Bovary Emotional satire based on the novel by Gustav Flaubert

grown-ups

This story, told with honesty and compassion, is a story of insignificance, hopeless yearning, stupidity, small-mindedness, cruelty and comic tragedy … If we look at Emma and the people who surround her as our own close social circle, people just like us, if we find ourselves in them, there is no need to understand them. We feel them as fellow human beings. As the author of the adaptation says, situations, people and their reactions, hardly change at all through the course of history. People don’t want to change, get re-educated or improve. We only live in one constant present tense. But the goal of Flaubert’s writing wasn’t to change the world. He wrote to be – honest. He found man’s powerlessness and his limitations both sad and funny at the same time. Flaubert observed and felt the world with a mix of satire and emotion, in other words he had a satirically emotional appreciation for man.

The adaptation of Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary offers an interesting staging potential whilst concisely summing up this extensive work into a questioning of the world we live in, the world that disabled not only Emma’s but almost every human’s soul, the world that raised barriers between man and the key questions of his existence and pushed humanity into a state of spiritual impotence. In an agony of aimless search we’re clutching at instant material gratifications and hoping that, at least for a moment, we can forget about the banality of our lives and fill our inner void. Flaubert himself said: “I deny that Emma Bovary is a monstrous creation of my degenerate imagination. She may well be a monster, but I am not the one who created her. Our world, your world and my world created her. There are thousands of Emma Bovarys out there whose life could have been my inspiration.“

EMMA ROUAULT’S FATHER

Emma, there is something I must ask you. Mr. Bovary is waiting outside, asking me for your hand in marriage. I find him a little obtuse; he is not exactly the son-inlaw of my dreams. But he is well-mannered, I hear, frugal and well qualified; he has healed my broken leg as it befits. I don’t think he will demand a rich dowry. In any case, I have to sell those 20 acres of land to pay the dowry and still have enough left so that I can repay my debts to the builder and the harness maker. Perhaps I could even have the press repaired. So if you are willing… 

EMMA

I am! I said yes!

(Charles arrives, dressed as before. Emma first looks at Charles then she speaks to the audience, overcome with emotion yet disheartened.)

EMMA Oh, I thought it was a man who can ride a horse, fence, break glasses, crack a whip, recite poetry, swim the waters of life, and that now life will begin and happiness will come…

(Emma goes to Charles. He embraces her.)

EMMA … in stagecoaches, hidden behind blue silk curtains we shall ride slowly along mountain roads, listening to the coachman's song echoing from the mountains while a goat herd clatters by and waterfalls rumble. And when the sun goes down we shall smell citrons on the beach. In the evening, standing alone on the terrace of our villa, we shall hold hands and watch the stars.

(To the audience.)

Then, in the garden of our first home, under a full moon, I passionately recited Lamartine.

My heart longs for the shores of the southern sea

Where warm waves whisper to the aloes,

At the foot of the Etna where fertile cinders lie,

The plain is like a flowering garden in May

When immortality still blossoms in our hearts;

When each throb of the heart

Is a cry for happiness hidden who knows where. 

And Charles said... 

CHARLES

What is shown

I've always known:

As the clock strikes one,

to bed I’m gone;

As the clock strikes two,

the owl goes boohoo;

As the clock strikes three,

the pig grunts its plea;

As the clock strikes four,

the cock sings some more;

As the clock strikes five,

I get up, come alive;

As the clock strikes six,

I go feed the pigs;

As the clock strikes seven,

I eat till I’m laden;

As the clock strikes eight,

I sing to my mate;

As the clock strikes nine,

I drink some wine;

As the clock strikes ten,

I’m back in my den;

As the clock strikes eleven,

I think: Almost even;

As the clock strikes twelve,

I say: End of the poem!

EMMA

What is this, Charles?

CHARLES Oh, it is nothing, just some poetry. It’s a poem from my youth that I learned when I was little. 

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For the author's contact please write to sigledal@gmail.com.