The Consequences of Female Gender Expectations in "The Spoils of Poynton and Madam Bovary"
Eric Shapiro - The Art of the Novel with Professor Peter Dunwoodie - Goldsmiths University of London 6/15/2011
Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary both involve female characters that come into inevitable conflict with the gender norms of their time. Ultimately, sociological barriers thwart the women’s attempts at self-realization, with men ostensibly retaining their authority. While the men are seemingly triumphant, their “victories” (namely the retention of social dominance) are hollow and unenviable, demonstrating that the oppression of one gender is not in the interest of the other.
Madame Bovary (published in 1856) and the Spoils of Poynton (published in 1898) emerged in the Victorian Era. Therefore, the issues of gender and sexual politics explored in the two novels must be analyzed against the backdrop of that time period. Commenting on the expectations of women in the 19th century, Howard I. Kushner of San Diego University wrote: “ideology, as opposed to social reality, emphasized women as mothers and guardians of the family” (Kushner 1). Women like Mrs. Gereth, Fleda Vetch, and Emma Bovary paid the price for this limited perception.
According to Edmund Wilson, James’s work is chiefly occupied with “the presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life.” Wilson is correct in pointing out that James’s novels foreground moral conflict and character over social statements. Still, the inner struggles he so painstakingly creates take place against the backdrop of Victorian society. Regardless of whether and to what extent he is making a social critique about the plight of women in that era, the values and morals of the time period act as the impetus for the characters’ actions. Therefore, they are worthy of consideration along with the timeless moral conflicts waged in their hearts and minds. Indeed, the strong human element that interests James gives an extra resonance to the larger social points that are only touched upon.
Fleda Vetch and Mrs. Gereth provide drastically different but equally enlightening examples of what happens when a society treats half of its population as second-class citizens. To be sure, these women are not simply innocent victims thwarted by a world stacked against them. Fleda and Mrs. Gereth are complicit in their shared downfall. A series of mistakes and personality defects bear some ultimate responsibility for the women’s failure, rendering them incapable of navigating their way to a satisfactory conclusion despite their intelligence. However, their dilemmas arise in the first place as a result of societal factors.
The law of primogeniture deprives Mrs. Gereth of a dignified retirement by placing her collection of antiques and furniture in the hands of her son Owen, the heir of her recently-deceased husband Colonel Gereth’s, and hence, the inheritor of Poynton. The so-called spoils are the product of:
“Twenty-six years of planning and seeking, a long, sonny harvest of taste and curiosity… there had been her personal gift, her genius, the passion, the patience of the collector… an almost infernal cunning, that had enabled her to do it all with a limited command of money” (James 8).
There is an element of social rebellion in Mrs. Gereth’s bid to keep her spoils. A report by the Married Women’s Property Committee published in 1882 describes the plight of women for most of the 19th century: “The Common Law of England continued down to the later half of this century to treat a wife as being incapable of holding property of her own… and, in fact, with regard to all civil rights, possessing no legal existence” (Married Women’s Property Committee 3). Primogeniture, a law that holds the eldest male heir of a family entitled to all property rights upon the death of the father/husband, is a glaring reflection of this legal reality. Mrs. Gereth, while no feminist, sees this as an affront to her dignity: “A long resentment had ripened. She hated the effacement to which English usage reduced the widowed mother” (James 32). The law of primogeniture effectively ignores a wife’s essential contribution to her husband’s estate, be it raising his children, tending the house, or acquiring income. Depriving Mrs. Gereth of the collection she has cultivated for decades is tantamount to seizing the fruits of her labor and giving them to Owen for no other reason than the fact that he is a man.
Owen, despite his legal claim to the spoils, has played no role in acquiring the objects and has little appreciation for them: “Owen had from a boy never cared, never taken the least pride or pleasure in his home” (James 10). Nevertheless, his legal claim according to the law of primogeniture trumps Mrs. Gereth’s moral one. The ensuing struggle for possession of the spoils serves to undermine not only the people affected, but also the institution of family. It is hard to conceive of the Gereths ever reconciling in the wake of the Poynton fire at the novel’s conclusion.
