Jane Austen Describes Emma Woodhouse

JANE AUSTEN DESCRIBES EMMA WOODHOUSE

BY

DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS

I have no excuse but my prejudice to offer for favoring Emma Bovary over Emma Woodhouse. I have already given a few reasons therefor, and they all boil down to my temperament or humour. Not that I am myself an adulterous, home-breaking man; quite to the contrary: I am a rebellious thinker, but a conservative actor. Neither am I your everyday scandal-mongering sort.

There is much more involved here than the quotidian infidelity of yet another 'That Woman.' Gaultier saw that and invented a whole 'new' philosophy of illusionism - Bovarysm - using Madame Bovary as his model. My own fascination has caused me to neglect Jane Austen and her Emma Woodhouse.

I have occasionally quoted from Flaubert's Madame Bovary, therefore the very least I can do is quote something from Austen's Emma. We can dip into Flaubert's text almost anywhere and immediately understand the subject matter, the characters and the action. That is not true of Austen's text. She does not pause to explain her characters at length: she allows them to make their appearances and to speak and act for themselves within the complex of her novel; unless the context is understood, brief quotes from the text are meaningless. However, the first four paragraphs of her novel are an exception:

"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived twenty-one years in the world with little to distress or vex her.

"She was the youngest of two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father, and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses, and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.

"Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Woodhouse's family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of Emma. Between them it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of the authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and Emma doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.

"The real evils of Emma's situation were the power of having to much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her."

On Whether Constructive Criticism is Constructive

On Constructive Criticism

Dear Madame Melina:

Reality is the death of me and I can't stand realism for long. I have taken your letters under consideration, and I'm afraid you have left me with the impression that literary Realism has become dog food because of the decadent reality that realists really represent because they live in the animal shelter. The hounds bark hysterically before meals and think they sing ever so beautifully.

Of course I do not speak of the reality of idealism but of the technological materialism that has turned writers into mechanical street-sweeper drivers. They resort to cumbersome formulas at public expense. The public thinks the street-sweepers are doing a lovely job, but once they have passed by, it becomes obvious to refined sophisticates that the dirt, trash and leaves have just been shuffled around to the sides of a broad wet streak in the gutter, thus the process is really a waste of time and money albeit only a few lucid people know it. Whereas the realists of old could not help making a mysterious romance out of reality while actually playing in the mud with humankind.

But I am no critic, Madame Me. I thank you for considering me as such even though I find critics personally revolting. However, I am a reviewer from time to time: I will be glad to give a friend's book a glowing review at Amazon. And I will honor your request for a critique of the brief excerpts you sent over from Alexander Theroux's book, limiting myself to same since they do not inspire me to look further.

After I received your first communication about this literary gift to the world, it occured to me that I lack critical criteria for critiques, that I have no standard for praise and blame except my own gut feelings, which depend on the frequency and quality of my meals. I had just eaten a good dinner, and I was not in a mood to do what so-called 'good' critics seem to do best, something that makes of the word, 'critic', a perjorative expression. Now most of the critics you just cited seemed to be flatterers, and therefore bad critics. I found myself in a quandry, and heartburn was setting in.

It suddenly struck me that I might avoid putting your author down or raising him up, and instead provide a criticism that might flatter me! I remembered Niccolo Tucci's paper, 'On Constructive Criticism' - it appeared in the November 1949 issue of Partisan Review. It so impressed me that I kept a copy. The best way, I thought, to provide you with the critique you want, would be to simply write a superlative paraphrase of the first paragraph you submitted to me - a better paragraph on the same subject!

I retrieved Niccolo's article for better guidance - from under the bathroom sink - it was behind the hardened can of Ajax and the cockroaches, and was still in relatively good shape although stained brown. I sat down on the toilet and read this:

"I wonder if the 'constructivists' have ever paused long enough to consider what would happen in the other fields of criticism if their principles were suddely accepted. For example, music. Now, when a serious musical critic dismisses as symphony as bad, and gives only the reasons why it does not hold together musically, that is rightly called 'criticism.'

"If the same musical critic announced the next day that he has composed a symphony of his own, that would be rightly referred to as a symphony of his own. But if upon presenting his own composition to the public, he said: 'This music here is a constructive criticism of the symphony criticised by me yesterday,' he would righly be sent to the unholiest places and criticized, not once but twice: first as a critic who does not keep his place; secondly as a composer who pretends to be exempt from criticism because, until yesterday, he was a critic too."

