Resisting Shallowness

On why you should read Flaubert

Dolce Far Niente by John William Godward, 1906

“As humanity perfects itself, man becomes degraded.”

Letter Flaubert wrote to George Sand on May 5, 1871.

Life is short. Time is precious, and one must be unabashedly, even violently, committed to not wasting his breath on the unpleasant frivolities of his epoch or his energy on conformity. If one finds himself engaging in them, it must serve a purpose, always. There are, in fact, very few things, very few people, very few events, that are truly worth it. This is how French writer and genius of the percutaneous prose Flaubert saw it. 

When Flaubert wrote Madam Bovary, which took him five years to finish, he wanted to immerse the reader in the life of someone consumed by banalities, cheap idealism, and corrosive thoughts. He intended to demonstrate to the world what it is like to be imaginative but dull-witted and intelligent but nonsensical.

The main character, Madam Emma Bovary, wife of Charles Bovary, is bored because too ambitious, often angry because too sensitive, sad because too intellectually curious, disappointed in life because too passionate.

While she was not particularly of an immoral or evil nature, she cheated on her husband and did everything to hide from him her dire financial situation. She had affairs because her hopeless romantic fantasies, which were simply from the romance novels she consumed, needed to be somehow fulfilled.

She ended up taking her own life by ingesting arsenic. After learning of the breadth of her deceptions after her death, her husband—who had been unaware of her adventures—died of torment.

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”

Flaubert’s novel, while it can be read as a tragic story and interpreted as the unfortunate luck of a woman too bright and elegant to be the wife of a simple public health officer, should be read as a warning.

There is a certain Madam Bovary within us all. 

There is an inescapable desire within us to fulfill the dreams that others have for us. We become what we consume and surround ourselves with, after all. She made the grave nihilistic error of letting hallucinations from the novels she was reading get into her head. She surrounded herself with superficial desires and convinced herself they were real. Idealism killed her.

She had no idea who she was. She only knew that she needed to be what everyone else aspired to become. Out of boredom, she started wishing for a lovestruck. Even Cupid got tired of her.

Whether it’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, Sentimental Education, or A Simple Heart, Flaubert’s novels are all glimpses into the harsh realities of those who choose conventionality.

Flaubert, you see, could care less about morality; what he truly cared about was the unresolved mystery of human folly, and why resisting shallowness is a Herculean task. And this is precisely why reading him is such a delight.