MADAME SOVARY
181
without suffering it himself. Yet Emma is tiresome too, at least to her
lovers, and she would have been tiresome to Flaubert in real life, as he
well knew, because her boredom is a silly copy of his own, and she is
never more conventional and tedious than when she is decrying con–
vention. She and Loon agree that membership in a circulating library is
a necessity if you have
to
live in the provinces (he also has a music
subscription), and they are both wholly dependent on this typical bour–
geois institution. The lending library is a central metaphor of
M adarne
Bovary
because it is the inexhaustible source of
idees refues-borrowed
ideas and stock sentiments which circulate tritely among the population.
But for Flaubert all ideas become trite as soon as somebody ex–
presses them. This applies indifferently to good ideas and bad. He makes
no distinction. For him, the lending library is an image of civilization it–
self. Ideas and feelings as well get more and more soiled and grubby,
like library books, as they pass from hand to hand. The
cures
greasy
thumbprint on Christian doctrine is just as repulsive as Monsieur Ho–
mais's coffee stain on the philosophy of the Enlightenment. The pursuit
of originality is as pathetic as Emma's decorating efforts. Similarly with
the quality called sincerity.
If
it exists, it is inarticulate, pre-verbal, dumb
as an ox or as the old peasant woman who is awarded a medal at the
agricultural fair for fifty years of meritorious service. The speech of
presentation annihilates fifty years of merit-a life-in a flash by turn–
ing it into
words.
From his own point of view, this renders Flaubert's efforts in his
study as unavailing as Emma's quest for a love that will live up to her
solitary dreams. Words, like lovers, have the power of lying, and they
also, like lovers, have a habit of repeating themselves, since language is
finite. Flaubert's horror of repetition in writing (which has been con–
verted into the dogma that you must never use the same word, above
all the same adjective, twice on a page) reflects his horror of repetition
in life. Involuntary repetition is banality. What remains doubtful,
though, is whether banality is a property of life or a property of language
or both. In Emma's eyes, it is life that is impoverished and reality that
is banal, reality being symbolized for her by Charles. But Charles is not
banal; Rodolphe and Leon are banal, and it is exactly their banality
that attracts her.
Rodolphe is superior to Leon, in that his triteness is a calculation.
An accomplished comedian, he is not disturbed, at the agricultural fair,
by the drone of the voice awarding money prizes for animal flesh, manure,
and flax, while he pours his passionate platitudes into Emma's fluttered
ears. "Tell me, why have we known each other, we two? What chance