An analysis of The Spoils of Poynton from any angle must, in some capacity, deal with the nature of the titular spoils. They are not important in themselves, as is evidenced by the fact that James scarcely takes the time to describe them. Their main significance lies in what they represent to the characters in the novel. Mrs. Gereth finds her empowerment in the cultivation of aesthetic beauty, spending her entire life stocking Poynton with priceless antiques. Her affection for them amounts to far more than a hoarder’s pride in her collection: “it was not the crude love of possession; it was the need to be faithful to a trust and loyal to an idea” (James 30). Mrs. Gereth’s concern for her collection transcends mere materialism.
In addition to constituting a triumph of taste, the spoils and their meticulous arrangement functions as a distillation of Mrs. Gereth’s personality. Many times throughout the novel, James calls attention to the ability of objects to represent the essence of a human being, the culmination of their experiences and the receptacles of their memories. The narrator refers to Poynton as “the record of a life… written in great syllables of color and form” (James 14). Mrs. Gereth claims: “they were our religion, they were our life, us. And now they’re only me.” By taking the spoils from his mother, Owen, with the blessing of her society, strips his mother of her identity.
Fleda Vetch also suffers from the social expectations of women in the Victorian Era, albeit in subtler way than Mrs. Gereth. The latter attempts to thwart the system, whereas the former compulsively seeks to abide by it, even as she pursues a result that is impossible within such a framework. She is hamstrung by admirable principles that she takes to drastic extremes, fanatically devoted to these ideas that she does not so much as consider the human consequences of her actions. She places her precious code above all else: “You mustn’t break faith. Anything’s better than that” (James 134). Fleda sublimates her own healthy desires for love in the name of her “reputation,” telling Owen: “If I didn’t break off it was just on purpose… so that there shouldn’t be a thing to be said against me” (James 132). Fleda’s concern for her reputation reflects the general preoccupation with appearances prevalent in the Victorian era. Underneath the veneer, however, lie universal, selfish motivations common in all humans. Mrs. Gereth calls attention to this reality: “My dear child… don’t try to make yourself better than you are… You’re not quite a saint in heaven yet… you’re pale with your passion… I can’t for the life of me see where the shame comes in” (James 141). The shame comes, quite simply, from being human. Fleda is the product of a society in which self-denial and denying one’s human needs is the highest virtue.
What Fleda fails to realize is that other people do not abide by her strict code, she attempts to impose it on them. Mrs. Gereth calls her out on this as well: “What are you, after all, my dear, I should like to know, that a gentleman who offers you what Owen offers should have to meet such wonderful exactions, to take such extraordinary precautions about your sweet little scruples” (James 150). Mrs. Gereth brings up the possibility that Fleda’s adherence to her code is in part a product of her ego. By demanding so much of her suitor, Fleda places herself on a pedestal.
Fleda sees her code as a testament to moral virtue. Charles ultimately proves unwilling to abide by expectations that Mrs. Gereth aptly describes as “a passion that bewilders a young blockhead with bugaboo barriers, with hideous and monstrous sacrifices (James 155).” At this point, Fleda’s faith in her code crosses over from willful naiveté to the realm of delusion. Unable to accept that Charles has abandoned her for reasons not in accordance with her idealized view of him as a man of honor, Fleda interprets his offer of a gift from Poynton as “a token of gratitude for having kept him on the straight path” (James 179). This is absurd; Owen never implied that he subscribed to Fleda’s code. On the contrary, he went out of his way to bypass it. His gift for her, which he insists she will know the purpose of, is a sign of his love for her. Alas, Fleda’s view of the world is so warped that she cannot see it.
In the end, Fleda’s code serves no one: Owen Gereth remains trapped in a loveless marriage, Mrs. Gereth sacrifices her collection for nothing, and she ends up alone. Her attempts to win over Owen in a manner consistent with her code is unintentionally cruel in that it tauntingly suggest the possibility of romance provided that he meets impossible conditions. Ultimately, Fleda’s neuroses uphold the sexist order of her society.
Despite Fleda and his mother’s best efforts, Owen achieves his initial objective of reacquiring the spoils and marrying Mona Brigstock. His victory, however, comes with great cost. In behaving in the way that his society expects him to, he loses Fleda and his mother and marries a woman he despises. He is also forced into a position at odds with his nature. Because he is Colonel Gereth’s male heir, Owen must contend with an inheritance that he does not even want. He admits that he would be happy to let his mother have the contents of Poynton, but as their custodian, he must contend with the clashing interests of three strong-willed women. In the process, he is forced to endure great stress and to act in a manner that offends his sensibilities.
