The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert

You shall see with what delicate precaution the author has introduced a saintly old maid, and how, with a purport of teaching religion, there is allowed to slip into the convent a new element, through the introduction of romance brought in by a stranger. Do not forget this when the subject of religious morals is under consideration.

"At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love-songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away. She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work."

This is nothing but marvellous, speaking from a literary point of view, and absolution can but be granted a man who has written these admirable passages as a warning against all perils of education of this kind, as an indication to young women of the stumbling-blocks in the life in which they will be placed. Let us continue:

"They were all love, lovers, sweet-hearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, 'gentlemen' brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Emma, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries. With Walter Scott, later, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted châtelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time, she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Héloïse, Agnès Sorel, the beautiful Ferronnière, and Clémence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI., a little of St. Bartholomew's, the plume of the Béarnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honor of Louis XIV.

"In the music-class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;—mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities."

Now, you have not remembered this, when that poor country girl, having returned to the farm and married a village physician, is invited to an evening party at the Castle, to which you have sought to call the attention of the judges to show that there was something lascivious in a waltz she took part in. You have not called to mind this education when this poor woman is charmed that an invitation comes to take her from her husband's common fireside and lead her to the Castle, where she sees fine gentlemen, beautiful ladies, and the old duke, who, they said, had had great fortune at Court! The Government Attorney has shown some fine emotions à propos of Queen Marie-Antoinette! Assuredly there is not one of us who would not share his thought; like him, we have trembled at the name of this victim of the Revolution, but it is not with Marie-Antoinette that we are concerned here, it is with the Castle Vaubyessard.

There was an old duke there who had had, they said, relations with the queen, and towards whom all eyes were turned. And when this young woman found herself thus transported into the midst of the world, thus realizing all the fantastic dreams of her youth, can you wonder at the intoxication of it? And you accuse her of being lascivious! Better accuse the waltz itself; that dance of our great modern balls where, said a late author writing about it, the woman "leans her head upon the shoulder of her partner whose limbs embrace her." You find Madame Bovary lascivious in Flaubert's description, but there is not a man, and I will not except you, who, having taken part in a ball like that and seen that sort of waltz, has not had in mind the wish that his wife or his daughter refrain from this pleasure which has in it so much of the untamed. If, counting upon the chastity which enveloped this young woman, we allow her sometimes to give herself up to this pleasure which the world sanctions, it is necessary to count very much upon that envelope of chastity and, however much one may count upon it, it is not unheard of to express the impressions which M. Flaubert has expressed in the name of morals and chastity.

Here she is at the Castle Vaubyessard, observed by the old duke, noticed favorably by all, and you cry out: What details! What does it mean? Details are everywhere, although we cite but a single passage.

"Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses.

"But at the upper end of the table, alone among all those women, bent over his full plate, with his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with a black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiére, once on a time favorite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Mari-Antoinette between Monsieur de Coigny and Monsieur de Lauzun."

Defend the queen, defend her especially before the scaffold, say that because of her title she had the right of respect, but suppress your accusations when one contents himself with saying that he had been, it was said, the lover of the queen. Can that be so serious that you reproach us with having insulted the memory of that unfortunate woman?

"He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to, stammering, and constantly Emma's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens!

"Iced champagne was poured out. Emma shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pine-apples."

You see that these descriptions are charming, incontestably, and that it is not difficult to take a line here and there for the purpose of creating a kind of colour, against which my conscience protests. It is not a lascivious colour, it is only lifelike; it is the literary element and at the same time the moral element.

Here we have a young girl, whose education you are acquainted with, become a woman. The Government Attorney has asked: Did she even try to love her husband? He has not read the book; if he had read it, he would not have made the objection.

We have, gentlemen, this poor woman dreaming at first. On page 34 you will find her dreams. And there is something more here, something of which the Government Attorney did not speak, and which I must tell you, and these are her impressions when her mother died; you will see if they are lascivious soon enough! Have the goodness to turn to page 33 and follow me:

"When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried some day in the same grave. The good man thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Emma was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow."

I wish to make answer to the Government Attorney's reproach that she made no effort to love her husband.

THE GOVERNMENT ATTORNEY:

I did not reproach her for that, I said that she did not succeed in loving him.

M. SENARD:

If I have been mistaken, if you made no reproach, that is the best response that could be given. I believed that I understood you to make one; let us see how I may be deceived. Moreover, here is what I read at the end of page 36:

"And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she desired to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after this as before, and Charles seemed no more amorous and no more moved.

"When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Charles's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner."

On page 37 we find a group of similar things. Now, here is where the peril begins. You know how she has been brought up; and I beg you not to forget this for an instant.

There is not a man who, having read this, would not say that M. Flaubert is not only a great artist but a man of heart, for having in the last six pages turned all the horror and scorn upon the woman and all the interest towards the husband. He is a great artist, as has been said, because he has left the husband as he was, he has not transformed him, and to the end he is the same good man, commonplace, mediocre, full of the duties of his profession, loving his wife well, but destitute of education or elevation of thought. He is the same at the death-bed of his wife. And nevertheless, there is not an individual to whom the memory returns with more interest.

