Unknown Speaker 00:52 We first started one last hurrah so you can only see what was in the restroom should we start I think we'll begin by asking everyone to identify themselves perhaps say who you are and what your academic affiliation is if that's how you define yourself or anything else that's pertinent so that that would have helped and encouraged the discussion should begin to be like a librarian who has left to work to write the book Unknown Speaker 01:59 that's it okay English Renaissance I'm Susan Stein and graduate student friend Instagram always interested in my recommendations to result in someone's interested in Unknown Speaker 02:34 teach financial insecurities I'm Judy Johnson and I teach English Unknown Speaker 02:43 and pay Peggy while my graduate student in French this year Unknown Speaker 02:49 I did Spanish literature because Unknown Speaker 02:54 I'm worried and my teacher was a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts my interest here is that I'm writing a dissertation on cyclist flow bear Unknown Speaker 03:13 I mentioned commerce and also crashes too much Unknown Speaker 03:18 on Tom Cora and I Unknown Speaker 03:30 I can play the tape back invasion of this chair snatches. Unknown Speaker 04:02 Lets me I work in publishing and I was an undergraduate student in General Studies years ago and have been a graduate student ever since. Emma Unknown Speaker 04:18 da under the French department of the student of contemporary writing they are interested in everything that affects contemporary writing. We have here the students and Unknown Speaker 04:31 I was asked before because Nova Unknown Speaker 04:42 Carroll co founder, psychologist, college. Nobody ever heard that his monologue appears Unknown Speaker 04:49 to be In the first half of the day interested me, I'm the spice and I'm a feminist therapist and very interested in the defense's that people use to avoid facing each other, Unknown Speaker 05:35 the anxiety Unknown Speaker 05:48 before we begin or when, in fact, we have already begun, I think I'd like to say that I don't see this as a class. I don't I rather put off by the fact that I'm behind the desk. And I very much hope that this will be a discussion. And I will simply be here to sort of start the ball rolling by telling you some of my ideas about the anxiety of difference and Madame Bovary but I would like to be interrupted, as much as possible. So I'm inviting interruption. I think that is the main idea. It's not to speak, ex cathedra. I have something of a problem, which I think is quite evident from the way people introduce themselves. That is that many of the people here were in my classes, and are very familiar with what I have to say about Madame Bovary. I have not had too many new thoughts since last you heard from me, and other people have absolutely no idea about what I have to say about Madame Bovary. So I'm going to have to sort of steer a course, between the two. But in fact, I don't really want to talk that much about my own ideas about Madame Bovary so much as to explore in fact, mostly south, I think that you can be very helpful to me in that case, because I do think that what he has to say about Madame Bovary is particularly pertinent to the theme of the conference. Just a couple of preliminary remarks. The question I would like to raise today is what I would call the problem of impersonation, female impersonation. In the sort of French style, I like to use hyphens as a form of privilege form of punctuation. And so I would spell it in personation. To sort of stress what I'm talking about. And think that this is a question that is raised by any novel written about a woman by a man that is the problem of female impersonation. What is exactly the process by which a male writer incarnates or reincarnates himself as a female as a female character. And I think that the problem is very acutely posed by Madame Bovary. I mean, everyone knows the line Madame Bovary, c'est moi. And although many writers might have said that, although flow bale might not in fact, have said pronounced these exact words, it doesn't really matter. I think that the fact that even this exists is an apocryphal statement is already an indication of something that is very unique to Madame Bovary, which is the relationship between the male author and his female protagonist. And Mary McCarthy in her introduction to the Signet edition, pretty much corroborate my feeling that there's something very unique about the relationship between Flo bear and Madame Bovary. He says that all novelists draw on their experiences. But Flo bear went beyond the usual Call of Duty. Madame Bovary was not Flo bear certainly, yet he became Madame Madame Bovary and all the accessories to her story her lovers her husband, her little Greyhound, the corset lace and so on so forth. That is He is somehow there's a sort of penne impersonation, he is not just his not just become Madame Bovary, but he has also become everything matter, inanimate animate, there's really not that much distinction. So I think that this is the problem I would say that this is the main focus and that is why southwest book will be particularly useful to us since it is a kind of fictionalized biography of flu Bell. Now, one thing that Mary McCarthy misses How many of you have have most of you read this in French or in English? Well, how many people have read this in French? Yes. I hesitate to ask how many people have read south because I think Think that articles have been written to the effect that possibly 100 people have read soft, but it's not one of your it's, it's a sort of coffee table academic book. It's huge and it's quite unwieldy. For those of you who have read the English version, I must admit that I don't usually read Madame Bovary in translation wasn't even familiar with this addition. So I've just read Mary McCarthy's introduction. And I think, well, I find it extremely perceptive. Unknown Speaker 10:28 I find that rather amazing that she misses something, which I wouldn't say I think is self evident. It's something that I exposed myself and somehow I expected my McCarthy to have seen it before me, and she doesn't. And I'd like to just read this as a way of just sort of starting right into the heart of the problem. She says it must be remembered that If Emma is a reader, masu only is not only a reader, but a writer, the local correspondent of the wall beacon, that is they represent the passive and active sides of the same vice. So Emma is the leader, Minister on May is the writer. What is what Mary McCarthy is doing there is doing exactly what male critics have done for a long time and I'm surprised to see a female and I think feminist critic fall into the same trap, which is to interpret the statement Madame Bovary, c'est moi, with a very important restriction, which is that Madame Bovary Rafi, c'est moi. So, if you bear except for one little difference, which is that flowback is a novelist, a great novelist, and a MA is seen as having all the flow bale sort of hypochondriac and neurotic nature, character attributes, but not his Sterling outstanding quality, which is to be a great writer. And this is something that this is this is endemic to Madame Bovary criticism that as Madame Bovary is granted, all that is worst in flow bear, when people read that sentence, what they hear are negative traits of flow bear, and never the one positive thing which is not so different. I mean, that problem is not so different from I think the problem raised by feminist critics now about a lot of women's writings where they say that women writers, when they create female protagonists, give them everything they give them 10 lovers, they give them a fortune, they give them beautiful blonde hair, I mean, everything you've always wanted to have, except