Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Madame Bovary: Yes, I'm still reading this

Still slogging through this thing. I can’t remember which page I’m on.

Charles attempted this new operation to cure a poor hapless soul of his clubfoot. Charles and Emma figured if he mastered this surgery, fame and fortune would follow. Big surprise. It didn’t work. Gangrene followed, and another surgeon had to be called in to amputate the guy’s leg. Charles paid for the guy’s new wooden leg, but now he spends his time ducking down alleys when he hears the thud-thud of the wooden leg because he’s so ashamed of his flubbed surgery. Emma is embarrassed and thinks Charles is a useless piece of crap. On the bright side, the patient is really quite pleased with his wooden leg. Who knew?

Meanwhile, Emma and Rodolphe carried on their torrid affair. Problem is, these being the days before television, there’s not much for Emma to do between her sneaky visits to Rodolphe’s place, so she just spends her time being neurotic (and loathing Charles). Rodolphe starts to get bored by Emma, as he does with all his chickies.

In my humble opinion, Charles needs a mistress, but since the book is called Madame Bovary and not Monsieur Bovary, I doubt this is going to happen.

Emma-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown forces Rodolphe to make plans for them to move away together. He says: what about your kid? She says: oh whatever, we’ll take her with us. Whatever. Plans are made, plans are made. All this time she’s buying trunks and travelling clothes, while denying she’s going anywhere. Nobody in the town is fooled. Charles is oblivious.

The night before their scheduled departure, she rushes home to pack. Rodolphe thinks: She was a good mistress, but you gotta be kidding. He’s not running away to anywhere. He’s got a house and a business to run. Tough cookies, Emma.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I remember reading this (not in French) years ago and wondering what all the fuss was about. And now, reading it again via this, well, interesting interpretation, it comes across as a very ordinary soap opera.