70

WATER IMAGERY IN MA DAME BO VARY

When Flaubert described the physical setting of the "roman flamand"
which was to become Madame. Bovary, he indicated that there would be a
river at the bottom of the heroine's garden;1 although his vision of the novel
as a whole was at this stage extremely imprecise, Flaubert was already
certain that water would have an important part to play. Both in the final
version and in the earliest plans the heroine's development is apprehended
against a background in which water is abundantly present. An initial

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metonymio digression, marked by the simple adverbial phrase "au bord d'une
riviere" proves rich in possibilities which are systematically developed as
the work proceeds and which link the inner life of the heroine with water
in a number of ways. One feature of the physical world Emma is said to
inhabit, water acts as a backdrop for certain of her experiences. But it also
has a psychological function, seeming on occasion to exert an influence on
the way Emma behaves, and a figurative function, acting repeatedly as a
point of comparison, enabling various emotions and experiences to be evoked
with greater precision.
In addition to the river of the initial project there are other watery
locations; the "Eau-de-Robec" which transforms the quarter of Rouen where
Charles lives into an "ignoble petite Venise", the Seine itself which divides
the town into two just as La Rieule bisects the valley of Yonville, the pond
in the forest where Emma is seduced and, ensuring that Madame Bovary is
in no sense a dry book, a good deal of triokling water and a pervasive melan-
choly dampness. These settings are exploited intensively. There are several
important scenes which take place by water. The garden of the Bovary
house in Yonville is the setting for meetings with Leon and Rodolphe (Charles
only appears in the garden after Emma's death). Whenever Emma wishes
to conceal her movements she passes through the garden and across or along
the river. This is the secret way, treacherous but removed from the public
eye, allowing Emma to escape unseen to visit Rodolphe, Guillaumin or La
Mere Rollet. A barrier as a rule, the river is crossed for the last time with
fatal ease, as the prosaic and humiliating "planohe aux vaches" is lowered,
when Emma returns from her unsuccessful visit to La Huchette on the way
to steal the arsenic. In Part HI, Emma repeatedly and senselessly crosses
the Seine in the cab but later adopts a less frantic mode of locomotion when
she goes to dine on one of its islands.
It would be surprising if all this water were to leave the characters un-
moved. It is suggested, in fact, that it can produce a wide variety of effects
on those near it. Water stimulates a reverie in which the mind dwells on
distant realities (Charles dreaming of the "fraicheur sous la hetree"* before
the Eau-de-Robec) or evokes an idealized past or unreal future. By its
 71
example water encourages an "epanohement" or liquid release of stored up
desire and it can silence wagging tongues. Lastly, in the presence of water
Emma is endowed with added grace as if water has somehow caused her to
blossom like a flower. Flaubert may wish to suggest that water possesses
secret powers, akin to the "virtualites secretes" mentioned in L'Education
sentimtntaU* which elicit from Emma the most perfect expression of her
latent sensuality and bring to inexorable fruition her concealed death-wish.
The main concern of this article, however, will be with the figurative use
of water4 and in particular with the way in which descriptions of water
take on symbolic overtones. The view that in Flaubert "la description n'est

