Madame Bovary

Was Emma Bovary written as a sympathetic character? Mostly I think this is a cautionary tale of the destructiveness of always having your eyes set on the horizon waiting for something to happen, " Like a shipwrecked sailor she scanned her solitude with desperate eyes for the sight of a white sail far off on the misty horizon. She had no idea what chance would be... But every morning when she woke she hoped to find it there. She listened to every sound, started out of bed, and was surprised when nothing came. Then at sunset , sadder every day, she longed for the morrow.'

Emma Bovary was blighted with a destructive longing; that writhing, wriggling, restlessness that nothing is right and hoping and searching for that someone or something that will make her feel alive and contented. Miserable, dissatisfied, and enraged she

looked beyond herself in order to feel complete.

I loved the part where she is being seduced by Rodolphe, and interspersed with the flowery deceitful language of his seduction are the cries from the Agricultural Show judges announcing winners for "best manure" or "pigs". It's a lovely juxtaposition between what's real and the artifice of her life and fantasy. Ultimately Emma's 'constant craving' destroys her and her family. The book is a great account of the Global Financial Crisis or of the passions that fueled it - the dissatisfaction with one's lot and an insatiable hunger for things and people we hope will "soften the bitterness of (one's) life".

A more sympathetic reading of Emma might be that her talents, spirit, genius, or self was thwarted by small town life where women were destined to have unfulfilled lives. But, Emma pins her salvation or hope for contentedness in others and not in her own self expression. In this sense Emma does not take her place in the pantheon of courageous women. For her, deliverance from her suffering is achieved by someone else and not herself.