Madame Bovary is much more obviously concerned with issues of gender, containing strong social messages. To his credit, Flaubert does not condescend to the reader; he is neither preachy nor polemical in making his points. He allows the characters and situations in his novel to speak for themselves. His distinctive style nudges the reader to certain conclusions without seeming to have an agenda, often relying on free indirect discourse to put the reader in the mind of the character. The advantage to using this method rather than stream of consciousness is that it gives him license as narrator to subtly criticize the norms of his day by poking fun at his characters’ frequently absurd notions. This is particularly effective in calling attention to the way that men perceive women.
When Charles first encounters Emma, he only focuses on her looks. Flaubert painstakingly describes the most obscure details of her physical appearance, implying that this is what Charles notices when he meets his wife-to-be. Tellingly, we learn nothing about Emma’s personality from the perspective of the male characters. Even her adoring father sees her more as a valuable possession to be sold than an individual with her own thoughts and personality: “Pere Rouault was going to have to sell off-twenty-two acres of his property, since he owed a lot to the mason, and to the harness-maker, since the cider press needed a new shaft” (Flaubert 23). Pere’s motives for essentially selling his daughter are almost comical in their absurdity. He seems to place the mundane expenses of running his farm ahead of his daughter’s well being.
This is by no means a malicious act; Pere’s distraught reaction to Emma’s suicide shows that he does love his daughter. Rather, he does not see why he should take the time to get to know his prospective son-in-law given his ostensible quality. Charles is from a good family, has a steady, relatively lucrative career, and is a decent human being. It does not occur to Pere and other fathers in the Victorian era that a successful marriage requires more than just these superficial qualifications. To be fair, choosing a spouse for your child is no enviable task. There is no way the “vetting” process can possibly account for true compatibility. This begs the question: why not allow men and women to decide on their own marriage? Alas, such a concept defies the societal norms of the time, and women like Emma are forced to endure loveless marriages arranged for the convenience of their parents.
Some women might be happy with a man like Charles, but Emma has higher (perhaps unreasonable) standards. She is far more ambitious and culturally aware than her spouse, but society does not allow her to advance beyond the status her husband’s position affords. As a member of the middle class, Emma is taunted by her brief encounters with French high society. She idealizes the luxuries and seeming sophistication of a world that is ever closed off to her and blames Charles for being an inadequate husband because he does not have the ambition or ability to ascend the social ladder: “she would have liked this name of Bovary, the name that was hers, to be famous, to see it displayed in the book-shops, quoted in the newspapers, known all over France. But Charles hadn’t an ounce of ambition” (Flaubert 57). Because Emma is a woman, she does not have the capacity to attain the status she craves. Her community expects her to be a good mother and wife. All of her efforts must go into being the best possible housewife, despite the fact that it gives her no satisfaction. Faced with utter powerlessness, Emma frequently takes her frustration out on her husband and her child.
Flaubert highlights the patent unfairness of women’s status in Victorian France by contrasting Emma’s plight Leon’s. In many ways, the two are similar. Both are smitten with the romantic notions found in their reading materials, and both crave the excitement and cultural sophistication of the big city. Both have ambitions to advance beyond their social rank. Indeed, their relationship is fundamentally based on these common grounds. The key difference between Leon and Emma is gender. The former, being a man, is able to pursue a career that lifts him out of the mundane countryside and provides him with the opportunity for advancement. The latter, on the other hand, is shackled to her husband and daughter. Put simply, Leon has the power to alter his circumstances whereas Emma is stuck where she is. It is very likely that Emma’s unrealistic romantic notions would not allow her to be content anywhere, regardless of societal, but her inability to even try finding happiness serves to fuel her depression and bitterness.
On the rare occasions that Emma tries to be a supportive wife, Charles rewards her with disappointment. When the pharmacist Monsieur Homais receives word of a “promising” new treatment for clubfoot, Emma eagerly encourages her husband to attempt the procedure. She hopes that his success will help her attain the status she craves, but when the procedure goes horribly wrong and necessitates amputation of the limb, Emma is once again reminded of her well-intentioned husband’s mediocrity. She realizes then that Charles will never be able to get her what she wants, and turns to extra-marital affairs.