for one thing, the talent to write, which is seems to be somehow the writers privilege. So this can also happen in the way we interpret a text. And I think that this is what has always happened with Madame Bovary. And this is something that I tried to miss. I tried to dispel in an article, actually the only article I've written about Madame Bovary, which appeared in Lithia. Ito in, I believe, 1976. And I don't really want to rehash what I put in the article, though, I realized that not many people here are familiar with it. But I mean, you can ask me questions and stuff. And it'll come out, I think, anyhow, the discussion. But I do want to put up on the board. This sort of gist of my discovery, that is I began to think about Emma as a writer, I began to think that maybe this whole identity, this identification between poohbear and Emma should be taken up doula led, absolutely, literally. And to see that Emma is also a writer, which is not immediately apparent, I had to do some pretty fancy footwork, working pretty closely with the text to prove my point. Unknown Speaker 13:52 I prove this in a number of ways. There is a scene early on in her marriage, where she is very bored. She often is she is wondering whether this is what it's all about. And as part of redecorating her house, we're told that she buys herself a blotter paper pen, but she had no one to write, to whom to write. And then on the facing page, so that's sort of one little thing which suggests that maybe Emma would like to write, but there's something that is standing in her way. On the facing page, we're told that she wishes that her husband were a great doctor, because she would like to see her name. On the cover of books in windows everywhere all over France. She would like to see her her name her married name, that is a movie, she would like to see it displayed in the windows. And this is a rather strange fantasy because even though it's true that in France doctors write theses, they don't usually write publish bestsellers. I mean, I wouldn't say that these species are usually Best Sellers, they're usually not in the window of all the stores so that we have sort of disassociated what I see sort of two parts of a fantasy of being becoming a writer, that is the desire to write but not having an audience basically not having whom to write to. And on one page, and on the other page, you have the ambitiousness, the ambition, that she cannot somehow admit to herself that she cannot assume as a woman. I mean, as a woman, there's really no place for her to say, I want to be a writer. Yes, she can say I want to be like a character in a novel. She's very good at that. But she's not so good at saying I want to be a writer. And that is something so that's there it is. It's right there at the very outset of her of her life. That the part that we see now what happens to her, as soon as she meets her daughter, the first thing she does is begin to write to him, she has finally found the pen pal that she was looking for. Because interestingly enough, and I think this is also worth noting, the only kind of writing that she in fact indulges in throughout the whole book is letter writing, which is of course, a snub will say specifically feminine or female form. But it does correlate pretty well. I mean, it is a form of which women Excel. Since she Unknown Speaker 16:32 read all of those previous Unknown Speaker 16:34 books dealing with this virus, that's a novel. Yes, I think so. I think that is some static. Unknown Speaker 16:44 I was talking about the slavery novel tradition in the late 18th century America really began early 19th century. And back, America really is very well written. The books are rolling out. So I was wondering if they might have some? Unknown Speaker 17:07 Yes, I think so. I mean, I don't think that was titled that he cites the books that she's read. He doesn't mention any epistolary novels, it's quite clear from the kind of reading she does, that she would have read because? No, I think so. Definitely. I think that's right. I mean, I think that's the model she's imprinted on. Maybe that's the only model but she could somehow in any way relate to a new model of the epistolary novel, because it's about a lot of generally. And, and, and it involves communication with another person. That is you're not all alone in the room yet. You aren't alone in your room, but you're communicating with someone else, someone very specific, someone you know. And furthermore, what's very important, someone who can respond to you, because in a sense, in what I posit is that in the first stage, or for what I see is an apprenticeship to writing. In the first stage, what she's really interested in is writing to someone so she'll get a letter back. And she's always complaining to her lovers that the letters aren't long enough. She wants a longer letter, she wants to be the object of the communication, but she has to get it started. I mean, she she's the one who started exchanging letters and metaphors. metaphor Unknown Speaker 18:25 I mean, just the exchange. Unknown Speaker 18:28 Okay, well, yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe it is. And I think all right, I could see remark prompted for longer. Unknown Speaker 18:49 No, no, I think there is something to that. And I think that her trajectory will be away from the communication implied and epistolary relationship to another form of writing, which will, in fact be which to keep up with the sexual metaphor would be going from the act of making love to fantasy. I mean, what what really happens, I mean, they sort of parallel trajectories is that she goes from writing letters, getting letters back and complaining that they're not long enough to a point and that's the one thing I'd like to read to you. Later on. When she this is sort of towards the end of her affair with Leona, when she's really getting beyond all of that. Where she is really she's discovered in adultery the platitudes in the board and marriage so the sexual excitement is gone. And she begins to retreat not retreating to fantasy, but really to to embrace fantasy to understand that that's really what it's all about, which was sort of Adam braided in the first part of her relationship with Leo, but not Neither one of them can really quite understand that both of them basically prefer to fantasize about each other. And the and the presence of the of the lover intrudes upon the fantasy. But at the very end of Madame Bovary, she accepts the fantasy and that is I think, the moment this is the one paragraph that this while we just this one, where I think that we glimpsed the possibility of Emma of something like a female writing something like and and very much like the writing process as experienced by flow bear, which is masturbatory, let's say that is, you get off on creating these imaginary figures. It's not about real people anymore. But even this is the quotation. But even as she wrote, she perceived another man, a phantom, fabricated from her most ardent memories, her most beautiful literary memories, her strongest desires. And he finally became so real and accessible that she trembled with amazement, yet without being able to visualize and clearly since he was so hidden like a god, under his many attributes, he inhabited that enchanted country were soaking ladders swing from balconies among flowers, by the light of the moon. That's the trouble with Emma's writing is that she's still mired in all these romantic cliches, and I'm not sure that she ever does get beyond them. She felt him near her, he would come and sweep her away in one case, then she fell back to Earth broken for her surges of imaginary love tired her more than wild debaucherous. So I think the important notion here is the imaginary love that the imaginary you have