Niccolo proposed that art museums allow space for critics' paintings next to the paintings they criticize. That is a great idea! I thought, and should be applied to libraries. As it is, we have a few volumes of an author's work on the shelf, followed by volumes of praise and blame. Why not rid the shelves of praise and blame, in favor of volumes of constructive criticism? War and Peace, for example, will be followed by the critics' versions of the masterpiece!

Niccolo pointed out that 'Constructive criticism' was a relative new phenomenon, most popular in the U.S., for it was purportedly 'democratic.' In his opinion, so-called constructive criticism is an attempt to tone down genuine criticism. It is equivalent to a happy ending in the movies. And to demand that a critic, who criticises a work based on common sense, should be expert enough to do it better, is childishly arrogant and demonstrative of the prejudice that one must be a specialized to be qualified to know the difference between good and bad work. That concept is sheer nonsense and often dishonest - common-sense criticism is so embarassing to political leaders, for example, that they insist on diplomatic and military secrecy in the "interest of national (their own) security.".

Furthermore, the objection that negative as opposed to constructive criticism is destructive hence worthless is cry-baby talk. The negative critic has no duty except to except to negate, and has no obligation to come up with a workable solution.

"It's like advertising," Niccoli wrote, referring to the constructive criticism of the trains going to the death camps. "The world goes to the dogs, everything is dark, but we here at the factory have a new toothpaste that will brighten your smile."

He thinks that constructive criticism is not really democratic but is a despotic attempt at getting critics to show respect for the people and theories they criticize. It was borrowed from masters of that technique: Hitler and Mussolini. It was called "criticism within the system" because it was not "criticism of the system." It got to comic proportions in Italy. He gives this dialogue in Russia:

Critic: We, the Russian people do not want these chains.

Stalin: You are prefectly right. I will give you better ones.

Critic: We don't want better ones, we want none at all.

Stalin: You are a pessimist, a negativist, a destructive critic. You do not believe that I am here to help you. If you tell me your grievances concretely, I may help you, but if you insist on asking for the impossible, I will have to eliminate you.

Well, Madame Me, Niccolo Tucci certainly made some excellent points, and I was glad I reviewed them. Nevertheless, when I got off the throne, I knew that the best way to criticize the paragraph you sent over was to write a better one. And that I shall do as soon as possible. As you may have noticed, I have been quite busy lately because the world is going to the dogs and something must be done.

Yours,

Mr. Groundhog 

Addendum on Audultery - Madame Melina Critiques the Worst Possible Novel

Dear Mr. Two Emmas:

I realize your Emmas are two of the finest creatures devised according to the new Realism of their time, so please forgive me for intruding into your discourse on same yet again. I wish to add to my previous remarks on An Adultery before you come to a definite opinion on same. I do not believe I am impertinent for doing so. I was astonished to see Alexander Theroux flattered with a comparison to the great Flaubert. Alas, literature has decayed since Jane Austen and Gustave Flaubert set pen to paper. What passes for fine literature today would cause them to spin in their graves if they could care at all for their own immortality as authors after their deaths. Alas, the art of writing has been degraded to such a confusing post-modern mess that anything that makes sense or sensibility will soon be rendered absolutely incomprehensible. If the tasteless trend continues, people will only think that they're reading and writing, for they shall have lost their ability to think, and therefore to write.

In all fairness to Alexander Theroux, I must admit that, when I first read the line I cited from his An Adultery for your highly esteemed consideration, I was struck with the fact that such an artful array of running sentence fragments could not have been the result of mere accident, say, like falling down a flight of stairs. Instead a marionette, an unwitting subject of deliberate manipulation comes to mind, one bade to posture and tumble down the stairs by virtue of a a higher power, exercised, of course, by the puppeteer.

I do not propose that the arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power has no place in fiction-writing. However, I believe the reader will subconsciously or otherwise perceive and be confused by the ambiguity of Theroux's sort of tyrannical writing. I quote two additional excerpts from An Adultery to clarify what I mean by this. The first quote provides a glimpse of the author's writing style including his tyrannical treatment of his main character, Christian Ford. The second provides a small taste of his "fascinating, eloquent, thoughtful, and wonderfully written book" (Los Angeles Times Book Review):

"I have a tendency to speak with the spasmodic cadences of a person who wants words out of the way in a hurry and along with something of a regional accent have a way of extending my vowels so that I seem to be racing through lists of possible meanings of statements in mid-word, almost stuttering to get on with an idea."

"I felt her in confidence immediately, a side of her (at complete loggerheads of what is expected in beauty of self-assurance) she ascribed, when I mentioned it, not to what I'd presumed was an unhappy marriage, though this entered into it, but oddly enough to her father, an artist, she from childhood loved far more, she felt, than he her--I thought I heard a therapist's echo--a matter of import apparently in that she admitted to an interest in the arts herself, drawing, sculpting, whatever."

