexual education came from the romantic novels, and you've probably noticed how difficult it is to change the ideas you were taught in childhood.
Emma's fantasies are based on the double illusion of time and space. On the one hand, she believes that things will get better as time progresses (illusion of time), and on the other she concludes that her boring existence will improve once she reaches the greener pastures of the good life (illusion of space). Neither of these dreams comes true. Clearly her life falls apart instead of improving, and the "green pastures" seem to get browner.
Some readers believe Emma is more intellectual than emotional--a sensual woman, not a passionate one. They claim that she is guided more by imagination than by physical urges, and that she seems more interested in the idea of having a lover than in actually having one. Emma is not a simple woman. On the contrary, there is something extraordinary and rare about her. Whenever Flaubert describes her sensuality, he does so in an almost delicate, religious style. Yet apart from Emma's romantic inclinations, some readers consider her essentially mediocre. She is incapable of understanding things she hasn't experienced, and resembles her Norman peasant ancestors, known for their callous insensitivity. Though she aspires to a life of romance, she is rooted in middle-class materialism and surrounds herself with "objects." Some would say that the struggle between the two is what finally kills Emma Bovary.
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MADAME BOVARY: CHARLES
Charles is portrayed as a dull country doctor whom most readers regard as a fool. He is vulgar, primitive, and almost entirely without passion--like a docile animal who wallows in monotony. His devotion to Emma is as blind as a sheep's, and he contributes almost nothing to her life. He has no original ideas, bungles an attempt at curing a clubfoot, and hasn't the slightest notion that he is being victimized by Emma (adultery), Lheureux (debts), and the law (repossession of property). In fact, this sleepy, awkward man has an almost total absence of character. Some readers consider him a "nothing" who merely exists.
At the beginning of the novel, Charles is a schoolboy tied to his mother's apron strings, too timid to assert himself. It's only with the greatest effort that he's able to pass his medical college exams. After graduation, his mother secures a job for him in Tostes, then arranges his marriage. Do you have the feeling that he has no idea what he wants to do and would just as soon have his mother make all his decisions for him?
His marriage enables him to cut loose from his mother, and everything that happens to Charles from this point on results from his decision to marry Emma. Soon after their marriage, Emma sees him as a burden. Some readers, however, see him as a faithful, loving, and forgiving man whose devotion to Emma is a sign of strength. His honesty and hard work also stand out among the number of unscrupulous characters that people Yonville. As you read the novel, ask yourself whether you sympathize with him, respect him, or judge him to be an imbecile for whom "ignorance is bliss."
MADAME BOVARY: LEON DUPUIS
Leon, a law clerk in a notary's office, meets Emma on her first night in Yonville. He is certainly physically superior to Charles, with ideas that are somewhat fresher. Drawn together by their common interest in music, art, and fashion, he and Emma fall in love. Though Leon is too passive and inexperienced to seduce her physically--and Emma isn't ready for an affair--he does seduce her intellectually and lays the groundwork for their future involvement.
Three years later, when they meet again at the Rouen opera house, Leon has gained experience with the world and women. Acting like most young men of his time, Leon succumbs to Emma, and they begin to meet once a week in a hotel room at Rouen.
Soon after their affair begins, however, Leon seems overpowered by Emma. It's as if their roles have been reversed, with Leon becoming Emma's mistress. Ultimately, she is too much for him. Besides, having an affair with a married woman conflicts with his essentially middle-class values.
If there are two Leons--the naive youth in Yonville and the sophisticate in Rouen--do you think they are essentially the same or different? Do you agree with Emma's final judgment of him as being "incapable of heroism, weak, banal, softer than a woman, and also stingy"?
MADAME BOVARY: RODOLPHE
Rodolphe, Emma's first real lover, is a cold seducer with no conscience. He has successfully used the same seductive approach dozens of times, and Emma falls for it no less than his previous conquests. Rodolphe is to Emma's love life what Lheureux is to her financial affairs. He is a vulture who preys on her weakness and exploits her to his own advantage.
To his credit, Rodolphe occasionally seems like the only character who understands Emma's state of mind. Unlike Leon, he's had extensive experience with women and quickly assesses Emma as being bored with her life. He begins plotting her seduction from the moment he sees her and, like a hunter, will chase Emma until he has no further use for her. For Rodolphe--who is dashing and wealthy, but not particularly talented--the conquest means everything. In this way, he is something of a Don Juan figure who enjoys the seductive process more than the end result. He even keeps a box of mementos from old lovers, to which he adds Emma's letters when their affair is over.
Not long after the affair begins, Rodolphe wonders how he'll escape from it. True to the spirit of Don Juan, his treatment of Emma proves to be inhuman--as inhuman as Emma's treatment of Charles. Emma's blindness to Rodolphe's nature is characteristic of her devotion to dreams at the expense of reality.
MADAME BOVARY: HOMAIS
The Yonville pharmacist (apothecary) loves to hear the sound of his own voice and will talk, with assumed authority, about almost any subject. Though merely a pharmacist, he holds court like a master physician for people who come from all over to benefit from his medical "expertise." He is an immensely powerful and prosperous figure in Yonville who, though not a physician, has more patients than any doctor in the area. While busying himself with everything and intruding in every imaginable matter, Homais considers himself the resident intellectual of Yonville--and in this respect Flaubert paints him as a fool. His conversation, though forceful and often stylish, is filled with commonplace cliches and lies. He says whatever is necessary to portray Yonville in a good light or to convince an audience that his opinion is correct.
Homais represents Flaubert's attack on the new middle-class man, the rising bourgeois who has true faith only in materialistic pursuits, which he covers with the progressive-sounding jargon of scientific ideas. It's he who recklessly encourages Charles to perform the clubfoot operation, hoping that it will bring publicity and money to Yonville--and to himself. Yet he's too frightened to witness or help with the surgery. When the operation proves to be a failure, Homais cowardly refuses to take responsibility for suggesting it.
The turning point in Homais' career is his campaign to have the blind beggar removed from the Yonville-Rouen road. Ironically, Homais' success at having the beggar sent to an asylum is Flaubert's way of ridiculing the pharmacist's smug self-importance. What's more, Homais' success in receiving the prestigious national decoration of the Legion of Honor indicates Flaubert's pessimistic attitude about the direction in which his society was headed. You may disagree with Flaubert's position, however, especially if you see Homais as a vital force in helping society move forward. After all, progress depends on money and scientific discoveries. What is your assessment of the pharmacist?
MADAME BOVARY: LHEUREUX
The dry-goods (household items) merchant and money lender of Yonville is as much a seducer as either Rodolphe or Leon. He lies to Emma and takes advantage of her inexperience with financial matters by enticing her with luxurious items. In Lheureux, Flaubert has created a character who reveals middle-class society in all its vulgarity.
By the time he enters the novel, you realize that surface impressions are not reliable. A cruel monster lurks beneath Lheureux's gentle facade. Not only does he consciously get Emma over her head in debt, but he also attempts to come between Emma and Charles by encouraging Emma to have the power of attorney over Charles' financial affairs. When he sees Leon and Emma together, he uses this information to blackmail her. And when Emma comes to see him one last time, hoping that he'll do something to help her out of her financial difficulties, he slams the door in her face. He's used her, milked her dry, and is completely unconcerned about her fall.
MADAME BOVARY: FATHER BOURNISIEN
The town priest of Yonville, Father Bournisien has a one-dimensional sense of the needs of his parishioners. When Emma goes to him, desperate for help, he can barely understand what she's saying. He insensitively interrupts her plea for help by telling her that he just cured a sick cow. Bournisien represents the corruption of religious values in middle-class society, and in this sense he resembles Homais, with whom he has hilarious arguments.
MADAME BOVARY: BINET
The tax-collector of Yonville, Binet is the fourth--and dullest--of the middle-class types whom Flaubert portrays. His main occupation is to turn out napkin rings on his lathe, a meaningless occupation since he never uses them for anything. They just pile up around his house. Flaubert uses the background noise of Binet's lathe, however, to symbolize the meaninglessness of middle-class life. Its droning sound can be heard when Emma receives the letter from Rodolphe that ends their affair, a signal of the monotonous future that looms ahead.
MADAME BOVARY: MADAME BOVARY, SENIOR
She has suffered for many years because of her husband's infidelities and alcoholism and she takes her frustrations out on her son, trying to guide and dominate his life. At first, she arranges his marriage to Heloise Dubuc, but when Heloise dies and Charles marries Emma, her power over Charles fades. Every time she visits the Bovary household, she and Emma argue, forcing Charles to take sides. Eventually he sides with his wife, and Madame Bovary, Senior, is driven from the picture.
MADAME BOVARY: CHARLES BOVARY, SENIOR
After he's forced to leave his position as a doctor's assistant in the army, he retires to the country with his wife and son. An unfaithful husband and an alcoholic, he raises Charles strictly, but has no real love for him.
MADAME BOVARY: JUSTIN
Homais' nephew, Justin is also his assistant at the pharmacy. Justin is the same age--fifteen or sixteen--as Charles was at the start of the novel. Like Charles, he genuinely loves Emma, and is the only other character in the book who sincerely mourns her death. His role is both tragic and ironic, since it's Justin who shows Emma where to find the arsenic.
MADAME BOVARY: FELICITE
As Emma's maid, Felicite is probably aware of her mistress' infidelities. After Emma dies, she flees Charles' house with her lover and most of Emma's wardrobe.
MADAME BOVARY: DOCTOR CANIVET
Canivet is a doctor from a nearby town whom Charles consults during the operation on the stable boy's clubfoot. Canivet later appears with Doctor Lariviere and tries to save Emma's life. He's only slightly more competent than Charles himself, but nonetheless treats Charles as an inferior.
MADAME BOVARY: DOCTOR LARIVIERE
A doctor of great reputation, his character was probably modeled after Flaubert's father. He arrives in Yonville when Emma is dying, but is too late to save her. Though he appears only briefly at the end of the novel, he's one of the few characters with integrity.
MADAME BOVARY: MONSIEUR ROUAULT
Rouault, Emma's father, is genuinely affected by the death of his wife. A sentimental man, he sends the Bovarys a turkey every year to mark the anniversary of their meeting. At the end, he's too upset by his daughter's death to see his granddaughter, Berthe.
MADAME BOVARY: BERTHE
Charles and Emma's daughter is left in her aunt's care when her parents die. The aunt eventually puts Berthe to work in a cotton mill to earn her living.
MADAME BOVARY: HIPPOLYTE
The stable boy at the Lion d'Or, he allows Charles to perform an experimental operation on his clubfoot. As a result of the disastrous operation, his leg must be amputated.
MADAME BOVARY: SETTING
Both Tostes and Yonville, where the main action of Madame Bovary takes place, are fictitious names of small towns in the Normandy region of northwest France. Both towns were invented by Flaubert, though many readers assume that Yonville was modeled after the town of Ry, where an actual scandal similar to the story of Emma and Charles had taken place. Originally Flaubert had subtitled the novel "Scenes From Provincial Life" to emphasize the importance of the setting as a commentary on French small-town life in the mid-nineteenth century.
Flaubert describes the town of Yonville in great detail, from the "straight street lined with young aspens" to "the emaciated pear trees pressed up against the plastered walls of the houses." It has only a single main street which is lined with stores. Nothing ever changes in this town or in its surrounding landscape that is as flat and monotonous as the lives of its inhabitants. The farmers continually plow their fields, whether the land is fertile or not. Note especially Flaubert's description of the town cemetery (Part Two, Chapter 1).