to accept the prevalence or the the, the importance of the imaginary versus some sort of real interaction, as the precondition to becoming a writer, you have to accept substitutes instead of going for reality, because as long as she's involved in the nitty gritty of her relationship with adults, and being sure that he's at the appointment, when she expects him to be, you know, sort of worrying whether the phone is going to ring, she's not going to be able to become a writer. Now, the question is, I'm summarizing much of what's in my article, Does she ever really become a writer? In other words, alright, maybe people have overlooked the fact that Phil bale did project into Emma, something more than his own negative female characteristics. The question remains open, Does she ever attain anything that is vaguely similar to flow bales? prose, I mean, she capable of it all she seems to be able to do is have moon and stars and, and silken balconies and all that. And that's really not terribly exciting as a model of as a specific female writing. Unknown Speaker 22:57 Now, here, I'm very tenuous grounding. I mean, for people who know the text, I hear from people who know the text, I'd really be very interested in having, you know, some discussion on this, it seems to me that one possible clue we have, to what she might have written, what the kind of writing she was capable of, is not is not something that she writes. But it is an imitation of something she writes, which is her final letter. That is before she dies. And this is very typical of what happens in epistolary novels, this has been studied by Nancy Miller in particular, the way women really only have access to a certain kind of language, at the moment, when they're going to die is really in the weeds. The deathbed letter is a very important letter. And in a way M, does nothing but duplicate this sort of pattern, but we never see the letter, there's an ellipsis. On that letter, we only see three words, and that's it connect us we have son, and then there's a there's an ellipsis. And we never see the rest of it. And I think that in some sense, it was an unreadable letter. I mean, he couldn't write the letter because the letter would have had to be something quite qualitatively different. However, Chavo, who, as we know, is quite inept and his use of language suddenly after Emma's death, and he's read the letter, of course, writes this incredible letter. It's sort of what he says how he wants me to be buried. And he gives us a short paragraph. It's very brief. It's It's totally different from from it's totally unexpected from Shao. And not only is it totally unexpected, but it resembles in a certain sense, the best and the most characteristic elements and Fruitvale style as described by her long back are not about says in I think it's pretty obvious text. He talks about flow bales writing is being characterized by translating a generalized a cinder time a sender time being that rhetorical We'll figure where there is an ellipsis. of conjunctions conjunctions are left out the contrary is Polly send a tone where you have and and and here it's you have let's say a semicolon instead of having a conjunction. So you get this kind of parent tactic style which is characteristic of rebel and lo and behold, Charles's letter is written in that style it suddenly someone is writing like, Oh, it's so bad. There's a lot of pastiche in Madame Bovary, you know, he pastiches, the way the town councilor speaks or all these sort of minor bureaucratic figures, he passed the Amaze writing is pastiche. And suddenly there is flow bear foundry men for their Allama yell the full bear, and it's shower who was holding the pen, but I sort of wonder, I mean, this is what I say an open question, whether it isn't in some sense Emma, who is who is dictating because as after Emma's death shall begins more and more to to act like Emma to dress like her to try to please her to. He does all kinds of things, which of course raises the whole problem of why, why Emma is inserted in Charles's novel, and whether they're not really somehow maybe part of the same character is a whole other question. Now. Therefore, I'm positing that Emma, Madame Bovary, c'est moi also means Madame Bovary is a writer. And this leads me to my little discovery that I made, which has to do with opposing amaze writing, to Emma's writing. In other words, I agree totally with Mary McCarthy, that omae is a figure of the writer and I think not to see him only as a sort of grotesque figure of the boudoir is terribly reductive. I mean, he's, he's really much more sinister than than that. I mean, that's sort of reassuring at this point. But what's really sinister about me is that he is he represents a certain kind of, of rider and the kind of rider who gets recognized the kind of rider who wins prizes since at the end, it's sort of like the penguin cool is Lucien is being rewarded for his writing, he's not being rewarded, just because he is an upstanding bourgeois citizen. So I'm, this led me to see that Mr. And a me are really in some sort of oppositional structure that they are not just alter egos, that they're similar. They're similar as writers. And to see that a May obviously, the name doesn't take much to see that in me, there's, um, but what I think fewer people have seen is that in Emma, Unknown Speaker 27:42 Emma is what is left of family, you see, and what is fascinating is that the way that this my theory is entirely my own hypothesis, is that the way he created this opposite this paradigm, now that we're getting to difference, slowly, but surely, this seems to be the structuring difference of Madame Bovary. It is about male versus female, that male writing versus female writing. And the curious thing is, how did he How did he get to this and it seems that what he did is he added something to home. Since men have something extra in some sense, and you remove something from the word fun, sort of like it's like an analogy gone. South was favorite expression, sort of an objective correlative for castration. Some sense we castrated the word. Fun. Mind you, Emma is a name that has been interpreted different ways by different critics. I mean, I was just reading someone the other day who sees it as the past tense of the word to love a month and I mean, I believe in you know, Polly sent me I'm sure that there are many I don't know if you see other things just going to say Has anyone ever Unknown Speaker 29:05 come into the Oba? That's great. Unknown Speaker 29:18 You're saying My reasoning for a in Mr. Makes it fun. More fun. Yeah, Unknown Speaker 29:24 that's right. Of course. It's the female suffix. Unknown Speaker 29:28 That's very nice. Unknown Speaker 29:32 Because I have often wondered, I mean, it is a very peculiar name. What do you see other things? The other the other day is one of my students. I was just teaching Madame Bovary and one of the students said, Well, what about Beth? And I said, I don't know. And then I went home and I thought about it some more. And I thought, well, of course, Beth is Like the feminine, have bad and flu bear best. buy that. But it seems that he's sort of all over the place in the book. It's very interesting. Okay, so now we have arrived at difference. In other words, by working on the problem with writing, I got to this. And I sort of liked to stay with the problem of sexual difference in Madame Bovary. And I'd like to sort of complicate this is this is where I was about three years ago. And I think now that it's really infinitely more complicated than this. I'd like to rehearse go back over some of the important things that have been written already about sexual difference in Madame Bovary. And I think that there's no better place to begin then with both layers, very famous text on Madame