CLARISSA AND
EMMA AS PHEDRE
833
organism, who has been fabulously robbed of the vision of life.
Clarissa H arlowe
and
Madame Bovary
are each beyond com–
parison technically, and to juxtapose them for comparison is to con–
cede nothing to differences in time or artistic development. Their
comparison as versions of love-myth is illuminating inasmuch as both,
the one ingenuously, the other ironically, give a universal voice to
modern idealism, giving dramatic form and religious significance to
the same given mass of aspirations, attitudes, customs, and passions.
The myth of
Clarissa
conforms naively to that acquisitive idealism
that has been morally rationalized by Puritanism and afforded religious
depth by fear, perverted sexuality, and death-worship. It is a paean to
death, with the rape-motif central. The myth of
Madame Bovary
con–
forms deliberately to the archaic mode and is centered in the ancient,
tragic, religious intelligence of the value and destructibleness of life.
The myth is given precise temporal dimension by its modern setting
in a culture which denies both the value of life and, with obstinate
irrational logic, its destructibleness. When life is denied, it cannot
really be destroyed, for it is already destroyed.