Flaubert sets a good portion of Part Three in Rouen, the city of his birth. In his day, Rouen, the capital of Normandy, was the third largest city in France, known mostly for its medieval architecture and especially for the Cathedral where Leon and Emma begin their affair. In Madame Bovary the shift from town to city is important to the relatively unsophisticated residents of Yonville. For Homais, a trip to Rouen is a special occasion. During his visit, he makes Leon take him on a tour of the restaurants and cafes, acting like a typical sightseer. On the other hand, you get the impression that Charles prefers small-town life. When he goes to Rouen to buy tickets for the opera, he might as well be in a foreign country. For Emma, city life presents the perfect remedy for her boredom, almost a dream come true. The crowded streets provide her with enough excitement to blot out, at least momentarily, her usual morbid thoughts. For Emma, Rouen represents another imagined escape route from everyday reality. Similarly, Paris, the glittering city that seems paradise to Emma, serves as the backdrop to many of her fantasies.
MADAME BOVARY: THEMES
The following are themes of Madame Bovary.
1. BLINDNESS
The blind beggar whose melancholy song Emma hears just before she dies symbolizes the lack of insight that characterizes the main figures in Madame Bovary. Charles might also be thought of as blind--to Emma's unhappiness and to her unfaithfulness. Even when he discovers Rodolphe's and Leon's letters at the end of the novel, he still refuses to accept the truth. For her part, Emma is unable to see through either her own self-deceiving view of life or the deceptions of others. She idealizes her lovers and is fooled by both the false ideas of Homais and the unscrupulous practices of Lheureux.
2. INADEQUACY AND FAILURE
Madame Bovary is a record of Emma's failure to find a life which corresponds to the vague, romantic notions which she has read about. Each failure leads to another attempt at self-fulfillment. She accepts Charles' marriage proposal, thinking that a life with him will solve the boredom of life on her father's farm. But Charles becomes the symbol of everything inadequate or wrong with her life. The failure of the clubfoot operation represents both Emma's thwarted expectations and Charles' mediocrity.
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3. HUMAN INSENSITIVITY
Most of the relationships in Madame Bovary are marked by an extreme lack of sensitivity and love. Despite her dreams of romance, Emma is not particularly loving and seems to care little for others, even her own child. Others, like Father Bournisien and Homais, talk about humanity but ignore actual human suffering. Husbands and wives like Emma and Charles and the elder Bovarys live in a state of separation, marked by either silence or antagonism. Lack of communication, at best, and cruelty, at worst, replace human sympathy. Even Emma's affairs lack real feeling and mutuality, with each of the partners focused inward instead of on each other.
Some readers take the bleak picture of human relationships drawn by Flaubert as evidence of his fundamental pessimism about life. Others consider it a reflection of his own failure in personal relationships.
4. THE "DISEASE" OF ROMANTICISM
Some readers feel that Madame Bovary is a novel about the dangers of reading romantic novels since Emma's image of romance developed from the books she read at the convent school. These books reflected the more exuberant aspects of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement that focused on the expression of the emotional and imaginative life of the individual. Emma gorged herself on fixed ideas about ideal romance, but since fantasy is rarely like reality, she creates chaos all around her when she imposes these dreams on her daily life. She actually becomes ill after romantic episodes in her life. It's at this point that Romanticism might be considered a disease.
Readers are divided in their interpretation of Flaubert's attitude toward Emma. Some feel that Emma destroys herself and her family by trying to make her dreams reality. Others interpret her romantic feelings as a form of rebellion against the monotony of middle-class life. For these readers even a corrupt form of Romanticism is better than the life-style epitomized by Charles and Homais.
5. ILLUSION VS. REALITY
Emma's dreams do not correspond to the reality of her life. She imagines an ideal life of romance, yet is trapped in a marriage she despises. This reality, however, does not prevent her from imposing the romantic illusion on her life. But in trying to do so, she destroys herself and her family.
6. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF PROVINCIAL LIFE
Flaubert explores the hollowness of nineteenth-century middle-class French life. In his detailed descriptions of the clothing, speech, and work habits of his characters, he portrays--often scornfully--the monotony and hypocrisy of small-town life. Dr. Lariviere, who appears at Emma's deathbed, and Catherine Leroux, the old woman who receives an award at the Agricultural Show for fifty-four years of dedicated service, are among the few characters for whom Flaubert exhibits any genuine sympathy. They've worked hard all their lives without pretense or illusion. Remember that Flaubert came from a middle-class background and that he appreciated the values of hard work and stolid professionalism that these two characters represent.
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MADAME BOVARY: STYLE
Flaubert described Madame Bovary as "a work of anatomy." Recall that Flaubert's father was a doctor and that Flaubert spent much of his childhood in a hospital environment. The precision with which Flaubert brings his characters and their surroundings to life in many ways resembles the work of a scientist. And like a careful scientist, he tries to stick to the objective, concrete facts about his characters in their setting that will reveal their essence.
In a letter written while he was working on Madame Bovary, he referred to the book as "an exercise in style." He thought the actual subjects he was writing about--the people, the story, the places--were unimportant and that the only way to redeem the book was by making it into a great work of art. He did this by trying to bridge the gap between form and content, by attempting to make the words he used merge with the things he was describing. To do this, he searched almost fanatically for the "mot juste," the uniquely perfect word. That is, every word had to be exactly right to reveal the essence of the thing being described. To create a book in this way is a laborious, painstaking job, and it's no wonder it took Flaubert five years to finish Madame Bovary.
Flaubert uses description of physical things--clothes, food, buildings, nature, carriage rides--as another dimension of his story. In many novels, descriptive passages serve as intermissions in the plot, but in Madame Bovary they're an integral part of the story. For example, Flaubert's description of Charles' cap in the opening scene tells you as much about its owner as you might get in several pages of character analysis. In a similar vein, Flaubert conveys the aimlessness of Emma's affair with Leon by taking you on an endless cab ride through the streets of Rouen. The long, winding sentences parallel the drawn-out nature of the trip. The description of Rouen Cathedral at the beginning of Part Three is another example of a passage rich with meaning. And, the many descriptions of food throughout Madame Bovary often are reminders of lust. For example, notice the elaborately detailed description of the feast at Emma and Charles' wedding, where "big dishes of yellow custard, on whose smooth surface the newlyweds' initials had been inscribed in arabesques of sugar-coated almonds, quivered whenever the table was given the slightest knock."
Symbolism is an important stylistic device in Madame Bovary, Note the frequent use of windows to help create a mood. A closed window might symbolize the reality and monotony of small-town life and of the limitations of marriage, while open windows might symbolize dreams and freedom. Other important symbols are the dried wedding bouquets of both Emma and Charles' first wife, as well as the blind beggar.
Word imagery, also, is important. Flaubert uses many liquid images to convey sensuality, boredom, and even death. The liquids take on various forms from oozing, dripping, and melting to oceans, rivers, tides, torrents, and waves. Emma's passion for Rodolphe is referred to as a "river of milk." His fading love is "the water of a river sinking into its bed." There are many related images of dampness, drowning, and boats.
Flaubert's attention to detail and his reliance on description to tell his story have led to the labeling of his style as realistic, or giving an objective impression of real life. He creates this effect both by using a great number of accurate details as building blocks and by carefully selecting and arranging them into a new reality, the world of Madame Bovary. Later in the nineteenth century, writers like Emile Zola and Alphonse Daudet pushed this focus on realistic detail even further by including even the most disgusting aspects of life in their works, usually for the purpose of social criticism.
By selecting and arranging the details, Flaubert hoped to capture the essence of the life he described instead of merely reproducing it. Readers disagree on whether he succeeded. Some see the descriptive passages as plodding and slow, and the accumulation of details as monotonous. As you read such scenes as Emma's wedding in Tostes, the ball at La Vaubyessard, and the agricultural fair in Yonville, you will form your own reactions to Flaubert's realistic style.
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See how the French words "garcon de classe" are rendered as "school servant," "monitor," "janitor," and "handyman" by the translators. (Russell's use of "school servant" and "civvies" indicates that this is a British translation.) Similarly, every page of Madame Bovary differs noticeably from one English version to another. While this might occur in translations of other foreign works, it is especially significant for the work of Flaubert with its emphasis on precision of expression. All translators try, in their various ways, to capture the tone and meaning of the original. Your choice of translation will affect your overall impression of the novel. (To fully experience the results of Flaubert's intense devotion to style, the original is the best source.)
This guide is based on the translation by Lowell Bair (Bantam Books, 1959).
MADAME BOVARY: POINT OF VIEW
The opening pages of Madame Bovary are told from the point of view of one of Charles Bovary's schoolmates in the first person plural ("we"). This "character" disappears midway through the first chapter and the rest of the story is written from the point of view of an omniscient third-person narrator.
Flaubert's aim was to make himself (the writer) disappear from his work, to become, as he said, like "God," who creates but whose creation stands apart without direct evidence of the creator. He also wanted to resemble a scientist who presents his evidence (his characters and their surroundings) in a precise, objective manner--to create an appearance of reality. One of the techniques that Flaubert uses to create the impression of objective reality is the style indirect libre (free, indirect style), indirect narrative that makes the narrator seem "absent." For example, instead of saying, "Emma wanted some fruit" or "Emma thought some fruit would be nice," the writer merely says, "Some fruit will be nice." By dropping the real subject of the sentence, Emma, it is implied in an indirect way that the idea of eating fruit originated with Emma, and that her direct thoughts are being expressed.
This intermittent use of "absent" narration creates an illusion of objectivity and detachment by pushing the character into the foreground as the narrator recedes into the background. At the same time, it allows an intense close-up focus on the characters and especially on Emma, who is the chief object of the narrative. You will learn about her actions through the traditional third-person approach, but you will also be able better to read her thoughts, feel her feelings, and catch her reactions as a result of the indirect style. Although the focus occasionally shifts to Charles, Leon, Rodolphe or others, Emma's presence remains central.
Despite Flaubert's attempt to distance himself from his characters objectively, his involvement with Emma seems so deep that many readers see her as a "self-portrait" of the author. They say that is why, when asked who Emma was based on, Flaubert usually replied "Madame Bovary, c'est moi!" (I am Madame Bovary!).
MADAME BOVARY: FORM AND STRUCTURE
Madame Bovary is divided into three sections, each exploring a crucial part of Emma Bovary's life and her three attempts to find romantic fulfillment in three different but neighboring locales.
Part One introduces you to Charles and Emma and describes their early married life in Tostes. Charles is the focus of the first few chapters, and it is through his eyes that Emma is first described. Her past is then revealed (by contrasting her convent experiences with Charles' life in medical school). Emma's hopes that Charles will be the romantic fulfillment of her convent dreams are disappointed. The two contrasting focal events of Part One are the low-class wedding and the aristocratic ball at the chateau of La Vaubyessard. The ball gives Emma a real taste of the life-style about which she has only dreamed and tempts her to look outside her marriage for happiness.
Part Two details the life of the couple in the dull town of Yonville as Emma embarks on her second attempt to find the romance of her dreams and escape the dreariness of marriage. Flaubert introduces the backdrop of middle-class small-town society against which Emma's story will be played. The agricultural show--with its counterpoint between Emma and Rodolphe's romantic conversation and the mundane details of rural life--is the focal event of this section. Emma's romantic hopes are again frustrated, this time by Rodolphe's eventual rejection. Part Two closes with the introduction of a third and new hope for the future; Emma and Leon (with whom she had been infatuated on first arriving in Yonville) meet again in Rouen.
Part Three centers on Emma's increasing desperation and her love affair with Leon, which is carried on primarily in Rouen. Emma's total rejection of her married life and any notion of respectability leads to her own and her family's ruin. The final rejection of her romantic hopes, in an ugly scene of death by poisoning, contrasts pointedly with the description, early in Part Three, of Emma and Leon's meeting in the Rouen Cathedral. The two focal points of this section are Emma's flights into Rouen for romance and her steady decline into debt through her irresponsible financial dealings with the unscrupulous merchant Lheureux. Madame Bovary closes, as it had opened, with Charles, first with his hopes and last with his despair and death.