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jamais gratuite mais toujours signifiante par rapport a un personnage ou a
une situation"5 is, of course, well established. It is often the case in Flaubert
that "le mouvement meme de la description suit dans le detail le mouvement
du regard qui est en train de le vivre"8 but, in addition to this "focalisation",
the details selected often possess a symbolic appropriateness which makes
them harmonize with the situation or state of mind of the character or
characters present. There may be something verging on the tautologous7
in the process of "recuperation" which involves perceiving the congruity
between descriptive details and an itat d'dme the details themselves help to
evoke, but in the case of description of water Flaubert does nothing to dis-
courage symbolic interpretation of thin kind.8
The flickering meaning9 of literal descriptions of water is steadied by a
series of explicit comparisons, placed at strategio intervals in the text, which
equate water with erotic love, conceived as an amalgam of sensual and affec-
tive experience. When Rodolphe brutally, if accurately, compares Emma's
condition to that of a fish out of water ("Qa bailie apres Pamour, comme une
carpe apres l'eau sur une table de cuisine", p. 444) or when the deterioration
of her relationship with Rodolphe is analysed ("leur grand amour, ou elle
vivait plongee, parut se diminuer sous elle, comme l'eau d'un fleuve qui
s'absorberait dans son lit, et elle apercut la vase", p 481), erotic experience
is presented as something external to Emma It is Emma's position in
relation to water which is significant; being out of water is clearly correlated
with lack of involvement in erotic experience and being immersed in water
with total abandonment to such experience. But there are also images in
which it is presented as something internal. Rejecting Emma's association
of "l'amour" with a cataclysmic force that will rock her hie to its foundations,
the narrator explains that it is something that builds up within. "Elle ne
savait pas que, sur la terrasse des maisons, la pluie fait des lacs quand les
goutti^res sont bouchees, et elle fut ainsi demeurde en sa securitd lorsqu'elle
decouvrit subitement une lezarde dans le mur" (p. 416). Desire, when it has
no outlet, accumulates finally to be released in the affair with Rodolphe
with explosive force (water turning into champagne in this instance)10:
"1'amour, si longtemps contenu, jaillissait tout entier avec des bouillonne-
ments joyeux" (p 474). In this second type of image it is not Emma's
 72

position in relation to water but the movement (or lack of movement) of

water which is significant.
Since these comparisons begin to appear only in Part II, their impact
on early descriptions of water is delayed or only folly felt on re-reading.
Nor is it always altogether clear whether the equation of love and water is
part of the narrator's analysis or integral to the attempt of the characters
involved to understand their situation reported in style indirect libre. In one
case the comparison is shared: the transition from plural "leur" to singular
"elle" in "leur grand amour, oil elle vivait plongee . . ." reflects a shift
from Emma's idealizing point of view which desperately clings to the illusion

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of shared emotion to the narrator's more clear-sighted apprehension of the
ultimate egocentricity of Emma's feelings. But although the equation is
often entrusted to character, it is grounded sufficiently solidly in the text
to sensitize the reader to the symbolic resonances of literal descriptions of
water, directing his attention to the implications of the way in which water
undergoes a series of changes—changes of position in relation to Emma,
changes of volume and changes of appearance—whioh both pinpoint and
harmonize with some of the major modifications of the "enchalnement des
sentiments"11 which forms the horizontal axis of the work
Although water is never completely devoid of symbolic overtones, the
most significant changes are found in a number of distinct scenes set near
or on water and connected by a network of systematic parallels and contrasts.
The most important are Emma's excursion to Banneville (pp. 365-6), the
return from La Mere Rollet's with Leon (pp. 411-2), the seduction in the
forest by Rodolphe (pp. 469-72), the last meeting with Rodolphe on the eve
of the planned elopement (pp 506-7) and the boat-trip with Leon (pp. 559-
60) during the "lune de miel" in Rouen. These five scenes have certain
features in common. In all except the first Emma is alone with the man who
ifl already or will become her lover and reaches a new threshold of emotional
or sensual awareness, tempered almost invariably by a strong feeling of
apprehension. In each case she has escaped from her usual, oppressive
surroundings into a magic circle in which she seems shielded from a prosaic
reality but confronted with powerful forces of which she is not normally
aware. Finally, in each of these scenes, a rich variety of closely and at times
myopically observed detail18 suggestively mimes Emma's inner state and
dramatizes her predicament.
In Part I of the novel, water is not present in its later abundance. More
emphasis falls on the dustiness of Les Bertaux than on the muddy pond and,
significantly, on the wedding night a practical joker is prevented from blow-
ing water through the keyhole of the bedroom door by Emma's father. The
house at Tostes is damp but there is no river and not even a "bassin a jet
d'eau" (p. 355) in the garden. It is because "ses sens ne sont pas encore
nes"13 that water, in the only scene where it takes on its later connotations,
is distant and only briefly apprehended. During her outing to Banneville
 73

