The Craft of Fiction Page 6

  VI

  If Flaubert allows himself the liberty of telling his story in variousways--with a method, that is to say, which is often modified as heproceeds--it is likely that he has good cause to do so. Weighing everyword and calculating every effect so patiently, he could not have beencasual and careless over his method; he would not take one way ratherthan another because it saved him trouble, or because he failed tonotice that there were other ways, or because they all seemed to himmuch the same. And yet at first sight it does seem that his manner ofarriving at his subject--if his subject is Emma Bovary--isconsiderably casual. He begins with Charles, of all people--Charles,her husband, the stupid soul who falls heavily in love with herprettiness and never has the glimmer of an understanding of what sheis; and he begins with the early history of Charles, and hisupbringing, and the irrelevant first marriage that his mother forcesupon him, and his widowhood; and then it happens that Charles has aprofessional visit to pay to a certain farm, the farmer's daughterhappens to be Emma, and so we finally stumble upon the subject of thebook. Is that the neatest possible mode of striking it? But Flaubertseems to be very sure of himself, and it is not uninteresting to askexactly what he means.

  As for his subject, it is of course Emma Bovary in the first place;the book is the portrait of a foolish woman, romantically inclined, insmall and prosaic conditions. She is in the centre of it all,certainly; there is no doubt of her position in the book. But _why_ isshe there? The true subject of the novel is not given, as we saw, by amere summary of the course which is taken by the story. She may bethere for her own sake, simply, or for the sake of the predicament inwhich she stands; she may be presented as a curious scrap ofcharacter, fit to be studied; or Flaubert may have been struck by heras the instrument, the victim, the occasion, of a particular train ofevents. Perhaps she is a creature portrayed because he thinks hertypical and picturesque; perhaps she is a disturbing little force letloose among the lives that surround her; perhaps, on the other hand,she is a hapless sufferer in the clash between her aspirations and herfate. Given Emma and what she is by nature, given her environment andthe facts of her story, there are dozens of different subjects, I daresay, latent in the case. The woman, the men, all they say and do, thewhole scene behind them--none of it gives any clue to the right mannerof treating them. The one irreducible idea out of which the book, asFlaubert wrote it, unfolds--this it is that must be sought.

  Now if Emma was devised for her own sake, solely because a nature anda temper like hers seemed to Flaubert an amusing study--if his one aimwas to make the portrait of a woman of that kind--then the rest of thematter falls into line, we shall know how to regard it. Theseconditions in which Emma finds herself will have been chosen by theauthor because they appeared to throw light on her, to call out hernatural qualities, to give her the best opportunity of disclosing whatshe is. Her stupid husband and her fascinating lovers will enter thescene in order that she may become whatever she has it in her to be.Flaubert elects to place her in a certain provincial town, full of oddcharacters; he gives the town and its folk an extraordinary actuality;it is not a town _quelconque_, not a generalized town, but asindividual and recognizable as he can make it. None the less--alwayssupposing that Emma by herself is the whole of his subject--he musthave lit on this particular town simply because it seemed to explainand expound her better than another. If he had thought that a woman ofher sort, rather meanly ambitious, rather fatuously romantic, wouldhave revealed her quality more intensely in a different world--insuccess, freedom, wealth--he would have placed her otherwise; Charlesand Rodolphe and Homard and the rest of them would have vanished, themore illuminating set of circumstances (whatever they might be) wouldhave appeared instead. Emma's world as it is at present, in the bookthat Flaubert wrote, would have to be regarded, accordingly, as all a_consequence_ of Emma, invented to do her a service, described inorder that they may make the description of _her_. Her world, that isto say, would belong to the treatment of the story; none of it, nother husband, not the life of the market-town, would be a part of theauthor's postulate, the groundwork of his fable; it would be possibleto imagine a different setting, better, it might be, than that whichFlaubert has chosen. All this--_if_ the subject of the book is nothingbut the portrait of such a woman.

  But of course it is not so; one glance at our remembrance of the bookis enough to show it. Emma's world could not be other than it is, shecould not be shifted into richer and larger conditions, withoutdestroying the whole point and purpose of Flaubert's novel. She byherself is not the subject of his book. What he proposes to exhibit isthe history of a woman like her in just such a world as hers, afoolish woman in narrow circumstances; so that the provincial scene,acting upon her, making her what she becomes, is as essential as sheis herself. Not a portrait, therefore, not a study of character forits own sake, but something in the nature of a drama, where the twochief players are a woman on one side and her whole environment on theother--that is Madame Bovary. There is a conflict, a trial ofstrength, and a doubtful issue. Emma is not much of a force, no doubt;her impulses are wild, her emotions are thin and poor, she has nopower of passion with which to fight the world. All she has is herromantic dream and her plain, primitive appetite; but these can beeffective arms, after all, and she may yet succeed in getting her wayand making her own terms. On the other hand the limitations of herlife are very blank and uncompromising indeed; they close all roundher, hampering her flights, restricting her opportunities. The dramais set, at any rate, whatever may come of it; Emma marries herhusband, is established at Yonville and faced with the poverty of hersituation. Something will result, the issue will announce itself. Itis the mark of a dramatic case that it contains an opposition of somekind, a pair of wills that collide, an action that pulls in twodirections; and so far Madame Bovary has the look of a drama. Flaubertmight work on the book from that point of view and throw the emphasison the issue. The middle of his subject would then be found in thestruggle between Emma and all that constitutes her life, between herromantic dreams and her besetting facts. The question is what willhappen.