Bovary of which I have some Xerox copies for you, so that we can look at this together because this is really the basic place this is almost contemporary. Unknown Speaker 31:47 Since this is rather long, I think I'll just sort of, you know, point out the strategic points. Also, just for the sake of not carrying too much stuff on the train. I didn't Xerox the first page, but all it says before on page 143, is, is bootlegger, saying that flow bear has accomplished a tool to false by taking the most banal subjects and adulterous woman in a provincial town with insignificant secondary characters. And he has made this great work, and he says to accomplish the tool to false in its entirety. And that brings us to page 144, the author had only to divest himself as much as possible of his sex and to become a woman. Okay, this is the notion of impersonation. The result is a marvel, in spite of all his zeal as an actor he could not keep from infusing a virile blood into the veins of His creation, and Madame Bovary in what is most forceful, most ambitious and also most contemplative in her nature has remained a man just as Pallas Athena sprang full arm from the head of Zeus, so this strange, androgynous and French it's bizarre on Blue Gene. It's a noun. So this strange, androgynous creature has kept all the attraction of a virile soul in a charming feminine body. Other words, to the question, if you as board layout. How did flowback go about writing Madame Bovary, he simply projected himself but the man remains in the text. In other words, you get male author plus female character equals androgyny. That's one definition we could use of androgyny in Madame Bovary. Now I won't. I don't know whether we have time to go over some of the other he expands on this and it turns out that all of the good things about Madame Bovary are masculine. I mean, this is a sort of like take, pulling covered himself, she is almost male, and he repeats that over and over again, she's altogether masculine way, the altogether virile quality, everything that she has. What's good is masculine imagination, energy, taste for seduction, you name it, even hysteria. That's the best part. I think if you switch if you go to page 146, he even takes the stereo away, and makes her into a figure of the hysterical poet. The last paragraph on page of section four hysteria. Why couldn't this physiological mystery be made the sum and substance of a literary work? This mystery which the Academy of Medicine has not yet solved, and which manifesting itself in women by the sensation of a lump in the throat that seems to rise this is supposed to be the classical symptom, I am mentioning only the chief symptom shows itself in excitable men by every kind of impotence as well as by a tendency toward every kind of excess. So those are the qualities some of the problems He's a Blair. And they are the qualities of the hysterical poet. Unknown Speaker 35:06 Put this together. But speaking of words, you know what hysteria means? Yes. Unknown Speaker 35:11 I mean, uterus, speaking of ovary hysteria, a word that developed because men saw women during their periods being distraught or something. And they they defined that as hysterical. And that's a man's word that has come to be defined. Unknown Speaker 35:35 It originally meant that to uterus hadn't become determined was No. No some from its position. That was originally thought Unknown Speaker 35:52 that it came to me as a female in this group, psychological, biological, Unknown Speaker 36:00 although there is male hysteria, I mean, there's no I mean, in Freud's time, I mean, there was such a clinical category of male hysteria. But we do tend to think of it as female pathology. And in some senses, as we said, No, but I think even this morning, it was sort of our this morning, or this afternoon beginning to run together in my mind that I mean, hysteria has been taken up as a kind of, sort of like, the equivalent of Black is Beautiful hysteria is beautiful. I mean, it's been claimed now, it's the sort of specificity of female discourse and female, a female pathology that's being positively valorized, that this so called equity of the means, might have something to do with hysteria. So I find it very interesting to find both layers sort of taking away the hysteria which, and saying this is She's a figure of the hysterical poet, therefore sort of appropriating hysteria. Now, I'm, what I would like to sort of bring to your attention. And that's really the last thing that I have to say after that, it's it's really quite open is that what's wrong with both levels? Article, it seems to me which is brilliant. I mean, there's no question that there are very few as we critics know, there are very few works of criticism that can withstand 100 years of up other critics sort of coming along. I mean, he really did put his finger on a crucial problem in Madame Bovary. But one of his assumptions is that feel bad as a man, I mean, what I mean that feel bad as a man and that that's a statement we can make, and but it's really very simple. And we all know what a what a man is. And maybe there's some hysterical men, but fundamentally, the word man is sort of placed there when he says Madame Bovary, in what is most forceful, most ambitious and also most contemplative in her nature has remained a man who has a man who about impersonates himself in Madame Bovary. So Madame Madame Bovary is immense, no problem of sexual differences there. I mean, she's just, she's just a man. And she's a man in drag. That that that's all I mean, she just has a couple of female secondary features, but they're really not important. Now, Trump calls out in his monumental three volume, work on flow, bear appalled Lee Jude Law family, because robear only learned to speak quite late. And we can see that the people who learn latest often are the ones who speak best. Complicated complicates our ideas about flow bales sexuality considerably, I mean, that the notion that we can just say flow bear is a man and therefore who has created masculine character becomes a tremendous oversimplification. I want to stress I'd like to hear very much from the person who's working on this work of Southwest, it seems to me that South has created a kind of fiction, I mean, in other words, we have a kind of triple relationship, we have the relationship between South Well, how should we go south to Flo Bale, Madame Bovary and their fiction, there is fiction at every level. I mean, he is he is reconstituted, he has imagined through best childhood flu bears relationship to his mother in particular, we're back to the to the pre edible there. And he has arrived at some sort of sense of what flu Bell's sexual problems were but which in French is not described as a problem but rather a problematic. He does speak of something called a sexual problematic of bluebells. And I've been trying to sort of figure it out. It's not quite it's not all that simple. But I think it goes something like this. He takes off from the notion it's a chapter in the first volume, call Meanwhile, a live feed t shirt, a t shirt for me. Wow. It's the relationship of flow back to the mirror. What does he want to see in the mirror? Unknown Speaker 40:17 He would like to see himself as a woman. I mean, that is Sophos main point in Server fam imaginaire. He wants to be an imaginary or the image see the image of a woman reflected when he looks at himself in the mirror. His says his primary intention is to see himself as a woman in this mirror. I mean, he says it many, several different ways. Now, this immediately raises the question, well, maybe feel bad is a homosexual. I mean, maybe that's what it's all about. He wants to see himself as a woman. And Souter goes to quite great lengths to exclude that hypothesis. In a very