ACK! I say again, but I am but one voice crying out in the Void, which is sufficient reason to be confused. Here then are other voices, no less confused by my estimation, and though I risk boring you with repetition, note the different ways some readers will rationalize their confusion, i.e., perceive the effects of unrestrained exercise of power by the author over their thoughts and feelings. I might add, the latter speaks to Theroux's "literary prowess" (I use the term loosely), otherwise known as the power to dupe:

'Another masterpiece from the other Theroux,' November 5, 1999. Reviewer: from Washington, DC.

"A wonderfully excoriating novel from one of America's greatest authors. Ever. Though not as rich and encyclopedic as the better and better known Darconville's Cat, it is honed and tightly written, and at home among the several great American novels written in the last 30 years. . . . As to be expected, the quality of the language and the vituperation in which it is often adorned is for its own sake worth the effort (and yes, effort is required) and worthy of the cited Frederick Rolfe."

'It grows on you,' October 21, 1997. Reviewer from Ottawa, Canada.

"After getting over the annoyance of Theroux's 'hoity-toity' way of writing, and the largely unrealistic dialogue, this book truly grows on you. You find that you have to force yourself to read the first 1/3 of the book, but after that, you then look forward to what's next. It may not be the 'Psychological Masterpiece', as it has been toted to be, but it is a very heartfelt and emotionally wrenching book." Reviewer: A Reader

'Hard going but worth the effort,' August 6, 1997. Reviewer: A reader.

"I wonder why this was not a best-seller. As usual with this author you need to work at it staying with him. It is sometime repetitious - or it seems so to the unenlightened like me." Reviewer: A Reader

"Ah! To stumble time and time again over impossibly tangled syntax, doze off in the middle of a paragraph--oh, excuse me, I meant sentence--and force oneself to stay the course through thickets of wholly inane, self-conscious dialogue is to be, forsooth, unenlightened. If this is the case, then we must view the following comments made by a Washington reader not as a genuine response to Theroux's An Adultery, but as a testimony to what surely must be her own mental defects: Insufferable characters, June 7, 1999. Reviewer: A reader from Olympia, WA.

"The only thing that prevented me from giving this book 1 star was that there were some good observations - otherwise the characters are annoying, the writing is pretentious, and the general effect is both creepy and pathetic." Reviewer: A Reader

I ask you, Mr. Two Emmas, what is the literary world coming to? I do not consider Mr. Theroux's An Adultery or at least parts of it, to be entirely without merit; any number of its sentences would surely win first prize in the prestigious Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for the opening line of the worst of all possible novels. It is no simple feat to write non sequitur, maddeningly involuted prose with a deft hand, and a writer's ability to pull it off should indeed be noted, if only occasionally admired.

Of course, I do not want to unduly influence your opinion, and I certainly hope you will render it as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Madame Melina  

Madame Melina Loves Mr. Two Emmas

An Adultery

Dear Mr. Two Emmas:

You are keeping one of the most provocative literary logs on the Internet, and I hope there will be no end to it. Thus far I have especially enjoyed Charlotte Bronte's acerbic critique: it was a resonating bong! amidst all the Austen noise.

Speaking of critics and critiques, I pulled a book written by Alexander Theroux off my shelf. I purchased it at a yard sale some years back, and finally decided to have a go at it yesterday afternoon. The title might pique your interest: An Adultery.

The following reviews appeared on the back cover:

". . . Part cautionary tale, part homage to the great books of the genre by Hawthorne, Flaubert, Tolstoy and James, An Adultery is a novel of linguistic virtuosity and riveting insight--a classic for our time." - Macmillan Publishing Company

"Theroux's new novel is a brilliant piece of work--a psychological masterpiece in which the prose is of classic stature, the imagery just, and the capacity for character analysis immensely sophisticated. . . ." - Anthony Burgess

"A fascinating, eloquent, thoughtful, and wonderfully written book." - Susan Cheever, "Los Angeles Times Book Review"

Here an excerpt from page 40 of the book. It is the last line I read before slamming it shut:

"But of course I went, one freezing night following her car in my own to a dimly lit side street on the outskirts of St. Ives where a mock couple, a mimic marriage, we had dinner and listened to music--she played soft jazz over and over--and talked in an anxiety-ridden preappointed mood as doubly indistinct as the faint gradations of tone perceptible in the sky outside the large winter window of the living room that brought a constant chill into rooms as sterile and white as the snow outside, a dampness which Farol, constantly feeding logs into the wood stove, sought to buffer in spite of the general caveat there, her husband's upon leaving, that she not waste wood."

