FLAUBERT'S "MYSTERY PLAY": A DAY IN THE LIFE OF MADAME BOVARY

Renascence, Winter 2005 by Rogers, Peter S

THE object of mystery plays was religious. Gustave Flaubert, it is often thought, was rather removed from any interest in religion and was, if anything, somewhat cynical about it. Studies have nevertheless demonstrated the rich resource that religion offered him for the composition of many of his works.1 In his correspondence he noted how dogma served to express human feeling. For instance, concerning the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, he stated that the Catholic Church was right to affirm it since such a dogma "sums up the emotional life of the nineteenth century" (Wall 264).

Mystery plays were not foreign to Flaubert, for he had tried his hand at one with the composition of Smarh: An Old Mystery written in 1838-39. With Bibliomania, published in 1837, he tells the story of a former monk who has become a bookseller and who commits criminal acts to acquire the Mystery of St. Michael. Then, with The Temptation of Saint Anthony, written between 1848 and 1849, Flaubert approaches the genre again as he has saints, demons and others exchange words with the anchorite. After reading the Temptation to his friends Louis Bouilhet and Maxime du Camp, they suggested that he abandon the project because they sensed that he would not find a publisher. He did not, however, follow their advice because he eventually went on to write two more versions, the third of which he published in 1874. Madame Bovary was published in 1856, followed by other novels and his Three Tales (1877), stories about saints Julien l'Hospitalier, John the Baptist, and a pious woman who develops a close bond with her parrot with whom she associates the Holy Spirit.

I propose that, even before the composition of his tales, Madame Bovary did not completely break with the phantasmagoric world of heretics and apparitions found in the Temptation. That world exists in the shape of a mystery play within the story of his adulterous woman. In one of the conversations that the pharmacist Homais has with the pastor of Yonville, he reminds the priest that actors participated in the liturgy: "... Yes, they used to act right in the middle of the choir - put on farcical plays called mysteries. These often violated the laws of decency, I may say" (246).2 The purpose of this essay is to explore the possibility that a mystery play is woven into the fabric of Madame Bovary.

Mystery plays would call upon the main characters of salvation history to represent one of its important moments. The usual characters would be Adam and Eve, the tricky serpent, Our Lady and her son Jesus. In this study I will examine one day in the life of Emma Bovary when she goes to church to find solace from her pastor. In taking the words of Homais seriously, I hope to indicate how different characters take on the role of God the Creator, Jesus, John the Baptist, women in search of healing, and disciples who are called together and then sent forth.

THE story of the sinful woman, of Emma's adultery, may seem to be banal. Reared on the farm and educated in the convent, she escapes the life that agriculture offers by marrying Charles Bovary, a young health officer whose first marriage has ended in the death of his wife Héloïse. Marriage proves to be a disappointment for Emma. The couple leaves Tostes for Yonville in hope of a better life. Henry James remarks that their new neighbor, the talkative pharmacist Homais, is one of the few people Emma comes to know besides her lovers Rodolphe and Léon. The pharmacist and her husband provide Emma with the occasion for temptation and the ensuing adultery and financial ruin when they suggest that she go horse-back riding with the former and attend the opera in Rouen, where she will meet the latter. Eventually abandoned by her lovers, Emma loses hope and commits suicide.

Henry James ends his summary of the plot by saying that one might consider the tale to be "rather a vulgar tragedy" (99). Yet he recognizes that the story has meaning. "In spite of the elaborate system of portraiture to which she is subjected, in spite of being minutely described in all her attitudes and all her moods, from the hem of her garment to the texture of her fingernails, she remains a living creature, and as a living creature she interests us" (99). The remark about Emma's hem should not escape us. On the day that she seeks out Father Bournisien, the priest stumbles into her presence with his cassock "frayed at the hem . . ." (126). The unraveled cloth, "effiloquée" (145), as much as the hem, offers an important thread or "fil" of the text that, we shall see, is important for its spiritual meaning in the mystery play.

This priest has frequently been seen in an unfavorable light. Baudelaire thought that the curé was no different from many priests: "... which one of us, in a more naïve age and in troubled circumstances, did not find himself confronted with similarly incompetent priests?" (de Man 343). Sainte-Beuve notes that Emma tries "to confide in the wellmeaning priest, M. Bournisien, a vulgar and crude man who has no inkling of the moral distress that confronts him" (de Man 332). Flaubert treats his curé less harshly. Writing to Louise Colet, Flaubert says that, when Emma meets the priest, he shows himself to be dirty and stupid. However, Flaubert adds that he is "quite a good fellow, even excellent" (Bruneau 2, 304-305; 13 April 1853).