Why Madame Bovary Isn't Great

A novel that dismantles everything and builds nothing, that gives disillusionment but not redemption.

Last week brought us a trip to the moon, something we haven’t seen in decades. High school kids across the country watched the launch. People cheered. All of which leads me to Madame Bovary, obviously. Bovary is a novel of incredible craft. In this, the work is akin to the perfectly constructed model rocket. Each piece is properly positioned. The pre-packaged engine flies the rocket some 500 feet into the sky, and then the tiny little parachute deploys, and the little rocket floats back to the ground. Now juxtapose this perfect baby rocket with the Artemis II. The Artemis has a plumbing problem. The toilet has malfunctioned three times. Not great. But it circled the moon. Bovary is the model rocket, perfectly constructed but not transcendent. The truly great novels are the Artemis.

Flaubert’s prose is pristine. There’s no denying it. He would spend five days rewriting and rewriting one page. It shows. Flaubert is a master of simile and deploys them in ways that both give vivid pictures and disillusion.

“She kept promising herself that on her next trip, she would be profoundly happy; then she would admit that she had not felt anything extraordinary. This disappointment would fade quickly in the presence of fresh hope, and Emma would return to him more ardent, more avid. She would undress roughly, tearing the thin string of her corset, which would whistle around her hips like a slithering snake.” – Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 250).

It’s easy to see why Flaubert faced charges of indecency. You can hear the moment he describes. But notice, too, the use of a snake, which symbolizes danger, even poison. And observe the precision in the first half of the paragraph. He concisely shows us Emma’s emotional roller coaster that leads to her destruction.

All of this prose serves Flaubert’s goal. He is writing an anti-morality tale. There is no happy ending. There is no moral vision proposed. There’s no redemption to be found. He takes the romantic notions found in novels, the Enlightenment belief in science, the supposed solid ground of the church, the quaint town, and the larger city, and he lays waste to the notion that any of these will make us happy. He is an author of disillusionment.

Flaubert’s Failure

In my one-sentence review of Madame Bovary on Goodreads, I simply said: “Has this guy ever known an actual real human woman?” And I meant it. Emma has two dominant character traits: over-romanticism and lustful depravity. There is no real internal conflict about her own actions. She’s after some juvenile feeling of happiness she cannot find. She does not learn. After her first consummated affair, she ends up in despair after her lover discards her.

“She cast her eyes about her, wishing the earth would cave in. Why not put an end to it all? What was holding her back? She was free. And she moved forward, she looked down at the paving stones, saying to herself: “Go on! Go on!” The ray of light that rose directly up to her from below was pulling the weight of her body down toward the abyss. – Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 180).

But this disaster isn’t even a speed bump as she accelerates to her next affair. And this makes her flat. A bit less than human. It is rare, even among people trapped in addictions of all types, for there to be a lack of hesitation or internal conflict. Emma never wonders if the orientation of her goals is wrong. This is my critique of the book. The characters are caricatures. Literature critics will tell you that this is on purpose, that Flaubert does this intentionally to strip away all illusions that give people meaning. This is why Homais is a silly version of the Enlightenment, why the local priest is parochial and obtuse, and why the creditors are predatory and unfeeling. And I grant that this is what Flaubert intends. But it also prevents Bovary from reaching the heavens. Transcendent work forces the reader to grapple with the deep questions the author is asking, but then goes further to give human voice to those questions in the characters written. We need to see some piece of ourselves in the characters in order to be challenged.

Conclusion

Spending hours with these characters was akin to sitting under hospital lighting for too long. My head vaguely hurts, and I’m annoyed. But more than that, I’m disappointed that a master technician couldn’t bring in serious humanity. This isn’t Flaubert’s only failure. His goal is to smash all the illusions that promised happiness but couldn’t deliver. He largely succeeds, but he offers no positive moral vision whatsoever. This is his point. Everything disappoints. Even other people.

“But vilifying those we love always detaches us from them a little. We should not touch our idols: their gilding will remain on our hands” – Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) (p. 250).

The best the reader can do is say, “I will live honestly in light of all these fancies failing to deliver on their promises.” V. S. Naipaul makes this point with Nazruddin in A Bend in the River. Nazruddin faces the failures of colonialism and post-colonialism in Africa and does his best, even if it’s doomed.

“All over the world money is in flight. People have scraped the world clean, as clean as an African scrapes his yard, and now they want to run from the dreadful places where they’ve made their money and find some nice safe country. I was one of the crowd… All of them are on the run. They are frightened of the fire. You mustn’t think it’s only Africa people are running from.” – Naipaul, V. S.. A Bend in the River (Vintage International) (p. 234).

No one ever accused Naipaul of being a rosy optimist, but he still gave more positive vision than Flaubert. Many critics applaud Flaubert’s choice. He faces reality without giving any false comfort. This is yet another factor that prevents Bovary from being transcendent. We read of Emma’s depravity and feel as if we’ve had a whiff of cloying scented candles covering rotting meat. But there’s no relief to be found. Indeed, the nausea only increases as the book closes. There’s no hope. No light. And no transcendence.

Thanks to ChatGPT for spelling and grammar copyedits (and blame for any failures!) as well as the generated image of Emma