ingenious way, he says, this is all about the biography now but what I'm really I should do the parenthesis and in my discourse, I'm really I'm Ken, I want to connect flow bales biography to the creation of mammogram doing exactly what structuralism formulas have been taught not to do I want to drag info bear with the specificities of his life whenever we know about his life, into the creation of Madame Bovary. So southwest says that phobia is not exactly a homosexual because it doesn't what is important about phobail sexuality is that it is passive. And that for flowback Safa makes it very clear that it's not for himself. I don't know, soft experts can help me out on this. For flu bear passivity, passive resource is feminine, soft attractor, I think he tries to take his distances, he's too careful. And not he doesn't want to fall into the trap of saying that he thinks that passive equals feminine, but he's saying that in propels mind, they are synonymous or they are equivalent. And he's saying that what is so this is the most significant thing that flow bear wants to see himself as a woman, he wants to enjoy sex as a woman, because he wants to be, as the people say, Done to rather than doing I mean, someone was saying to me, basically, the world comes down, it's not a question of male or female, it's a question of do you want to be done to or do you want to do and he wants to be done to he this sample quotes from some letters that Roberto wrote when he was in Egypt, which is a place in the Orient, where many writers went to sort of live out their sexual fantasies in the 19th century. And he describes a scene where he is done to buy a mess surf in Hawaii, among them, and that is the whole point is the passivity his passive part in that scenario. And sounds hypothesis is that what he wants to do is that he wants to return to the time when he was a child, and he was tended to by his mother he wants that is the ultimate thrill for full bail would be to be diapered, essentially to be washed, to be powder to be all those things. That whole ritual of being he didn't get enough of it is I want his mother was too repressed. And the way she dealt with him, she was too tough. She didn't want to relate to his sex, perhaps. And she and so he has remained forever. That's what he seeks. That's his. That's what he seeks. He seeks in all kinds of ways. So the key thing is he's passive. And it doesn't matter what the sex of his partner is. That's why he thinks he's not a homosexual, because it could be a woman two. In other words, Flo Belle, did not have many homosexual experiences except the one. I think he didn't have any facts except for the one in the Orient. Although he did have very strong relationships, friendships with men, and he did have some rather passionate affairs with women, but the women were generally older, and they were rather virile. They were images, perhaps of what is called the psychoanalytic jargon, the phallic mother, that is his sex object. He wants to play the passive role. So he says, we don't have to talk about homosexuality when we're talking about full bail, because he wants to be dominated. He wants to play the passive part. But there's something there's another form of sexual aberration and so bear, and this will bring us to the question of difference is and it's his This is sad was definition of the perverse, which is you don't have to talk we don't have to have recourse to homosexuality to characterize Gustaf sexual behavior, he said I will prefer to call them perverse. And this a very, very narrow definition very sought South Korean definition of what is perverse. Unknown Speaker 45:14 By this word, I intend to designate any erotic attitude, which implies or he calls in email is assumed. And the realization I guess we could call it in English in the second power. Now, what does this mean? It means that there are two people making love. And each one of them is playing out an imaginary scenario, it's not enough for one person to be doing it there has to be d realization on both sides. That is the ultimate orgasm in the sense of flow bear. If both partners are enacting this kind of D realization and what is not where does he see this at work and Madame Bovary. One thing I have to explain about Saltos book on BLUEBELL, there are three volumes. And in those three volumes, he never gets to Madame Bovary. He never gets to the time in this is a biography, right? He never gets to the moment when Roberto Madame Bovary and he never will not not because he stopped writing it. I don't know, are there two people hope that there are some manuscripts somewhere? Yes, Unknown Speaker 46:24 I read. It is intended as a core value, right? Don't think that everybody holds up too much right now, not only because of conditions, I've asked for great appearance that it just wouldn't be right for you to complete this work. And on the other hand, he has said that what he set out to do in writing this video enough for me is just is to demonstrate that one can say everything about a person's idea, which is repugnant to a certain tradition within that same week humanities, that there's always something transcendent about a person's going to capture the total flow. So maybe wouldn't do well to do that for the notes. I don't personally expect to see it from anything that I've read recently that Unknown Speaker 47:14 no one ever knows what saffron think, because he really has so much stuff lying around. I imagine that he has these drawers that are just spilling over with unpublished manuscripts. I mean, have you Unknown Speaker 47:26 know, a tradition of incomplete they should have any Bethenny was incomplete. The philosophical work was integral part of Unknown Speaker 47:42 any great frustration for those of us who work on Madame Bovary. However, in the course of three volumes, or at least the first two volumes, there are fragments of an analysis of Madame Bovary remarkable fragments, which give us an idea of of a critical work, which would have eclipsed nine tenths of what has been produced today, at least my tastes, I mean, that may be slightly hyperbolic, but I've soft is a great literary critic. And he really does see some amazing things and he works very closely with the text. Now, the set of the scenes that he focuses on and this is where I'd like to sort of focus maybe our discussion is Emma's love affair with Leon. These are the scenes these are perverse sexual scenes in southwest definition. So I'd like to just outline two things that Southwest says, to make a distinction between what he considers androgyny in Madame Bovary and what he calls her math for defeatism. Okay, androgyny would be simply he says Emma is an androgen Okay, now we're still have the same word as both Leia but the context is going to make the word change. Emma is an androgen because when she's making love with her daughter, she is feminine essentially, that is she is passive. She has this Jewish sauce, this female who is sauce, and so that's, I think that's untranslatable. On the other hand, when she's involved with Leon, she plays the active pursuing masculine role. So here we are, this is what this is. One way we could talk about sexual difference in Madame Bovary would be to see Emma as an androgen right to see her as having in herself male and female, sexual behavior, that she can be both active and passive. And she as we know she is active not only with Leon, but also with her own husband. They're practically the same sentences to apply to both the day after her wedding night. It is said the child was the one who seemed to have been the Virgin of the night before. He seems completely transformed and And she is above it all. And similarly with Leone It is said that he had become her mistress spa ordinary remark. But that's not perverse I mean