I admit the novel could very well have been Theroux's "prose of classic stature" and "linguistic virtuosity" that, upon meeting with my own dullwittedness, compelled a resounding "ACK!" from my lips. But never mind me, I can see from your discourse on the Two Emmas that you are qualified to make your own critical assessment. I know I would be greatly pleased with it, and I hope you can spare it.

Sincerely,

Madame Me

The Romantic Fool's Game

THE ROMANTIC FOOL'S GAME

by

David Arthur Walters

I suppose I am a foolish romantic. I know romance is a fool's game, yet I continue to play. The illusion of it all keeps me going. Everything perceived and conceived is an illusion, says the great master. So what? It is a real illusion, is it not? And what would he have me do? Jump through a plate glass window? Go home and put a plastic bag over my head or cut my wrists in the bathtub? Not without a noble Roman cause!

Reality is not for me because I feel it is the death of me. I must protest against the real for the sake of the ideal, eternal life, no matter how vain or empty that utopia might seem. A romantic like me lives in the spirit of rebellion. After all, what choice do I have? Every existence would persist forever if only it could. I think we are all romantics in our own way.

My god is perfection and perfection is unlimited. My god is the death of my imperfection. I am not my god, at least not yet. I am working on it, but I cannot help stalling for time; I am making a few deals here and there, with the relative realities limiting me in time. I am reading my Shelley and Byron. I must get away, I must wander, I must revolt. I shall pen a poem. I am fighting illusion with illusion, fire with fire. Yes, here is smoke, and there is the fog of war, and things are getting hazy, nebulous. I am confounded and confused, I feel a tragedy coming on, I have that melancholy feeling. Love is slipping away. Of course there is always the possiblity of perfect love - how romantic. There is always faith. There is always hope. Wherefore nothing is good enough for me. Everything is an occasion for disastisfaction. Nothing is perfect.

That is why I sympathize more with Emma Bovary than I do with Emma Woodhouse. I imagine I would rather marry the latter, who was satisfied with what she got, and have an affair with the former, who was not, but in truth I could not marry Madame Bovary, for, despite my intellectual romanticism, I confess that I am in fact a passionate monogamist, a conditioned conservative, a stick in the mud. I suppose that is why I rebel so vehemently. Few people are aware of my rebellion, and those who know the man behind the intellect have no fear of me, for I am just the mild-mannered man with the thick glasses trying to balance the books in the office at the far end of the hall.

My temperament or my characteristic humour caused me to agree with Charlotte Bronte's criticism of Jane Austen and her Emma. We have read Bronte's letter: she did not say that Austen was a cold-blooded, narrow-minded, provincial Englishwoman who should have moved to London or Europe to find out what was really going on in the world (1) instead of staying cooped up around the village hearth with her family and telling stories to the kids. Of course Austen was not completely ignorant of what was happening in London and elsewhere, but London was apparently not her cup of tea. She had visited London and Bath occasionally while living in the village of Steventon, Hampshire, and, in the 1800s, she took temporary lodgings in London, Bath, and Southampton. Besides, her extensive network of relatives and friends acquainted her with affairs outside of the confines of her residences. Wherever she was, she had a keen eye for detail and an acutely analytical mind. She was a mastermind of miniatures; that's what she did, and her literary achievement is nothing short of outstanding. Now Charlotte Bronte knew that. Bronte criticized Austen for being relatively heartless. Shall we say, unromantic? Whereas Bronte was a realistic romantic - her realism was heartfelt.

"Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushed through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death - this Miss Austen ignores."

I suppose that Bronte would enjoy Gustave Flaubert and his Emma Bovary - not that she would approve of either - Madame Bovary was a realistic satire on romanticism, a pioneering work of the new Realism. Madame Bovary characterizes the modern spirit of continuous incipience, the constant urge to always be beginning something new. Neoteric beings feel the restless tendency to break up the fixed forms of reasoning which presumably correspond to worldly reality; and to release the imprisoned will, restoring its original vitality, the native emotion that moves it - the will to exist forever in time - the will to be other than what it is - the consciousness of which is an illusion until realized, if ever realized.

Yet we no longer associate modernism with the romantic tendency. The world was shocked back into its senses by the devastation resulting from the attempt to realize the regressive romantic claims of unbridled Vitalism, or unmitigated Will to Power. The world would have been better off sticking with the altruistic pessimism of Schopenhauer's Will to Life. Nietzsche expounded Will to Power. Gaultier read Nietzsche and Madame Bovary, and fathered the philosophy of Bovarysm, the Will to Illusion - he believed that Emma's illusion was a morbid expression of an otherwise healthy process. Two world wars have left us with grave doubts about vitalism, romanticism, illusionism, idealism, utopianism, egoism, and so on. In a sense, we have returned to Austen's Emma.

Perhaps that is why most critics today come squarely down in Austen's favor - indeed, she was a foremost exponent of the modern novel and a pioneer of the new Realism. We certainly know which Emma the critics recommend to our young. Some of us were tortured by her because we were not very realistically inclined in our youth. Educators no longer approve of the romantic approach with all its politically incorrect heroes, even though the young are inherently romantic - some rebellious kids took up the primitive romantic form, the Gothic, in protest; which is ironic, for it protests the scenic illusion of scientific salvation, throwing the obscene reality of decay and death in parental faces. In any case, Madame Bovary is hardly a suitable role model or a romantic heroine for a child. She was not intended to be. Flaubert's contemporaries, however, were not at all shocked by her: they could not understand why the author would bother writing about such a commonplace personality involved in everyday adultery. Of course the authorities had to bring a morals charge against him for exposing the underlying reality.

However that may be, and despite all the damage that has been done by foolish romantics, many fools remain among us, provoking realistic people to long for more romance in their lives. In the literary world, many writers, when not constipated by writer's blocks, have great difficulty excreting a long, continuous, "romantic" line. And they resent and deplore those those who can, calling them "verbose", "boring", "wordy", "lecturing", and "selfish" - if they can scream lengthy protests, they are "hysterical," no matter how reasonable their underlying complaint might be. Such authors are denied a romantic life in the literary world, in forums, in ordinary conversation - which used to be an art. The self, which once struggled to assert itself, to free itself from slavish conformity, has now hidden itself in a trash heap of "facts", news, sports scores, superficial descriptions, daily gossip.

The writer's business today is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits writers to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushed through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death - that is what they ignore.

Alas.

Note:

(1) "Read Jane Austen and you would never know the Napoleonic wars were raging while Emma Woodhouse and the Bennett sisters were seeking husbands (yes, soldiers flit across Pride and Prejudice - but only as unsuitable marriage prospects). It stood to reason: women could not be actors in the big events but sat at home waiting for the war to maim their men. The quotidian shaped their existence, and became their subject of study and creative efforts. The same became true of their journalism, which served simply to mirror their confined existence. " Cristina Odone, The Observer, 10/13/2002. Cristina's remark might cause us to wonder at how parochial or small-minded many American men and women are in our present highly-specialized Information Age.

Jane Austen's Critics

JANE AUSTEN'S CRITICS

by David Arthur Walters

I am not one to find out what other people say about something in order to have an opinion on it. But once I have a definite attitude about a certain subject or person, I do consider the opinions of others. Sometimes, but not often, I change my opinion as a consequence. When it comes to personal likes and dislikes, I tend to agree with those who share mine, and sometimes I consult their opinions to help me to understand and to voice my feelings.. 

I do not care for Jane Austen's work although she is a great novelist who has pleased millions of readers and who is raved about to this very day. No matter how much others might be amused by it, I have little patience for the complex detail and personal gossip in her work. I prefer the a more 'psychological' novel, where motives are exposed and behavior agonized over. I try to read Emma and I wind up being thankful the novel was turned into a really funny movie. Yes, I know, people who understand the novel read it several times over and never stop laughing, but it is not for me. 

I recently perused the criticism of Austen's critics. Criticism is at bottom praise or blame, and honest critics are not afraid to come down on one side or the other. I saw few moderate opinions in the 19th-century criticism of Austen's person and work. Her work received either low ratings accompanied by rude personal remarks based mostly on hearsay, or it enjoyed high ratings along with praise for her person, again based mostly on hearsay. Yet in the 20th century, I found a consensus that she is one of the greatest novelist who ever lived, and several recommendations that every novelist should study her work. Furthermore, the critics claim that Emma is her most brilliant creation, the ultimate character study of English literature. 

I was most interested by the following details: she was surrounded by family; she was a patient person who wrote for her amusement; she had no studio to write in, and hid her work when someone approached; she liked to tell children's stories; she never married but had a proposal; she was sociable; when first published, her name did not appear on her works; she was not popular while alive but got a few good reviews; she died young at 41; when she began to get famous 40 years later, people came around and asked questions about her, and the locals could not imagine why anyone would be interested in her. 

I am certainly thankful for Austen's literary gift to humankind, yet I am now a heretic in respect to the orthodox opinion of my contemporaries. 

