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guardians_song) wrote2013-08-27 01:40 pm
guardians_song) wrote2013-08-27 01:40 pm
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Review/Recap: Madame Bovary
I'll say this: for the quality of the prose, it deserves its classic reputation. The originality of the theme by which I mean, a brutal deconstruction of petty, whiny twits is also worthy of great praise.
However, Madame Bovary is rightly well-known for a highly... unlikeable... main character, and so those with short tempers are advised caution when deciding whether to read this. In fact, nobody in the book is all that likeable, so you had better come into the book with a readiness to mentally MST their thought processes. (This IS in line with what the author wanted, since he wrote it to mock the bourgeoisie, so their unpleasantness is wholly intention.)
I'd recommend it. Now, for those who don't mind spoilers, read on to find a summary below:
We open with Charles Bovary, the future husband of the title character. Now, Charles is a loser. No way around it. He's either Shinji Ikari with about half the IQ points or Neville Longbottom without any redeeming courage or principles. However, he is a Nice Guy. *cough* At any rate, he becomes a doctor, marries a lady he doesn't much like, and falls for Emma, our very bored country-girl protagonist. His wife conveniently keels over, so heeeere's Emma!
Emma is basically Bella Swan in real life. She's a dissatisfied, melodramatic twit who constantly fantasizes about living out her favorite romantic novels. This being a deconstruction, reality falls grotesquely short of her expectations. Rather than being a knight in shining armor, Charles is... very sweet and loving, but rather stupid and utterly oblivious. Rather than living the romantic life of the rich, she leads a comfortable upper-middle-class existence, which is so terribly dreadful I want to puke. (On her.) Rather than passing her life in a daze of exquisite fantasies, she's excruciatingly bored.
Now, unfortunately, I read SparkNotes, so I know some people think this is an enlightened commentary on the unhappy lot of women in that time period. Ah... NO. Women may not have had it easy, but Emma is supported quite comfortably and is given leeway to do as she likes - as she demonstrates thoroughly in her unsavory actions later in the novel. Charles even confusedly lets her procure a tutor, and wants their daughter educated. She's not exactly ~oppressed~. And that, to me, is the POINT - that she's actually set up quite well and could exploit more than a few opportunities, but insists on being a petulant brat about the whole thing because it's not like her fantasies, whine, whine, moan. (In much more flowery language, of course. Very well-written flowery language.)
In all fairness, Charles is (to put it charitably) plain, oblivious, and mentally dull. (And he's a doctor. Heaven help the state of medicine at that time!) He completely misses Emma's discontent and hatred of her present life, which indicates that he has about the same relationship with her that I used to have with my stuffed animals as a kid. Oh, I loved those stuffed animals. Talked to them, hugged them, arrayed them in various settings... However, they were INANIMATE OBJECTS, and I wasn't MARRIED TO THEM!
(I don't say that he treated her like a beloved dog, because one DOES tend to notice when a pet is unhappy.)
That would be why I called him a Nice Guy above - on account of how this book is about how Emma is a horrible, escapist slattern who should have appreciated what she haaad and how he was always so gooood to her and oh let's just forget about the part where he never paid an ounce of attention to the emotional state of his "beloved" wife whatsoever. However, if we ignore the narrative's treatment of him, he's actually a fairly decent fellow. An idiot, yes, but a kindly idiot, and easily led. I'll get to why I keep emphasizing this later, but she really doesn't give him due credit.
So Emma has a child, who's a girl - and her musing about this is again more ~feminist~ commentary according to some people, but really, her chief idea of Male Privilege is that men get to have more fun gallivanting around abroad, rather than being stuck at home. Given her behavior in-book and her lousy self-justifications, I can't see male!Emma ending up any way other than a syphilis-ridden dissolute in an opium den, so I wouldn't go around trumpeting Emma as MAKING VALID POINTS ABOUT MISOGYNY~★
I come off as really hating Emma, but I don't. The book treats her as exactly what she is, so I can't feel hatred for her in the sense that I do for Author's Pets. Plus, I see far too much of the character type IRL and in history, so it's not even like she's a new level of pettiness for me. And yes, I can sympathize somewhat with the dissatisfaction and boredom. It's how she handles it that makes me really look down upon her, and I don't feel seething contempt so much as "Ah, what a waste". It's... really an interesting novel.
She then flirts with a clerk (Leon) for a while, but decides this is a Forbidden Love and so goes about looking all noble. I don't mean that she actually feels sorry about her adulterous feelings, just that she wallows in How Very Put-Upon She Is and casts herself in the role of a great martyr. I tell you, she IS IRL!Bella.
However, luckily for her wangst, her husband actually screws up by getting hyper-arrogant and performing a clubfoot-surgery that leads to the poor sap in question having his leg amputated above the knee (I told you there were no likeable characters around here), so she now feels justified in humping the local seducer. Did I mention that, while her husband was being eaten alive by humiliation and remorse, she just sat around sulking and whining to herself about how he should have thought how badly this would reflect on HER? Yes, this book is a completely accurate depiction of how a Mary-Sue would look if placed into a realistic world.
(Mind, it's not ACTUALLY realistic. Rather, it's that peculiar sort of misery-fetishism beloved of "humanists", wherein everyone is unlikeable, everything is perverse, flawed, and hopeless, and every plot point revolves around the characters, their circumstances, or both being complete fuck-ups. One gets the feeling that those who call it 'realistic' have poems like this scrawled away in their diaries:
Oh, the rot in the soil, the eternal bitter tomorrows -
The corruption of which all things are made,
The turmoil, the sin, the trouble, the sorrows -
Fuck, I need to get laid.
Disclaimer: Depression, angst, and lack thereof have actually nothing to do whatsoever with one's levels of sexual activity. The last line was solely for the tone-dissonance.
...But if you think it will help to get expelled in egg-form from a hen, I'm not going to judge you.)
At any rate, hers is a torrid affair, though the seducer gets a bit bored with her eternal protestations of affection. Sure, we know that hers are ~really passionate~ rather than vacant frippery like it is from all those othercheap sluts mistresses (*theees book eez so feeeemenist, yeeeep*), but, frankly, she's PASSIONATELY spouting vacant frippery she memorized out of romance novels. Same difference, IRL!Bella. (And, in all fairness, the judging of the passion or lack thereof comes through the obvious Emma-mentality narration even if Emma herself isn't saying it, so I think we're supposed to be viewing that evaluation with some cynicism.)
But! They plan to run off. It is all very romantic, except for the little matter of taking the kid along. The fellow delays and delays and delays until, at last, he writes her a (VERY cynically analyzed) Dear John letter and flees for the hills. He gives one of his private reasons as not wanting the kid along, but it's also obvious that he's more than a bit leery of Our Lady of Romance Novels.
I'd like to stop here again to repeat that, while Emma is portrayed as a quite unpleasant sort, so are the male main characters. Herr Seducer is an obvious case, as he's about as much of an asshole as she is, save that he has far more experience and so has become rather more jaded. (And yes, Emma IS about as manipulative as he is, though far more unpracticed.) Charles, as I've mentioned, is rather dubiously a nice guy. His chemist friend, whom I'm not really mentioning because I'd have to go back and reread his parts to give a careful overview, is to science-fetishism what Emma is to romance-fetishism, and shares her level of (in)competence. And the merchant... whoo boy, we'll get to the merchant. So it's not ragingly misogynistic, just... rather misanthropic. And Emma, being the POV character, is the most readily mocked.
THAT SAID, Emma's reaction to getting dumped is first to take a long walk out a short window (but she's interrupted by her husband calling downstairs before she can), then to acquire spontaneous meningitis when she glances through a window and catches sight of her ex skipping town.
Yes.
Spontaneous meningitis.
Tell me again how this is ~the dawn of Realistic Fiction~?
At any rate, she spends forty-three days in a coma (!) and puts a heavy strain on the family income, on account of being comatose and of having ordered traveling gear from the aforementioned merchant Lheureux (who cheerfully padded the bill without her around to contradict him) when she thought she was going to run away with her lover. But she awakens, decides to Get Religion, and all is well.
Ha.
Did anyone buy that?
Of course, she treats religion as just another fantasy tour, worshiping form over function. I mean, she all but states in her thought processes that God is the Ultimate Romantic Boyfriend, for crying out loud. Everyone is duly impressed, because no one can smell a rat when it's hanging off their noses by its teeth, and it seems all is well for a little while.
Buuuut Leon the clerk turns up, they flirt with many fabricated stories of how well they fulfilled the requisite romance tropes, and they shag. And then Madame Bovary, under the pretense of wanting music tutoring, convinces her husband to let her go to town weekly (so she can shag Leon some more).
So she has an affair, there is much romance, and Emma spends like the U.S. Government. And with about as much debt, too, since Lheureux is more than eager to encourage her to take out loans and put things up as collateral. Along the way, Charles's father passes away and Emma just whines about how pathetic he looks while grieving. I don't think I can emphasize how shallow this ~deep~ woman is. As I keep saying, she's Bella Swan without the varnish.
But she slowly gets bored with Leon, having become fain to take a little rest from grievous humping and wangst. But she can't go find herself a new cardboard cutout to smooch, because, as it turns out, all that spending is coming home to roost, and she's run out of money with which even to pay interest on her debts.
So all her furniture goes up for sale, and she runs about trying to get money. Leon? Can't do it, and he's been getting warned not to have a scandal with a married woman, anyway. Her ex, whom she tracks down? Doesn't have the money. Lheureux? Are you out of your mind, woman? A tax collector? Refuses her attempted prostitution. And so it goes, until she arrives home and, with her husband already arrived but unaware of the situation, decides to run up to the attic and eat arsenic rather than facing the catastrophic consequences of her actions.
Now, some people say that it's all the sleazy Lheureux's fault for ruining her. To which I say, "And WHEN did he FORCE her to throw money around like a drunken bull?" Oh, poooor Emma, being so evilly TEMPTED to live well beyond her means. Oh, the terrible oppression of a COMFORTABLE MIDDLE-CLASS EXISTENCE!11!!! How was she to LIVE without those couches, and that drapery, and those carpets, and -
Yeah, I have no sympathy for Emma. No hatred, either - as I've said, the book makes her folly abundantly clear, and so I have no need to feel fury - but no sympathy.
Her death by arsenic is long, dreadful, and VERY un-romantic, and she is inexplicably mourned. Charles wangsts himself to death, and their daughter is left to work... in a cotton mill. Welcome to Victorian child labor, kid.
THE END.
Notes:
So why did I mention that Charles was easily led? Why, simple. Because if Emma had been a COMPETENT sociopath, she could have leveraged a LOT of what was at her disposal. She pretty much had an ideal set-up: reasonable family wealth, an easily-led man, and nothing else to do all day long. If she'd planned ahead and worked to advance herself even a little, she might have found herself having advanced quite far towards her fantasies of wealth and power down the line.
("Sociopath? That's harsh," you say?
A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following:
failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;
Yes. Sociopath.
Also:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
requires excessive admiration
has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Narcissist.)
I feel strongly about this because I care about analyzing power dynamics and the methods of achieving power in oppressive situations. Emma was NOT being held back by desires to be moral or to conform to social norms, as is the case with most people crushed by the system. She displayed great willingness to do whatever she wanted without any care for consequences. Therefore, it's important to note that she failed because she was a thoughtless twit, not because she was a woman. As I commented rather graphically during the summary, I don't think she would have met with any more success as a man.
As for the feminism, or lack thereof, of the book - I've commented on the Nice Guy aspects that make me give the general plot a leery look. Aside from that, however, I think this is a flawless depiction of the inner life of a self-indulgent, sullen con artist. I don't think this would be any more or less feminist/misogynist if Emma, rather than eating arsenic, got a mastectomy, declared she'd done it all because she was a confused trans man, and called himself Thanfiction. She really is the sort of person who, if she had slightly more chutzpah and more high-fantasy reading material, would have tried to start a hobbit cult.
I am fain to be VERY sick and tired of analysis confusing brainless sociopathy with feminist independence, though. Yes, women have had to be calculating, strong-willed, and more than a little socially-defiant to get their way throughout history. That does NOT mean every manipulative, thick-headed wastrel with two X chromosomes is a ~force for female independence~.
Overall, it's very good. Again, I'd recommend it. Just be a liiiiittle leery of the analysis. :P
However, Madame Bovary is rightly well-known for a highly... unlikeable... main character, and so those with short tempers are advised caution when deciding whether to read this. In fact, nobody in the book is all that likeable, so you had better come into the book with a readiness to mentally MST their thought processes. (This IS in line with what the author wanted, since he wrote it to mock the bourgeoisie, so their unpleasantness is wholly intention.)
I'd recommend it. Now, for those who don't mind spoilers, read on to find a summary below:
We open with Charles Bovary, the future husband of the title character. Now, Charles is a loser. No way around it. He's either Shinji Ikari with about half the IQ points or Neville Longbottom without any redeeming courage or principles. However, he is a Nice Guy. *cough* At any rate, he becomes a doctor, marries a lady he doesn't much like, and falls for Emma, our very bored country-girl protagonist. His wife conveniently keels over, so heeeere's Emma!
Emma is basically Bella Swan in real life. She's a dissatisfied, melodramatic twit who constantly fantasizes about living out her favorite romantic novels. This being a deconstruction, reality falls grotesquely short of her expectations. Rather than being a knight in shining armor, Charles is... very sweet and loving, but rather stupid and utterly oblivious. Rather than living the romantic life of the rich, she leads a comfortable upper-middle-class existence, which is so terribly dreadful I want to puke. (On her.) Rather than passing her life in a daze of exquisite fantasies, she's excruciatingly bored.
Now, unfortunately, I read SparkNotes, so I know some people think this is an enlightened commentary on the unhappy lot of women in that time period. Ah... NO. Women may not have had it easy, but Emma is supported quite comfortably and is given leeway to do as she likes - as she demonstrates thoroughly in her unsavory actions later in the novel. Charles even confusedly lets her procure a tutor, and wants their daughter educated. She's not exactly ~oppressed~. And that, to me, is the POINT - that she's actually set up quite well and could exploit more than a few opportunities, but insists on being a petulant brat about the whole thing because it's not like her fantasies, whine, whine, moan. (In much more flowery language, of course. Very well-written flowery language.)
In all fairness, Charles is (to put it charitably) plain, oblivious, and mentally dull. (And he's a doctor. Heaven help the state of medicine at that time!) He completely misses Emma's discontent and hatred of her present life, which indicates that he has about the same relationship with her that I used to have with my stuffed animals as a kid. Oh, I loved those stuffed animals. Talked to them, hugged them, arrayed them in various settings... However, they were INANIMATE OBJECTS, and I wasn't MARRIED TO THEM!
(I don't say that he treated her like a beloved dog, because one DOES tend to notice when a pet is unhappy.)
That would be why I called him a Nice Guy above - on account of how this book is about how Emma is a horrible, escapist slattern who should have appreciated what she haaad and how he was always so gooood to her and oh let's just forget about the part where he never paid an ounce of attention to the emotional state of his "beloved" wife whatsoever. However, if we ignore the narrative's treatment of him, he's actually a fairly decent fellow. An idiot, yes, but a kindly idiot, and easily led. I'll get to why I keep emphasizing this later, but she really doesn't give him due credit.
So Emma has a child, who's a girl - and her musing about this is again more ~feminist~ commentary according to some people, but really, her chief idea of Male Privilege is that men get to have more fun gallivanting around abroad, rather than being stuck at home. Given her behavior in-book and her lousy self-justifications, I can't see male!Emma ending up any way other than a syphilis-ridden dissolute in an opium den, so I wouldn't go around trumpeting Emma as MAKING VALID POINTS ABOUT MISOGYNY~★
I come off as really hating Emma, but I don't. The book treats her as exactly what she is, so I can't feel hatred for her in the sense that I do for Author's Pets. Plus, I see far too much of the character type IRL and in history, so it's not even like she's a new level of pettiness for me. And yes, I can sympathize somewhat with the dissatisfaction and boredom. It's how she handles it that makes me really look down upon her, and I don't feel seething contempt so much as "Ah, what a waste". It's... really an interesting novel.
