Lauren Jensen
Madame Bovary
LIT 290
10/12/18
Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary criticizes the French provincial bourgeois society in many ways, though not in the ways the French courtrooms were accusing him of. The story’s first appearance in the Paris Revue was in parts, throughout a series of issues. The magazine was a place for writers to have a safe zone to express their works of literary art without political critique. However, Flaubert’s work brought complaints of slander toward the French government, claiming it to be immoral and disgraceful because women like that could never exist in France; they had more class than that.
The prosecution claimed the book was immoral for more reasons than not. From the way it portrayed French women to be scandalous and devious and manipulative, to the vulgar language and innuendos. It slandered the church and government. How dare anyone have their own opinion on religion and politics, but more importantly, how dare that opinion differ from that of those who are calling the shots. The adultery was supposedly the worst part of the book. People wanted pieces removed from the book, especially the scene in the back of the cab, when Leon and Emma are very clearly having sexual relations.
French law says that a person is guilty until proven innocent, so Flaubert’s lawyer Antoine Senard had to say anything he needed to say to win the case. The defense said the book was moral because it teaches women that adultery has consequences. Sinning, lying, cheating, sneaking around has disgusting, deathly consequences. Senard stated that Flaubert wrote the book to deter women from doing such appalling things. He claimed Flaubert’s purpose was for women to think ‘I’m not going to be like Emma; I don’t want to end up like her’. Senard also pointed out that Flaubert was a respectable, upper class citizen, and the son of a famous doctor. Since they were trying to convince white men of high social status and good standing, this was a great point to make, since they were the only people who had any real say.
The defense won the trial, and that brings the book full circle. Senard said what people wanted to hear, because he knew that winners are the people who work the system. Homais knows this in the book, too. He stays on everyone’s good side so that people don’t find out he is actually a fraud and liar, and in the end even receives the highest civilian form of French recognition. The prosecution, Pinard, said “art without rules is not art. It is like a woman who discards all clothing,” which is shameful and disgraceful. But Flaubert’s art is really meant to show the honest to God French government, stripped down, not hidden or covered up.
The book was said to be an insult to the honor and virtue of the French government, especially its women. But if the French people were so good and moral, they wouldn’t have even read the novel. The hypocrisy of the trial is the best part of it all. Infidelity occurs- in real life and in books, and everyone takes part in it. Whether they are the ones having the affair, or the ones talking about it, or the ones turning their cheek and pretending not to notice: everyone is involved.
Meanwhile, Flaubert didn’t care what people thought of his work. He knew that the people who found it immoral were afraid of it; afraid to admit the brutal honesty that his words depicted. It didn’t matter whether the book is moral or not, it mattered that he may be allowed to write it, and that anyone may be allowed to read it, regardless of what others may think of it. This brought the abolition of freedom of the press, and Flaubert said that censorship was “treason against the soul.” He didn’t make a point to say whether what Emma does in immoral or moral. That wasn’t the point of his art. The point of his art was to tell the facts of what was happening in their society, around Emma, which should have been the real events being questioned about morality. The events in Flaubert’s booked only mirrored real life events, in a smaller way. Redolphe seducing Emma, just like the French Government was, at the time, seducing its people. The government was telling the people what they wanted to hear. Emma being so willing to give away her virtue to Rodolphe is just like the old lady who won the lottery at the street fair. She won, but immediately is ready to give her money to her master.
But morality cannot possibly determine the quality of a book, or any piece of art, for that matter. One cannot simply say someone’s feelings and thoughts and emotions are immoral. Those things are valid, no matter the circumstance. The stories people tell through their art are theirs to tell, and no one else’s. As a matter of fact, I think the more uncomfortable art makes you, the more it pulls you from your comfort zone to a place you’ve never ventured before, the better the art is.
Lauren Jensen 