where for the first time she consciously regrets having married Charles
("Pourquoi, mon Dieu, me suis-je mariee?"), Emma is shaken out of her self-
pitying mood by "des rafales de vent, brises de la mer qui, ronlant d'un bond
sur tout le plateau du pays de Caux, apportaient, jusqu'au loin dans les
champs une fraicheur sal6e".14 At this stage Emma is a long way off her later
abandonment but she here has a premonition of the erotic dimension of
human experience, in particular as it is to manifest itself in her relationship
with Rodolphe The wind blowing from the sea, like the figurative "brise
parfumeV' of the second scene, covers a distance in space which represents
a distance m time, although in this case it brings a real "fraicheur saleV'
rather than imagined "mollesses natales" The remoteness of the source of

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this "fraicheur" is compensated for by its vastness which allows it to send
moisture-laden winds bounding far inland to inspire in Emma a mixture of
exhilaration (as heart and senses are stirred in anticipation) and fear (as she
intuits the dangers that erotic experience holds), a mixture conveyed by the
quivering of leaves and the whist ling of rushes. Although the sea is heavily
dependent upon subsequent references to water which help to define its
meaning, they are all in a sense tributaries of this first, primal symbol of
the force of sexual desire which unobtrusively dominates Part I.
In Part II, returning from La Mere Rollet's with Leon, Emma comes
closer to water than on any previous occasion Avhen she has to piok her way
over makeshift stepping-stones:
La terre, a un endroit, se trouvait effondree par les pas de bestiaux;
il fallut marcher sur de grosses pierres vertes, espacees dans la boue.
Souvent, elle B'arre'tait une minute a regarder ou poser sa bottine, —et,
chancelant sur le caillou qui tremblait, les coudes en Pair, la taille
penchee, l'oeil ind6cis, elle riait alors, de peur de tomber dans les
flaques d'eau.
Water, which in the first scene appeared as a distant but vast sea, is now
near by but miniaturized. When the possibility of erotic experience presents
itself for the first time, it has lost much of its earner power to alarm, with
the result that, as Emma is poised in playful hesitation over the diminutive
puddles, her fear dissolves into laughter which simultaneously welcomes and
mocks so slight a danger. L6on being as yet inexperienced and Emma her-
self at the stage where the heart rather than the senses is responsive, she
can afford to run the risk of slipping into one of the "flaques d'eau", just
as soon after she need not fear figuratively dipping into an even smaller
concentration of water when her thoughts constantly turn to L6on: "ses
pens^es continuellement s'abattaient sur cette maison, comme les pigeons du
Lion d'or qui venaient tremper la, dans les gouttieres, leurs pattes roses et
leurs ailes blanches" (p. 423). It is not until sexual experience becomes a
reality with Rodolphe that the synecdochal "bottines" will be muddied and
her freedom of movement alarmingly restricted: "elle prenait a travers des
champs en labeur, ou elle enfon9ait, tr^buchait et empe'trait ses bottines
 74

minces" (p. 475). Even in the second scene all is not what it might appear
on the surface The description of the river itself stresses not only a "lim-
pidite" congruent with the "idealized" innocence of Leon and her own feel-
ings, but also a more disquieting coldness ("Elle coulait sans bruit, rapide et
froide a l'ceil"). If the "fraicheur salee" of the first scene represents a nascent
sensual awareness, the river is the correlative of a powerful current of cold
sexual desire which deep down has perhaps already—despite the implications
of the static "flaques d'eau"—begun to flow, its existence and dangers un-
known to Emma.
Whilst Emma voluntarily exposes herself to negligible danger on the

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stepping-stones, she is forced in the third scene in the forest to go round a
stagnant pool: "il l'entrama plus loin, autour d'un petit dtang". The pool
is an enlargement of the "flaques d'eau", the risk she runs with Rodolpho
being correspondingly greater, but the adjective "petit" and the "verdure
sur les ondes" make it contrast with the "immense lac pale" (p. 470) which
the valley of Yonville resembles and the "immensite bleuatre" (p. 473)
which she later imagines surrounding her. The reality of Emma's seduction
is at odds with her idealized expectation and recolleotion. She is not floating
miraculously in the vast blue sky or above the limpid water of a mountain
lake but reluctantly walking around a shiny pool which, ironically, is not
all that different from the "mare bourbeuse" (p. 372) associated with her
peasant origins By a process of metonymic contamination, erotic experience
temporarily takes on the unpleasant connotations of stagnant water, re-
flecting Emma's16 and possibly Flaubert's feelings of revulsion at what is
happening. Finally, concluding the series of images of repressed sexuality,
the stagnant pool symbolizes the final state of a sensuality which has still
to be released and contrasts with the subsequent image of blood circulating
"comme un fleuve de lait" which both dispels the unpleasant connotations
of the stagnant pool and suggests that sexual release is not necessarily as
abrupt as the images of spurting blood, champagne and cider which are
dotted playfully throughout imply.
Emma's relationship with Rodolphe is subsequently dominated by the
river whose steadyflowingmimes Emma's continuous erotic experience. As
the relationship draws to what is both its peak and conclusion in the final
nocturnal meeting, Emma and Rodolphe move even closer than usual to the
river ("ils . . . allerent s'asseoir pres de la terrasse, sur la margelle du mur")
and witness the richly symbolic spectacle of moonlight on water:
elle laissa tomber sur la riviere une grande tache, qui faisait une
infinite d'etoiles, et cette lueur d'argent semblait s'y tordre jusqu'au
fond a la maniere d'un serpent sans t£te couvert d'ecailles lumineuses.
Cela ressemblait aussi a quelque monstrueux cand61abre, d'ou ruis-
selaient, tout du long, des gouttes de diamant en fusion.
The moon is closely associated with Emma through the mediating image of
the "serpent". The vine in the garden at Tostes which resembles "un grand
 75
serpent malade" (p 383) becomes appropriately hyperactive in the com-
parison of the lace of Emma's corset whistling around her hips to "une
couleuvre qui glisse" (p. 583) and at the end of the novel Binet recoils from
her "comme a la vue d'un serpent" (p. 605). Identified with the moon by
virtue of the metaphorio and metonymic links connecting her with a serpent,
Emma, now endowed with "une majesty glaciale" (p. 542), attains a shim-
mering erotic apotheosis as she is completely ("jusqu'au fond") immersed
and writhes in mindless ("sans tete") ecstasy in what Rodolphe's comparison
of her to a fish leads the reader to regard as her natural element, figuratively
realising the dream of Louise Roque: "Qa doit §tre si doux de se rouler la-
dedans, de se sentir caress^ partout".18

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The Seine in Part III is usually referred to as "la riviere" rather than
"le fleuve" (which would be the more normal word), encouraging comparisons
with La Rieule. Although much wider, the Seine does not suggest a heighten-
ed satisfaction with L6on since the close harmony between Emma and water
has ended. In her weekly trips to Rouen Emma has a distant view of the
river, making the islands resemble "de grands poissons noire arretes" (p. 564),
which suggest that her previous ecstatic writhing has ceased, and in the fifth
scene, though the boat puts her in close proximity to water, it also seals her
off from direct contact with it. Emma's inability to repeat the pleasurable
immersion in erotic experience neutralizes the benefits to be drawn from the
more copiousflowingof her sensuality. The ornate "gouttes de diamant en
fusion" of the previous scene with Rodolphe, which suggest a delicious
dissolution of self, give way to the decadent "larges gouttes grasses, ondulant
inegalement" whioh mark the failure to achieve the same deliquescent unity.
Finally, when her sensual quest has drawn to its sordid end (the degrading
"bal masqu6") the surface of the river is again suggestive: "la riviere livide
frissonnait au vent; il n'y avait personne sur les ponts, les reVerberes s'6teig-
naient" (p. 591). The livid water, in marked contrast with the limpid water
of La Rieule, both anticipates the pallor of Emma's death agony and, like
the "flot de liquides noire" (p 628) which pours out of her mouth after her
death, bodies forth the ghastliness of her degeneration, whilst its shivering
mirrors simultaneously the continuous questing of an irrepressible sensuality
and Emma's horrified reaction as her natural element is revealed in its true
colours.
In all of these scenes water is not the only element endowed with sym-
bolic overtones. In each case there are a number of "slots" which are filled
with symbolically appropriate descriptive details. Around a nucleus of water
in some form, Flaubert constructs a unified metonymic struoture,17 drawing
upon an inventory of feasible visual and auditory sensations for items which
contrast in such a way as to support the description of water in its function
of linking and differentiating the various states and situations through which
Emma passes.
 76