  But then again--that is not exactly the question in this book.Obviously the emphasis is not upon the commonplace little events ofEmma's career. They might, no doubt, be the steps in a dramatic tale,but they are nothing of the kind as Flaubert handles them. He makes itperfectly clear that his view is not centred upon the actual outcomeof Emma's predicament, whether it will issue this way or that; _what_she does or fails to do is of very small moment. Her passages withRodolphe and with Leon are pictures that pass; they solve nothing,they lead to no climax. Rodolphe's final rejection of her, forexample, is no scene of drama, deciding a question that has been heldin suspense; it is one of Emma's various mischances, with its ownmarked effect upon _her_, but it does not stand out in the book as aturning-point in the action. She goes her way and acts out herhistory; but of whatever suspense, whatever dramatic value, theremight be in it Flaubert makes nothing, he evidently considers it of noaccount. Who, in recalling the book, thinks of the chain of incidentthat runs through it, compared with the long and living impression ofa few of the people in it and of the place in which they are set? Noneof the events really matter for their own sake; they might havehappened differently, not one of them is indispensable as it is. Emmamust certainly have made what she could of her opportunities ofromance, but they need not necessarily have appeared in the shape ofLeon or Rodolphe; she would have found others if these had not been athand. The _events_, therefore, Emma's excursions to Rouen, herforest-rides, her one or two memorable adventures in the world, allthese are only Flaubert's way of telling his subject, of making itcount to the eye. They are not in themselves what he has to say, theysimply illustrate it.

  What it comes to, I take it, is that though Madame Bovary, the novel,is a kind of drama--since there is the interaction of this womanconfronted by these facts--it is a drama chosen for the sake of thepicture in it, for the impression it gives of the manner in whichcertain lives are lived. It might have anothe
r force of its own; itmight be a strife of characters and wills, in which the men and womenwould take the matter into their own hands and make all the interestby their action; it might be a drama, say, as Jane Eyre is a drama,where another obscure little woman has a part to play, but where thequestion is how she plays it, what she achieves or misses inparticular. To Flaubert the situation out of which he made his novelappeared in another light. It was not as dramatic as it was pictorial;there was not the stuff in Emma, more especially, that could make herthe main figure of a drama; she is small and futile, she could notwell uphold an interest that would depend directly on her behaviour.But for a picture, where the interest depends only on what she_is_--that is quite different. Her futility is then a real value; itcan be made amusing and vivid to the last degree, so long as no otherweight is thrown on it; she can make a perfect impression of life,though she cannot create much of a story. Let Emma and her plight,therefore, appear as a picture; let her be shown in the act of livingher life, entangled as it is with her past and her present; that ishow the final fact at the heart of Flaubert's subject will be bestdisplayed.

  Here is the clue, it seems, to his treatment of the theme. It ispictorial, and its object is to make Emma's existence as intelligibleand visible as may be. We who read the book are to share her sense oflife, till no uncertainty is left in it; we are to see and understandher experience, and to see _her_ while she enjoys or endures it; weare to be placed within her world, to get the immediate taste of it,and outside her world as well, to get the full effect, more of it thanshe herself could see. Flaubert's subject demands no less, if thepicture is to be complete. She herself must be known thoroughly--thatis his first care; the movement of her mind is to be watched at workin all the ardour and the poverty of her imagination. How she createsher makeshift romances, how she feeds on them, how they fail her--itis all part of the picture. And then there is the dull and limitedworld in which her appetite is somehow to be satisfied, the small townthat shuts her in and cuts her off; this, too, is to be rendered, andin order to make it clearly tell beside the figure of Emma it must beas distinct and individual, as thoroughly characterized as she is. Itis more than a setting for Emma and her intrigue; it belongs to thebook integrally, much more so than the accidental lovers who fall inEmma's way. They are mere occasions and attractions for her fancy; thetown and the _cure_ and the apothecary and the other indigenousgossips need a sharper definition. And accordingly Flaubert treats thescenery of his book, Yonville and its odd types, as intensely as hetreats his heroine; he broods over it with concentration and gives itall the salience he can. The town with its life is not behind hisheroine, subdued in tone to make a background; it is _with_ her, noless fully to the front; its value in the picture is as strong as herown.

