Love, like the innocence of childhood, evolves as one does in a society held tightly by the strings of convention and patriarchy. Though these ties are faint and may often feel inconsequential, which is more in keeping with that of Madame Bovary’s atmosphere. Gustave Flaubert’s classic feels intricately profound and courageous.
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The details are felt rather than read. The characters surrounding Emma feed her ambitions to life. Her psyche which is emotionally loaded compromises the scope of empathy. And it grows as the story progresses. It’s a fable tale about the capacity of love and its depletion by a bad conscience. The story knows what it’s bound by. And as its roots deepen in that soil, the life of Emma, of Charles, of “Bovary” becomes multi-faceted and sentient. It’s not tragic that one should love where it’s never granted and that that love remains unfulfilled. What is tragic is the memory of love. The re-living of its familiarity, intimacy, and the inevitable maturity of that sentiment. A love that completes itself by its incompleteness. Madame Bovary has structure, cadence, and grit. It has elements of sanity as clear as day. And of insanity as mysterious as a riddle wrapped in an enigma.