She then flirts with a clerk (Leon) for a while, but decides this is a Forbidden Love and so goes about looking all noble. I don't mean that she actually feels sorry about her adulterous feelings, just that she wallows in How Very Put-Upon She Is and casts herself in the role of a great martyr. I tell you, she IS IRL!Bella.
However, luckily for her wangst, her husband actually screws up by getting hyper-arrogant and performing a clubfoot-surgery that leads to the poor sap in question having his leg amputated above the knee (I told you there were no likeable characters around here), so she now feels justified in humping the local seducer. Did I mention that, while her husband was being eaten alive by humiliation and remorse, she just sat around sulking and whining to herself about how he should have thought how badly this would reflect on HER? Yes, this book is a completely accurate depiction of how a Mary-Sue would look if placed into a realistic world.
(Mind, it's not ACTUALLY realistic. Rather, it's that peculiar sort of misery-fetishism beloved of "humanists", wherein everyone is unlikeable, everything is perverse, flawed, and hopeless, and every plot point revolves around the characters, their circumstances, or both being complete fuck-ups. One gets the feeling that those who call it 'realistic' have poems like this scrawled away in their diaries:
Oh, the rot in the soil, the eternal bitter tomorrows -
The corruption of which all things are made,
The turmoil, the sin, the trouble, the sorrows -
Fuck, I need to get laid.
Disclaimer: Depression, angst, and lack thereof have actually nothing to do whatsoever with one's levels of sexual activity. The last line was solely for the tone-dissonance.
...But if you think it will help to get expelled in egg-form from a hen, I'm not going to judge you.)
At any rate, hers is a torrid affair, though the seducer gets a bit bored with her eternal protestations of affection. Sure, we know that hers are ~really passionate~ rather than vacant frippery like it is from all those other
But! They plan to run off. It is all very romantic, except for the little matter of taking the kid along. The fellow delays and delays and delays until, at last, he writes her a (VERY cynically analyzed) Dear John letter and flees for the hills. He gives one of his private reasons as not wanting the kid along, but it's also obvious that he's more than a bit leery of Our Lady of Romance Novels.
I'd like to stop here again to repeat that, while Emma is portrayed as a quite unpleasant sort, so are the male main characters. Herr Seducer is an obvious case, as he's about as much of an asshole as she is, save that he has far more experience and so has become rather more jaded. (And yes, Emma IS about as manipulative as he is, though far more unpracticed.) Charles, as I've mentioned, is rather dubiously a nice guy. His chemist friend, whom I'm not really mentioning because I'd have to go back and reread his parts to give a careful overview, is to science-fetishism what Emma is to romance-fetishism, and shares her level of (in)competence. And the merchant... whoo boy, we'll get to the merchant. So it's not ragingly misogynistic, just... rather misanthropic. And Emma, being the POV character, is the most readily mocked.
THAT SAID, Emma's reaction to getting dumped is first to take a long walk out a short window (but she's interrupted by her husband calling downstairs before she can), then to acquire spontaneous meningitis when she glances through a window and catches sight of her ex skipping town.
Yes.
Spontaneous meningitis.
Tell me again how this is ~the dawn of Realistic Fiction~?
At any rate, she spends forty-three days in a coma (!) and puts a heavy strain on the family income, on account of being comatose and of having ordered traveling gear from the aforementioned merchant Lheureux (who cheerfully padded the bill without her around to contradict him) when she thought she was going to run away with her lover. But she awakens, decides to Get Religion, and all is well.
Ha.
Did anyone buy that?
Of course, she treats religion as just another fantasy tour, worshiping form over function. I mean, she all but states in her thought processes that God is the Ultimate Romantic Boyfriend, for crying out loud. Everyone is duly impressed, because no one can smell a rat when it's hanging off their noses by its teeth, and it seems all is well for a little while.
Buuuut Leon the clerk turns up, they flirt with many fabricated stories of how well they fulfilled the requisite romance tropes, and they shag. And then Madame Bovary, under the pretense of wanting music tutoring, convinces her husband to let her go to town weekly (so she can shag Leon some more).