In this three-part structure, centered on Emma's repeated attempts to find in reality the fulfillment of her chronic, romantic dreaming, the action is less concerned with the chronological advancement of events than with presenting each part as an "act" complete with its own setting and set of relationships. Within these acts are a succession of scenes, many of which reverberate against one another like the themes in a piece of music. And, across the scenes are repeated images and symbols, as well as the technique of "double action" that creates a counterpoint of parallel, contrasting actions within the same scene.
Almost every page of Madame Bovary contains something--a word, description, action, memory, piece of clothing, or object--that relates it to another part of the book. The scenes at Emma's wedding are meant to be compared to the ball at La Vaubyessard. The seduction of Emma by Rodolphe parallels her seduction by Leon. The agricultural fair and the Bovarys' arrival at the Lion d'Or inn both contain strands of contrasting conversations and situations that act as counterpoint in the general orchestration of the scene. The charred black paper "butterflies" that float from Emma's burning wedding bouquet are recalled later on by the white paper "butterflies" that Emma lets fly from the carriage during the ride when she gives herself to Leon.
Some readers compare Madame Bovary to the carefully constructed edifice of an architect or engineer; some compare it to a painting; others see it as a symphony, and still others think it resembles a play. Whichever analogy you think most appropriate, you will find it hard to ignore the way almost all the elements of the novel fit together. You may find that Flaubert's attention to structure and detail detracts from the story and makes it move too slowly. You may think everything a bit too controlled to fully convey the passion and reality of the characters. You may feel that the devotion to accurate description creates monotony. But you cannot fail to admire the way Flaubert has put together the pieces of an entire society over a span of almost twenty years and at the same time painted a complex inner portrait of an unforgettable woman.
Compared with other nineteenth-century novels, Madame Bovary contains relatively little action. A good deal of the activity takes place in the minds of the characters. As you read, note the way Flaubert shifts back and forth between external reality (what the characters do and say) and internal reality (their memories and dreams). The dreams are, in fact, an important part of the "action" in the book.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 1
The book opens with a glimpse of Charles Bovary as a shy fifteen-year-old on his first day at a new school. It's an experience you can probably identify with--being in a new place for the first time, aware that everyone is watching and waiting to see what you're like. Charles' clothes are too tight for him, and he's too nervous even to hang up his cap like his fellow students. When the teacher asks him his name, he can barely open his mouth, and in his confusion he finally shouts out "Charbovari" (a country hick's way of saying Charles Bovary). You also see that his attempt to be a serious student saves him from being placed in a lower grade, even though he doesn't seem particularly intelligent.
NOTE: These opening pages are told from the point of view of one of Charles Bovary's fellow students. This anonymous narrator disappears midway through the first chapter. The abrupt shift in point of view is one of Flaubert's many innovations as a novelist. He will use this first-person narrator ("we") only at the beginning. For most of the novel, he uses the style indirect libre (free, indirect style) in order to create the illusion of an absent narrator. For example, instead of saying, "Emma wanted some fruit," he will say, "Some fruit would be nice." This implies--indirectly--that the idea of eating fruit originated with Emma, not with Flaubert. This "absent" narrator creates an illusion of objectivity and detachment. You will come across many examples of this style as you read.
In a flashback, you learn about Charles' childhood and the relationship between his parents. His father had begun his career as an army doctor but was involved in a scandal and was dismissed. He married Charles' mother for her money, but ended up squandering most of it on women and alcohol. After their money had run out, the couple moved to a small farm where they tried, with little success, to settle down peacefully.
At first, Charles' mother tolerated her husband's affairs, but after a few years she became bitter and disillusioned. When Charles was born, she focused her hopes on him and fantasized that he'd become a successful lawyer or engineer. Charles' youth was ultimately dominated by his mother--a foreshadowing of what his marriages to Heloise and Emma would be like.
NOTE: PROVINCIAL SETTING Notice that Flaubert gives you many details about the rural setting in which Madame Bovary takes place. Charles grows up in the country, then attends secondary school in Rouen, the main city of the province of Normandy to the northwest of Paris. The lower middle-class characters (members of the petit [small] bourgeoisie) represent what Flaubert detested most in life: smugness, vulgarity, greed, and ignorance. They aspired to money, power, and respectability--not to art or beauty.
After attending the lycee (high school) in Rouen--where the novel begins--Charles enrolls in medical school. He is a mediocre student and is overwhelmed by the amount of work required of him. Not surprisingly, he fails his final exams, but his mother blames this on the examiner and refuses to face up to her son's inadequacies. Charles returns to medical school, works harder, and finally manages to pass the tests.
His mother finds him a position as a doctor in the town of Tostes. She also finds him a wife--the ugly, middle-aged widow, Heloise Dubuc, whose main asset is her small yearly income. Heloise is a dominating shrew--much like Charles' mother--who forces her tastes on her young husband. Because of her jealousy, she spies on him when women patients come to his office.
NOTE: CHARLES BOVARY Charles is a weak-willed person who's easily controlled by other people, especially women. He's not very bright and must work hard at everything in order to succeed. He seems to have no particular interest in medicine, yet he becomes a doctor--no doubt to please his mother. Similarly, he has little feeling for Heloise, yet marries her anyway. Would you marry someone you didn't love in order to please your parents? Or would you enter a career just because someone else wanted it for you? Since Charles gives in on both accounts, what conclusions can you draw about his character?
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 2
In the middle of the night, a messenger arrives at Charles' house with the news that a nearby farmer, Monsieur Rouault, has broken his leg. Heloise thinks it's too dangerous to travel by night, so Charles sets out at dawn on the fifteen-mile trip. Half-asleep, he recalls his life as a student and compares it to his present life as a doctor and married man.
NOTE: INTERIOR MONOLOGUE In Flaubert's work, it is usual to see memories of objects and people from the distant past interacting with events of the present. Flaubert was one of the first novelists who tried to show how people think--the way one thought connects with another. This analysis of the mental process had an important influence on many twentieth-century writers, especially Marcel Proust and James Joyce, who both developed further the technique known as interior monologue or stream of consciousness. As mentioned earlier, Flaubert uses an indirect narrative approach to take you inside the minds of his characters. He describes their thoughts and reactions without directly stating who is doing the thinking or reacting, so that it seems as if the character has replaced the narrator. This is the process that occurs as Charles travels to the farm. From what you already know about him, do you think he would express his thoughts in the same language if he was reminiscing directly in the first person?
Arriving at the farm--called Les Bertaux--Charles is met by Rouault's beautiful young daughter, Emma. He sets Rouault's leg without any problems, and notices Emma's hands as she helps him with the bandages. Her eyes look straight at him "with naive boldness," and Charles is struck by her elegance.
Over the next few months, Charles visits the Rouault household regularly, even though Monsieur Rouault is fully recovered. Heloise, suspicious about Charles' new happiness, inquires about Rouault's daughter. Consumed by jealousy, she makes her husband promise never to visit the farm again. But this backfires on her since Charles quickly becomes aware of his infatuation.
NOTE: Flaubert introduces you to Emma but doesn't tell you much about her. What you know is filtered through the impressions of Charles and Heloise. By introducing the sensual Emma into Charles' dull world, Flaubert sets up one of the many contrasts that will echo and reverberate throughout Madame Bovary. Bovary's early dreams of romance with Emma will be echoed by her dreams of a romantic marriage with him. Also, the contrast between the shrewish Heloise and Emma will be recalled when Emma replaces Heloise and turns out to be different from this initial impression she makes both on you and on Charles. As you read, notice Flaubert's skill in presenting Emma. With each chapter, you will learn a little more, and the different aspects of her character will gradually come together into a complete portrait.
Later that spring, the notary who had handled Heloise's estate embezzles the remainder of her money. Charles' parents are outraged since Heloise's main attraction was her modest income. A violent quarrel takes place between Charles' parents and his wife, and a week later, Heloise collapses and dies suddenly in the front yard.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 3
Monsieur Rouault consoles Charles by describing his own feelings of despair at the loss of his wife. He advises Charles to continue visiting Les Bertaux. But Charles isn't really suffering. Though he occasionally thinks about Heloise, he has begun to enjoy a feeling of freedom--the first in his life since he is no longer controlled by a domineering woman.
One afternoon Charles arrives at the farm and finds Emma alone in the kitchen. The shutters are closed, and he watches as she tilts a glass of liqueur to her lips. He dwells on the sensual way in which she licks the bottom of the empty glass. Later, as he returns home, Charles tries to imagine how it would feel to be married to someone like Emma. It is not long before he realizes that he is falling in love with her.
NOTE: WINDOW SYMBOLISM Flaubert uses windows as a symbol of freedom or restraint, depending on whether they are open or closed. When Charles visits Emma, she is seated in the kitchen with the shutters closed. She's shut in and stifled with her monotonous country life. When Charles gets up in the middle of the night--too excited by his thoughts of Emma to fall asleep--he sits by the open window and watches the stars, an indication of the promise that his dreams open up for him. As you read, notice how Flaubert uses windows to reflect the emotional states of his characters.
Since Charles has become fond of Emma and since she is of no use around the farm, Rouault sees no reason why she should not marry the young doctor. Preparations for the marriage will be made during the winter, and the ceremony will take place in the spring. Inspired by her romantic novels, Emma would like to marry at midnight, by torchlight, but her father insists on a traditional country wedding feast, which will last three days.
NOTE: EMMA'S CHARACTER What do you know of Emma's character at this point? From her father you learn that she's too clever to spend her life on a farm. She has an interest in music, but no particular talent. It is suggested that she has a romantic nature; both her sensuality and tastes (for a torchlit wedding) are placed into contrast with her dull surroundings. After reading the next three chapters, compare the Emma you will know then with the young girl about to marry. What hints has Flaubert already given to prepare you for the Madame Bovary you will get to know? Whose view of Emma have you been seeing up to this point? Watch, as you read, to see when and how this early portrait changes.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 4
The guests arrive at Charles and Emma's wedding from as far as twenty-five miles away. For a country wedding, it seems like a lavish affair. Flaubert's interest in concrete details can be seen in his intricate descriptions of the women in their city-style dresses, the men in tail coats, frock coats, and so on. Everyone has fun except for Charles' mother, who is angry about not being included in the wedding preparations. After two days of wedding parties, the young couple returns to Tostes.
NOTE: REALISM Realism is often defined as an artistic representation that is visually accurate. Though Flaubert hated the term--and once declared that "it was in hatred of realism that I undertook this book"--he was a master at describing things clearly and accurately. His chief goal, however, was not to reproduce a photographically correct picture of life. He wanted to create a beautiful book (art) out of the trivial, often ugly, lives of mediocre people in a nondescript section of France. Flaubert rejected Realism as a literary style that reveled in detail for its own sake. But he used detail as the building blocks of his beautiful structure.
In a few paragraphs describing the wedding feast he portrays the spirit of social life in nineteenth-century provincial France. Though you're reading an English translation, see if Flaubert lives up to his ideal that every word must capture the essence of the thing being described. Read closely, for example, the paragraph about food; note the detail with which every aspect of the meal is described. Does the description of the food and other details tell you anything else about the wedding? About the characters? About the social setting?
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 5
Charles takes Emma to her new home, and Flaubert describes its contents in detail. To her horror, Emma finds Heloise's dried wedding bouquet, which Charles had carelessly left in the bedroom. This is the first indication that he will underestimate the intensity of his wife's emotions. After Charles removes this dead symbol of his first marriage that foreshadows the fate of his second, Emma wonders ominously what will become of her own bouquet after she dies. (In Chapter 9 the symbolism of the wedding bouquet will become more clear.)
Emma's disillusionment with Charles begins almost immediately. The feast, the wedding night, and the dead bouquet--everything seems to be going wrong. Her desire to make changes in the household is the first sign of that restlessness and desire for change that characterizes her dream-soaked nature and foreshadows trouble ahead.
