1. Syringa: 1. lilac; 2. mock orange -YourDictionary.com
"The tenderness of the old days came back to them, abundant and silent as the flowing river, as soft as the perfume of the syringa." -Page 194
2. In this section the full-fledged affair between Emma and Rodolphe begins. However, after Emma is almost caught sneaking to Rodolphe's house, they begin to meet only in secret in the garden at night. Rodolphe clearly has no feelings for Emma other than lust but she genuinely thinks she loves him. After recieving a letter from her father Emma tries to be a good, pure wife for Charles. Charles, meanwhile, is persuaded by Homais to perform a sugery to rid Hippolyte of his clubfoot. The operation appears to be a success but Hippolyte later gets gangrene and is forced to have his leg amputated to the thigh. After this disappointment, Emma becomes disgusted with Charles and stops trying to be a good wife. She throws herself full force into her affair with Rodolphe and eventually make a plan to run away together and start a new life. Rodolphe, however, has no intentions of following through, and writes Emma a letter before running away the day they are to leave. Emma goes into a frenzy, at one point considering suicide, and becomes bed-ridden with grief.
3. My favorite part of this section was when Rodolphe composed his letter to Emma because it showed the inadequacy of language in a completely different way than I had been considering it. I was thinking about this concept in terms of words not existing for the things we try to say, but in this section it is pointed out that words can be easily manipulated. Rodolphe does not love Emma, yet by choosing his sentences carefully, he can leave her thinking he does. Because all Emma has to go by is his written word, she may never know the deceit in this letter.
4. In this section I found myself wondering if Emma truly loved Rodolphe. Sure, she loved the IDEA of Rodolphe, and she certainly had lust for him, but I doubt she loved him, no matter how often she claims she did.
Also, along with the idea of love, I wonder how Berthe is doing. She gets no attention from her mother and there has been no mention of attention from Charles, so I imagine she's growing up primarily with her nurse or maid. I wonder if this will affect the teen and eventually the adult she turns into.
On page 184 it is said that, "The more she gave herself to one man, the more she loated the other." I wonder if this was put in place specifically to point out Emma's personality. She seems to thrust herself completely into whatever she is passionate about at the moment, but as soon as it doesn't work according to her fantasies, she loses interest. I'm not sure if this sentence was just a coincidence or if Flaubert was trying to draw attention to this trait.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment