Flaubert – What was I thinking?

         I choose to write my final paper on Flaubert’s Sentimental Education because I enjoyed reading it, as I did Les Trois Contes.  But I have found it extremely difficult and have really struggled trying to write about it.  My interpretation has changed with each time that I read it, or even sections of it.  I read it a certain way and felt that I could argue it reasonably well, and then I would realize I could discount it as ‘reasonably well’.  So I would discard and start over.  I have found the same thing with the articles I choose.  The ideas were presented well and the argument logical, but I read them with some ambiguity.   I think Flaubert intentionally wrote the text open to several interpretations, even spelling out more than one reason as a response.  For example in the final scene with Mme Arnoux and Frédéric, he rejects her assumed proposition for either incest or degrading the ideal.  The narrator suggests both of them and both story lines are present throughout the text.  Even the final scene and the final exclamation that is supposed to reveal the lesson of the education, when Frédéric and Deslauriers conclude that the best they have been was as youth going together to the locate prostitutes.  Whether they are referring to a brotherhood male friendship theme or an innocence of the emotional and physical contact with women therefore preserving the unity of ideal and real woman, or a lost desires theme is up for grabs.  Further, whatever is chosen is called into question by Deslauriers in the last sentence.  His agreement is in the from of a question, not in the English version I have, but in the folio French edition, “Oui, peut-être bien?  Maybe so? that was the best we were.  This makes this novel enjoyable to read, but I hope never to write about him again. 
          My thesis is that there are two critiques in the novel, the Paris bourgeoisie and female relationships.  Both of these critiques, economics and love, are mirages, and both are morphed into a single sentiment towards Mrs. Arnoux.  The education of Fred is distinguishing illusion from reality in these two aspects of his life, the Paris bourgeoisie and his own economic status and the polemic categorization of the females in this life.  I think the opening and closing scenes tell the story.  The boat scene where they all meet indicate Frédéric’s desire to be have Mr. Arnoux’s place in society, between the art world and financial and social success, and this is the basis of his obsession with the Arnoux’s, not romantic attachment to Mrs. Arnoux, at least initially. I could be wrong, but this is how I read the novel and I’m sticking with it…

 

The language of The Cubs

           I was intrigued by the language in this text and learned from Dr. Seminet the importance of language in the boom novels.   One of Shaw’s characteristics of the new novel is “Linguistic inventiveness as a dominant feature and central to the interrogation of reality, language becoming the protagonist, with a decrease of character and plot”. (p.363 of Shaw article) The Cubs did this splendidly.  The language was definitely inventive, but also the language was more important, or at least as important, as the plot. 
           There are many distinguishing characteristics that stood out.  Throughout the text we see very long sentences, such as the 2^nd paragraph on p.43, starting with “From…” ending with “how?” at the end of the paragraph. There are lots of commas and explanation points, and few periods, creating many voices in one sentence. There is one voice, then a comma, then another voice in response, and it continues.

            The medley of voices is infused with multiple tenses in the same sentence.  Along with that we find sentences that run together, “The boys looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes, Lalo laughed, Fina what’s wrong with them, why the horse laughs, tell us, Choto blushed, because that’s why…” (p.22) “But he no way, waste of time, our parties bored him, old before his time, he didn’t go because he had better ones where I enjoy myself more.” (p.21)

            In the preface, Vargas Llosa says that he wrote with the intention of creating a  text to be sung, not read.    But there is also a lot of play in the language, which started to drive me crazy.  “…what horse laughs, she don’t play dumb…”. (p.22) The style of the text leads us to read this as She [said] “don’t play dumb”, since that is the way he cited them speaking.  But it could also be read “she don’t [or doesn’t] play dumb” which changes the sentence.  I felt that the author wanted the reader to insert punctuation, subtlety changing meaning.  He wanted an active reader, engaged in interpreting punctuation, grammar, and therefore meaning.

Not only did the narrator language stand out, but also the language of the Cuéllar.  His stuttering could have represented his isolation and disassociation, mirrored in the confusion of the language of the text.

        The plural voices in one sentence created a sense of collectiveness of thought, a feeling of group conversation and thoughts.  Everyone’s thoughts are thrown together creating a group presence, of everyone talking together.  This linguistic style translated into energy for me.  I felt the energy, liveliness, animation of the boys running to the soccer field, running into town, or piled into a car driving, learning to dance, and standing around shooting the breeze.  

 

Césaire’s host and sacrificing priest

The image on page 5 is France and the Catholic Church united together in destroying this island.  The stanza begins with the corruption and sodomies of the host and sacrificing priest, following by a list of offenses.  The offenses flow right into degenerative vocabulary describing La Martinique,  “scrofulous buboes”, “forced feeding of very strange microbes”, “sanies of ancient sores”, and “unforeseeable fermentations of putrescible species”.  It’s an image of rotting away, death, a slow degenerative death.   The night is motionless, the stars dead, the balafon caved in, the music stopped.  He denounces efforts to associate themselves with France.  “And our foolish and crazy stunts to revive the golden splashing of privileged moments, the umbilical cord restored to its ephemeral splendor…”.  This has gotten them nowhere.  The results of the host and sacrificing priest’s “prejudice and stupidity, the prostitutions, the hypocrisies, the lubricities, the treasons, the lies…” are that they are poverty stricken, sick and dying, scenes played out for us throughout the text.  It’s time for a different method, time to reject and separate themselves from the host and sacrificing priest.  My favorite line on the poem is “put up with me, I won’t put up with you”. (p.23)

In the first sentence, he tells the cop to beat it, a cop being an image for imperialism.  After reminding them of the degradation by the masters, imperialists Europeans, whites, Césaire exalts his race, the nobility of working the earth, work without greed or desire for control. He wants them recognize their uniqueness, to celebrate their blackness, their ancestors and roots, their island, their colonialism. 

This poem was so difficult for me that I did not really enjoy it, but at the same time I was captivated by the power and beauty of its language.

 

The experience of reading Pedro Páramo

As I read this book I felt like someone was showing me pictures, one image after another.  Instead of a plot or narrative I was reading images, scenes that were someone’s experience.  Juan speaking to Eduviges which is interrupted by memories of things his mother said to him is an example of this.  The action is photos rather than events. Instead of writing a narrative with a plot Rulfo only paints pictures.  The succession of these scenes is the text, the story.  For example, to recount the death of Miguel, the reader is not told he dies, but is shown the funeral scene. (p.29)

            The scenes were vivid and bizarre at the same time.  I could not get past this and was not able to unravel the themes of novel.  However once Dr. Ruiz suggested solitude as one of the themes and explained the title change and its purpose of focusing on the solitude of Juan it made sense.  I remembered a passage at the beginning of the story of Comala.  It was relevant because it suggested activity (of everywhere else) vs. abandon and solitude (of Comala).   On p. 7, it says:

 

It was the hour of the day when in every little village children comes out to play in the streets, filling the afternoon with their cries.  The time when dark walls still reflect pale yellow sunlight.           

       At least that was what I had seen in Sayula, just yesterday at this hour.  I’d seen the still air shattered by the flight of doves flapping their wings as if pulling themselves free of the day.  They swooped and plummeted above the tile rooftops, while the children’s screams whirled and seemed to turn blue in the dusk sky.           

      Now here I was in this hushed town.  I could hear my footsteps on the cobbled paving stones.  Hollow footsteps, echoing against walls stained red by the setting sun. 

Here Rulfo shows us Juan’s experience on seeing Comala for the first time and contrasting it with Sayula.  The Sayula vocabulary denotes activity, doves swooping and plummeting, and children playing.  This is in contrast to Comala’s inactivity, solitude, children screams vs. silence, whirled vs. still.   Outside Comala (2^nd paragraph) whirling, swooped, plummeted, flapping, shattered, cries.   Comala (3^rd para) is hushed, hollow, echoing.  The phrase hushed town is interesting.  Hushed is an action imposed, done from the outside.  Someone or something hushes something else.  I was intrigued by the phrases in this section, ‘screams whirled’, ‘hollow footsteps’, ‘air shattered’, and my favorite which is on p. 46 ‘echoes of shadows’.    

            These expressions were mentioned by Dr. Ruiz who remarked that strong concise expressions are part of the structure.  Although the passage is short, the vocabulary and the imaginary of this passage announce the theme of solitude, Juan’s solitude

Another example of the powerful imagery is on page 24.  It’s the image of Pedro’s (I think) mother tells him of his father’s death.   The light, sky and this woman in pain are fused together in this photo which is his memory.  I think this novel is also about how we experience things and store memories.   As I was reading this novel, I understood nothing, yet it was the most enjoyable text I have read this semester.

 

Night in Endgame

Darkness is a constant theme, often used in the sparse conversation of the text.  Mother Pegg died not of disease or ailment, but of darkness.  Hamm refused to give her oil for lamp, thus keeping her in darkness. The irony now is Hamm is blind and is now in darkness.  Hamm and Clov live as in a hole in the world, a world that’s grey and the light is fading, continually fading.  Their room is also grey. 

            Light and darkness signify their personal existence, or lack of meaningful existence.  At the beginning Clov is upset that “light is dying”.  But self-centered
Hamm feels sorry for himself and shifts attention to his light, which he thinks is worse.  “Take at look at me and then come back and tell me what you think of your light.” p.12

            Later in the text, Hamm seems to be waiting on night, as he has Clov look out the windows, and wonders out loud if night has fallen, staying that the sun should be sinking. 
       Hamm recounts a narrative that has a poor beggar come to him begging for bread for his child.  The darkening begins at this point.  He remarks that it was a “glorious bright day”, but already the sun was sinking down into the …down among the dead”. p. 51.  He later admits that at this point he does not think he will be in the world much longer.

            Nagg then talks about Hamm’s childhood.  When Hamm was a child and frightened of the dark, he wanted comfort from his father.  But Nagg says that Hamm the child did not really want him to listen, and his hope is that Hamm will cry out of the darkness and really want him to listen, and he will “be his only hope”.

            After talking about happiness,
Hamm suddenly wants to feel the light on his face.  He has Clov take him to the window, but there is no light. 
          Hamm cries out for the darkness to come, which is the end.  “Let it end! with a bang! of darkness” p. 77.  And in his poem at the end he cries for night, for a chance to cry in darkness.

            In the “game” of Clov and Hamm’s interdependence, there is no meaning in their existence, no sincerity in the acts.  They live to die.  Clov stares at the wall, in other words, he fills his life with insignificant and less than meaningful acts.  He is passive, a fatalist and an “unauthentic” person.  He wants order so much, that he refuses to make his own choices and spends his days following orders of
Hamm.  Conversely, Hamm has to be center, but he only sees the world through Clov’s eyes.  Both avoid their own personal existence through their interdependent relationship.  Clov objects several times to the “game”.  He does not want to look out of the glass when he looks out the window at the world.  But Hamm always insists.  Clov always obeys, however he does so grudgingly.  When Clov refuses to play any longer, Hamm just puts his handkerchief over his eyes, his “old stancher”.  To stanch is to stop the flow of blood.  His handkerchief stops the bleeding, or life, returning him to his dreams of forests, where he can make love, go into the woods, run, and see the sky. (p. 8). 

            Their evolution from living their life to waiting for death with days filled with meaningless, insignificant acts and relationships is expressed in the darkness metaphor.  The importance is shown in the repetition of the metaphor in this minimalist language of Beckett.  I’m sure there are plenty of deeper meaning for darkness in this text and look forward to reading other ideas.

 

The world of ideas

In The Poem of Niagara, Martí begins by discussing poetry in its relationship to the historical and political environment, and then to the poetry of the past and the future.