Charles is infatuated with his wife and, in typical bourgeois style, sees her as a possession. But he has no curiosity about what's going on beneath the surface, what she's thinking and feeling, and whether she's truly happy. You catch a glimpse of the real Emma for the first time when Flaubert takes you into her mind. She had assumed she was in love with Charles before marrying him, but has not yet begun to experience the "bliss" or "ecstasy" which she has read about in the romantic novels. Love should bring happiness, and because she doesn't feel happy, she wonders if it was a mistake to marry Charles.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 6
Until now, you've mainly seen Emma through the eyes of others. In this chapter, Flaubert breaks into the story of Emma's marriage to take you back to her childhood and adolescence. Do you think this technique of gradually revealing Emma's character is an effective one? Does it make you want to know more about her?
At thirteen, Emma had been sent to a convent school by her father. She took her religious duties seriously, enjoyed the company of the nuns, and studied her catechism diligently. But she was most aroused by the aspects of the convent atmosphere, its perfumed altars, the cool water of the holy-water fonts, and the radiance of the candles. In the sermons, phrases like "heavenly lover" and "eternal wedlock" took on a meaning that was more emotional and erotic than spiritual. As a result, she invented sins so that she could linger close to the priest in the intimacy of the confession booth as long as possible.
NOTE: Keep an eye on the connection between sexual and religious imagery and symbolism. It will play a special role later in the novel when Emma meets Leon in the Cathedral in Rouen. And the convent imagery of mixed sexuality and piety will be recalled in Emma's deathbed scene. The suggestion of a relationship between carnal desire and religion was one of the main reasons that the author and publishers of Madame Bovary were prosecuted in the French courts for an "outrage against public morals and religion." They were acquitted but the case caused a public furor.
Once a week an old spinster came to the convent to mend the linen. She let the older girls read the romantic novels that she carried in her pockets, and these books filled Emma's mind with images of lovers meeting their mistresses in lonely country houses. Emma developed a passion for the historical romances of the famous Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott. She imagined herself living in an old castle, looking out a window as her lover galloped across the countryside.
NOTE: ROMANTICISM In Madame Bovary, Flaubert attempted to describe Romanticism in its most extreme and degenerate form. He wanted to show how the original idea of Romanticism had been corrupted. As a child, Emma fed her sensitive nature by reading popular novels that were themselves a corrupt form of the great Romantic literature of the early nineteenth century. In this chapter, Emma is portrayed as being hopelessly taken with romantic notions--a young girl who had read Paul and Virginia, the sentimental novel that was immensely popular in the early nineteenth century. Her dreamworld merged with the reality of her life in the convent, and offered her a way of surviving the monotony of that existence. She identified strongly with the sentiments of the romantic heroines. But the adult Emma will do something that these heroines would never have dared to do--she will seek sexual satisfaction outside her marriage and will indulge her fantasies, despite the consequences.
At the convent, Emma received news of her mother's death. This was her first true loss, and she wept for several days. She consoled herself with sentimental poetry, feeling that she'd finally attained the role of the romantic heroine. But after a while, she became bored with the unhappiness of such a heroine's life and rebelled against the strictness of convent life. With that, her father removed her from the school.
NOTE: Do you think Flaubert is being satirical in his description of Emma's reaction to her mother's death? In your opinion, does Emma care deeply about her mother's death? Or does she only behave as she believes a romantic heroine would? What evidence can you find for your opinion?
Back at her father's farm, Emma enjoyed managing the servants but soon grew tired of country life. When Charles arrived on the scene, she realized that there was still something missing in her life. Love and romance were supposed to make one feel ecstatic, yet Emma felt nothing but restlessness and boredom.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 7
Not surprisingly, life in Tostes doesn't measure up to Emma's expectations of the ideal honeymoon. She imagines traveling in the mountains, visiting countries with exotic names, and spending nights in a villa where she and her husband can gaze at the stars, hold each other's hands, and talk about the future. In short, she sees a wide gap between her life with Charles and that of a romantic heroine.
Emma realizes that she can never discuss her yearnings with Charles. He is dull, insensitive, and stupid. His conversation is "as flat as a sidewalk" and he's unaware of life's refinements. So Emma spends her days playing the piano, drawing, and writing letters to Charles' patients who have not paid their bills. Charles idolizes his wife and has no idea that she isn't happy with their life.
NOTE: THE GAP WIDENS From now on, the more Charles loves and grows dependent on Emma, the more she will withdraw from him. She does not admire a man who is content with his station in life. She is ambitious, restless, and anxious for perpetual change. Once she achieves a desired goal, she wants to move on to something new. Can you sympathize with her? Or is this a sign of immaturity and a distorted sense of reality? Isn't she really happiest when longing and suffering?
In an effort to spark romance into their marriage, Emma recites love poems to Charles in the garden--but to no avail. She begins to doubt Charles' love for her since he embraces her only at certain times of the day. Not all men, she concludes, are like Charles, and perhaps she should have waited for Mr. Right to come along. She longs for the passionate and fiery advances of a lover, and wonders what kinds of husbands her former classmates have.
Finally, something exciting happens. The Bovarys receive an invitation to a ball at La Vaubyessard, the chateau of the Marquis d'Andervilliers, one of Charles' former patients. The couple sets out for the Marquis' residence in their modest buggy and arrives at nightfall.
NOTE: FLAUBERT'S REALISM Compare the description of La Vaubyessard with that of Emma and Charles' wedding. This will help you appreciate Flaubert's realistic, almost scientific, writing style. The people in these scenes represent two distinctly different social groups and can be thought of as specimens being examined under a microscope.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 8
The Marquis greets the Bovarys at the door of his splendid chateau, La Vaubyessard. It is filled with art and expensive furnishings, and the guests are members of the aristocracy. For Emma, being in the company of great wealth is like a dream come true. She drinks champagne and gazes in awe at the pomegranates and pineapples, neither of which she's ever tasted before.
NOTE: Emma thinks that she fits perfectly into these luxurious surroundings. Her observations about the noblemen, in particular, make them seem so desirable and exquisite in comparison to the others. But there is something else about them that Emma may be aware of but doesn't cause her to reflect. They possess "the special brutality that comes from half-easy triumphs which test one's strength and flatter one's vanity--the handling of thoroughbred horses, the pursuit of loose women." This describes fairly well Rodolphe, Emma's first lover, and it foreshadows the nature of their relationship and the way that her romantic conceptions will prevent her from distinguishing between herself and a "loose" woman.
Emma seems embarrassed by the provincial Charles and pushes aside his attempted affections. During the dance, Emma watches a young lady pass an amorous note to a possible suitor. It's like a scene right out of a romantic novel, and she revels in the atmosphere. For a brief moment, time stops and Emma finds her world. At three in the morning, she's still on the dance floor, waltzing with a gentleman known as the Viscount, who spins Emma around dizzily until the hem of her gown catches on his trousers.
Where is Charles all this time? More and more he fades from the foreground and ceases to interest Emma. By not mentioning Charles, Flaubert brings a partial death to his character. In Emma's mind, her new husband is already a thing of the past.
Charles has spent the night watching people play whist (a card game) without being able to make sense of the game. With relief, he climbs into bed, but Emma stares out the window at the rain.
On returning to Tostes, Emma seethes with anger about her lowly life-style. She is frustrated by Charles' boorish manner and believes she deserves better. In a fit of rage, she fires a maid who has been faithful to Charles. Though Emma tries to rekindle the memories of the ball at La Vaubyessard, they soon fade into a blur.
NOTE: ON EMMA Emma's dreams have--for a moment--become reality in this chapter. She mingles with aristocrats and carries it off quite well. Emma possesses the qualities necessary for success in that world, and this is made clear in her symbolic dance with the Viscount. But a close examination of this world as described at the ball, shows that the aristocrats are not really superior to their middle-class counterparts except for their surface charm, wealth, and manners. Emma will find this out through her experience with Rodolphe.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 9
Now that Emma has tasted of her dreamworld, she finds Tostes unbearable. She has fantasies of opulent parties attended by noblemen and aristocrats, and in the process she becomes even more critical of Charles. Having never been to Paris, Emma daydreams about the Viscount and about the excitement of the capital, where everyone is surely in love. She devours travel books and fashion magazines, along with the anti-middle-class novels of Honore de Balzac and the Romantic works of George Sand, the pseudonym of the famous, flamboyant, and free-living woman writer of the early nineteenth century.
Charles, whose limited vision keeps him from understanding Emma's needs, seems unaware of her state of mind. He subscribes to a medical journal in an effort to keep up with his field. But whenever he begins to read after dinner, he falls asleep within five minutes. Emma stares at him critically from across the room, wishing she'd married someone more exceptional. Ironically, however, the people of Tostes like his attentive bedside manner. Could it be that he has many positive features which neither Emma nor Flaubert want to acknowledge? Would these features (related to his plodding sense of professional duty and perhaps to his basic kindness) be of interest to someone like Emma? One of the questions that Madame Bovary brings up in a general way is the bleak picture of human nature that the characters represent. By making Charles fairly decent but horribly mediocre and dull, is Flaubert giving decency a chance?
Emma waits anxiously for a change in her life, but nothing happens. As her unhappiness increases, she stops playing the piano and abandons her sketchbooks and sewing. Even her novels leave her cold. She begins to neglect her household duties and finally gets sick. Charles, not being a particularly good judge of nonphysical illness, assumes that something about the town of Tostes is causing Emma's illness, so he takes her to one of his old medical professors, who recommends a change of scenery.
NOTE: THE ROMANTIC "ILLNESS" Flaubert explores Emma's state of mind in great detail. This is an important chapter, coming directly after the ball at La Vaubyessard and at the close of Part One. Flaubert demonstrates the influence of emotions on physical health and describes Emma's life almost completely in terms of her dreams and expectations. One of Flaubert's intentions is to depict the extremes of Romanticism and to show how adherence to the ideals of romantic heroines can lead to despair. You might empathize easily with Emma in her boring, rural surroundings. Perhaps you can also identify with her increasing dependence on the world of dreams. The problem with Emma is that her dreams do not nourish happiness; they merely provoke and prolong her unhappiness. Their realization, however, may not be any better than their frustration. It may be that their unattainability is the very cause of their potency.
Charles doesn't want to leave Tostes, but he'll do anything for the sake of Emma's health. He learns that the town of Yonville-l'Abbaye needs a doctor, so he decides to move. What does this self-sacrifice tell you about Charles' character? Do you see it as a weakness or a strength?
While preparing for the move, Emma pricks her finger on her bridal bouquet. Disgusted, she throws it into the fire and watches it burn. By the time they're ready to leave Tostes and start a new life, Emma discovers that she's pregnant.
NOTE: THE SYMBOLIC BOUQUET The description of the burning bouquet, with its "burnt" berries and "shriveled" paper "black butterflies," symbolizes everything that's wrong with Emma's life. It is a physical reminder of her union with Charles Bovary. Just as its flowers have withered and died, so too have Emma's hopes of realizing her dreams in married life with a country doctor. Her pregnancy seems, at this low point in Emma's life, just another unpleasant reminder of her ties to the reality of marriage. The departure for a new town, Yonville-l'Abbaye, and the imminence of a new life don't seem to hold much attraction for Emma. They are not the stuff of which her kind of dreams are made.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 1
From his realistic description of Yonville, Flaubert makes it clear that this town is no better than Tostes. It contains only one street, lined with a few shops and the only sight that might catch your eye is Homais' pharmacy, with its colored glass jars in the front window.
On the evening of the Bovarys' arrival, they meet Madame Lefrancois, the proprietor of the Lion d'Or inn, Homais, the pharmacist (apothecary), Binet, the tax-collector, and Father Bournisien, the town priest. Homais and the priest argue about religion. Homais, a rising middle-class citizen, professes to be a free-thinker who believes in his own personal god as opposed to the traditional God of Christianity. In the course of his argument, he attempts to link himself to all the advanced thinkers of his day, a sign that Homais believes in the cult of science and progress.