One might think that having a child would give Emma’s life some direction and lessen her dissatisfaction, but in fact it only exacerbates her unhappiness. Although she is initially excited by the prospect of motherhood, Emma’s thoughts about the gender of her child foreshadow a negative outcome:
“This idea of having a male child was like an anticipated revenge for the powerlessness of her past. A man, at least, is free; he can explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted… Always there is desire urging, always the convention restraining” (Flaubert 82).
Like many parents, Emma wants to live through her child. A son would be able to do all the things that she has been unable to on account of her gender. He would be able to prosper according to his merits, rather than being relegated to a supporting role. She is afraid that a daughter will encounter the same dissatisfaction as she does. Although somewhat self-serving, Emma’s desire for a boy is understandable given the circumstances of her day. She realizes that being a woman in Victorian times is one long string of thwarted ambitions. To be sure, Emma’s inability to love her daughter in spite of her disappointment reflects badly on her character, but it also casts doubts on a society that actively encourages parents to prefer one child over another based on solely on gender.
The Spoils of Poynton and Madame Bovary both serve to indict the oppressive force of Victorian gender norms. They are patently unjust, and they bring out the worst of human nature by depriving women of their dignity. They rob Mrs. Gereth of her identity, drive Emma Bovary to suicide, and compel Fleda Vetch to forsake her happiness in their name. While some would say that it is wrong to apply contemporary standards to works of fiction from another era, it is not remiss to claim that authors like Henry James and Gustave Flaubert were instrumental in exposing the injustices of their day, laying the foundation for future generations to build a better society. These authors were not feminists according to today’s definition of the term, but their works documented the shifting social consciousness that would eventually lead to societies where all human beings, irrespective of gender, are entitled to equal rights. Bibliography
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.
James, Henry, and Bernard Richards. The Spoils of Poynton. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008. Print.
Kushner, Howard. "Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity in Nineteenth Century Medical and Social Thought." Journal of Social History 26.3 (1993): n. pag. JSTOR. Web. 10 Jun 2011.
Report of the Married Women's Property Committee. Married Women's Property Committee. Willis's Rooms, London. 18 Nov 1882. Address.
Wilson, Edmund, and Lewis Dabney. The Portable Edmund Wilson. New York: Penguin, 1983. 128-129. Print.
Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary both involve female characters that come into inevitable conflict with the gender norms of their time. Ultimately, sociological barriers thwart the women’s attempts at self-realization, with men ostensibly retaining their authority. While the men are seemingly triumphant, their “victories” (namely the retention of social dominance) are hollow and unenviable, demonstrating that the oppression of one gender is not in the interest of the other.
Madame Bovary (published in 1856) and the Spoils of Poynton (published in 1898) emerged in the Victorian Era. Therefore, the issues of gender and sexual politics explored in the two novels must be analyzed against the backdrop of that time period. Commenting on the expectations of women in the 19th century, Howard I. Kushner of San Diego University wrote: “ideology, as opposed to social reality, emphasized women as mothers and guardians of the family” (Kushner 1). Women like Mrs. Gereth, Fleda Vetch, and Emma Bovary paid the price for this limited perception.
According to Edmund Wilson, James’s work is chiefly occupied with “the presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life.” Wilson is correct in pointing out that James’s novels foreground moral conflict and character over social statements. Still, the inner struggles he so painstakingly creates take place against the backdrop of Victorian society. Regardless of whether and to what extent he is making a social critique about the plight of women in that era, the values and morals of the time period act as the impetus for the characters’ actions. Therefore, they are worthy of consideration along with the timeless moral conflicts waged in their hearts and minds. Indeed, the strong human element that interests James gives an extra resonance to the larger social points that are only touched upon.
Fleda Vetch and Mrs. Gereth provide drastically different but equally enlightening examples of what happens when a society treats half of its population as second-class citizens. To be sure, these women are not simply innocent victims thwarted by a world stacked against them. Fleda and Mrs. Gereth are complicit in their shared downfall. A series of mistakes and personality defects bear some ultimate responsibility for the women’s failure, rendering them incapable of navigating their way to a satisfactory conclusion despite their intelligence. However, their dilemmas arise in the first place as a result of societal factors.
The law of primogeniture deprives Mrs. Gereth of a dignified retirement by placing her collection of antiques and furniture in the hands of her son Owen, the heir of her recently-deceased husband Colonel Gereth’s, and hence, the inheritor of Poynton. The so-called spoils are the product of:
“Twenty-six years of planning and seeking, a long, sonny harvest of taste and curiosity… there had been her personal gift, her genius, the passion, the patience of the collector… an almost infernal cunning, that had enabled her to do it all with a limited command of money” (James 8).
There is an element of social rebellion in Mrs. Gereth’s bid to keep her spoils. A report by the Married Women’s Property Committee published in 1882 describes the plight of women for most of the 19th century: “The Common Law of England continued down to the later half of this century to treat a wife as being incapable of holding property of her own… and, in fact, with regard to all civil rights, possessing no legal existence” (Married Women’s Property Committee 3). Primogeniture, a law that holds the eldest male heir of a family entitled to all property rights upon the death of the father/husband, is a glaring reflection of this legal reality. Mrs. Gereth, while no feminist, sees this as an affront to her dignity: “A long resentment had ripened. She hated the effacement to which English usage reduced the widowed mother” (James 32). The law of primogeniture effectively ignores a wife’s essential contribution to her husband’s estate, be it raising his children, tending the house, or acquiring income. Depriving Mrs. Gereth of the collection she has cultivated for decades is tantamount to seizing the fruits of her labor and giving them to Owen for no other reason than the fact that he is a man.
Owen, despite his legal claim to the spoils, has played no role in acquiring the objects and has little appreciation for them: “Owen had from a boy never cared, never taken the least pride or pleasure in his home” (James 10). Nevertheless, his legal claim according to the law of primogeniture trumps Mrs. Gereth’s moral one. The ensuing struggle for possession of the spoils serves to undermine not only the people affected, but also the institution of family. It is hard to conceive of the Gereths ever reconciling in the wake of the Poynton fire at the novel’s conclusion.
An analysis of The Spoils of Poynton from any angle must, in some capacity, deal with the nature of the titular spoils. They are not important in themselves, as is evidenced by the fact that James scarcely takes the time to describe them. Their main significance lies in what they represent to the characters in the novel. Mrs. Gereth finds her empowerment in the cultivation of aesthetic beauty, spending her entire life stocking Poynton with priceless antiques. Her affection for them amounts to far more than a hoarder’s pride in her collection: “it was not the crude love of possession; it was the need to be faithful to a trust and loyal to an idea” (James 30). Mrs. Gereth’s concern for her collection transcends mere materialism.
In addition to constituting a triumph of taste, the spoils and their meticulous arrangement functions as a distillation of Mrs. Gereth’s personality. Many times throughout the novel, James calls attention to the ability of objects to represent the essence of a human being, the culmination of their experiences and the receptacles of their memories. The narrator refers to Poynton as “the record of a life… written in great syllables of color and form” (James 14). Mrs. Gereth claims: “they were our religion, they were our life, us. And now they’re only me.” By taking the spoils from his mother, Owen, with the blessing of her society, strips his mother of her identity.
Fleda Vetch also suffers from the social expectations of women in the Victorian Era, albeit in subtler way than Mrs. Gereth. The latter attempts to thwart the system, whereas the former compulsively seeks to abide by it, even as she pursues a result that is impossible within such a framework. She is hamstrung by admirable principles that she takes to drastic extremes, fanatically devoted to these ideas that she does not so much as consider the human consequences of her actions. She places her precious code above all else: “You mustn’t break faith. Anything’s better than that” (James 134). Fleda sublimates her own healthy desires for love in the name of her “reputation,” telling Owen: “If I didn’t break off it was just on purpose… so that there shouldn’t be a thing to be said against me” (James 132). Fleda’s concern for her reputation reflects the general preoccupation with appearances prevalent in the Victorian era. Underneath the veneer, however, lie universal, selfish motivations common in all humans. Mrs. Gereth calls attention to this reality: “My dear child… don’t try to make yourself better than you are… You’re not quite a saint in heaven yet… you’re pale with your passion… I can’t for the life of me see where the shame comes in” (James 141). The shame comes, quite simply, from being human. Fleda is the product of a society in which self-denial and denying one’s human needs is the highest virtue.
What Fleda fails to realize is that other people do not abide by her strict code, she attempts to impose it on them. Mrs. Gereth calls her out on this as well: “What are you, after all, my dear, I should like to know, that a gentleman who offers you what Owen offers should have to meet such wonderful exactions, to take such extraordinary precautions about your sweet little scruples” (James 150). Mrs. Gereth brings up the possibility that Fleda’s adherence to her code is in part a product of her ego. By demanding so much of her suitor, Fleda places herself on a pedestal.