There are always heretics. While going through the critical anthologies, I found a fascinating letter written in 1850 by Charlotte Bronte, who read Emma with "interest and just the degree of admiration Miss Austen herself would find suitable. Anything like warmth or enthusiasm - anything poignant, heart-felt, is utterly out of place in commending these works... 

"... Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushed through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death - this Miss Austen ignores.... Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and insensible (not senseless) woman. If this is heresy, I cannot help it." 

Bronte came down hard on Austen and she has my sympathies. Jane might have been the kinder of the two women, but I cannot condemn Charlotte for expressing herself honestly. I share her antipathy. As a critic she is balanced but biased in my direction. She compliments Jane for her Reason while she blames her for her deficit of Will or passion. Reason versus Will was once the big "issue." I note her use of the term 'enthusiasm' (god-possession), once a popular theme with writers. Romantic Artists - is there any other kind? - are supposedly inspired by their vital Will, enthused by God's revelations, guided by idols called Muses. They are not cold, calculating and rational; they are not much interested in surfaces, in superficial detail, in mere gossip; rather, they burn within with fires wrapped in mysterious smoke and fog and so on. Yet they have been known to maintain a reasonable, classical line, whereas merely superficial minds cleave to materialistic details and are lost in newsprint that passes for literature. 

Bronte, then, like all critics, employs a philosophical "platitude" to justify her feelings about Austen. After all, morality is founded on a few platitudes - the sin is in not concealing them with fancy talk, in using hackneyed phrases instead of original variations on themes.

The Madame Bovary Philosophy

THE MADAME BOVARY PHILOSOPHY

BY

DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS

We can certainly identify with characters who are true to life. The authors who have the perspicacity and skill necessary to artfully represent them should be gratefully applauded. Since the advent of the Internet, many aspiring novelists have emerged from obscurity to be applauded.

I am myself one of the greatest authors the world will ever or never know, but I do not fancy myself as a novelist. For one thing, I have no taste for fiction. But I occasionally browse a library wing stacked with the greatest literary fiction in the world. I pick out a title that happens to strike my eye. I read a paragraph or two, sometimes a whole chapter, usually from the end or the middle of the book. If a book appeals to me, I ask myself why. Most likely I like a book because of the author's ideas rather than his technique and style, and that is because I am philosophically inclined; I enjoyed reading Kant's obscure critiques, and I eventually found a bright and clear light under the basket - one must avoid the illusions of the transcendental logic. But bad technique can turn me off of good ideas, so when I find a good technique, I make a mental note of it just in case I come up with some good ideas.

I suppose aspiring novelists read far more fiction than I do - by fiction I mean those works placed in that category whether they are true or false. No doubt they'have read about the Two Emmas. Even the reader who does not write much must know of Austen's Emma from high school. I imagine Flaubert's Emma is banned from those youthful precincts; I would not know since I did not have the privilege of attending high school. I am, however, a graduate of Clay Elementary School, where my sixth grade teacher encouraged me to write my first story about saving the world, and I am still preoccupied with my assignment. Nevertheless, given my informal education, not only the aspiring novelist but the ordinary reader as well is certainly more advanced in literary studies than I am. Therefore I post questions to them every once in awhile in hopes I might be enlightened by some passerby.

For instance, I was thinking about the Two Emmas yesterday, and thought I would post these "stupid" questions: "Would not a woman better understand and portray her own sex? Is there not an essential difference between the thoughts of men and women? If there is a substantial difference in thought corresponding to gender, is a woman too close to the subject to understand her feminine nature?

I liked Flaubert's Emma more than Austen's Emma. However, I loved the Emma Woodhouse played by Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. That might be because she was not really Austen's but was the film writer's postmodern interpretation. Or maybe I preferred Emma Bovary because I prefer Flaubert's style. Is he the better writer? How would I know? I'm not a critic. People rave about Jane, and I admit she is one of the best novelists of all time, but I cannot stand her work. I am prejudiced, I think.

I mentioned elsewhere that I found Flaubert via my circuitous study of the Doctrinaires - the political moderates who took part in government of France during the Restoration. Now that is a long story, fascinating to me, but it would weary many a reader who wants to get on with life here and now. The Doctrinaires were cryptically recommended by a casual remark made by Ortega y Gasset somewhere - I was caught up in tracing his leading idea, Perspective, for a few months. As for the Doctrinaires, I was surprised to discover they had no set doctrine, therefore the usage of the term "doctrinaire" is not etymologically just. During the course of my research into their affairs, I encountered a philosophical thread that does have very much to do with life in the here and now. I followed up from one end in Germany and and then on to Scotland, then to France where the Eclectics or Spiritualists picked it up, and on to the French school of "Vitalism," the most famous teacher of which is Bergson.