A central feature of the idealized landscape of the keepsake is the image

of "un grand rayon de soleil perpendiculaire tremblotant dans l'eau" (p. 360).
In the second scene, which is the only one to take place in full daylight,
reality approximates to the ideal ("le soleil traversait d'un rayon les petite
globules bleus des ondes") but generally the light effects depart from such
stylized simplicity. In the scene in the forest the sun streams through the
branches just as it had done in the first scene, but its impact on Emma
("lui eblouissait les yeux") is now emphasized like that of the oppressive
lines of trees ("l'etourdissait un peu") which also reappear Tho difference
between indistinct awareness and full-blooded appreciation is also brought

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out by the contrast between the inchoate "eclairait la mousse" describing
the sunlight at Banneville and the superb evocation of dappled light in the
forest: "Qh et la, tout autour d'elle, dans les feuilles et par terre, des taches
lumineuses tremblaient, comme si des colibris, en volant, eussent eparpillc
leure plumes." This description combines suggestions of an inner tremulous-
ness, of sharpness and delicacy of sensual response and of pleasure suffusing
Emma's whole being as well as hinting, through the image of scattered
feathers,18 at the idea of disintegration. Similar effects are found in the
fourth scene when the moon, like the sun "couleur de pourpre" and low in
the sky, again appears behind a screen of trees before rising in the sky and
shedding its light on the water, allowing the multiple "taches lumineuses"
and scattered feathers of the previous scene to be replaced by the single
"grande tache" and the "fusion" of "gouttes de diamant" which mark a
miraculous coalescence of Emma's fragmented inner substance.
The parallel motif of quivering connotes both apprehension (often associ-
ated with the verb "frissonner") and sensual pleasure (expressed by "fre-
mir"). Emma herself quivers with delight ("avec un long frcmissement")
in the wood, with apprehension ("elle frissonna") when she hears the boat-
man speak of Rodolphe—but it is more common for the quivering to be
projected onto the natural surroundings19 which often seem almost to have
absorbed part of the heroine's being. The symbolic possibilities of quivering
of leaves are controlled by the comparison associating it with Emma's fear
("plus tremblante que les feuilles des peupliers", p 476) and by the link she
establishes with sensual pleasure ("sentant encore l'6treinte de ses bras,
tandis que le feuillage fremissait", p 473), a link which runs counter to the
description ("les feuilles ne remuaient pas") in the scene itself. The descrip-
tion of the leaves at Banneville ("les feuilles des hetres bruissaient en un
frisson rapide") suggests, therefore, a feeling of dread tinged with excitement
which is heightened by the very details used to express it and partly con-
firmed by Emma's behaviour ("Emma serrait son chale contre ses 6paules")
Of the various flowers and animals mentioned in these scenes it is those
closest to water which are most significant. In the scene with L6on the
following minutely observed detail is found: "quelquefois, a la pointe des
joncs ou sur la feuille des n6nufars, un insecte a pattes fines marchait on
 77

se posait." The insect, delicately balanced above the water, anticipates tho
way Emma will stand trembling on the stepping-stones. In the scene in the
forest the place of the insect is taken by the traditionally repulsive frogs
which "sautaient pour se cacher", their muscular jumping perhaps prefigur-
ing the swelling of Emma's neck ("son cou blano qui se gonflait d'un soupir")
and their urge to concealment, the way she hides her face ("se cachant la
figure"). In addition, the water lilies which are in flower in the first scene
are now "fletris" and the visually attractive but insubstantial "petits globules
bleus des ondes qui se succedaient en se crevant" are replaced by the more
tenacious but repulsive "lentilles d'eau" which "faisaient une verdure sur
les ondes". All these details back up the central contrast between the limpid