in South was sent to say that she's an androgen there's nothing perverse about it what is what is perverse and here's the word anxiety, we get to slowly we're getting to the title of this seminar. What is anxiety producing in Madame Bovary are the perverse games that Leo and Emma play. And they play them very consciously. I mean, the scenes, I think that's one of the reasons perhaps why there had to be two episodes of Leo and Emma. In the first one, they haven't quite gotten their act together. And Emma has to get this notion article head, that she wants to have a lover like her daughter, who's really in some sense of sort of, I mean, that's conventional. That's a conventional love affair. And there's something rather more unconventional about her relationship with Leo, but she wasn't ready for it the first time around, it's almost like a parody of an Austin structure where you have like persuasion where you have episode ones, and they don't quite make it and then there has to be certain amount of time in between, and then you have a second chance and the second time, they do a whole lot better. Although it doesn't end as happily as Jane Austen's novels do. But then nothing does. And here, I'd like to read this rather long quotation from it's not very long, but I'm going to translate it as I go along. This is this is the perverse side of the relationship between male and AMA, according to sop. He says, what Leo is seeking for an MLM is the satisfaction of what had become his vice. And this is this is his vice. And I have to explain that, at this point, we have to think layoffs and why that is Leon is here playing the part of Bluebell. The desire to imagine himself as a woman, so have they found submitting to the caresses of a woman, in other words, Leo's trip, we could say is to be a lesbian. And you know, that forbear said that he was a lesbian? Unknown Speaker 52:16 I believe, like pack three do Lesbos. So what does that mean? It's very, very strange to to try to think that, but that's what it would mean, it would mean that when he makes love with Mr. He is making love as a woman, he is imagining, that's the key thing he's imagining himself a woman am on the other hand, and here's an interesting word SAP, Emma is odd. He's also he says, is also worried. In other words, NATO is worried about this, he feels guilty about what he's doing, I suppose, and sort of threatened and his notions of his own gender identification, in keeping with what was said this morning about men being very anxious, more anxious, perhaps, about this and women, but so soft, Emma is also worried, because through the person through the role that she is playing when she can't help but play. And one might say, one could almost say that she feels the danger of becoming of changing sex for good. All right, in other words, what I mean, I've reduced this to label as lesbian, and Emma is transsexual. I mean, when these two people are making love, it is not a man making love with a woman, nor is it a a slightly effeminate man making love with a slightly masculine women, it is much, much more complicated than that. And this is this is what South was notion of the hermaphrodite. In other words, he says they are a couple of hermaphrodites. And this is sort of, I think, marvelous. His notion of what a hermaphrodite is each the interim Aphrodite has a real sex, a set of a biological sex, we could say, and an imaginary sex, or sex imaginaire. That's when Leo and Emma make love. There was a meeting of two real sexual partners and two imaginary sexual partners, they're not necessarily the same, and they can enter into all kinds of combinations. I wouldn't want to limit it too much. I mean, I've sort of tried to schematize it. And I think that that's, that's too reductive, to say that the, the male in Leo is making love to the female in a male or the male in the MA or what have you. I think it's all of them at the same time. So we have in other words, instead of having two people, we now have four people, you know, they sometimes say to people go to bed, there really aren't just two people there. Well, you can really say that that's true about Madame Bovary. There are there are several roles that are sexual roles that are being played So, to summarize, I think that if we follow soft was reading of the Lille episode, and I think it's pretty persuasive. Unknown Speaker 55:11 As the book moves towards a close, what seems to be in danger of happening is a sort of collapse of sexual difference. And I think that that's one of the threats posed by Emma. I mean, always the question returns, why does he kill her off? Right? I mean, we always have to ask that question. We know that the mortality rate of female protagonist is unusually high in male authored literature, and in each case, we have to answer the question why, I mean, why does she have to commit to that? Why do we have to get rid of her What is what how she's threatening the status quo? And I think that one of the things that one of the anxieties that she produces in us and probably in some in Leo, Leo is, he's very freaked out by Emma, I mean, he begins to really get quite frightened of her towards the end. He's afraid of her because she is threatening notions of boundaries, you know, between genders. And if you pay attention to Emma and Leo's conversations, you see that they have this these conversations about, oh, well, men do this. And women do that. And they have this you get the sort of sense of the cliches about what a masculine role is, and what a female role is. She says it to him at one point, she said, I would like to be a missionary saint or something's one of her fantasies. And he says, You see, men can't do that. We don't have that kind of vocation, altruistic vocations. Well, maybe I could be a doctor. So there's a notion of what a female role is, and that's their discuss the dialogue level of their interaction, when they dialogue, they talk about me, what is male, what is female, the cultural coding that they received, but when they make love something altogether different begins to happen. So I see, I see that the whole novel moves in a sense, towards the masked ball at the end of last the end of her relationship with Leon, when she gets dressed up essentially, as a man. That is the ultimate degradation and Madame Bovary, the Ulchi. She goes to mass ball with him. It's introduced, the mass ball is introduced about 20 pages earlier when she goes to the hairdresser to have her hair done before she goes back to her husband. And he's always trying to sell her tickets to a mask ball, and she doesn't take them. But at the end, she does and she goes, and they go to they go slumming, essentially, they go to a bar Unknown Speaker 57:38 on the shore, and they're long they're all the men are dressed up as longshoreman and the women are of the lowest social class. I mean, we it's really a scene out of out of 19th century novel, it's something we've seen elsewhere. But that is the ultimate form of of degradation after that. It's it's I mean, there's there's only death, I mean, something has happened and I could show you but I don't want to, I don't want to take up the time. That all along from the first time we see Emma she is always masquerading she always is dressing as a man slowly but surely, she's getting her costume assembled. First, she's just wearing a pair of eyeglasses, that's not so bad that she wears her hair in a masculine way. Then she begins to dress in the writing habit. Then she starts walking around in the street both first? Well, I think essentially what's what does smoking a cigarette and dressed in tight fitting costume masculine style costume. It's, it's it's constantly building toward and then finally she goes to the mass ball. And I think after that, there's just no place to