I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
SPOILER ALERT: I share key plot details from Madame Bovary and The Scarlet Letter in this post.
This week, my most important project is working on my submission for the (Un)Altered Books: Unheard Voices art show. For this show, I am researching novels about adulterous women, and constructing an art pieces out of old hardcover editions of the books.
I finished watching the 2014 movie version of Madame Bovary, with Mia Wasikowska playing the lead, Emma. I knew it would be tragically sad, but I wasn’t ready for the pain that hit me when Emma died via poisoning herself. Emma was only 17 years old when she marries the country farmer Charles Bovary, and in her mid-twenties when she poisons herself after financial ruin and two adulterous affairs. In mid-nineteenth century France, she had very little opportunity for developing agency or throwing herself into anything other than motherhood and creating a household.
Emma lived under the Napoleonic Code passed in 1804. It legally defined married women as minors and did not grant them any basic civil rights. Wives were legally required to obey their husbands. They could not own property independently, open a bank account, or enter into a contract without their husband’s written permission. Divorce was completely illegal in France from 1816 until 1884.
Nineteenth-century France enforce a concept of “separate spheres.” Men occupied the public sphere of work and politics while women were strictly confined to the private, domestic sphere.
French society at the time treated adultery quite differently when a woman committed it versus a man. An unfaithful wife could be imprisoned for up to two years, and a woman caught in an affair faced permanent social exile. Male adulterers suffered no legal or social consequences.
The tragedy of Madame Bovary is that a young, unfinished woman with great passionate drive had no opportunities to become anything other than a wife, mother, and consumer.
The novel’s author Gustave Flaubert was put on trial in January 1857 on criminal charges of “outrage to public morality and religion” after the story was published in serial format in a magazine. The novel was seen as making adulterly look alluring and poetic rather than immoral. The government prosecutor Ernest Pinard identified specific scenes as being obscene and lascivious. The state argued that Flaubert should have included a moral narrator that told the reader that Emma was evil and sinful.
Flaubert was acquitted. His defense attorney argued that the novel was a highly moral and cautionary tale. Emma’s affairs brought her no lasting happiness and in fact led to misery, financial ruin, and and agonizingly painful death.
Because of the media coverage and public scandal, the book became famous. When it was published as a complete two-volume novel in April 1857 it became an instant bestseller. Flaubert became a literary star.
But not all tales of adulteresses are tragic
Tragic stories help us understand and come to terms with human suffering. But they are not the only kind of stories we like to immerse ourselves in.
The Scarlet Letter is at once tragic and hopeful. Its adulterous protagonist Hester Prynne starts out shamed and isolated, but gradually becomes an admired member of her town. She owns her past and she wears the ornate letter A she embroidered herself with something that is not quite pride but rather a kind of Nietzschean affirmation.
And yet the story is tragic, because even as Hester is transforming along a positive trajectory, her affair partner the Puritan minister Arthur Dimmesdale, becomes more and more distraught over his sin. He does not confess to the town that he is the father of Hester’s child. He does not stand up on the scaffold with Hester when she is required to. In the end, he dies after finally taking responsibility. It is too late for him, though.
I have not yet started reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but that is the next book about an adulteress I will tackle. If I can find a way to watch the 1993 BBC version I might do that. According to the AIs that I’ve consulted with, this is another example of adultery resulting in transformation rather than tragedy.
For the artwork I’m working on for the (Un)Altered Books: Unheard Voices show, I’m going to use four books, two that are mosty tragedies (Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary) and two that show their heroines undergoing transformation (The Scarlet Letter and Lady Chatterley’s Lover).
After completing Madame Bovary last night, I was thinking “it’s all tragic!” but then considering The Scarlet Letter I realized that is too simplistic.
That an adulterous affair can be tragic, or transformational, or even both, seems a more complete way of thinking about it.
I have a new plan for my artwork based on this. It might be titled something like “Tragedy or Transformation: Stories of Adulterous Women.” I like the word “adulteress” a lot — it immediately suggests immorality in a way that should be questioned — but I’m not sure how to work that in without making the title awkward.
ChatGPT suggested “The Adulteress: Tragedy or Transformation” which is pretty good.
Some other options:
- Library of An Adulteress: Stories of Tragedy and Transformation
- The Adulteress’ Library: Tragedy and Transformation
- The Adulteress: Four Stories of Tragedy and Transformation
Maybe I can use the word “adulteress” effectively.
What’s on tap for this week
In addition to watching or reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover and working on my art piece (which will involve mounting the books on a wood cradle board, and then painting designs and words onto them), this week I’ll be doing my usual dog walking (now with one more foster dog MJ the chihuahua mix), working on a couple paintings for upcoming calls, keeping the plants from burning up by watering them each day, blogging each morning, and, always, ensuring my house is neat and clean.
Oh and of course options trading. I expect the markets to be weak given ongoing pessimism about AI names and increasing conflict in the Middle East. I am a bit overloaded on AI names against my own diversification rules but I also have plenty of uninvested cash. So on balance, I think a pullback right now benefits me. But it still feels bad when I confront a sea of red numbers on my brokerage account positions page.
And today, I’m going with my daughter to the Lavender Festival at Chatfield Farms then for dinner she is cooking a Whole30 compliant meal of grilled shrimp and zoodles.
It’s shaping up to be a creative, fun, but hot week. The heat dome continues, with some relief to arrive mid-week. We may even see some thunderstorms late in the week. I miss the summer afternoon thunderstorms so common in my childhood growing up here in the Denver area.