NOTE: Homais is a caricature of the middle-class individual whom Flaubert despised. Just as the Romanticism which Emma has read about stands for a form of Romanticism fashionable in early nineteenth-century France, so Homais typifies the middle-class mentality of his time and its intellectual pretensions. He's overconfident and filled with a lot of ill-digested knowledge. As you read his speeches, however, ask yourself whether his ideas amount to anything substantial.
You're also introduced to Monsieur Lheureux, the dry-goods (household items) merchant who was riding in the same carriage as Charles and Emma. At the same time that Emma gets increasingly involved in romantic adventures, she gets increasingly involved in financial dealings with Lheureux. Her blindness to his unscrupulousness will have dire consequences for her.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 2
The Bovarys--along with their maid, Felicite--descend from the carriage and enter the inn. Across the room, Leon Dupuis, a young clerk in the office of the town notary, watches Emma. Every night Leon arrives at the inn for dinner, hoping he'll meet a traveler with whom he can spend the night talking. In this sense, Leon is very much like Emma, in that he is always waiting for something new and exciting to happen.
During dinner, Homais tries to impress Charles with his knowledge of medicine and science. Leon and Emma strike up a conversation, and it's immediately clear, as they discuss their love for the ocean, mountain scenery, and music that they share the same romantic ideas. During the conversation, Leon rests his foot familiarly on the rung of Emma's chair, and for a moment everyone else in the room fades into the background.
NOTE: The twin conversations of Charles with Homais and Emma with Leon are an example of the counterpoint that Flaubert uses to underscore contrasts. Compare the two conversations. On the one hand, Flaubert makes fun of the shallowness of middle-class knowledge and its devotion to the concrete. On the other, he satirizes the Romantic concern with nature and dramatic situations. The characters are mouthing second-hand ideas rather than expressing themselves.
It's getting late, however, and time for Charles and Emma to go to their new home, which is only about fifty yards from the inn. As Emma lies in bed that night, she remembers all the different places where she has slept, other than her father's farm--the convent, Tostes, the night at La Vaubyessard, and now here. She falls asleep with the thought that her life won't be any worse than it was before, and with the hope that it will be better. In this regard, her conversation with Leon seems like a good omen.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 3
Her first morning in Yonville, Emma wakes up and sees Leon in the town square, on his way to work. She nods to him and quickly closes the window. What does this gesture tell you about her feelings for him?
NOTE: Remember the symbolism of the window. When Emma sees Leon through the open window, it is a sign that she is looking for more than Charles can offer. By shutting the window, Emma closes off her sudden feelings for Leon. She has not yet begun to break through the moral and social pressures working against her--that is, against adultery--but there is no question that her body has begun to give her signs of mounting tension.
Leon's conversation with Emma the night before was apparently an important occasion for him. Never before has he spoken to a woman for such a long time, nor has he been able to express himself so eloquently on such a wide range of subjects.
As the Bovarys settle down in Yonville, Homais proves to be a helpful neighbor. You learn that he's been practicing medicine in the back of his pharmacy without a diploma, and since this is a violation of the law, he's anxious to make friends with the doctor so that Charles will defend him to the authorities if necessary.
Charles isn't particularly happy in his new surroundings. He has few patients and spends most of his time doing odd jobs around the house. He's worried about money, but that doesn't prevent him from taking pleasure in Emma's pregnancy. Emma is disappointed that she doesn't have enough money to buy fancy clothing for the child. She wants a little boy, feeling that males have more opportunities than females in the world. When she gives birth to a girl, she turns away and faints.
NOTE: For Emma, pregnancy and giving birth are interesting as new experiences, but otherwise they seem to have little meaning. There is no place in a life of romance for taking care of a baby, and some readers feel that she senses the child will tie her down even further to a life she despises. For Charles, on the other hand, the birth of the child is the crowning achievement of his life.
Emma decides to name her daughter Berthe, remembering that at the ball she'd heard the Marquis call a woman by that name. As a new mother, Emma enjoys the attention of all the townspeople, but otherwise remains unsatisfied. One day, Emma feels the need to see her daughter, who's living at the house of a wet-nurse, a woman employed to breastfeed another's baby. On the way she meets Leon who accompanies her. By evening, all of Yonville knows that Emma and Leon spent the afternoon together.
NOTE: The people of Yonville feel that Emma, as a married woman, has "compromised herself" by walking with a man who isn't her husband. Emma's values are contrasted with the narrow-mindedness of middle-class small-town people, and her scorn for public opinion foreshadows her future infidelities.
At the wet-nurse's house, Emma picks up her child and begins to sing to her, but the child throws up on the collar of her dress--an act that horrifies Emma. Is Emma's attitude toward her child consistent with what you know of her personality?
As they walk back to town, Emma and Leon talk about a company of Spanish dancers that is coming to perform in Rouen. Their words seem less important, however, than the emotions between them. Emma returns home and Leon, unable to work, climbs to the top of a hill at the edge of the forest and thinks about how different Emma is from all the other people in Yonville. Despite his excitement, the idea of pursuing their intimacy frightens him and offends his middle-class sensibility.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 4
Emma spends the winter dreaming idly at her window. Life in Yonville, it seems, is no more interesting than life in Tostes, and the highlight of her day is a glimpse of Leon as he walks from his office to the inn. In the evenings, Homais visits while the Bovarys are eating dinner. Charles and the pharmacist discuss Charles' patients, and Homais tries to impress them with his knowledge of current events and politics.
Every Sunday, Charles and Emma attend a small gathering at the pharmacist's house. This is the major social event of the week. While Charles and Homais play dominoes, Emma and Leon turn the pages of the latest fashion magazines and recite poems to one another. Though there's an obvious bond between the two, Charles notices nothing improper.
NOTE: Flaubert characterizes Charles as a person "little inclined to jealousy." It's one thing not to be jealous, but another to be blind to what's happening around you. Charles has so little understanding of his wife that he can't imagine she isn't completely happy with their marriage. Consequently, he can't see Leon or any other man as a threat. Blindness and an inability to communicate are two of the major themes of the novel. It might be interesting to take each of the major characters and see in what way they're afflicted with these two conditions.
From her window, Emma can see Leon tending his garden. She makes him a wool bedspread, and everyone in the town concludes that she must be his mistress. What do you think Emma has in mind by giving Leon this gift? Some readers feel that a bedspread is something a mother might give a son, not a gift between lovers. Other readers feel that the gift is Emma's attempt to publicize her feelings for Leon, and by so doing fly in the face of public opinion. Some regard the bedspread as a symbol of Emma's desire to make Leon's bed her own. Leon is confused by her act of generosity and tries to write letters to Emma declaring his love, but always tears them up.
NOTE: Held in by the restraints of her time, as well as by her fears and inexperience, Emma is forced to communicate her emotions for Leon in symbolic words and gestures. Again, the window plays a role in highlighting her need to look beyond the stifling world of Yonville and Bovary. She wants something very deeply--love--but does not know how to attain it. At this point she is still a simple country girl with the potential for sophistication, but without the experience to act on her own desires. She is not even sure about them, since her reading has led her to believe that love comes suddenly "with great thunderclaps and flashes of lightning."
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 5
One Sunday in February, the Bovarys, Leon, Homais and his children, and Justin, the pharmacist's assistant, take an excursion to see a spinning mill that's being built on the outskirts of Yonville. Homais, as usual, talks at length about how important the mill is going to be but no one's particularly interested. The trip gives Emma a chance to compare Charles and Leon. While her husband is the image of the country bumpkin, Leon has big blue eyes turned toward the clouds--the vision of a young prince.
NOTE: Homais is excited about the new spinning mill because to him it's a symbol of industrial progress. Emma has gone with them for the opportunity of being with Leon. As in the scene at the inn, Flaubert divides the characters into two distinct pairs; Homais and Charles stand for the advancement of middle-class values, while Emma and Leon represent the values of Romanticism. The scene also presents a contrast between ugliness (industrial life) and beauty (romantic love).
Alone in her house the night after this excursion, Emma fantasizes about Leon and remembers the way he looked at her that afternoon. She concludes that he must be in love with her. The next day, she receives the first of many visits from the shady Lheureux, the dry-goods merchant who is always stooped in a bent position that evidences his crooked character.
He brags about his contacts with all the leading shopkeepers in Rouen and about his ability to get Emma anything she needs. He shows her his latest wares, and when she decides not to buy anything, he says that money isn't important--that she can pay him any time. He even offers to lend her money if she needs it.
NOTE: This is the beginning of the financial disaster that will ruin Emma and Charles. The credit extended to Emma is a sign of Lheureux's middle-class desire to exploit people for all they are worth. His name, incidentally, means "the Happy One."
When Leon visits that evening, Emma goes out of her way to praise her husband, further confusing the young clerk, who now assumes that she must not like him. Whenever Leon comes to the house, he sees an image of perfect marital bliss, and can't imagine how he ever entertained the idea that Emma might love him. In reality, Emma is frightened by her runaway feelings for Leon. The only way she knows to control them is to deny them.
Though she appears to be the model of virtue, at least in regard to Charles, Emma's real feelings are evident in her physical state. She stops eating and lapses into long silences when she's with other people. Whenever Leon leaves the Bovary house, Emma rushes to the window and watches him walk down the street. Her secret desires for love and money result in a life of anguish.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 6
After daydreaming about her life in the convent, Emma thinks that Father Bournisien might be able to help her, so she heads for the church. But when she arrives, the priest, his cassock covered with grease spots and snuff stains, doesn't recognize her. When he finally remembers her, and she tries to tell him about her unhappiness, he responds by saying that he too is suffering. What do you think he means by this? Though distracted continuously by the boys playing in the church, he advises her to consult her husband about her condition. Finally he excuses himself and runs shouting into the church to see what the boys are doing. If you've ever sought help from a guidance counselor or teacher who was too busy to deal with you or too obtuse to sense that you had a real problem, you may appreciate Emma's feelings at this moment.
For Bournisien, religion is something that's taken for granted, not something you genuinely feel. He's a materialist who thinks the only causes for suffering are lack of food and warmth. Like Charles, he's an example of blindness and is a poor communicator.
Emma returns home and sinks despondently into her armchair. What can she do now? Her daughter Berthe attempts to amuse her, but Emma pushes her away and Berthe falls, cutting her cheek on the edge of the dresser. Guiltily, Emma takes the child upstairs and sits with her until she stops crying. "How ugly that child is," she thinks, as she stares at Berthe's tear-stained face. Does Emma's attitude shock you? Hasn't Flaubert prepared you for the fact that, while Emma dreams of love in the abstract, she has little feeling for real people?
And what is Leon feeling? He has no real ties to anyone in Yonville. He can leave whenever he wants, and if Emma isn't going to return his love, there's no reason for him to stay. Like Emma, he's consumed by fantasies and begins to imagine a life in Paris. Finally he writes to his mother, setting forth his reasons for wanting to move to Paris, then makes plans for his departure. Does it seem odd to you that he should require his mother's permission to take this step? In this respect, is he any different from Charles? Leon seems every bit as conventional as Charles and the other residents of Yonville. His romantic fancies, like Emma's, may just be the result of too many bad books. Watch for the return of Leon at the end of Part Two.
The time comes for Leon to leave Yonville and he goes to see Emma one last time. After kissing Berthe good-bye, he shakes hands awkwardly with Emma and runs down the street to the carriage. After he leaves, Emma stands by her window and watches the clouds gather in the west. That evening, Homais and Charles speculate on what Leon's life in Paris will be like, while Emma remains silent. As he leaves, Homais informs them of the latest news: the agricultural show will be held in Yonville later this year.
