No Direction Home: Emma Bovary the outsider

The famous "agricultural fair" chapter in Flaubert's Madame Bovary anticipated cinema by about 50 years - it's probably the most example, and maybe the first example, of literary montage - as Flaubert, hilariously, cross cuts between Emma and her new paramour, as they sit by a window in the town hall overlooking the agricultural fair, flirting with each other, coming on to each other, and essentially hiding out, and scenes of the fair, the dull political speeches and the awarding of prizes for the finest steer and pig. I suppose you could read this chapter as Flaubert's foray into irony - the high romance and lofty diction of courtship (and betrayal) set against the crude simplicities of political discourse and the coarse, earthy language of farmers and agricultural workers - yes, but irony does not get at the essence of the scene: it's not that the scene is funny or pathetic, but that we see Emma as one who rejects the world around her, who sees herself, in fact makes herself, an outsider, one who is literally as well as figuratively "above" the others in her society - or at least so she thinks, but like everyone else in her tiny village she is completely dependent on these farmers and laborers for her very existence, for her sustenance. With all her pretensions and with all her desires, she is not really so different from anyone else - the world she is in is not bifurcated, it is not "ironic" - i.e., two disjunctive elements sharing the same time and space - no, it is unified world in which the work of farmers, of villagers, of the shopkeepers, and even of the professional class like her husband all contribute to the well-being of the society. Emma's outsider status is hers by choice - but she's not as outside as she would like to believe. She would not be able to survive if she left her marriage for one of her suitors - the feckless Leon or her new guy who just wants her as a plaything - and of course that is her tragedy: she hates her life but has nowhere to go, no way out - no direction home, in other words.