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water of the river and the stagnant water of the pool which is designed to
underline the transition from comparatively innocent to culpable behaviour.
Although at one point mention is made of "le murmure des ondes" (p.
437) water is usually associated with silence,20 providing an ideal backdrop
for a wide range of contrasting and suggestive sound. Soft swishing sounds
(the "robe qui bruissait doucement" and the "clapotement doux de la bauce")
indicate a mild degree of pleasure with Leon whilst sharper sounds such as
the creaking of saddles, rattling of dry reeds and whistling of rushes convey
the more active possibilities opened up by Rodolphe. The "mousse qui
craquait doucement" at Banneville combines and anticipates both types of
sound. The "battements d'ailes" heard in the forest is echoed by the descrip-
tion of Emma's singing on the river ("le vent emportait les roulades que
Leon entendait passer, comme des battements d'ailes, autour de lui") which
replaces a hint of Emma vainly trying to esoape Rodolphe's clutches with
that of her failing to remain close to Leon. Certain sounds are pioked up at
other points in the novel; the "voix qui trainait" anticipates the appearance
of the blind man" and the sound of the ' 'peche mure que tombait'' which in the
fourth scene repeats the falling movement of the moonlight has ironic over-
tones since, despite Emma's initial feeling that "une abondance subite se
serait detached de son ccaur, comme tombe la recolte d'un espalier, quand on y
porte la main" (p. 362), the peach falls "toute seule", and dashes, as a result,
Leon's hopes of plucking the "fruit d'or suspendu a quelque feuillage fantas-
tique" (p. 536) of which he dreams.
The harmonious web of natural sound is rarely disrupted. Water has a
beneficial effect, drying up or allowing Emma and her companion to trans-
cend the flow of platitudes through which their experience is usually re-
fracted. Beneath the banal snippets of conversation of the second scene is
set the "causerie plus serieuse" of which their eyes are full and the "murmure
de l'ame, profond, continu qui dominait cehii des voix". With Rodolphe the
river is twice interiorized: as a flow of non-verbal communication when in
the fourth scene words are abandoned ("ils ne parlaient pas"), allowing "la
tendresse des anciens jours" to return "abondante et silencieuse comme la
riviere qui coulait", and as a medium for converting words into a succession
 78

of crystalline sounds ("an milieu du silence, il y avait des paroles dites tout
bas qui tombaient BUT leur ame avec une sonorite cristalline", p. 479)
Only in Rouen do the beneficial effects of water seem to wear off for, as the
moon rises above the water, Emma and Leon "ne manquerent pas do faire
des phrases".
Although many of the contiguous details examined28 suggest an essentially
pleasurable experience, water is frequently associated with the idea of drown-
ing, suggesting that pleasure and pain, love and death, are inextricably
commingled. Following the river path, particularly in the winter when the
water level is high, Emma is exposed to the danger of drowning, a point

