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Thread: Madame Bovary

  1. #1

    Madame Bovary

    I was reading an article about this book recently and found this.
    "It has been pointed out by some critics that Flaubert's book shows an exaggerated cynicism and an unwarranted degree of hatred for the bourgeoisie."........."Should she not have met with at least one or two people who understood her?"

    Do you agree with this criticism?
    The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
    -Sydney J. Harris

  2. #2
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    No, you can't be too cynical about the bourgeoisie, or hate them too much. This is maybe why I liked the book so much! Madame Bovary was living in the provinces, in a fully bourgeoise context, it's entirely believable that she couldn't meet anyone who understood her.

    The bourgeois has an obsession with maximising personal wealth, and his own philistine pleasures. This involves upholding the political and economic interests of the capitalist ruling class, and not doing anything to push forward social change as that might interrupt his pursuit of personal gain. He actually sows the seeds of his own destruction (e.g, French & Russian revolutions) through the cruelty he imposes on others.

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    Registered User Emil Miller's Avatar
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    I don't agree with the article's conclusions. Flaubert was merely telling a story about characters who came from that particular milieu and let's not forget that the author was himself an archetypical example of the bourgeoisie.
    "L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.

    "Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.

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    Flaubert's disavowal of the bourgeoise does look, from some angles, like a response to the fear that he had not escaped it. No one embodied the middle-class gospel of work, or the middle-class ideal of sacrificing oneself for one's family, more than Flaubert. But I think he was too anti-bourgeoise in the majority of his statements and actions to call him the archetypal bourgeoise.

    A visceral distaste for the safe middle runs like a leitmotiv through his writings published and unpublished. In a letter to Bouilhet's he says: "Yes! this is on the whole a rotten century! And we are in a ****ty mess! What makes me indignant is the bourgeoisisme of our fellow writers! What merchants! What dull imbeciles!" He found nothing more disheartening than middle-class decorousness;he thought bourgeoisdom a fate worse than death.

    Flaubert , starting as a schoolboy, peppered his letters with sallies against royalty and the church, and the boring, repellent world in general. A youthful satanist, he cultivated lurid fantasies professing a taste for novels by the Marquis de Sade, admired prostitutes, declared himself capable of crime, dreamt of deflowered virgins, and aimed to grow into a destroyer of good morals. He told his sister, Caroline, the more he provoked bourgeois, the more content he felt. He sent George Sand a foundational Axiom: "Hatred of Bourgeois is the beginning of all virtue."

    Flaubert's wrote: Bourgeois are commonplace, cowardly, colorless, censorious, sentimental, devious; their pleasures are abominable, their moments of happiness squalid, their political opinions foolish; they have no inkling of the inner life and are so obsessive in their habits that they fall ill when they go to bed at an unaccustomed hour. They are of course materialistic from head to toe, lacking all sense for the exotic, the adventurous, the extraordinary.

    Flaubert frequented camps of Gypsies--Bohemiens--, "always with new pleasure. It was wonderful to see how they aroused the Hatred of bourgeois, even though they were harmless as sheep. I had the crowd look askance at me by giving them a few sous.--And I heard some pretty Philistine comments." He found it easy to explain this hatred for a handful of innocent vagrants: it "has to do with something deep and complex. We find it among the whole party of order. It's the hatred felt for the Bedouin, the Heretic, the Philosopher, the recluse, the poet.--And there is fear in that hatred. This exasperates me, since I am always for the minorities." That hatred is a typical bourgeois defensive maneuver, transforming unfounded fear into rage. As cheerleader for a mutinous avant-garde, Flaubert was "driven wild" by these middle-class traits.

    Flaubert's mock dictionary became an inexhaustible hunting ground for bourgeoisophobes; it exposed middle-class lovers of culture as shamelessly unapologetic for yawning their way through a musical evening: "CONCERT. Well-bred pastime." "NOVELS. Corrupt the masses" hence "only historical novels can be tolerated because they teach history." Flaubert's bourgeois were the kind of misbegotten creatures who could define "LITERATURE" as "pastime of the idle" or the "BOOK" as being "always too long, whatever it is about." How could one expect a discerning palate from such barbarians?