Martí juxtaposes the stable, fixed court environment of the past poets who created what are considered works of genius against the setting of poets in his day.  “Genius is becoming less individual and more collective.  Man is losing for the benefit of man.” (p. 315).  I started wondering if there was something lost in this?  Do we spend less time in developing a single idea?  Was there a time when ideas were richer because there was consistency, in opposition to today when ideas are collective and appear and disappear quicker?  I do not think so.  Today few ideas are belong to one person.  Instead there seems to be an evolution so that our understanding of them involves development by several people.   Martí calls it a decentralization of intelligence.  There is an expanding, widening, and opening of the idea that is unique to our rich culture and advanced communications.  The world of ideas and literature is present and alive in ways not possible in the past, operating and changing at the same time.  It is more a part of everyday life and interaction among average people, instead of being exclusive to certain situations and people.  Martí claims these circumstances are necessary for one to understand himself and to decode “what is intrinsic in man from what was added to him by his predecessors with their lessons, legacies, and law.” (p. 317)

I enjoyed reading Martí.  He created very interesting and imaginative images.  I also appreciated the perspective on how ideas are worked and used in society.  It gave me a greater appreciation of the variety and richness of our culture.

 

Ordinary daily life

What makes Sentimental Education interesting is the description of every day events.  Well, of the bourgeoisie anyway.  Flaubert is silent on the lower classes and what their lives were like.  But he gives us a transparent image of daily life of the bourgeoisie with passages such as the newspaper description.  Describing Hussonnet’s Flambard, “The leading article was invariably devoted to taking apart some distinguished man.  After that came some society gossip and some scandals.  Then there were some wry observations about the Odéon Carpentras, fish-breeding, and prisoners under sentence of death…” “In the third column a chronicle of the arts, in the form of anecdotes or advice, gave some tailor’s announcements, together with accounts of evening parties, advertisements of auctions, and analysis of artistic productions, writing in the same strain about a volume of verse and a pair of boots.” (p.261)  We see what they were reading and talking about.

Another example is the duel. We are shown the seriousness of offenses, how they were handled and the related code of honor, the role of the seconds, who decides how they will be resolved, and what weapons will be used.  Flaubert alludes to whether or not Frédéric has a right to duel with Cicy because he is a member of the aristocracy and only members of the same social standing have the “right” to fight him.  It provides an insight to the prevailing class ideology and how this ideology affects more than economics.

Flaubert describes the dinner parties at the Dambreuse’s, what the women and men discussed, and what coffee table books the high society people were flipping through (the Revue des Deux Mondes, Imitation and Almanach de Gotha, a literature, philosophy, political and science publication, a spiritual guide, and a genealogy of royal families).  In Frederic’s rant we are told that the subject and ideologies of the revolution were taboo to the upper class, as it was economically threatening. 

The horse race passage describes how the races were executed and the scenes of the spectators.  We are shown how the spectators interacted with other social classes and within their own.  And there is the description of the Champs d’Élysées as everyone was leaving the races, the rows of carriages, horses, and people mixing with the rain, light and sky.  This was a common event, going home from the race, but because it was something meaningless and ordinary, it felt like the reader was seeing real, instead of staged and produced.

All of these things and many others give a glimpse into the society of someone like Frédéric in the first half of the nineteenth century.  It provides an interesting comparison to our present day society.  It also helps make the historical events of that time more constituent.  Instead of just seeing history as an end event and focusing on what the result was, it is also interesting to see how the changes occurred, the many elements involved that resulted in a change, and how it affected the individual.  The readers are shown throughout the text that the ideas and spirit of the Revolution were not a single ideology, or a collective rising up against the established government as a solitary force, but an opposition of many, extremely varied opinions also fighting amongst themselves. 

 

Black and White

What struck me at beginning of Sab was the stark contrast of the juxtapositions.  In the first few pages she positions images of Sab against slaves, slaves against Carlotta and Theresa against Carlotta.  Theresa is wearing a mask but hers is seen as negative, contrasting Sab’s positive one, neither one is seen; their souls and power are hidden. She hides behind a protective emotionless and severe hardness, yet she is an emotional, compassion person.  Sab is first mistaken for an educated farmer.  Society’s label is the mask to a soul remarkable different from expectation.  Theresa is also contrasted against Carlotta who is on the inside as she appears to be, naïve, sensitive, and tender. 