Fleda sees her code as a testament to moral virtue. Charles ultimately proves unwilling to abide by expectations that Mrs. Gereth aptly describes as “a passion that bewilders a young blockhead with bugaboo barriers, with hideous and monstrous sacrifices (James 155).” At this point, Fleda’s faith in her code crosses over from willful naiveté to the realm of delusion. Unable to accept that Charles has abandoned her for reasons not in accordance with her idealized view of him as a man of honor, Fleda interprets his offer of a gift from Poynton as “a token of gratitude for having kept him on the straight path” (James 179). This is absurd; Owen never implied that he subscribed to Fleda’s code. On the contrary, he went out of his way to bypass it. His gift for her, which he insists she will know the purpose of, is a sign of his love for her. Alas, Fleda’s view of the world is so warped that she cannot see it.
In the end, Fleda’s code serves no one: Owen Gereth remains trapped in a loveless marriage, Mrs. Gereth sacrifices her collection for nothing, and she ends up alone. Her attempts to win over Owen in a manner consistent with her code is unintentionally cruel in that it tauntingly suggest the possibility of romance provided that he meets impossible conditions. Ultimately, Fleda’s neuroses uphold the sexist order of her society.
Despite Fleda and his mother’s best efforts, Owen achieves his initial objective of reacquiring the spoils and marrying Mona Brigstock. His victory, however, comes with great cost. In behaving in the way that his society expects him to, he loses Fleda and his mother and marries a woman he despises. He is also forced into a position at odds with his nature. Because he is Colonel Gereth’s male heir, Owen must contend with an inheritance that he does not even want. He admits that he would be happy to let his mother have the contents of Poynton, but as their custodian, he must contend with the clashing interests of three strong-willed women. In the process, he is forced to endure great stress and to act in a manner that offends his sensibilities.
Madame Bovary is much more obviously concerned with issues of gender, containing strong social messages. To his credit, Flaubert does not condescend to the reader; he is neither preachy nor polemical in making his points. He allows the characters and situations in his novel to speak for themselves. His distinctive style nudges the reader to certain conclusions without seeming to have an agenda, often relying on free indirect discourse to put the reader in the mind of the character. The advantage to using this method rather than stream of consciousness is that it gives him license as narrator to subtly criticize the norms of his day by poking fun at his characters’ frequently absurd notions. This is particularly effective in calling attention to the way that men perceive women.
When Charles first encounters Emma, he only focuses on her looks. Flaubert painstakingly describes the most obscure details of her physical appearance, implying that this is what Charles notices when he meets his wife-to-be. Tellingly, we learn nothing about Emma’s personality from the perspective of the male characters. Even her adoring father sees her more as a valuable possession to be sold than an individual with her own thoughts and personality: “Pere Rouault was going to have to sell off-twenty-two acres of his property, since he owed a lot to the mason, and to the harness-maker, since the cider press needed a new shaft” (Flaubert 23). Pere’s motives for essentially selling his daughter are almost comical in their absurdity. He seems to place the mundane expenses of running his farm ahead of his daughter’s well being.
This is by no means a malicious act; Pere’s distraught reaction to Emma’s suicide shows that he does love his daughter. Rather, he does not see why he should take the time to get to know his prospective son-in-law given his ostensible quality. Charles is from a good family, has a steady, relatively lucrative career, and is a decent human being. It does not occur to Pere and other fathers in the Victorian era that a successful marriage requires more than just these superficial qualifications. To be fair, choosing a spouse for your child is no enviable task. There is no way the “vetting” process can possibly account for true compatibility. This begs the question: why not allow men and women to decide on their own marriage? Alas, such a concept defies the societal norms of the time, and women like Emma are forced to endure loveless marriages arranged for the convenience of their parents.