  Such is the picture that Flaubert's book is to present. And what,then, of the point of view towards which it is to be directed? If itis to have that unity which it needs to produce its right effect therecan be no uncertainty here, no arbitrary shifting of the place fromwhich an onlooker faces it. And in the tale of Madame Bovary thequestion of the right point of view might be considerably perplexing.Where is Flaubert to find his centre of vision?--from what point,within the book or without, will the unfolding of the subject becommanded most effectively? The difficulty is this--that while oneaspect of his matter can only be seen from within, through the eyes ofthe woman, another must inevitably be seen from without, throughnobody's eyes but the author's own. Part of his subject is Emma'ssense of her world; we must see how it impresses her and what shemakes of it, how it thwarts her and how her imagination contrives toget a kind of sustenance out of it. The book is not really written atall unless it shows her view of things, as the woman she was, in thatplace, in those conditions. For this reason it is essential to passinto her consciousness, to make her _subjective_; and Flaubert takescare to do so and to make her so, as soon as she enters the book. Butit is also enjoined by the story, as we found, that her place andconditions should be seen for what they are and known as intimately asherself. For this matter Emma's capacity fails.

  Her intelligence is much too feeble and fitful to give a sufficientaccount of her world. The town of Yonville would be very poorlyrevealed to us if Flaubert had to keep within the measure of _her_perceptions; it would be thin and blank, it would be barely more thana dull background for the beautiful apparition of the men she desires.What were her neighbours to her? They existed in her consciousnessonly as tiresome interruptions and drawbacks, except now and then whenshe had occasion to make use of them. But to us, to the onlooker, theybelong to her portrait, they represent the dead weight of provinciallife which is the outstanding fact in her case. Emma's rudimentaryidea of them is entirely inadequate; she has not a vestige of thehumour and irony that is needed to give them shape. Moreover theyaffect her far more forcibly and more variously than she could evensuspect; a sharper wit than hers must evidently intervene, helping outthe primitive workings of her mind. Her pair of eyes is not enough;the picture beheld through them is a poor thing in itself, for she cansee no more than her mind can grasp; and it does her no justiceeither, since she herself is so largely the creation of hersurroundings.

  It is a dilemma that appears in any story, wherever the matter to berepresented is the experience of a simple soul or a dull intelligence.If it is the experience and the actual taste of it that is to beimparted, the story must be viewed as the poor creature saw it; andyet the poor creature cannot tell the story in full. A shift of thevision is necessary. And in Madame Bovary, it is to be noted, there isno one else within the book who is in a position to take up the talewhen Emma fails. There is no other personage upon the scene who seesand understands any more than she; perception and discrimination arenot to be found in Yonville at all--it is an essential point. Theauthor's wit, therefore, and none other, must supply what is wanting.This necessity, to a writer of Flaubert's acute sense of effect, isone that demands a good deal of caution. The transition must be madewithout awkwardness, without calling attention to it. Flaubert is notthe kind of story-teller who will leave it undisguised; he will notbegin by "going behind" Emma, giving her view, and then openly,confessedly, revert to his own character and use his own standards.There is nothing more disconcerting in a novel than to _see_ thewriter changing his part in this way--throwing off the character intowhich he has been projecting himself and taking a new stand outsideand away from the story.

  Perhaps it is only Thackeray, among the great, who seems to find apositively wilful pleasure in damaging his own story by openmaltreatment of this kind; there are times when Thackeray will evenboast of his own independence, insisting in so many words on hisfreedom to say what he pleases about his men and women and to makethem behave as he will. But without using Thackeray's licence anovelist may still do his story an ill turn by leaving too naked acontrast between the subjective picture of what passes through Emma'smind--Emma's or Becky's, as it may be--and the objective rendering ofwhat he sees for himself, between the experience that is mirrored inanother thought and that which is shaped in his own. When one haslived _into_ the experience of somebody in the story and received thefull sense of it, to be wrenched out of the story and stationed at adistance is a shock that needs to be softened and muffled in somefashion. Otherwise it may weaken whatever was true and valid in theexperience; for here is a new view of it, external and detached, andanother mind at work, the author's--and that sense of having sharedthe life of the person in the story seems suddenly unreal.

