The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert

by Various

Now, the prosecuting attorney perceives in all this, and through it all, a lascivious colour. If it were possible to take the number of lines of the book which he has cut out, and put parallel to them other lines that he has left, we should have a total proportion of about one to five hundred; and you would see that this proportion of one to five hundred was in no way of a lascivious colour; it exists only under the conditions of being cut out and commented upon.

Now, what has M. Flaubert desired to paint? First, education given to a woman which is above the conditions to which she was born—something that too often happens among us, it must be confessed. Then, the mixture of discordant elements that are thus produced in the intelligence of the woman; and then when marriage comes, especially if the marriage is not in accordance with the education, but rather with the conditions under which the woman was born, the author explains all these facts which occur in the situation that he depicts.

What has he shown? He shows a woman entering upon vice because of a disappointing match; then vice in its last degree, degradation and wretchedness. Presently, when through the reading of several passages, I shall have made you acquainted with the book as a whole, I shall demand of this tribunal the privilege of their accepting the question on these terms: Would this book, put into the hands of a young woman, have the effect of leading her towards easy pleasures, towards adultery, or, on the contrary, would it show her the danger of the first step, and bring upon her a shiver of horror? The question thus put, your conscience would soon decide.

I have here stated that M. Flaubert wished to paint a woman who, instead of trying to adapt herself to the conditions in which she was placed, to her position and her birth, instead of seeking to make herself a part of the life to which she belonged, was occupied with a thousand foreign aspirations drawn from an education too far above her; instead of accommodating herself to the duties of her position, of being the tranquil wife of a country doctor with whom she should pass her days, in place of seeking her happiness in her house and in her marriage, sought it in interminable fancies; and then, meeting a young man upon the way who coquetted with her, she played the same game with him (Heaven knows they were both inexperienced enough!) urging herself on by degrees, and frightened when she turned to the religion of her early years and found it insufficient. We shall see presently why this was so. At first, the young man's ignorance and her own preserves her from danger. But she soon meets a man, of the kind of which there are too many in the world, who takes possession of her—this poor woman, already perverted and ready to stray. Here is the main point; now it is necessary to see what the book makes of it.

The Public Minister becomes incensed, and I believe wrongly so from the standard of conscience and the human heart, over that first scene, where Madame Bovary finds a sort of pleasure, of joy, in having broken her prison, and returns to her home saying: "I have a lover." Do you believe that this is not the first cry of the human heart! The proof is between you and me. But we must look a little further, and then we shall see that, if the first moment, the first instant of the fall, excites in this woman a sort of transport of joy, of delirium, in some lines farther on the deception makes itself manifest and, following the expression of the author, she seems humiliated in her own eyes.

Yes, deception, grief, and remorse come to her at the same time. The man in whom she has confided, to whom she has given herself up, has only made use of her for the moment, as he would a plaything; remorse and regret now rend her heart. It has shocked you to hear this called the disillusion of adultery; you would have preferred pollution at the hand of a writer who placed before you a woman who, not having comprehended marriage, felt herself polluted by contact with her husband, and who, having sought her ideal elsewhere, found the disillusions of adultery. This word has shocked you; in the place of disillusions, you would have wished pollution of adultery. This tribunal shall be the judge. As for me, if I had depicted the same personage I would have said to her: Poor woman! if you believe that your husband's kisses are monotonous and wearisome, if you have found only platitudes—this word has been especially brought to our notice—the platitudes of marriage—if you seem to see pollution in a union where love does not preside, take care, for your dreams are an illusion, and you will one day be cruelly deceived. But this man, gentlemen, who knows how to speak strongly, makes use of the word pollution to express what we would have called disillusion, and he has used the true word, although vague to him who can bring to it no intelligence. I would have liked better his not speaking so strongly, his not pronouncing the word pollution, but rather averting the woman from deception, from disillusion, and saying to her: Where you believe you will find love, you will find only libertinism; where you think you will find happiness, there is only bitterness. A husband who goes tranquilly about his affairs, who kisses you, puts on his house cap and eats his soup with you, is a prosaic husband revolting to you; you aspire to a man who will love you, idolize you; poor child! that man will be a libertine who will have taken you for a minute for the sake of playing with you. There will be some illusion about it the first time, perhaps the second; you may come back home joyous, singing the song of adultery. "I have a lover!" but the third time you will not wish to go to him, for the disillusion will have come. The man you have dreamed of will have lost all his prestige; you will have found again in love the platitudes of marriage, and this time with scorn, disdain, disgust and poignant remorse.