NOTE: PATHETIC FALLACY Notice that the weather--gray, cloudy skies--is in harmony with Emma's mood. As Leon leaves, Emma grows even more unhappy. Her tears, like raindrops, are a sign of rough times ahead. The technique of using weather to reinforce a person's emotions is called the pathetic fallacy. This is just another way that Flaubert reveals inner states by referring to outside objects.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 7
After Leon leaves, Emma feels as if she's in mourning. She replays in her mind all their joyous moments together--the walks along the river, afternoons in the garden, and so on. She realizes that his company was the only real pleasure in her life, and she curses herself for not seizing this happiness.
NOTE: INDIRECT NARRATION The opening paragraphs of Chapter 7 that describe Emma's despair at the loss of Leon are a good example of the indirect narrative that Flaubert uses to reveal a character's thoughts without having the character speak in his or her own voice (first-person), and without making the narrator (third-person) appear to be directly commenting. Notice the skill with which he moves back and forth from the narrator to Emma. In a sentence like, "Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life...." there is no evident narrator and yet Emma is not being quoted. In another sentence, "And she cursed herself for not having loved Leon," Emma's actions are described by the narrator who has taken over. The alternation of narratives is rhythmical and keeps a balance between action and thought. Though some readers complain that there's not enough action in Madame Bovary, others feel that the main story of the novel is what's happening inside Emma's head.
The intensity of Emma's love for Leon fades, but her depression and hatred for Charles remain. She tries to console herself by buying expensive clothing from Lheureux and by changing her hairstyle. She even attempts to read history and philosophy--a change from her usual diet of romance novels--but can't concentrate for more than a few pages. Charles, unaware of his wife's unhappiness, takes notice when she begins to spit blood. He writes his mother for advice and asks her to visit them. The elder Madame Bovary suggests that Emma has too much free time on her hands and advises her to go to work. Emma's worst offense, in her mind, is the fact that she spends her time reading novels. Considering the influence that her reading has on her, can you disagree with Charles' mother? Also, see if the theme of honest work as a solution comes up in other contexts. How many of the inhabitants of Yonville could be said to engage in honest work?
After Charles' mother leaves, Monsieur Rodolphe Boulanger de la Huchette, whose name indicates his aristocratic status, arrives at the Bovary household, asking Charles to bleed him since he feels "prickly all over."
NOTE: During the nineteenth century, bleeding was thought to be a general cure for many ailments. As a child, Flaubert probably watched his father perform this procedure on his patients at the hospital in Rouen.
During the bloodletting, Justin, who's holding the basin, faints. When Rodolphe and Charles talk about fainting, Emma tries to impress them by saying that she's never fainted in her life. You know, however, that she fainted after learning that her child was a girl. Why do you think Emma tells this lie? Rodolphe is charmed by Emma and can't understand how a "clumsy oaf" like Charles ever managed to snare such an elegant wife. Rodolphe is thirty-four, a bachelor, and lives on a nearby estate. He's had a great many lovers and is known to be a good judge of women. After meeting her, he can tell how bored she is and imagines how pleasurable it would be to make love to Emma. His only worry, however, is that he won't be able to rid himself of her afterward. He begins to devise a plan to seduce her and concludes that the opening of the agricultural show will provide a good opportunity to see her again.
NOTE: Though Leon never made love to Emma, he plays a crucial role in Emma's transition from marital fidelity to adultery. He helps prepare the way for her first real lover--Rodolphe. Whereas Leon was shy and hesitant, Rodolphe is experienced and dashing, like the brutal, passionate lovers that Emma envisions. He, in his turn, prepares the way for Emma's headlong return to an older and more hardened Leon, the second and last romance of Emma's life.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 8
The agricultural show is a major social occasion in Yonville. Early in the morning, as a crowd begins to gather on the main street, Homais and Madame Lefrancois meet outside the inn, where Homais delivers a lecture on the link between farming and chemistry. While they're talking, they see Emma and Rodolphe walking arm in arm down the street.
NOTE: Do you find it odd that Emma and Rodolphe would make such a public display of their new relationship? Where do you think Charles fits in to this scenario? Does Emma care about Charles' reactions or about those of the townspeople? By bringing the two lovers together so soon after their initial meeting, Flaubert means to underline Rodolphe's seductive powers and Emma's desperate vulnerability.
Rodolphe tells Emma of his sadness and boredom with life in the country. Do you find his words convincing. How does Emma react? Does she know that Rodolphe is playing games with her feelings? He tries to appeal to her sympathy and love for melodrama by saying that so much of life has passed him by, that he's always been alone, and that what he yearns for most is a woman who will give him her undying affection and love. He seems to understand perfectly what Emma is all about.
NOTE: Compare the descriptive passages in this chapter to the description of Charles and Emma's wedding and to that of the ball at La Vaubyessard. Notice especially Flaubert's description of animals, and his use of the same language and tone to describe both people and animals. Remember that Flaubert uses description as a form of commentary on individuals and society. What do you think he's trying to say about human nature in this chapter?
As the main speaker at the fair arrives, you catch a glimpse of Hippolyte, the stable boy at the inn, who will later play an important part in Charles Bovary's life. For the moment, you see him as he takes the horses from the speaker's carriage and leads them to the stable, limping on his clubfoot.
Rodolphe leads Emma to the second floor of the town hall where they can sit comfortably and watch the ceremonies down below. Their position above the action is a commentary on how they stand in relation to the rest of the town. The deputy opens the fair by paying tribute to the present French government and by describing a life where everyone in the country--worker, businessman, and landowner--can go to sleep without fear. Does his speech echo the platitudes of innumerable speeches, spoken by innumerable politicians, down through time? Or is he saying something original?
NOTE: Once again, Flaubert employs the technique of parallel conversations as a counterpoint component of the scene he is orchestrating. If you compare the conversation between Emma and Rodolphe to the speeches of the orators at the fair, you see that both are studded with lies, cliches, and posturing. Both conversations are equally at odds with true feeling and meaningful communication, despite their superficial differences in subject matter. No one in the audience is really listening to the orator, who, like Rodolphe, is merely expressing the thoughts and feelings that he thinks his audience wants to hear. And Emma herself is so blind to her own motivations that she cannot see the lack of genuine feeling behind Rodolphe's words. What's more, Rodolphe does not hear the sincerity and desperate need in Emma's words.
Rodolphe patiently tries to appeal to Emma's romantic nature by telling her that "our duty is to feel what's great and cherish what's beautiful--not to accept the conventions of society and the ignominy it forces on us!" Though Emma argues that it's necessary to heed some of the opinions and values of society, some would say that she doesn't really mean it. Others might point out that Emma has a lot of middle-class characteristics, like her love for material things and her ability to discriminate between the fake and the real. Emma is not quite ready to rise above her own bourgeois upbringing.
As the speeches down below drone on, Rodolphe leans forward and stares intently at Emma. For a moment he reminds her of the Viscount at the ball at La Vaubyessard. She looks into the distance and sees "Hirondelle," the carriage, coming down the road--the same carriage that Leon took when he left town. Hirondelle is the French word for a swallow, which suggests that the carriage is a symbol of flight (escape from the mundane). See how this symbol works for other carriage rides that occur in Madame Bovary. The smell of Rodolphe's hair--so close to her--intermingles with the smell of the ivy twined around the columns of the town hall. She awakens from her momentary reverie of Leon, and from the thought of the love that escaped her when he left.
The new speaker on the platform is discussing the connection between religion and farming. As he begins to award prizes for the best livestock and crops, Rodolphe takes Emma's hand and thanks her for not drawing away from him.
NOTE: Most readers agree that this is one of the most humorous and ironic moments in the book. As Rodolphe takes Emma's hand and continues plying her with a string of phony endearments, a first prize is awarded for "manures." You might want to reread this chapter and note other instances where Flaubert is making humorous contrasts.
Rodolphe and Emma sit together in silence, their fingers intertwined. After the ceremony, Rodolphe takes Emma home. That night there's a huge feast, with all the residents of Yonville in attendance. Rodolphe sees Emma, but she's with Charles and he makes no attempt to confront her. After the fireworks, the townspeople say good-night and retire to their homes.
NOTE: This is an important chapter because it exemplifies Flaubert's writing at its finest. The humor and irony that weave together the apparently unrelated talk of lovers and petty officials are a masterful way of presenting Emma and Rodolphe's attraction to one another. Notice the purely descriptive passages, the biting manner in which the pompous authorities are portrayed, and the parallels between the animal and human worlds. The peasant woman's faithful service to the farm is contrasted with the fleeting affections that Emma will receive from Rodolphe and her disloyalty to Charles. And the manure that wins first prize in the show is a parallel to the "manure" of Rodolphe's speech to Emma.
Notice that the award given to Catherine Leroux for her long service marks one of the few occasions in the novel where goodness is present, much less rewarded. Madame Bovary continues to be criticized by readers who find Flaubert's view of mankind totally negative.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 9
As part of his seduction plan, Rodolphe stays away from Emma for six weeks, reasoning that if she were in love with him before, his long absence will only make her love him more intensely. When he sees her again--alone in the parlor of her house, with the sun going down at the windows (her usual location for reveries)--he knows his calculations were accurate. At first he explains his long absence by saying that he'd been ill. But then he says the thought of her drove him crazy, and that he couldn't bear the idea of her marriage to another man. Finally, he confesses his love for her just as Charles walks in the door.
Rodolphe tells Charles that they were discussing Emma's health and suggests that horseback riding might be good for her. Charles, in his usual undiscriminating, blind way, notices nothing wrong with Rodolphe and Emma's being alone together. He even insists that Emma take up horseback riding, and offers to buy her a new riding outfit.
On a misty day in early October that suitably mirrors the romantic situation Emma longs for, Emma and Rodolphe ride into the forest. After a while they dismount and lead their horses into a clearing where they sit on a log and Rodolphe professes his love for her. At first Emma resists him, but in the end she falls into his arms.
NOTE: THE KNIGHT IN ARMOR Emma idealizes Rodolphe. He represents the romantic knight on horseback, whom she read about in innumerable novels. Some readers feel that Flaubert's decision to place the seduction scene in a natural setting indicates his own mixed feelings about Romanticism. Is he championing Emma for following her feelings in this instance? Other readers feel that Flaubert uses the natural landscape as a means of contrasting the true beauty of nature with Rodolphe's coarseness and manipulations. Knowing Rodolphe's character, do you feel any sympathy for Emma at this point? Is she a fool? Or has she acted heroically by stepping beyond the boundaries of her middle-class life?
That night, after dinner, Emma shuts herself in her room and relives the events of the afternoon. Staring in the mirror, she sees herself as a changed person. "I have a lover," she murmurs, as if the impossible had finally happened. She thinks of all the heroines she has read about, and now she has been seduced as many of them were.
Emma and Rodolphe spend the next few days riding and making love. Emma confides her unhappiness to him, and they vow to write to one another every day. One morning, filled with a need to see her lover, she visits Rodolphe at La Huchette, his estate. From that point on, this becomes a habit. She waits until Charles leaves for work, then dresses and races across the fields into her lover's arms. One morning, however, when she arrives unexpectedly at La Huchette, Rodolphe's estate, he seems displeased. He tells her that he thinks she's being too reckless and that she's compromising herself by visiting him so frequently. While this may be true, most readers conclude that Rodolphe has grown tired of Emma and reminds her of public opinion in order to ease out of the relationship. Rodolphe is obviously not the gallant knight in shining armor. He is all too human and as flawed as Charles or Leon, and Emma will soon learn that she has been used. Her "perfect" lover is a scoundrel, and their "ideal" romance is but a shoddy affair. Try as she might, Emma cannot succeed as a romantic heroine. The realities of life are too harsh.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 10
Emma is haunted by the idea that someone will find out about her affair with Rodolphe. One morning, returning from her lover's estate, she meets Captain Binet, who's out duck hunting. She lies to him, saying that she's been to the wet-nurse's house to see her baby, even though everyone in Yonville knows that Berthe has been living with her parents for a year.