So she has an affair, there is much romance, and Emma spends like the U.S. Government. And with about as much debt, too, since Lheureux is more than eager to encourage her to take out loans and put things up as collateral. Along the way, Charles's father passes away and Emma just whines about how pathetic he looks while grieving. I don't think I can emphasize how shallow this ~deep~ woman is. As I keep saying, she's Bella Swan without the varnish.
But she slowly gets bored with Leon, having become fain to take a little rest from grievous humping and wangst. But she can't go find herself a new cardboard cutout to smooch, because, as it turns out, all that spending is coming home to roost, and she's run out of money with which even to pay interest on her debts.
So all her furniture goes up for sale, and she runs about trying to get money. Leon? Can't do it, and he's been getting warned not to have a scandal with a married woman, anyway. Her ex, whom she tracks down? Doesn't have the money. Lheureux? Are you out of your mind, woman? A tax collector? Refuses her attempted prostitution. And so it goes, until she arrives home and, with her husband already arrived but unaware of the situation, decides to run up to the attic and eat arsenic rather than facing the catastrophic consequences of her actions.
Now, some people say that it's all the sleazy Lheureux's fault for ruining her. To which I say, "And WHEN did he FORCE her to throw money around like a drunken bull?" Oh, poooor Emma, being so evilly TEMPTED to live well beyond her means. Oh, the terrible oppression of a COMFORTABLE MIDDLE-CLASS EXISTENCE!11!!! How was she to LIVE without those couches, and that drapery, and those carpets, and -
Yeah, I have no sympathy for Emma. No hatred, either - as I've said, the book makes her folly abundantly clear, and so I have no need to feel fury - but no sympathy.
Her death by arsenic is long, dreadful, and VERY un-romantic, and she is inexplicably mourned. Charles wangsts himself to death, and their daughter is left to work... in a cotton mill. Welcome to Victorian child labor, kid.
THE END.
Notes:
So why did I mention that Charles was easily led? Why, simple. Because if Emma had been a COMPETENT sociopath, she could have leveraged a LOT of what was at her disposal. She pretty much had an ideal set-up: reasonable family wealth, an easily-led man, and nothing else to do all day long. If she'd planned ahead and worked to advance herself even a little, she might have found herself having advanced quite far towards her fantasies of wealth and power down the line.
("Sociopath? That's harsh," you say?
A) There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three or more of the following:
failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
deception, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another;
Yes. Sociopath.
Also:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:
has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
requires excessive admiration
has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends
lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her
(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Narcissist.)
I feel strongly about this because I care about analyzing power dynamics and the methods of achieving power in oppressive situations. Emma was NOT being held back by desires to be moral or to conform to social norms, as is the case with most people crushed by the system. She displayed great willingness to do whatever she wanted without any care for consequences. Therefore, it's important to note that she failed because she was a thoughtless twit, not because she was a woman. As I commented rather graphically during the summary, I don't think she would have met with any more success as a man.
As for the feminism, or lack thereof, of the book - I've commented on the Nice Guy aspects that make me give the general plot a leery look. Aside from that, however, I think this is a flawless depiction of the inner life of a self-indulgent, sullen con artist. I don't think this would be any more or less feminist/misogynist if Emma, rather than eating arsenic, got a mastectomy, declared she'd done it all because she was a confused trans man, and called himself Thanfiction. She really is the sort of person who, if she had slightly more chutzpah and more high-fantasy reading material, would have tried to start a hobbit cult.
I am fain to be VERY sick and tired of analysis confusing brainless sociopathy with feminist independence, though. Yes, women have had to be calculating, strong-willed, and more than a little socially-defiant to get their way throughout history. That does NOT mean every manipulative, thick-headed wastrel with two X chromosomes is a ~force for female independence~.
Overall, it's very good. Again, I'd recommend it. Just be a liiiiittle leery of the analysis. :P
no subject
no subject
(Charles is more like that cactus Movie!Bella brings with her to Forks. And Leon is like... I don't know, Mike Newton.)
Emma is DEFINITELY Bella, though. Literally, you could paste in Bella's name at all points and see what Bella would sound like in her twenties.
Emma expatiated much on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains entombed.
To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called forth his, the young man [Leon] declared that he had been awfully bored during the whole course of his studies.
A translation is available right here, if you want a look!
no subject