    Flaubert's Bouvard and Pecuchet focuses on hilarious and pathetic misadventures of two bourgeoise clerks who have come into money. They undergo an invariably disastrous education in agriculture, archaeology, religion, the sciences, the arts, rational housekeeping, and sexual seduction; they return to clerking.

    Flaubert was the son the most conformist of doting mothers--he nicknamed her "la bourgeoise". Freud would later analyze that middle-class affliction as springing from unwarranted embarrassment before the sexual drive, and Flaubert would no doubt have agreed. But, more interested in denunciation than in diagnosis, he preferred to call it names: mediocrity, mendacity, deadly virtuousness.

    So although he was born into the bourgeoise, and showed some of these tendencies (who wouldn't!), I don't think he can be called archetypal bourgeoise.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Emil Miller View Post
    I don't agree with the article's conclusions. Flaubert was merely telling a story about characters who came from that particular milieu and let's not forget that the author was himself an archetypical example of the bourgeoisie.
    Thanks for the reply.
    The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
    -Sydney J. Harris

  6. #6
    Thanks for the reply, mal4mac.
    I was wondering whether it was just that I was cynical/ hating the bourgeoisie too much that I didn't agree with the article's statement.
    I enjoyed reading your post. Thanks.
    The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure.
    -Sydney J. Harris

  7. #7
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    normally if you hated something you do not write about it you hat eit so much you avoid it.
    bourgeoisie or not Madame de Bovary is the epitome of le petit bourgeois et l'ennui that causes Bovary to be who she is in the story.
    For man Flauber does not do too badly at charactersing a woman, taken he is not a woman himself, and the bourgeois friendly atmosphere.
    I find it fascinating when the writer/author is man and their lead character a woman.
    Last edited by cacian; 05-07-2014 at 06:47 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    normally if you hated something you do not write about it you hat eit so much you avoid it.
    That sounds like a very bourgeoise reaction. "Don't write about that dear, it will just upset you." Where would that leave war novelists? People hate war atrocities, but we need people to write about such things, otherwise how can we come to terms with them & think about ways to avoid them?

    bourgeoisie or not Madame de Bovary is the epitome of le petit bourgeois et l'ennui that causes Bovary to be who she is in the story.
    She has bourgeois reactions initially, e.g., in the hiding her love for Léon and her contempt for Charles, and plays the role of the devoted wife and mother, while consoling herself with thoughts and self-congratulations for her own virtue. But later she fights the ennui by pursuing an affair, spending beyond her means, deceiving her husband. These are not bourgeois pursuits! But I guess she is, throughout, heavily constrained by her bourgeoise origins and environment, so I'm half agreeing with you here.
    Last edited by mal4mac; 05-07-2014 at 08:52 AM.

  9. #9
    Registered User Emil Miller's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    normally if you hated something you do not write about it you hat eit so much you avoid it.
    I think the answer here lies in the review of a celebrated biography of Flaubert :

    And then, as if these were not enough, there is Flaubert engagé, embroiled in politics and literary intrigue, and of course, Flaubert enragé, fulminating against all and sundry, not merely hack writers and reviewers but publishers, editors, theater folk, the military, the rabble, in short, the whole human race, not forgetting the bourgeoisie whom he detested with an ardor almost indistinguishable from love.
    "L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.

    "Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by chevalierdelame View Post
    I was reading an article about this book recently and found this.
    "It has been pointed out by some critics that Flaubert's book shows an exaggerated cynicism and an unwarranted degree of hatred for the bourgeoisie."........."Should she not have met with at least one or two people who understood her?"

    Do you agree with this criticism?

    I don't agree with that observation. He may have been influenced in some parts of his life and may hate some aspects of it but I don't think this so-called hatred was being reflected on Madame Bovary. He described the characters so eloquently.

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