That same night, Charles, thinking his wife looks unhappy and wanting to distract her, takes Emma to the pharmacist's house after dinner, where she accidentally meets Binet again. The tax-inspector makes a reference to meeting Emma that morning, but luckily for her, Charles doesn't notice anything. The next day Emma and Rodolphe decide that they must act more discreetly. Rodolphe promises to look for a "safe" house in Yonville, but meanwhile the lovers meet in the garden. Emma waits until Charles is asleep, then slips into the darkness, half-dressed. On rainy nights they meet in Charles' consulting room.
Though he's occasionally embarrassed by her extreme sentimentality, Rodolphe is also affected by the passion in Emma's love. Yet the very intensity of her feelings allows him to take her for granted. Emma notices the change in his attitude and begins to regret ever having given in to him. She feels helpless because she realizes how much she's in Rodolphe's power. After six months, they resemble "a married couple placidly keeping a domestic affair alive." Again, reality is encroaching on the dream.
Every year, to commemorate the mending of his broken leg by Charles years ago, Emma's father sends them a turkey. This year, he sends a letter along with the present. Emma is troubled by the way her affair with Rodolphe is going, and the letter makes her think back to her life with her father when she seemed happier. She sees Berthe rolling around playfully on the grass and experiences a sudden burst of love for her daughter.
NOTE: Notice the way Emma's memory plays tricks on her. When she's unhappy in the present, she romanticizes the past. If she can't actually escape her present reality, she can certainly escape it by way of her imagination. The sudden change of attitude toward her child also indicates a longing for innocence and for a way of life that she "should" lead as a mother.
That night she acts coldly toward Rodolphe, but he ignores her. She wonders why she continues the affair, and wants to love Charles but doesn't know what she can do to get close to him.
NOTE: The blind beggar symbolizes the depth of misery to which a person can sink. The sound of his voice "descended into the depths of her soul." Is it possible that Emma sees in the beggar a reflection of herself? Emma will soon be a beggar herself. Having run up enormous debts with Lheureux, she will be forced to beg for money to repay these debts. Flaubert uses the blind old beggar to foreshadow Emma's upcoming disaster. He is also a symbol of the moral and intellectual blindness of the main characters to their own natures and to others' needs.
The days between visits to Leon grow more and more intolerable. One night, Charles informs Emma that Mademoiselle Lempereur--the piano teacher--says that she has never heard of Emma. Emma tries to conceal her deception by saying that the teacher probably forgot her name. It's an unlikely story, but Charles is ready to believe anything. Emma pretends to search frantically for the nonexistent receipts, and a few days later Charles "finds" the receipts--obviously forged by Emma--in one of his boots.
One day, leaving the hotel in Rouen with Leon, she meets Lheureux. The greedy merchant realizes that, if necessary, he can blackmail Emma by telling Charles about her affair with Leon. He uses this knowledge to get more money out of her. In a complicated transaction, he convinces her to give him a piece of property that her father-in-law had owned. He has her sign four new promissory notes [written promises to pay a specified sum of money at a stated time] and tells her that she can keep the money from the sale of the house. With this money she pays most of her old debts. The fourth note arrives when Charles--who knows nothing about any of these financial arrangements--is at home. She sits on his lap, caresses him, and tries to explain how the money was spent. Charles, not knowing what to think, writes his mother for advice. The old woman arrives and immediately begins to complain about Emma's extravagant tastes. An argument ensues between the two women, and for the first time in his life, Charles takes his wife's side. His mother, enraged, leaves, threatening never to return to her son's house.
Her triumphs at home make Emma even more reckless in her behavior. She no longer fears compromising herself and walks openly with Leon through the streets of Rouen. One night, when Emma decides not to return to Yonville, Charles takes a carriage to Rouen in the middle of the night and searches for her. They meet accidentally on a street near the piano teacher's house, and Emma lies to him again, saying that she'd been feeling ill and that Charles shouldn't worry every time she stays out late. Charles blindly accepts her explanation, and after this incident, Emma begins going to Rouen whenever she pleases.
NOTE: Emma's life is rapidly disintegrating. Any control she had prior to her Rouen visits is now dwindling to nothing as her financial problems multiply and her marriage falls apart. Any vestiges of respect for the marital structure are now gone. She parades openly with Leon, maintains a hectic extramarital affair, and lies guiltlessly to her husband when questioned about her actions. The roller-coaster ride has begun, and it's only a matter of time before Emma completely destroys herself.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 6
Homais visits Rouen one Thursday--the day Leon and Emma usually meet--and takes Leon to a fancy restaurant, forcing him to miss his appointment with Emma. For the pharmacist, this trip to Rouen is one of his rare chances to escape from Yonville, and he keeps suggesting new things to do. Finally, Leon manages to get away from him and rushes to the hotel to see Emma. But she has departed, furious at him for missing their appointment. After this, Emma's passion for Leon cools down, then flares up again. Even Leon notices her irrational behavior, and wonders where all this madness will lead. He senses trouble ahead, but he can't bring himself to break off with her.
NOTE: As the affair progresses, Leon's middle-class values begin to reassert themselves. Emma is more than he can handle, so he retreats into his bourgeois security. He's about to be promoted to head law clerk in his office and begins to wonder whether his affair with Emma will jeopardize his career. His inability to leave Homais--who represents the middle class--and go to Emma, who represents his romantic side, indicates the direction in which he is headed.
Emma's affair with Leon never completely satisfies her. She still imagines the possibility of a perfect lover, this "strong, handsome man with a valorous, passionate and refined nature, a poet's soul in the form of an angel..." At this point, she thinks about nothing but her passions and, as a result, her financial dealings with Lheureux get completely out of hand. A bill, which Lheureux had given to a banker in Rouen, arrives at the house, and the following day a protest of nonpayment is delivered. Lheureux explains that he wants all the money the Bovarys owe him at once. If not, there will be a court judgment and the Bovarys' possessions will be seized. Emma begs for a loan, and Lheureux agrees only when she tells him that she still has some property coming to her from her father-in-law's estate.
In an attempt to raise money, Emma bills all of Charles' patients and begins selling old clothing and household articles. But her finances are so complicated that every time she pays back part of her debt to Lheureux, she has to borrow more money from him. In her confusion about money matters, Emma neglects to take care of her household, spending nights reading romance novels and thinking about her affair with Leon.
Charles is worried about his wife's health--he believes her old illness will recur--but he's too timid to complain, even when she's insulting him.
One evening, after staying up all night at a masked ball in Rouen, Emma returns home to find that a legal document has been issued ordering her to pay all her debts within twenty-four hours. If she doesn't, all her possessions will be confiscated. She rushes to see Lheureux, who not only refuses to help but threatens to tell Charles what he knows about her affair with Leon if she doesn't pay up. He has no more use for her now that she is destitute. When she bursts into tears and tells him that he's destroying her last hope, he acts as if her problems are none of his business and slams the door in her face.
NOTE: As her financial and emotional life falls apart, Emma withdraws more and more into her fantasy world. It's as if she's on a fast-moving train headed nowhere and can't get off. All she can do is indulge her fantasies to even greater excesses. The masked ball symbolizes how far removed she is from reality. She has no ability to deal with her problems and no one to turn to for guidance. All she wants to do is "fly away like a bird and make herself young again somewhere in the vast purity of space."
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 7
The next day, the bailiff (a local officer of the court) arrives at the house to make an inventory of Emma and Charles' possessions, though Charles knows nothing about what's going on. Emma travels to Rouen to visit all the bankers who might lend her money, but they all refuse. She asks Leon for help but all he can do is promise to talk to a rich friend and hope that his friend will lend him the money.
Emma returns to Yonville in the same carriage as Homais. They pass the blind man singing at the bottom of the hill. When Homais tosses the man a coin, the beggar squats on his haunches, in thanks, like a starving dog, and Emma tosses him her last coin.
NOTE: You see Emma slowly sinking to the same level as the beggar. Like him, she must go around asking people for money. Tossing him her last coin is a symbolic attempt to place herself on a higher level and to retain some sense of her own dignity and worth--but it's also a sign that she is giving up her worldly possessions in preparation for death.
The next morning Emma awakes to the voices of a crowd in the town square. A notice advertising a public auction has been posted, and Justin is trying to tear it down. Emma, seeing that all her property is for sale, goes to the house of the notary, Monsieur Guillaumin, to arouse his sympathy. He asks her why she never came to him before for help, then drops to his knees and begins to kiss her hand. She leaps to her feet, indignant, and demands the money. But when all he can say is "I love you," she rushes out of his house. Is it finally dawning on Emma that she is just one step removed from prostitution?
She goes to Binet and appeals to him as well. Notice that Flaubert describes this scene indirectly, through the eyes of the mayor's wife and a friend who watch Emma and Binet from a distance. Emma seems to be making a proposition to Binet; whether it's erotic or not you don't know. Suddenly Binet cries out: "Madame! You can't be serious!" The two old women turn and see Emma race down the street.
Needing time to think things over, Emma goes to the home of the wet-nurse Madame Rollet. She remembers Leon's promise and sends Madame Rollet to her house to see if he's arrived with the money. Not surprisingly, there's no sign of Leon. As a last resort, Emma thinks of seeking help from Rodolphe. She's certain that if she reminds him of their past love for one another, he'll come to her rescue. What's your prediction of her success?
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 8
As she approaches Rodolphe's estate, Emma wonders what she'll say when she sees her former lover. The familiar landscape brings back memories of their affair, but how different things are now! Is it possible that Rodolphe will have changed as well?
When she first sees him, he's seated in front of the fire, smoking his pipe. He leaps up, obviously surprised to see her, and they discuss the past while Emma weeps. Rodolphe kneels at her feet and says he still loves her, but when she asks for 3,000 francs, he backs away and explains that he doesn't have it.
Rodolphe's rejection is the crushing blow. His home is filled with expensive objects--many of which she gave him--that could be converted into cash. She tries to make Rodolphe feel guilty, but all he says in response to her tirade is that he doesn't have the money. With this, Emma returns to Yonville in a daze.
NOTE: Leon and Rodolphe's unwillingness to help Emma gives her some insight into their selfishness. She feels betrayed, especially by Rodolphe, and this gives her the impetus to kill herself. As she leaves Rodolphe's house, however, she's not thinking about money. "She was now," Flaubert tells you, "suffering only through her love." On the basis of what you know about Rodolphe, do you find his reaction surprising? Emma can't understand how she could love others so much and receive so little in return. Some readers feel that circumstances beyond her control have brought her to the brink of suicide. Others argue that she is solely responsible for her circumstances and refuses to admit her part in creating them.
Back in Yonville, Emma stops in front of the pharmacy, sees Justin, and orders him to give her the key to the upstairs laboratory where Homais keeps his special supply of chemicals. Because Justin is secretly in love with Emma, he can't refuse her. She climbs the steps to the laboratory, finds the bottle of arsenic, and before Justin can do anything, she swallows the poison. Justin, looking on, becomes frantic, but Emma warns him not to tell anyone what she's doing. She returns home, "feeling what was almost the serenity of a duty well done."
NOTE: The young Justin's love for Emma parallels Flaubert's infatuation with the older Elisa Schlesinger (see the Author and His Times section). In his pure and truly felt love, perhaps Justin, more than anyone, coincides with Emma's image of the ideal lover. Flaubert ironically has Justin show Emma where the arsenic is located, and then has him watch as she swallows it. The boy with the most to offer, stands by helplessly.