 

Sab stands out to the point that Enrique is mesmerized. On page 30
Avellaneda poses a description of Sab against a description of slaves, “…brows seared with mark of slavery just as their souls are branded with the desperation of Hell”.  In the following paragraph Sab is described as extraordinary, “In effect, the bearing of that farmer [Sab] seemed to reveal something great and noble which attracted attention, and what the stranger heard, expressed in a language and with an eloquence which belied the class his dress appeared to denote, increased his admiration and curiosity”. (p.30)  Enrique is fascinated with him because his interior does not appear to match his exterior, as defined by the culture they lived in.  Sab is a slave, who are described in the preceding paragraph as degraded humanity, brutes, “brows seared with the mark of slavery”, but he is educated, eloquent, great and noble.  Sab is able to contradict the labels.  He explains himself on p. 30 “It can happen,” he said, again fixing his eyes on the stranger, “that at times the soul is free and noble though the body be enslaved and base.”

            The poem at the start of chapter one describes the difficulty in determining oneself true self from one’s perception by society.

“The tyrannical influences of my guiding star formed me

into a monster of such rare quality

that while I am of heroic lineage

in the endowments of my soul,

I am also the scorn of the world”

 

I think this verse is ambiguous in that it could be referring to the author herself or to Sab.  But ‘The tyrannical influences formed me into a monster’, says to me that he identifies himself as the monster society sees.  There is acknowledgement along with the blame.  It foreshadows the theme of hidden souls not just in slaves, but in all of her characters, and of the difficulty of not assimilating the perceptions and labels of the culture into one’s personal true identity.  

            This is the first work I have read by this author and I find the text well written and very enjoyable.   

 

 

 

Narrator games?

Is it my imagination or is the author playing games with the narrator?  As I read the first chapter, I felt like the narrator was telling the action as if it was in past, as if it had already happened.  Then chapter two starts with dialogue between Theresa and Carlotta in the present tense.  I felt a little ambiguity because the narrator could be recounting the dialogue that happened in the past or switching to present tense. Chapter 3 starts in the present tense, “It is well known…” but then ends in the past?? Am I missing something? In the 5^th paragraph “A long period of silence followed this short dialogue, and we shall take advantage thereof to acquaint our readers with the two young women …” She appears to be still in the past tense, but pausing the action as if it was the present.  

And on several occasions the narrator speaks directly to the readers.  On p. 37 speaking of Enrique she says, “Did his soul understand that other passionate soul of which he was master?…We do not know: the events themselves will soon tell us and will then shape the opinions of our readers.”  How can the narrator not know?  This sentence seems to be an indication of the present. 

The narrator also seems to be establishing his/her power over the text and therefore the reader, not only the power of the narrator, but writers in general as authors.  This plays into our previous discussions in class of the part the author plays in establishing meanings by the selections and presentation of events.  But she makes a decision not to do this and tells us so.

            Not only does the narrator address the reader directly, but tells us her purpose.  “Not wanting to get ahead of things, we will limit ourselves for now to providing some knowledge of the people who appear in this story and of the events leading up to it.” (p. 37) Here are the events.  You decide if Enrique understands and is deserving of Carlota. Preceding this statement, she plants questions in the mind of the reader to get him/her wondering. “Did Enrique Otway deserve so beautiful a passion?” “Did he share in that divine enthusiasm which permits Heaven to be dreamt on earth?”  The narrator wants the reader to start questioning and draw their own conclusions, and s/he will present the story in a way that allows that to happen. S/he is drawing in, mentally engaging the reader and making it personal. 

 

Nature

Sab starts off with a description of man riding through the street.  However the emphasis is not on the rider but on the nature surrounding him.  Nature is not only humanized, but also genderized.  (I don’t think that’s a word, but I think you will know what I mean.)

      The sun is described as brutal, but becoming feeble, melancholy.  The sun is sinking, fading, dying; the day’s ending.  In contrast, the earth and fields are fertile, vigorous, luxuriant, virgin, youthful, and welcoming.

             I have not finished the text yet (okay I’ve only the first couple of chapters), but I am interested to see if something in the end is symbolized in the beginning, and to see how nature will be portrayed throughout the text.