go. So I think that there is I mean, this is to justify my title, there is an anxiety of difference. I mean, I think that one of the striking things about leading 19th century French fiction at any rate is that there is it is a pervasive anxiety. I think that Lobero sort of squarely in the middle of a century, that was very, very preoccupied with how to define male and female. Freud comes out of that tradition. I mean, I see Freud not so much as the theoretician of what well, he theorizes what he found in part in the fiction and I think that some of the the novelists are, are fictionalizing the theory that there's some sort of there's it's very hard to distinguish fiction and theory in the 19th century. It's something I mean, I can read Freud as just another myth maker. In a sense, someone just said earlier that myth that the question is to say male female is in some sense to use mythical categories of Okay. I think that the myth is one that very much preoccupied 19th century novelists and I think one I'd like to close with something which is just came to me while I was Think of the last panels, which is the question of the this is sort of slightly aside from all of this, the beggars song, do all of you remember that when Emma is dying, she hears the beggar the blind, very important, the blind beggars song, and she says the beggar and she got it. And for the first time, today, I began to think about the fact that it was a song. Thinking about specificity, female discourse, female style, and that she has a relationship to melody. It begins in her in her well, I don't know where it begins actually begins when she's in I think the first town that she lives in there is an organ grinder and there is music of the organ grinder, there's always a sort of motif of music So, yes, so I don't know we might even like think about that. I mean, about what it is the bet I've always seen the beggar as after Emma dies, there seem to be two people who take over Emma's identity in the novel One of them is shallow and the other one is the beggar and I mean, the beggar being being blind is I think, not an insignificant trait. That is taking blindness as a form of castration and he is hounded by a me right until he is locked up I mean the quite what is going on at the end of the novel is to lock to you know, we kill them off we lock up the the beggar who is also the singer you see that's what I'm beginning to see that he is the singer. And he has to be shut up, literally. And he has to be shut out and closed in this in an asylum so that he is still that voice. It's not enough that empathize there's still more to be done yeah to separate, Unknown Speaker 1:02:19 work together do their fantasy watching how did I grow up living up to your birth? Choices? Unknown Speaker 1:02:48 Yeah, well, I think we would have to account for the words of the of the song if I can find it would be. Yes. Right. And then her petticoat is lifted Yes, in English, it's often the warmth of a lovely day makes her girl dream of love. And then goes on to gather up the corn that the side has reaped my net bends to the furrow in which it was born. Yeah, and also the word birth Yes. Unknown Speaker 1:03:47 Be the manager with a nice golf ball at the end sees the facts of the class that she belongs to. And I think it's a important side of the novels, that she never makes it that she does not belong. She that she she can have access to where she belongs. Naturally, she has the potential to be more than what she says in the in the, in the social ladder. She She belongs in the home bed and that he will typically be home. And I think that she's blinded to this. Again, and again, she's blinded by a discourse, which comes from another space from her and she doesn't have access to that space. And I think there's I think that that can be that. It seems to me that has to be taken into account. Unknown Speaker 1:04:52 I'm not quite sure I understand. I mean that she's not she's in the wrong class. I mean, she Unknown Speaker 1:04:58 and I think I'm when when you to say something about the 19th century woman. And I think, for me, the novel reflects the anxiety of a whole class of people, which is so the American way you can glean insight out she's still something he started can have access to something like that, structurally, there's no way she's feeling where she is at the Unknown Speaker 1:05:37 most softly, I see is Unknown Speaker 1:05:41 trying to preach another another stage where she is this is not exactly a social stage, people have some stage, the human being Unknown Speaker 1:05:51 the human being doesn't have time in your mother that we look for. Unknown Speaker 1:05:59 And what is Unknown Speaker 1:06:01 in this, you and Mario, that's something that amo, we can't Unknown Speaker 1:06:08 in mystical confession at the beginning of the times, Unknown Speaker 1:06:12 it will be after that it will be the Unknown Speaker 1:06:18 tuition again, to get out from the farm and get a shout out anything? Unknown Speaker 1:06:26 Of course, it has nothing to do I have the Mondays? How do we find some days? We might utilize? But I might. Also if I don't see myself with that, what should we look into? What will be the rules? We'll be we'll need to because the other to become the mother she was. Unknown Speaker 1:06:56 She was the promoter. But I think you can only look into yourself if you have access to this court. Firstly, then she doesn't. This court does not beyond what she belongs, it belongs in that in that in that book, ESA, or may and so on. are different, different types of, of this code, she doesn't have access to it. And there is there is a dynamic of I had to limit it to class to do a class with this dynamic going on here. It's not like she goes to the factory at the end. Unknown Speaker 1:07:35 How do you interpret that? Unknown Speaker 1:07:38 The whole trajectory from the farm to the factory? And that's, I don't know I'd have to do something. Unknown Speaker 1:07:50 I think that's one thing that sort of sets out to do is to show the relationship between himself and his types this class. So I can't speak too much about that, because I'm only over 1200 pages into Unknown Speaker 1:08:07 anyone who's tried to read. Unknown Speaker 1:08:09 It's not quite half. But I know that that's a way of exploring. Unknown Speaker 1:08:19 Well, the way I know what sad says about the end of the book and his idea is that this is this is prevails revenge against the social ambitions of his parents, this is this is he is going to the important thing is that there will be nothing this there will be this tremendous effort to rise in society and then everything will be systematically destroyed and she will be thrown back into a worse condition because after all, Emma comes from a very well to do peasant background. She's not you know, her father has a lot of land, I guess, and he's rather well off. So he sees that as something as against his father. Basically, this is promap against his father and his brother and all that they represent there is the fact that the whole family dies out at the end. Also the journey a lot genealogy, that there's nothing left at the end. I mean, that's the I know that that's what that's one of the things that stands Unknown Speaker 1:09:14 out with a hyphen and I couldn't have I always thought this is quite funny. I don't know quite what to make of it. Yes. So various father's names, I should clarify should clarify. And the side refers to him by many hyphenated words throughout the book is often called the shooter. She has chefs. Then he's the Party Seattle and he's the doctor that is fully convinced of modern science and bring this into the you the new science, and this is exactly what the club air is countering as he grows, but it was very much a part of