As I meandered along the path, somehow determined to endure its indefinitude, I ran into the obscure but vital philosopher, Jules de Gaultier. He wrote a fascinating book entitled Bovarysm. He loved Flaubert's Madame Bovary and therefore he made a philosophy out of Emma - I kid you not. Well, sort of: he felt she was representative of the vital spirit of the age. The result of his reading was his philosophy of Will-to-Illusion, the necessary art of "conceiving oneself other" or "conceiving oneself differently."

Apparently Madame Bovary was and still is a pathological example of a natural process, a process which can be hopefully directed to good ends. Now Gaultier's philosophical departure from the novel may seem novel, but said he had to say many had said before him in Scotland, England, and German; however, Gaultier's phrasing was more romantic, if you will, spoken in a more passionate, conversational way characteristic of a number of French thinkers. Taine loved English literature over the French literature, criticizing his countrymen for a lack of originality of their smooth, sophisticated phrases; yet even he, with his social realism and penchant for the facts, admitted he could not help waxing romantically - a fault we relish in his counter-Revolutionary work.

But let the readers be their own judges, for their taste is no doubt superior to my own. A taste of Gaultier's Bovarysm may convince them I am subject to an illusion if not suffering from delusions:

"If, after having brought out the universality and fatality of the bovaryc illusion, we carefully avoided formulating here a pessimistic evaluation of life and its conditions, one must recognize that the very disclosure of this fact would be of a nature to motivate a different judgment in the immense crowd of human beings who live by their confidence and ardor, assure the progress of life in its different phases. The latter do not become disheartened when some particular illusion becomes apparent to them and the best of them only strive to retrench it. This task gives them an aim, which, once attained, procures them joy. But their courage would doubtless fail, if they had to verify that all their efforts only serve to replace on illusion with another and that the very conditions of phenomenal life condemn them to ceaselessly create more or less false perspectives. It is because these people are led by a major belief which is the mainspring of their activity: under names more or less symbolic and concrete they believe in TRUTH and all their effort proposes to reduce the modes of life to this ideological conception, to impose this yoke on phenomenal life; the yoke of truth..." (Translated by Gerald M. Spring)

Her Husband Was Not Good Enough

HER HUSBAND WAS NOT GOOD ENOUGH

BY

DAVID ARTHUR WALTERS

"He (Rodolphe) saw no reason why there should be all this to-do about so simple a thing as love-making. But for her (Emma) there was a reason; there was a motive force that gave an impetus to her passion. Every day her love for Rodolphe was fanned by her aversion for her husband. The more completely she surrendered to the one, the more intensely did she loath the other; never did Charles seem to her so repulsive, so thick-fingered, so heavy-witted, so common, as when she was alone with him after her meeting with Rodolphe..." Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary's husband was simply not good enough for her. The cause of her aversion was apparently a certain "motive force" of which we are rather uncertain of at the moment, for the very good reason that there is nothing certain in it, just a feeling of disgust with the real and a craving for an indefinite ideal. To understand this mysterious elusive motive force that impels the Madame Bovarys of the world from one set of arms to another, from husband to lover, from what can be had to what cannot be obtained, we must consider the romantic mood of our modern age, and we must do so realistically. Madame Bovary has a peculiar appeal even to those of us who realize she is a parody of our own foolish spirit, the spirit of rebellion, and that she is, so to speak, a satire or joke on us, whether we be females or males - especially those males who tend to weep over silly poems.

Flaubert, the author of our hapless romantic creature, was a pioneer of Realism, yet his Madame Bovary seems to be a masterpiece of Romanticism, at least to the indiscriminate reader. That should not surprise us, for how else would a realistic portrayal of the romantic mood seem?

Of course insecure pedants will argue all day over their favorite definitions of 'romanticism', yet when the Sun goes down, we shall be left in the dark as to what it really is. For it is not a thing - it is a mood or quality, and one that can be applied to anything. We speak not of a noun that definitely denotes, but rather of an obscure, universal adjective that indefinitely connotes. Indeed, every expert will agree that Romanticism is rebellious. But he will then set about pinning it down to only one end of a stick, when either end would do just as well. It is revolutionary and counter-revolutionary. It is classical and anti-classical. It is Roman and anti-Roman. It is liberal and conservative. It is a royal queen and a communist comrade.

