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/lit/ - Literature

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9943173 No.9943173 [Reply] [Original]

Did Flaubert intend Larivière as the role model to follow in order to not end up like Madame Bovary? His being late to save her meaning that had Emma adopted his behavior, she would've escaped her fate.

>> No.9943398

>>9943173
>the role model to follow in order to not end up like Madame Bovary
? He's not that deeply portrayed, no, I wouldn't see him as a role model. He's just a brief voice of reason, a sort of demigod who enters the story and leaves just as quickly. The reason I don't think he's a role model is because a.) Flaubert isn't telling an animal story for children, the novel is more nuanced than that, and b.) we don't even get to know much about Lariviere besides that he's a great, unhistrionic, and very respectable guy and he's by no means a major character, so how can we emulate him?

>> No.9943580
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9943580

>>9943398
Maybe less of a role model and more of a 'way out' Emma's fate. I mean Emma is trapped, she doesn't like Charles and she has 'higher' yearnings. Obviously Flaubert mocks those but if you go the other way you get Charles' way of a life, which can't be the one Flaubert agrees with since, you know, he's a writer, an 'artist', not a countryside physician. So the solution cannot reside in simply suppressing these yearnings, and ultimately discarding them. You could say she fucked up with Lheureux but had she not she still would've cucked Charles and thrown away by Rodolphe.

Then comes Larivière who's venerated by his students, sharp, generous with the poor, friendly. and most importantly he scorns decorations and 'practices virtue without believing in it'. Those few things ARE Lariviere, we know nothing else about him, not his looks, not his family situation, etc. His position as chief surgeon is only a reason for him to intervene. The only other scene in which he is involved gives us absolutely no information about him, which is remarkable since in the conversation he has with Homais what he says or how he reacts to Homais' ramblings is weirdly, simply not written down.

the symbolism is then obvious: 'he', that is his behavior, arrived too late in Emma's life

>> No.9943589

>>9943580
and thus his unimportance, plot-wise and in 'screen time', is actually a testament to the fact that he is a message in the form of a character. Indeed when you know only those exact things about him and nothing else, not the color of his eyes or his taste in food (Flaubert doesn't say if he's disgusted by Homais' gross cuisine or not -- he says nothing), there remains no ambiguity about the message to be delivered

>> No.9943595

>>9943589
that is (sorry for the spamming), the virtues he considers to be a remedy to Emma's sickness

>> No.9943608

>>9943580
>>9943589
Possibly. That's pretty deep.

>> No.9944505

bump