This, gentlemen, is what M. Flaubert has said, what he has painted, what is in each line of his book; and this is what distinguishes his work from all other works of the kind. Under his hand, the great irregularities of society figure on each page, and adultery walks abroad full of disgust and shame. He has brought into the common relations of life the most powerful teaching that can be given to a young woman. And Heaven knows that to those of our young women who do not find in lofty, honest principle and stern religion enough to keep them steady in the accomplishment of their duties as mothers, or who do not find it in that resignation and practical science of life which bids us accommodate ourselves to what we have, but who carry their dreams to the outside (and the most honest, the most pure of our young women, in the prosaic life of their households, are sometimes tormented by that which is going on outside), a book like this would bring but one reflection. Of that you may be sure. And this is what M. Flaubert has intended.

And notice carefully one thing: M. Flaubert is not the man who has painted a charming adultery for you, in order to arrive later with the Deus ex machina; no, you are carried too quickly on to the last page. Adultery with him is only a series of torments, remorse and regret; and then he arrives at the final, frightful expiation. It is excessive. If M. Flaubert sins, it is through excess; and I will show you presently what is meant by this. The expiation is not allowed to wait, and it is that which makes the book eminently moral and useful. It does not promise the young woman some beautiful years at the end of which she can say: after this, one is willing to die. No! from the second day there is bitterness and disillusion. The conclusion for morality is found in each line of the book.

This book is written with a power of observation to which the Government Attorney has rendered justice. And it is here that I would call your attention to it, because if the accusation is without foundation, it must fall. This book is written with a power truly remarkable for observing the smallest details. An article in the Artiste, signed Flaubert, has served as yet another text for the accusation. Let the Government Attorney note, first that this article is foreign to the indictment; then, that we will hold him innocent and moral in the eyes of this tribunal on one condition, which is, that he will have the goodness to read the entire article from the place of the cutting.

The most noticeable thing in M. Flaubert's book is what some accounts have called a fidelity wholly Daguerreian in the reproduction of the type of things, and in the intimate nature of the thought of the human heart;—and this reproduction becomes more powerful still by the magic of his style. Now notice, that if he had applied this fidelity only to the scenes of degradation, you could say with reason: the author has been pleased to paint the scenes of degradation with that power of description which is peculiarly his own. From the first to the last page of his book, he keeps close to all the facts in Emma's life, without any kind of reserve, from her infancy in her father's house, to her education in the convent, sparing nothing. And those of us who have read the book from beginning to end can say—and this is a notable point which should put him in a favorable light with you, not only bringing him acquittal, but removing from him every kind of misunderstanding—that when he comes to the difficult parts, precisely at the time of degradation, in place of doing as some classic authors have done, (as the Public Attorney knows full well, but whom he forgot when he wrote his address) a few pages of whose writings I have with me here, (not to read to you but for you to run through in Court—and I might quote a few lines here presently), in place of doing as our great classic authors, our great masters have done, who never hesitate at description when they have come to the scene of a union of the senses between man and woman, M. Flaubert contents himself with a word. All his descriptive power disappears, because his thought is chaste; because where he might write in his own manner and with the magic of his style, he feels that there are some things that should not be described or even touched upon. The Public Attorney finds that he has still said too much. When I have shown him some men who, in great philosophical works, have delighted in descriptions of these things, and when in the light of this fact I have shown that this man, who possesses the descriptive faculty to so high a degree and who, far from using it, desists and abstains from it, I shall indeed have the right to ask why this accusation has been brought?