Charles has learned that his property is going to be auctioned. He has searched everywhere for Emma, and on returning to the house finds her in the bedroom, writing a letter that she instructs him not to read until the next day. The arsenic has not yet taken effect and Emma feels only a bitter taste in her mouth. As she drinks a glass of water and suddenly begins choking, Charles notices a white substance on the side of the basin and begs her to tell him what she's eaten. When she refuses, he rushes to her writing desk, reads the letter, and realizes that Emma has poisoned herself.
Grief-stricken, Charles summons Doctors Canivet and Lariviere. Kneeling at the foot of her bed, he asks, "Weren't you happy? Is it my fault? I did everything I could!" Emma passes her hand through Charles' hair and reassures him that nothing was his fault. What is your reaction to this gesture of tenderness on Emma's part? Does she have genuine fondness--or even love--for Charles? Or does she finally recognize her own responsibility?
Emma asks to see Berthe one last time. After the little girl is brought to her and then taken away, Emma's suffering becomes more intense and she begins vomiting blood. Canivet and Lariviere arrive, but nothing can save her. As Father Bournisien administers the last rites, the blind beggar appears at the window, singing his song: "The wind was blowing hard that day / And Nanette's petticoat flew away." Emma begins laughing horribly, and as her body trembles one last time, she dies.
NOTE: THE DEATHBED SCENE Emma's death--an ugly, painful ordeal--concludes the long train of events that have progressively worn her down. Instead of dying the sensual, beautiful death of the romantic heroine, Emma shakes violently while the beggar, a symbol of death, lurks at her window. Notice this final use of the window to express the state of Emma's soul. When she was searching for love, the window was open; when she was making love inside a room, the window was closed. On her deathbed, Emma can see through the window to a world beyond--to the death represented by the old beggar, the final escape.
Notice the parallel between the bungled clubfoot operation and Emma's messy suicide. Both are filled with the most graphic medical details and serve as reminders of the ugly facts of life and death, facts that Emma never could face.
Even as she is on the verge of death, she recalls her first religious (sexual) experiences and summons all her waning strength to kiss passionately the figure of Christ on the crucifix as she receives the last rites. She seems content, as though there is still time for another dream of love. The beggar reminds her of terrifying reality one last time before she dies. Blind to the end, Emma never stops dreaming.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTERS 9 AND 10
Charles weeps over the body of his wife until Homais and Canivet convince him to leave her room. Homais disguises the fact of Emma's suicide by telling everyone that she'd mistaken the arsenic for sugar. What reasons do you think he has for concealing the truth? Homais and Father Bournisien tell Charles to make preparations for Emma's funeral. "Bury her in her wedding gown," he instructs them, "with white shoes and a wreath." Homais and the priest are amazed by Charles' tender feelings, but Charles is burying Emma as he imagines she would want to be. Do you think Emma would want to be buried in her wedding gown?
Charles' mother arrives and complains about the cost of the funeral. Charles flies into a rage in much the same way Emma might have done under similar circumstances. Notice, in fact, how Charles begins to take on Emma's characteristics after her death. Seated beside her body, he daydreams about their past together, remembering the sound of her voice, her gestures and poses. He even performs the romantic act of clipping a lock of her hair.
The people of Yonville pass through the house to see Emma's body and pay their respects to Charles. How do you think they react to Emma's death? Emma's father arrives, but he doesn't know whether his daughter is dead or alive. When Homais wrote him, he phrased the letter so that it was impossible to know what was wrong with her. Why do you think he did this? When Monsieur Rouault learns what happened, he falls into Charles' arms while Homais, with his typically insensitive way, advises them to be philosophical and to act dignified.
NOTE: After Emma dies, Charles tries to keep the spark of romantic feeling alive by "becoming" Emma. Is Flaubert using Emma's death to signal symbolically the death of Romanticism and the emerging power of middle-class life? Homais, with his hypocritical values, and Lheureux represent the future. Do you think Flaubert's vision is overly pessimistic?
At the gravesite, Charles cries out "Good-bye" and tries to throw himself into the grave beside her. Homais, filled with his typical sense of self-importance, regrets that he didn't have time to compose a speech.
Charles and his mother sit up most of the night talking about the future. She offers to live with him in Yonville, secretly pleased that she no longer has a rival for her son's affections, but Charles knows that this would never work. Everyone else in Yonville is asleep. Rodolphe is sleeping peacefully in his chateau. Leon is asleep in Rouen. The only person still awake is Justin, who's kneeling on Emma's grave, unable to believe that she's dead.
MADAME BOVARY: CHAPTER 11
Shortly after Emma's death, Lheureux shows up asking for money. Charles refuses to sell any of his wife's clothing and writes letters to his patients asking them for money, but he doesn't realize that they've already paid Emma. Felicite, Emma's maid, begins to dress in Emma's clothing, and Charles often mistakes her for his wife. Then the word arrives that Leon is getting married.
Going through Emma's things, Charles discovers the letter from Rodolphe, breaking off their affair. Blinded by his grief, Charles refuses to believe that Emma and Rodolphe had ever been lovers. He buys patent-leather boots and begins using perfumed mustache-wax, thinking that this would please his dead wife. If only he had acted this way when she was alive! Gradually he sells the furniture and empties all the rooms in the house except for Emma's bedroom, where he spends days playing with Berthe and repairing her toys. No one visits them. Justin has gone to work at a grocery in Rouen. The blind beggar, who had arrived in Yonville to try a cure prescribed by Homais, spreads the word that the pharmacist is a quack. Homais puts a notice in the newspaper complaining about the blind beggar, and has him committed for life to an asylum.
Looking through Emma's rosewood desk, Charles finally stumbles upon the letters from Leon and Rodolphe. Now there can be no doubt in his mind that Emma was having affairs with them. The discovery leaves him despondent, so he shuts himself up in his house, and people in town gossip that he's drinking heavily.
At the market, where Charles has gone to sell his horse, he meets Rodolphe. They go for a drink together and Charles, staring at the face of the man who'd been his wife's lover, realizes that he "would like to be that man." What do you think he means by this? How would you have reacted in a similar situation? Rodolphe attempts to steer the conversation to trivial subjects but notices that Charles is becoming more and more agitated. For a moment, it seems that Charles will finally vent his rage, but all he tells Rodolphe is that he doesn't hold what Rodolphe did against him. "Only fate is to blame," he tells Rodolphe, who considers him a weakling for being so passive.
NOTE: Reread Rodolphe's letter to Emma (Part Two, Chapter 13) where he writes "Only fate is to blame"--the exact words Charles uses when he and Rodolphe confront one another--and recall that Charles has just read Rodolphe's letter. Some readers feel that repeating the phrase to his rival is a sign of Charles' dullness and lack of cleverness. Yet others conclude that Charles sincerely feels that fate is the reason for Emma's tragic death. Other readers believe that fate is just an excuse to avoid the truth, and that Charles, to the very end, refuses to blame Emma for their ruin.
The day after meeting Rodolphe, Charles sits broken-hearted on the bench in the garden where Emma and her lovers used to meet. In the evening, when Berthe comes to look for him, she finds him with his eyes closed and a lock of black hair in his hands. She thinks that he's playing, but when she prods him, he falls to the ground, dead. His death, ironically, is right out of a Romantic novel and no doubt would have pleased Emma. Could it be that the only character in Madame Bovary who really knows what true love is and, in fact, has died for love, is Charles? In going back over the novel, are there any other indications that Charles has been misrepresented by Emma and Flaubert?
Berthe is sent to live with an aunt, who puts her to work in a cotton mill. Three different doctors, Flaubert tells you, attempt to practice in Yonville, but Homais--who has finally been awarded the decoration of the national Legion of Honor--manages to alienate them all.
NOTE: THE CONCLUSION Flaubert brings everything to a conclusion with the death of Emma. Charles discovers the truth of his wife's affairs with Rodolphe and Leon; the Bovary possessions are sold to pay off debts; Charles and his mother have a final falling-out; Berthe is victimized by the loss of her mother, and almost immediately, the death of her father. Even Homais manages to put his final stamp of authority on the town of Yonville. The novel does not end on an optimistic note. It is a bleak finale to a bleak story. Although the author and publishers were prosecuted for anti-religious, anti-moral attitudes, would you agree that the story has a moral? If so, what is it?
MADAME BOVARY: FLAUBERT AND EMMA
We cannot help noticing that Flaubert displayed a marked reluctance to give due weight to what was valid and genuine in Emma. She was not, as Henry James alleged, a woman who was "naturally depraved." She possessed a number of solid virtues which were deliberately played down by the novelist. It was after all to her credit that she possessed too much sensibility to fit comfortably into the appalling provincial society of Yonville-l'Abbaye and it was her misfortune that she was not big enough to find a way out of the dilemma. We cannot withhold our approval from her attempts to improve her mind or from the pride that she took in her personal appearance and in the running of her house.
-Martin Turnell, from The Novel in Francce, 1971
MADAME BOVARY: FLAUBERT'S STYLE
In Madame Bovary the crux of the action lies in the contrast between Emma's sentimental illusions and the plain facts of reality. The contrast would seem to be clear enough; but it presented Flaubert with a complicated problem of style. For he did not believe that any spiritual perspective really exists to distinguish significantly between them; emotions and ideas versed, to find man trapped by his own discovery, knowing that his new insight into the real is based on an optical illusion, yet incapable of passing beyond it; and as if Flaubert had then set his art the superhuman task of knowing reality in absolute terms. In a situation where the major dimensions of experience were held to give a false value to things, the burden fell upon style alone of revealing their true aspect and quality. Flaubert made original use of the distinction possible in fiction between what is described and the way of describing it.
-Anthony Thorlby, Gustave Flaubert
and The Art of Realism, 1957
MADAME BOVARY: EMMA BOVARY AND DON QUIXOTE
Like Don Quixote, she has read too many books, and the books she has read are those most likely to inflame her imagination. It is not her intellect, but her capacity to dream and to wish to transform the world to fit her dreams, which sets her apart. The parallel with Don Quixote almost imposes itself. Like Don Quixote's friends who decide to burn his books, Emma's mother-in-law suggests that reading be prohibited and that what she needs in order to be cured are "chores" and above all "manual work." Flaubert's and Cervantes' novels have further in common a certain autocritical tendency which makes of both works outstanding examples of ambiguity, literary subversion and yet latent idealism.
-Victor Brombert, The Novels of Flaubertt, 1966
MADAME BOVARY: FLAUBERT: ROMANTIC OR REALIST?
The question has often been asked whether Flaubert was a Romantic or a Realist. Emile Faguet enunciated the theory of the two warring brothers in him... struggling for ascendancy, sometimes one, sometimes the other, being victorious. The argument is not very profitable, and many books have been written on the Classicism of the Romantics; the Romanticism of the Classicist; the Realism of the Romantics; the Romanticism of the Realists. It generally happens that the richly gifted artists, creatively, tend, by their very nature, to be Romantics, otherwise they would not feel the overwhelming urge to create, for creation is fundamentally a Romantic activity in all forms of life. It depends, however, on the age in which the artist is creating whether the form of the creation will be objective or subjective--that is, Classical or Romantic.
-Enid Starkie, Flaubert:
The Making of the Master, 1967
MADAME BOVARY: FLAUBERT THE SCIENTIST
Flaubert does not say that poetry, art, and literature are indistinguishable from the sciences. The objects of the scientist and of the artist are as different as their intentions, as different as the facts they are concerned with, even though one may borrow the other's methods. Artistic and scientific observation are two quite distinct things, and the experiment conducted by the artist on the basis of the material he has accumulated takes place very largely in his heart and brain. He "imagines" and invents, only occasionally touching ordinary reality for inspiration or the verification of his theories. What he invents must have the same solidity and "truth" as that which comes within the scope of the senses; it acquires them by a "method" comparable to that of the scientist.
-Maurice Nadeau, The Greatness of Flaubeert, 1972