Romance appertains to love. What is love? Love is your life. What does life want? It wants to persist unimpeded. Absolute Power brooks no resistance. The motive force whether it be a living subject or the Subject of subjects wants something beyond all limitations, something greater than anything that can be conceived; for once a conception is set, once life is pinned down, it is life dead and buried, and all we have left after the decay are the petrified remains.

Madame Bovary's husband wasn't good enough because nothing is good enough for the spirit of rebellion - only Nothing is perfect. Her empty ideal is a protest against the real, a rebellion per se. Emma's concrete life does not work for her so she chases an illusion. Nothing works for revolutionary anarchy, hence anything goes, except what is, except for the real. Again and again nothing is good enough, hence one has blind faith in Nothing as traditional forms and institutions devolve, as the universe of discourse dissolves into monadic particles without windows, populating the postmodern world with irresponsible individuals, indefinite subjects without a common object or objective, without certain goals or gods. The communal object dialectically defined over centuries dissipates. God is dead, Nature is dead, and soon the Existence of romantic existentialism shall be dead as well. In the interim we encounter an illusory, almost formless world without a grand representation of its own, for it represents nothing really, this perverse world of wishful thinking and feel-good religion, this fantastic world of phantasms, blurred edges and hazy metaphysics, the nebulous occasions for life for life's sake and art for art's sake, and for anything goes.

But still man is good, and especially so in his obscure origins. Thus he would take comfort in the past by returning to the oceanic womb where he began as nothing. For nothing is good enough for him except his naked subjectivity. His bare I or ego is originally good. In fact the subjective ego has replaced the objective god as well as god's secular replacements - states, nations, the like abstract concretions.

Each individual is a god and all gods are naturally equal in their aristocracy and monarchy. All cattle are kings by divine natural right. They are originally right, not originally wrong - that much is settled. Each bovine god is omnipotent, the ultimate arbiter beyond relative considerations of good and evil. One cattle may not be compared to another cattle because any such definition setting one apart from another would ultimately be a moral judgment - judges assume a superior position over the object adjudged, hence it is no wonder that good advice is so often resented for what it is, a criticism based on moral praise and blame.

The world is not good enough, it is absurd, it is deaf, it is meaningless in itself. All criteria, all forms and institutions including marriage are disguises, illusions, phony facades. Only Madame Bovary our subject is necessary, or rather her first cause and motive power; the rest of the world is an accident, an occasion for her romancing. Her husband or any other man for that matter would do just equally well for a moment, for each is an absurd point of departure for yet another non-dimensional point along the continuum of romantic life, for nothing in particular will do, nothing works, therefore have faith in Nothing.

Madame Bovary's husband was just not good enough for her.

xYx 

Was Emma Clueless?

WAS EMMA CLUELESS?

by David Arthur Walters

I wonder if anyone has compared Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Austen's Emma Woodhouse? 

I've heard both characters referred to as "self-deceived" in the pejorative sense, implying complicity of the self in conscious deception. But it seems to me that Woodhouse was much more innocent than Bovary. Woodhouse was clueless until rectified or "humbled" - mostly by a man, of course, Mr. Knightley, whom she married. And wasn't her snobbery simply an imitation of her class?

On the other had, it seems to me that Madame Bovary was a bird of an altogether different feather, that she wanted to be something other than what she was.

For example, Emma Woodhouse having lost her illusion of superiority was humbly content in the arms of her master, but Emma Bovary, dispossessed of one illusion after another, seems to be wanting more. Her husband Charles is not good enough for her, and now her lover Rodolphe is becoming a stick in the mud in her eye, but she clings to it nevertheless:

"Their great love, in which she lived completely immersed, seemed to be ebbing away, like the water of a river that was sinking into its own bed, and she saw the mud at the bottom. She refused to believe it; she redoubled her caresses; and Rodolphe hid his indifference less and less." Madame Bovary

But while thinking about her father a bit later, she is quite aware of the illusory process:

"How long it was since she had sat there beside him, on the fire seat, burning the end of a stick in the flame of the crackling furze! She remembered summer evenings, full of sunshine. The foals would whinny when anyone came near, and gallop and gallop to their heart's content. There had been a beehive under her window, and sometimes the bees, wheeling in the light, would strike against the panes like bouncing golden balls. How happy she had been in those days! How free! How full of hope! How rich in illusions! There were no illusions left now! She had had to part with some each time she ventured on a new path, in each of her successive conditions - as virgin, as wife, as mistress; all along the course of her life she had been losing them, like a traveler leaving a bit of his fortune in every inn along the road..." Madame Bovary

Thus she knows from experience she will be disappointed, yet she presses on almost pathologically...