“I’ve never been so happy!” Emma squealed as she stood before the mirror. ” Let’s go out on the town. I want to see Chorus and the Guggenhiem and this Jack Nicholson character you are always talking about.” Emma Bovary in Woody Allen’s The Kugelmass Episode.
As I sit here pondering the life of Emma Bovary I wonder what it must have really been like for her. She was young, younger than I am now when she died. She was curious and bright and probably would have been a great college student; passionate but with her head a little bit in the clouds. Opportunities for women in the 1850’s were, as we all know, extremely limited. I wonder if I would have fared much better than Emma if I had been as trapped as her.
I also married young, but when I realized it had been a mistake I had the option of a divorce, Emma did not. I have had the opportunity to receive a good education and to choose for myself what path my life would take. I feel very sorry for Emma. Having never been given the opportunity to discover her true self or to develop her dreams and hopes for her future, all she had to base her aspirations on were trashy romance novels. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if all of my teenage curiosity had been forced to be satisfied by nothing but Danielle Steel romance novels.
Emma strove to better herself and her situation. She wanted to reach the upper echelon of society; she wanted what we in this country refer to as the “american dream.” She wanted more than her parents had. Emma wanted to feel great love and own nice things and live in a wonderful city. These are not things that are alien to most of us. Although it may be amusing to read Woody Allen’s take on what Emma Bovary might be like if she went to modern day New York, it must also be realized that he is not completely mistaken in his ideas of her character. In a very humorous manner, Woody Allen is able to sum up Emma’s lust for life and her desire to experience and learn new things; to actually go out and live.
Perhaps a trip such as the one described in Mr. Allen’s short story would have been the thing to save Emma Bovary, although I doubt she would have ever wanted to go back to Yonville as she does in Allen’s story. Emma Bovary is an unhappy, unfulfilled woman. Emma’s tragedy is that she cannot escape her own immanence. ‘Everything including herself was unbearable to her,’ But just as her walks always lead back to the detested house, so Emma feels thrown back into herself, left stranded on her own shore (Brombert 22). She constantly strives for experience and passion, but is continually restrained by a society that did not tolerate the growth, education, and mature development of women.
Emma was fortunate to have had any education at all in her day. Brought up in convent of the Ursuline order, she had received, as they say, a good education, “as a result,she knew dancing, geography, drawing, tapestry weaving, and piano playing (Flaubert 40). These are not exactly mind expanding subjects except perhaps for the geography (no offence meant toward piano players and tapestry weavers). Unfortunately, as we discover in Emma’s case, a little education can be a dangerous thing. Once someone begins to learn they want to continue their education, so it was with Emma.
She supplemented the education of the good sisters with one of her own, the dreaded romance novels. Emma’s world has suddenly been opened to new possibilities. She now knows that there is more to life than being a nun or a farmer’s wife. Now she had learned that there could be more, there could be passion and excitement. Emma sought to learn what was really meant in life by the words “happiness,” “passion,” and “intoxication,” “words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books (Flaubert 55). Taking her jump from the romantic novels she read, Emma now strove to emulate the lives of these people who had, seemingly to her, a perfect existence or at the very least an exciting one.
This was the only avenue of excitement that had been presented to Emma, so understandably this is what she chose to pursue in life. Emma does not begin her affairs because she was a nymphomaniac, but because she was looking for excitement, she wanted to really “live” life. Emma marries Charles because she wants to get off the farm. Her father also wants to get her married off. Monsieur Roualt considered Emma to be of little help around the farm. Inwardly he forgave her, feeling that she was too intelligent for farming (Flaubert 45).
Fortunately for women today if their father feels that they are too intelligent for farming, that life in the country does not suit them, they can send their daughters to college or let them move to the city and find work. For Emma there was marriage to Charles, who unfortunately for both Emma and himself, was nothing like the romantic heros she had read and fantasized about. Love seems impossible to Emma unless it appears with all the conventional signs which constitute a romantic code of love in fictions of romance (Bersani 33). Emma never realizes the depth of Charles’ love for her. Because he does not use the flowery speech of her romance novels or constantly pledge his undying love, Emma does not feel the “fireworks” that she has been reading about all these years.
It is no wonder that Emma falls for Rudolphe’s lines so easily. When Rudolphe says, “In my soul you are a Madonna on a pedestal, exalted, secure, and immaculate (Flaubert 161), Emma falls hook, line, and sinker. If Rudolphe were here in 1995 he would probably be using cheesy lines on some silly drunk girl in a bar. It is truly shameful that a grown woman was so sheltered from life that she did not know the difference between a pickup line and real love. The truly frightening thought occurs to me that there were thousands of “Emma’s” in the 1850’s; women who through oppression were forced to live out their lives never knowing who they really were or what was truth and what was false.
Emma does not have the knowledge to truly be held accountable for many of her actions. Freedom and responsibility are intertwined, you cannot have one without the other. As Emma was given virtually no freedom, it is impossible to force her to claim responsibility for the mess she creates. With almost no practical education or life experience or any decent advice it is actually a salute to Emma’s intelligence that she is able to juggle her financial problems as long as she does. Eventually, when everything comes to a head, she is forced to confront the mess she is in, both emotionally and financially. She learns that romantic ecstasy doesn’t last (Bersani 35). She is now “learning the hard way” and with no true friends to comfort or console her she is overwhelmed. Emma’s lust, her longing for money and her sentimental aspirations all become ‘confused’ in one single vague and oppressive sense of suffering.
Emma commits suicide not because of the money or Leon or Rudolphe. She kills herself because she realizes that she will never really understand life. She despairs because she is in a mess when she believes that she has done everything as she should. Emma’s hope for a baby boy sums up the female experience in 1850’s France. She hoped for a son. A man, at least, is free. He can explore passions and countries, surmount obstacles, taste the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually held back (Flaubert 101).
Works Cited:
Allen, Woody. Side Effects. New York: Random House, 1975.
Bersani, Leo. “Flaubert and Emma Bovary: The Hazards of Literary Fusion.” **Modern Critical Interpretations: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
Brombert, Victor. “The Tragedy of Dreams.” **Modern Critical Interpretations: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
Flaubert, Gustave. **Madame Bovary. New York: Signet Classic, 1964.