178
MARY McCARTHY
tions, in the mouths of his characters, are turned into desolate echoes–
into cliches.
Leon too is addicted to books, as the passage cited shows.
He
pre–
fers poetry. But it is not only the young people in
Madame BQ<vary
who
are glamorized by the printed page. Monsieur Homais is another illus–
tration of the evil effects of reading. He offers Emma the use of his
library, which contains, as he says, "the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau,
Delille, Walter Scott, the
Echo des Feuilletons."
These authors have
addled his head with ideas. And Monsieur Homais's ideas are danger–
ous, literally so; not just in the sense that Madame Bovary, Senior, meant.
An idea invading Monsieur Homais's brain is responsible for Charles's
operation on the deformed Hippolyte. Monsieur Homais had read an
article on a new method for curing club foot, and he was immediately
eager that Charles should try it; in his druggist mind there was a typical
confusion between humanitarian motives and a Chamber of Commerce
zeal. The operation is guaranteed to put Yonville
l'
Abbaye on the map.
He will write it up himself for a Rouen paper. As he tells Charles, "an ·
article in the paper gets around. People talk about it. It ends by snow–
balling." This snowballing is precisely what is happening, with horrible
consequences yet to come. Thanks to an article in the press, Hippolyte
will lose his leg.
The diffusion of ideas in the innocent countryside is the plot of
Madame Bovary.
When the book ran serially, Flaubert's editors, who
were extremely stupid, wanted to cut the club foot episode: it was un–
pleasant, they said, and contributed nothing to the story. Flaubert in–
sisted; he regarded it as essential to the book. As it is. This is the point
where Monsieur Homais interlocks with Emma and her story; elsewhere
he only talks and appears busy. True, Emma gets the arsenic from his
"Capernaum"-a ridiculous name for his inner sanctum based on the
transubstantiation controversy-but this is not really the druggist's fault.
He is only an accessory. But when
it
comes to the operation Monsieur
Homais is the creative genius; it is his hideous brain child, and Charles
is his instrument. Up to the time of the operation, Monsieur Homais
could appear as mere comic relief or prosaic contrast. But with the opera–
tion the affinity between apparent opposites-the romantic dreamer and
the "man of science"-becomes clear. Monsieur Homais is not just
Emma's foil; he is her alter ego.
For the first time, they see eye to eye; they are a team pulling to–
gether for Charles to do the operation and for the same reason: a thirst
for fame. And both, in their infatuation with a dream, have lost sight
of the reality in front of them, which is Charles. He surrenders to the
