Flaubert's use of past tense

I'm sure others have written about this matter, but one way to understand how Flaubert created such a vivid sense of reality - not realism but naturalism - Madame Bovary is through what I'll call his gradations of narrative style. He very often uses a verb structure - not sure what to call it either in English or French, though I think it's more rarely used in English - of a repeated, habitual, or continuous past tense - marked most frequently by the verb-frame "would." In other words, in describing a scene, Flaubert often does simply say this happened, that happened - he got up early, he set off at a gallop, he arrived, dismounted, etc. – but he writes it like this (taken at a random page opening, p. 15 in Davis translation): “On these days he would rise early, set off at a gallop, urge on his animal; then he would dismount to wipe his feet on the grass, and put on his black gloves before going in.” The effect is that we sense that often, or even always, took this action – that what he did was not a unique occurrence but part of his life, and of the life of the time. Flaubert uses this motif with particularly sharp effect in the long account of the Bovary wedding – the procession to church in particular, with the violin player leading the way, tattered ribbons blowing from his instrument – one of my favorite scenes in the novel. What makes this habitual past tense even more powerful is that Flaubert can abruptly shift from habitual past to simple past – which makes the simple past event striking and original: we see it as a unique and stunning moment, set against the past events that happened habitually – like a figure sharply drawn in a landscape. Here a random example from among many, p 16-17: “she would always see him out as far as the foot of the front steps. When his horse had not yet been brought around they would stay there. They had not said good-bye, the did not go on talking; the fresh air surrounded her, lifting in disarray the stray wisps of hair on the nape of her neck or tossing her apron strings so that they snaked like banners about her hips.” So we have the many visits to the farm with the awkward farewells between the shy Charles and the sexy and forthright Emma – and then the striking particulars of one visit, in which Emma is particularly alluring. Note that Flaubert does not narrate this moment through Charles – Flaubert does not tell us what Charles thought, not does he need to; the narration remains outside of the characters – that odd “we” introduced in the first chapter – and we see things not from their perspective but, to use his most famous metaphor, as from a mirror set beside a highway. Thus, Emma is more beautiful and alluring than if he had told us how Charles saw her – we see her for ourselves. More on this in a future post.