(no subject)
I resent whomever claimed Madame Bovary to be "the perfect novel." Or maybe I'm just a little uncomfy sitting with the criticism of maladaptive daydreaming and romantic idealism. Such a difficult book to get through. Be happy with what you have, or you will ruin everyone's lives!!! That's what you're meant to take away. Personally, I think the moral was don't marry the dullest man in the world when you are prone to flights of fancy! Don't chain yourself to someone who lacks any sort of ambition or creativity or intelligence just because they are a simple lap dog. Sure, Emma was an awful, horrible, no good, very bad person. But who in their right mind would be satisfied being sequestered with the most boring person on earth? Someone she couldn't even share real companionship with - what a lonely fucking existence! She shouldn't have saddled herself with the first person to kiss her ass, and then none of it would have ever happened.
There are some truly gorgeous quotes that made it a worthwhile read though:
“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.”
“Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers."
“What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright...Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”
“One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and to not accept the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.” This one is especially interesting to me because I agree whole-heartedly, and not at all. Well, I think it is the intended lesson - be happy with what you have, but to me it speaks to my non-conformist heart. Don't cherish what society says is important - consumption and corporate cogs and fitting into a certain box. I realize that my interpretation is not what was intended, yet couldn't one take it away without context?
“Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.”
“She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leaned? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! How impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.”
“But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.”
Ugh, I hate that I can relate so much to stupid, selfish Emma with her stupid dissatisfaction and wasted life. What an idiot.
I was going to start Anna Karenina next, but I'm topped up on fucking tragedy for a while. Life is tragic enough without rolling around in it. So I'm going on a Dumas binge instead. One of my favorite quotes is from The Count of Monte Cristo: "Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you."