his past. Another thing This might be a part of his website has caused Unknown Speaker 1:10:04 us constitute SEO is definitely Unknown Speaker 1:10:08 very interesting to speak about his reconstituted himself into character because to the character and cause did you feel is a technical term percenter referring to that which which creates a person of a very young child? And the further development of that he's caused by a guy by the term yes, no, just I don't know if I'm right in this, but is there a sort of tries to do understand the cause to choose your own personalities as soon as the making of the constitutive of the making of the person in some person now in his own person, we find, so bear I think, understanding somewhere from the very beginning, his mother always wanted to draw. And it wasn't really very Unknown Speaker 1:11:07 interesting. First childhood, being a science was no problem. The second child being stuck there terrible point or she was the mother was terribly disappointed with the Father, it was still considered all tension and nurturing himself and there was a surfer does tell us how, how it can become some emotion there. And he gave it I think he explained this earlier, but connection, a, the method of imaging consciousness, that he has a whole a whole philosophy or theology of a way of confronting the world by imaging it by the imaging consciousness. And there are three steps to it, whereby you can render that which was your real or not real renderings are not real, real. And I think this is how helpful they are does that you You do realize the world then the, what that leads to are they the object to that D realization is the mode in the real world. Now the writer is the person who has a privileged position of being able to render that world real in the object get rendered certains real objectivity by working hard, say a call in case the generic plays a play. And the novel takes over the character in case. The other characters are the inevitable. But as we wrote characters, but so bear can really, truly say I am. And all the other characters too. Unknown Speaker 1:13:06 Oh, sure. He sees all the other characters. But Unknown Speaker 1:13:09 this is such a cool little theory about how this can be accomplished in certain steps that he does. I think he's he built his case? Well, it's just that it's such a long convoluted process that he goes through, it's not readily accessible, but he does very well established this these different imaginary I think has to can be interpreted in two senses, the literally literal or technical sense of emotion. Yes. My second theory is then with the AIP subjects meanings in the fashion of or in the modem. She is or he is rather woman's in the mode of image that was what you were hinting at before. I think we're saying imaginaire so even the word says exactly what it is we have to do is go to the words types and. Oh, yes, about the passive passivity. Staci has demonstrated how should they also was woody called passive homosexual. And I think he's saying somewhat the same thing. Because it's very severe, some of the same way. But he has a lot of other things I love. I love the styles, people, smile and chocolates, etc. But I do. I love that style. And he's every now and again, like, he was saying how to bear as a child was weighing, as was. The word is to try to demonstrate the passivity as inspiration for adults Unknown Speaker 1:15:00 I'd love to know Unknown Speaker 1:15:10 if he mixes stylistic levels a lot, go from the most apps groups philosophical discourse to do something vulgar and somehow make it all work and that it's it is a great style at this point I wanted to get back to something John said earlier about the mixture of the whole notion of collapse a difference in Madame Bovary. I mean, I think you're right to extend, I think, I think that's good to talk about the carnival, the commis. I think God is, of course, a carnival. I mean, it's a carnival. And it is, as we all know, the central chapter. And, and all the things that happen at a carnival, according to Bakhtin. And all the theoreticians who have worked on the Carnival in literature happen at that carnival, that is the reversals of class relationships occur that is masters slay or whatever, the owners and the the servants, they change roles, male, female is broken down, there's a breakdown of difference. And at the end of the kameez, everything falls back into place. I mean, that's made very clear that this was just this, this intermittent moment, this was a privilege moment. This is what the Carnival is for. And I think it's very crucial that that is at the center of the novel that that there is that that mythical, allusion to a moment when all the differences are flaunted. And the other examples that you gave of growing potatoes in the cemetery. There are lots of things like that. And Madame Bovary, there's a use of the figure of select says, which is opposite which has been studied by critics, where he'll say something like Emma didn't know whether she wanted to die or move to Paris, or different things like that two things that are totally incompatible or put together and there's a kind of by putting those things together, there's an abolition of difference. Similarly, Shiva was analysis, you seem to you were talking, yes, you seem to be alluding to his analysis. He says that about the difference. For example, between booni Xia and Omate, which for a long time fascinated critics in France, critics were interested in the history of ideas, whether in fact, what is the situation in the anti clerical versus the clerical and as you have pointed out, probands technique consists essentially in placing the two opposites against each other and they auto destruct they destroy each other and they just, it's, it's nothing is left. So he has this way of playing with difference and abolishing it. I mean, basically, by central some sort of absurd mechanism. I mean, making the point, and it's very, I think that the result I think that's it I think, more and more I think that Madame Bovary is a very anxiety producing novel which I don't think I thought my first readings where I was identifying so much with with m&r, I'm getting retrospectively very anxious about that. Cassidy Unknown Speaker 1:18:28 received so ologies, and she says that this is a case of the hi Siri terrible Yeah. Unknown Speaker 1:18:54 Well, what do I mean by saying that she has to die? I think what I was saying is that, well, I guess I'm saying two things, I don't know whether we can hold them both. In Balance, one of them is that she has to die because because she's different, and different. And maybe in that sense, let's say female, but there's something about her specificity as a female and this would be the whole thing of Emma and her kind of writing her relationship to language. And that's where I wanted to bring in the beggar and his song that somehow she is related. Also in the love scene with hot dove, in the moment of rezones she hears a cry which is inarticulate, I mean, her she is beyond language, or before language, or she she's somewhere she does have a connection with this, what is called semiotic or creatable language which is which is has a different rhythm. Alright, so there will be that there will be Emma is woman and that what she represents, and then I think there's something else which is perhaps when I was trying Bring out today that she also represents a breakdown of difference is what I mean she's both different and also in her bizarre sexuality threatening to the difference between male and female because what is she in the end? I'm really that's what I'm really asking is she is she a man? Is she a woman? Is that question even inadequate? So I don't think it's because she's high spirited. I mean, to get back