  Flaubert's way of disguising the inconsistency is not a peculiar artof his own, I dare say. Even in him it was probably quite unconscious,well as he was aware of most of the refinements of his craft; andperhaps it is only a sleight of hand that might come naturally to anygood story-teller. But it is interesting to follow Flaubert's methodto the very end, for it holds out so consummately; and I think it ispossible to define it here. I should say, then, that he deals with thedifficulty I have described by keeping Emma always at a certaindistance, even when he appears to be enter
ing her mind most freely. Hemakes her subjective, places us so that we see through her eyes--yes;but he does so with an air of aloofness that forbids us ever to becomeentirely identified with her. This is how she thought and felt, heseems to say; look and you will understand; such is the soul of thisfoolish woman. A hint of irony is always perceptible, and it is enoughto prevent us from being lost in her consciousness, immersed in itbeyond easy recall. The woman's life is very real, perfectly felt; butthe reader is made to accept his participation in it as a pleasingexperiment, the kind of thing that appeals to a fastidiouscuriosity--there is no question of its ever being more than this. The_fact_ of Emma is taken with entire seriousness, of course; she isthere to be studied and explored, and no means of understanding herpoint of view will be neglected. But her value is another matter; asto that Flaubert never has an instant's illusion, he always knows herto be worthless.

  He knows it without asserting it, needless to say; his valuation ofher is only implied; it is in his tone--never in his words, whichinvariably respect her own estimate of herself. His irony, none theless, is close at hand and indispensable; he has a definite use forthis resource and he could not forego it. His irony gives him perfectfreedom to supersede Emma's limited vision whenever he pleases, toabandon her manner of looking at the world, and to pass immediately tohis own more enlightened, more commanding height. Her manner wasutterly convincing while she exhibited it; but we always knew that afiner mind was watching her display with a touch of disdain. From timeto time it leaves her and begins to create the world of Homard andBinet and Lheureux and the rest, in a fashion far beyond any possibleconception of hers. Yet there is no dislocation here, no awkwardsubstitution of one set of values for another; very discreetly thesame standard has reigned throughout. That is the way in whichFlaubert's impersonality, so called, artfully operates.

  And now another difficulty; there is still more that is needed andthat is not yet provided for. Emma must be placed in her world andfitted into it securely. Some glimpse of her appearance in the sightof those about her--this, too, we look for, to make the whole accountof her compact and complete. Her relation to her husband, forinstance, is from her side expressed very clearly in her view of him,which we possess; but there are advantages in seeing it from his sidetoo. What did _he_ really think of her, how did she appear to him?Light on this question not only makes a more solid figure of her forthe reader, but it also brings her once for all into the company ofthe people round her, establishes her in the circle of theirexperience. Emma from within we have seen, and Yonville from theauthor's point of vantage; and now here is Emma from a point by hervery side, when the seeing eye becomes that of her husband. Flaubertmanages this ingeniously, making his procedure serve a further purposeat the same time. For he has to remember that his story does not endwith the death of Emma; it is rounded off, not by her death, but byher husband's discovery of her long faithlessness, when in the firstdays of his mourning he lights upon the packet of letters that betraysher. The end of the story is in the final stroke of irony which givesthe man this far-reaching glance into the past, and reveals therebythe mental and emotional confusion of his being--since his onlyresponse is a sort of stupefied perplexity. Charles must be held inreadiness, so to speak, for these last pages; his inner mind, and hispoint of view, must be created in advance and kept in reserve, so thatthe force of the climax, when it is reached, may be instantly felt.And so we have the early episodes of Charles's youth and his firstmarriage, all his history up to the time when he falls in Emma's way;and Flaubert's questionable manner of working round to his subject isexplained. Charles will be needed at the end, and Charles is herefirmly set on his feet; the impression of Emma on those who encounterher is also needed, and here it is; and the whole book, mainly theaffair of Emma herself, is effectively framed in this other affair,that of Charles, in which it opens and closes. Madame Bovary is awell-made book--so we have always been told, and so we find it to be,pulling it to pieces and putting it together again. It never isunrepaying to do so once more.

  And it is a book that with its variety of method, and with its carefulrestriction of that variety to its bare needs, and with its scrupuloususe of its resources--it is a book, altogether, that gives a goodpoint of departure for an examination of the methods of fiction. Theleading notions that are to be followed are clearly laid down in it,and I shall have nothing more to say that is not in some sense anextension and an amplification of hints to be found in Madame Bovary.For that reason I have lingered in detail over the treatment of astory about which, in other connections, a critic might draw differentconclusions. I remember again how Flaubert vilified his subject whilehe was at work on it; his love of strong colours and flavours wasdisgusted by the drab prose of such a story--so he thought and said.But as the years went by and he fought his way from one chapter toanother, did he begin to feel that it was not much of a subject afterall, even of its kind? It is not clear; but after yet anotherre-reading of the book one wonders afresh. It is not a fertilesubject--it is not; it does not strain and struggle for development,it only submits to it. But that aspect is not _my_ subject, and MadameBovary, a beautifully finished piece of work, is for my purposesingularly fertile.