Why? Because he has kept to the end his simplicity and uprightness of heart; because to the end he has fulfilled his duty while his wife was led astray. His death is as beautiful and as touching as the death of his wife is hideous. On the dead body of the woman the author has shown the spots made by the vomiting of poison; they soil the white shroud in which she goes to her burial, and he has made her, as he desired, an object of disgust; but there is a man there who is sublime—the husband standing beside the grave. There is a man who is grand, sublime, whose death is admirable—the husband, who, finding himself broken-hearted by the death of his wife, sees afterwards all the illusions of the heart that remained to him embraced in the thought of his wife in the tomb. Keep that, I beg you, in your remembrance. The author has gone beyond what was necessary—as Lamartine has said—in rendering the death of the woman hideous and her punishment most terrible. The author has concentrated all the interest upon the man who did not deviate from the line of duty, who preserved his mediocre character, to be sure (for the author could not change his character) but who preserved also all his generosity of heart, while upon the wife who deceived him, ruined him, gave him into the hands of usurers, put into circulation forged notes and finally arrived at suicide, was heaped all the accumulated horrors. We shall see that it is natural—the death of this woman who, if she had not come to her end by poison, would have been broken by the excess of misfortune with which she was surrounded. The author has seen this. His book would not be read if he had done otherwise, if, in order to show where an education as perilous as that of Madame Bovary can lead, he had not been prodigal with the fascinating images and the powerful tableaux for which he is reproached.

M. Flaubert constantly sets forth the superiority of the husband over the wife, and what superiority, if you please? that of simple duty fulfilled, while the wife was straying from hers. Here she is, fixed by the bent of this bad education; here she is, gone out after the scene of the ball, with the young boy, Léon, as inexperienced as herself. She coquets with him but does not dare to go further; nothing happens. Then comes Rodolphe who takes the woman to himself. After looking at her for a moment, he said: This woman is all right. She will be easy prey, because she is light-minded and inexperienced. As to the fall, will you re-read pages 42, 43 and 44. I have only a word to say about this scene and that is: there are no details, no descriptions, no image that can trouble the senses; a single word indicates the fall: "She abandoned herself." I pray you to have the goodness to read again the details of the fall of Clarissa Harlowe, which I have not heard decried as a bad book. M. Flaubert has substituted Rodolphe for Lovelace, and Emma for Clarissa. If you will compare the two authors and the two books you will appreciate the situation.

But I will return here to the indignation of the Government Attorney. He is shocked that remorse does not immediately follow the fall, and that in the place of expressing bitterness, she said with satisfaction: "I have a lover!" But the author would not be true, if he made the enchanting draught seem bitter while it still touched the lips. He who wrote as the Attorney understands might be moral, but he would be saying what is not in nature. No, it is not at the first moment of a fault that the sentiment of fault is awakened; otherwise, it would not be committed. No, it is not at the moment when she is under a delusion that intoxicates her that a woman can be averted from this intoxication even by the immensity of the fault she has committed. She feels only the intoxication; she goes back to her home happy, sparkling, and singing in her heart: "I have a lover!" But can this last long? You have read pages 424 and 425. On both pages, and if you please, to page 428, the sentiment of disgust with her lover is not yet manifest; but she is already under the impression of fear and uneasiness. She thinks, weighs the question, and believes that she does not wish to abandon Rodolphe:

"Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly he frowned as one put out.

"'What is the matter with you?' she said, 'Are you ill? Tell me!'

"At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent—that she was compromising herself.

"Gradually Rodolphe's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her, and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house, she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead."

You see unmistakably that she was not deceived; she felt clearly that there was something about it of which she had not dreamed. Let us take pages 433 and 434 and you will be still further convinced:

"When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room, between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Rodolphe settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Charles which rather embarrassed Emma. She would have liked to see him more serious and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley.

"'Some one is coming!' she said

"He blew out the light.

"'Have you your pistols?'

"'Why?'

"'Why, to defend yourself,' replied Emma.

"'From your husband? Oh, poor devil!'"

And Rodolphe finished his phrase with a gesture which signified: I could crush him with a fillip.

She was amazed at his bravery, although she felt that there was a sort of indelicacy and naïve grossness about it that was scandalizing.

"Rodolphe reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Charles, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Emma had treated him to a lecture, which he did not think in the best taste.

"Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring—a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother—hers! and of his mother—his!

"Finally she wearied him."

Then, on page 453:

"He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad; so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Rodolphe concealed his indifference less and less.

"She did not know whether she regretted yielding to him, or whether, she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him."

And you are afraid, Mr. Government Attorney, that young women might read this! I am less frightened, less timid than you. On my own personal account, I can admirably understand a father of a family saying to his daughter: Young lady, if your heart, your conscience, if religious sentiment and the voice of duty are not sufficient to make you walk in the right path, look, my child, look well at the weariness, the suffering, the grief and desolation attending the woman who seeks happiness outside her home! This language would not wound you in the mouth of a father, would it? M. Flaubert has said nothing but this; he has made a painting most true, and most powerful, of what the woman who dreams of finding happiness outside her house immediately discovers.