On January 9, psychoanalyst and author Louise J Kaplan diedfrom pancreatic cancer in Manhattan at the age of 82. Ms. Kaplan's titillating1991 book, Female Perversions: TheTemptations of Emma Bovary, explored the subtlety of female fetish withinan industrial/material society. ---
She argued that many women tended to channelsexual aggression differently than men, through longing obsessively for luxuryitems, compulsive fashion sense and uber-conformity to rigid genderstereotypes. Ms. Kaplan used Gustave Flaubert’s fictional character Emma Bovaryto help illustrate her thesis.
Madame Bovary,published in 1857, follows the life of a woman unhappily married to a devotedand clumsy doctor (Charles Bovary) in a provincial town of northern France. Everythingaround Emma Bovary is rural, placid and dull—"bovine"—which results in her deepfits of depression. Looking to appease his wife, Charles moves to the largertown of Yonville- l'Abbaye and takes Emma to an opera in Paris, where she isenthralled and Charles is dumbfounded. After the opera, Emma's fantasy andfetish blossom rather than placate. She has married Charles, believing that adoctor would provide the ideal fantasy life present in Romantic novels. Whenthe bliss, passion, and rapture found in her books do not appear in the realityof married life, Emma begins to look elsewhere for enchantment. She strikes upan affair with Leon, a young law student with an equally romantic outlook. Butwithin a short period of time, the lust fizzles and Leon leaves for the morecosmopolitan Paris. Emma becomes depressed again, a bored housewife whom theshrewd gentleman "player" Rodolphe soon exploits. Emma travels to the citytwice per week for shopping and expensive music lessons, followed by meetings and"carriage rides" with Rodolphe. The make love during a town parade, and thesessions become more desperate, fetish filled, and debased. Emma spends waybeyond her means while grasping for an ideal love that never materializes. Rodolphetires of Emma and abandons her with self-serving excuses and lies. Crushed andheavily in debt, Emma commits suicide, a last romantic act, which again ringsempty.
Gustave Flaubert wrote MadameBovary in response to his friends’ attempt to cure him of excessiveRomanticism. They challenged Flaubert to write a gripping story about the mostboring topic they could think of, married life, using only non-idealized, non-Romanticstyle and technique. The result, MadameBovary, is the hallmark of “realist” literature which continues to set thestandard for literary fiction to this day. Flaubert is reported equal to hischaracters with regard to fetish, spending nearly eight hours per manuscriptpage, fretting that there were too many “r”s in a particular paragraph.
Yet the greater perversion is revealed as Flaubert holds upa mirror to the patriarchal French society of the 1800’s, a society eerilysimilar to contemporary America. In both circles, an ideal for female “happiness,” “success,” and genderrole have been perversely defined by increasingly unrealistic romantic ideals. ThisRomanticism is flamed by the media, drummed by Kim Kardashian, America’s nexttop model, and Snooki of Jersey Shore.The result is unhappiness, futility and debt. Most individuals in America livebeyond their means, in significant debt. As a nation, we cannot reconcilereality to our established romanticism. Joy is lost and happiness is elusivewith this mindset. The standard is beyond reason. Yet the perversion lives onand intensifies, illogically, a fetish that Louise Kaplan eloquently identifiedover twenty years ago. Like Emma Bovary, the American female’s sexual energymay be greatly misdirected, in a world they did not create.
Lee Miller is theauthor of the Bengali novel, Kali Sunset(www.clovercreekpress.com), a story of how Mrs. Sona Choudhurygrapples with the sexual stereotypes inherent in 20th century Indiansociety.
