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PARTISAN REVIEW
nerves, ambition, an uncontrollable aspiration toward a superior world,
she will be interesting. The tour de force thereby will be the more ad–
mirable, and our sinful lady will at least have the merit-compara–
tively quite rare--of being distinguished from the pompous and
babbling females of the period just behind us.
"I have no need to concern myself with style, with picturesque
arrangement, with description of places; I possess all these qualities
to an overabundant degree; I will advance supported by analysis
and logic, and will prove that all subjects are indifferently good or
bad, according to the manner in which they are treated, and that
the most commonplace can become the best."
Thereupon,
Madame Eovary-a
wager, a real wager, a bet–
was created.
There remained nothing more for the author to do, in order to
achieve his tour de force as a whole, than to relieve himself (as far
as possible) of his sex and make himself into a woman.
IV
Several critics have said: this work, truly beautiful in the live–
liness and detail of its descriptions, does not contain a single character
who represents the morality, who speaks the conscience of the author.
Where is he, the proverbial and legendary character, charged with
explaining the plot and guiding the intelligence of the reader? In
other words, where is the state-prosecutor?
Absurdity! Eternal and incorrigible confusion of function and
species! An authentic work of art has no need of a writ of prosecu–
tion. The logic of the work constitutes all the postulations of morality,
and it is up to the reader to draw the conclusions of the conclusion.
As to who is the most intimately and profoundly drawn character
in the. story, it is unquestionably the adulterous woman; she alone,
the dishonored victim, possesses
all
the graces of a hero . . . I said
just now that she was almost male, and that the author had endowed
her (perhaps unconsciously) with all the virile qualities.
Let us examine these with attention:
( 1) Imagination, that supreme and despotic faculty, is sub–
stituted for the heart, or what one calls the heart, from which reason–
ing is ordinarily -excluded, and which generally dominates in the
woman as in the animal.
(2) Energy for sudden action, rapidity of decision, mystical
fusion of reason and passion, which characterizes men created to act.