Some women might be happy with a man like Charles, but Emma has higher (perhaps unreasonable) standards. She is far more ambitious and culturally aware than her spouse, but society does not allow her to advance beyond the status her husband’s position affords. As a member of the middle class, Emma is taunted by her brief encounters with French high society. She idealizes the luxuries and seeming sophistication of a world that is ever closed off to her and blames Charles for being an inadequate husband because he does not have the ambition or ability to ascend the social ladder: “she would have liked this name of Bovary, the name that was hers, to be famous, to see it displayed in the book-shops, quoted in the newspapers, known all over France. But Charles hadn’t an ounce of ambition” (Flaubert 57). Because Emma is a woman, she does not have the capacity to attain the status she craves. Her community expects her to be a good mother and wife. All of her efforts must go into being the best possible housewife, despite the fact that it gives her no satisfaction. Faced with utter powerlessness, Emma frequently takes her frustration out on her husband and her child.
Flaubert highlights the patent unfairness of women’s status in Victorian France by contrasting Emma’s plight Leon’s. In many ways, the two are similar. Both are smitten with the romantic notions found in their reading materials, and both crave the excitement and cultural sophistication of the big city. Both have ambitions to advance beyond their social rank. Indeed, their relationship is fundamentally based on these common grounds. The key difference between Leon and Emma is gender. The former, being a man, is able to pursue a career that lifts him out of the mundane countryside and provides him with the opportunity for advancement. The latter, on the other hand, is shackled to her husband and daughter. Put simply, Leon has the power to alter his circumstances whereas Emma is stuck where she is. It is very likely that Emma’s unrealistic romantic notions would not allow her to be content anywhere, regardless of societal, but her inability to even try finding happiness serves to fuel her depression and bitterness.
On the rare occasions that Emma tries to be a supportive wife, Charles rewards her with disappointment. When the pharmacist Monsieur Homais receives word of a “promising” new treatment for clubfoot, Emma eagerly encourages her husband to attempt the procedure. She hopes that his success will help her attain the status she craves, but when the procedure goes horribly wrong and necessitates amputation of the limb, Emma is once again reminded of her well-intentioned husband’s mediocrity. She realizes then that Charles will never be able to get her what she wants, and turns to extra-marital affairs.
One might think that having a child would give Emma’s life some direction and lessen her dissatisfaction, but in fact it only exacerbates her unhappiness. Although she is initially excited by the prospect of motherhood, Emma’s thoughts about the gender of her child foreshadow a negative outcome:
“This idea of having a male child was like an anticipated revenge for the powerlessness of her past. A man, at least, is free; he can explore each passion and every kingdom, conquer obstacles, feast upon the most exotic pleasures. But a woman is continually thwarted… Always there is desire urging, always the convention restraining” (Flaubert 82).
Like many parents, Emma wants to live through her child. A son would be able to do all the things that she has been unable to on account of her gender. He would be able to prosper according to his merits, rather than being relegated to a supporting role. She is afraid that a daughter will encounter the same dissatisfaction as she does. Although somewhat self-serving, Emma’s desire for a boy is understandable given the circumstances of her day. She realizes that being a woman in Victorian times is one long string of thwarted ambitions. To be sure, Emma’s inability to love her daughter in spite of her disappointment reflects badly on her character, but it also casts doubts on a society that actively encourages parents to prefer one child over another based on solely on gender.
The Spoils of Poynton and Madame Bovary both serve to indict the oppressive force of Victorian gender norms. They are patently unjust, and they bring out the worst of human nature by depriving women of their dignity. They rob Mrs. Gereth of her identity, drive Emma Bovary to suicide, and compel Fleda Vetch to forsake her happiness in their name. While some would say that it is wrong to apply contemporary standards to works of fiction from another era, it is not remiss to claim that authors like Henry James and Gustave Flaubert were instrumental in exposing the injustices of their day, laying the foundation for future generations to build a better society. These authors were not feminists according to today’s definition of the term, but their works documented the shifting social consciousness that would eventually lead to societies where all human beings, irrespective of gender, are entitled to equal rights. Bibliography
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. Print.
James, Henry, and Bernard Richards. The Spoils of Poynton. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 2008. Print.
Kushner, Howard. "Suicide, Gender, and the Fear of Modernity in Nineteenth Century Medical and Social Thought." Journal of Social History 26.3 (1993): n. pag. JSTOR. Web. 10 Jun 2011.
Report of the Married Women's Property Committee. Married Women's Property Committee. Willis's Rooms, London. 18 Nov 1882. Address.
Wilson, Edmund, and Lewis Dabney. The Portable Edmund Wilson. New York: Penguin, 1983. 128-129. Print.