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stressed in a Scenario: "l'hiver sur la berge de la riviere, glissant, au risque
de se noyer" e When she returns from her visits to Rodolphe she has nothing
secure to hold on to ("elle s'accrochait, pour ne pas tomber, aux bouquets
de ravenelles fldtries"24 and at the end of her last meeting with Rodolphe
her physical posture is extremely precarious ("se penchant au bord de l'eau
entre les broussailles"). The drowning most frequently suggested, however,
is a figurative one. In the second scene "de grandes herbes minces" in the
river are compared to "des chevelures vertes abandonnees".25 Like their
counterpart in Rouen, the "grands poissons noire arretes", the "chevelures
vertes" are associated with Emma by the use of the verb "abandonner" in
two other contexts: in her first "mystical" phase when "elle se sentit triste
et abandonnee commo un duvet d'oiseau qui tournoie dans la tempete"
(which also looks forward to the image of humming-birds shedding their
feathers) and in the description of her surrender to Rodolphe ("elle s'aban-
donna"). There are several occasions when Emma is figuratively submerged
in water and seems, like Ophelia, "one incapable of her own distress, / Or
like a creature native and indued / Unto that element";28 in the forest scene
"on distinguait son visage dans une transparence bleuatro, comme si elle
eut nag6 sous des flots d'azur" and when she goes to see Rodolphe after the
quarrel with Charles's mother "ses yeux, pleins de larmes, etincelaient comme
dos flamme8 sous les ondes" (p. 502). The delicious spectacle she offers
Rodolphe corresponds to her situation, to her imminent, induction into erotic
experience in the first case and, fire connoting virility27 in the second, the
emergence of "masculine" qualities of energy and resolution as, in the midst
of her sexual submissiveness, she attempts to make Rodolphe agree to run
away, lake the image of the moon-serpent, such comparisons convey the
idea that the element of danger that is an essential part of erotio experience
is not necessarily apparent to the person immersed in it.
More frequently, however, Emma lives in fear of a "muddy death". 28
Water, in the shape of an "ocean tenebreux" (p. 429), represents an op-
pressive reality which threatens to engulf her. Returning from the final
visit to Rodolphe, "le sol, sous sea pieds, etait plus mou qu'une onde et les
Billons lui parurent d'immenses vagues brunes, qui deferlaient" (p. 611), and
when Emma and Rodolphe meet at night in the garden the "massifs d'ombre"
 79
formed by the trees loom up "comme d'immenses vagues noires qui se fussent
avancees pour les recouvrir" (p. 479). The life-giving, desperately needed
"eaux delicieuses" of erotic experience constantly threaten to turn into the
frightening "eaux dangereuses"*9 of death. As long as water only oozes
Emma is safe though bored. As soon as it begins to flow she is exhilarated
but at risk. In throwing herself into erotic experience Emma is knowingly
and wilfully preparing her own death; in a second Shakespearean allusion
Emma's craving for experience in which she can annihilate herself is associ-
ated with deb"berate drowning- "et son ame s'enfoncait en cette ivresse et
s'y noyait, ratatinee, comme le duo de Clarence dans son tonneau de Mal-
roisie" (p 500). The self-destructive streak in Emma's nature is brought

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out by the drowning imagery; as Bachelard suggests "qui joue avec l'eau
perfide, se noie, veut se noyer".30 Ironically, however, the grisly circum-
stances of Emma's death by arsenic poisoning make it turn out very different
from the figurative "mort fleurie"31 she has courted.
The danger inherent in erotic experience is also evoked by the ship
imagery. In Part I, Emma is shown, like a marooned sailor, "cherchant au
loin quelque voile blanche dans les brumes de l'horizon", not knowing whether
to expect a "chaloupe" or a "vaisseau a trois ponts" or "vers quel rivage il
la menerait" (p. 382) The vessel which finally arrives is not the magnificent
three-decker or the romantic gondola she dreams about (p. 504) but the
prosaio "chaloupe" of the fifth scene and the figurative ships which appear
do not carry Emma to safety. Ships in Madame Bovary offer no protection,
tossing around or pitching violently and threatening to hurl their oocupants
into the water. The "cris de naufrages" which Emma hears in Lagardy's
"lamentations melodieuses" (p. 530) seem about to be augmented when the
cab is described as "plus ballotte qu'un navire" and in the view of M. Church
"the entire section describing the death of Emma is dominated symbolically
by the imagery of the storm at sea".32 The description of the floor falling
away "a la maniere d'un vaisseau qui tangue" (p. 513) in Emma's first
attempt at suicide conveys, in addition to the possibility of drowning, a
sickening sensation of physical disorientation which even after her death
afliicts Emma when the coffin moves forward "comme une ohaloupe qui
tangue a chaque flot" (p. 634). This comparison also suggests that it is
Charon's boat whichfinallycomes to collect Emma and ferries her to a "rivage"
which lies beyond the Styx. But even before the end of the novel its shadowy
presence can be perceived in the cab which is "plus clos qu'un tombeau" as
well as "plus ballotte qu'un navire" and in the "chaloupe" which bears
such a sinister resemblance to the coffin, allowing Emma to rehearse her
death and confirming the view that "le suicide, en litterature, se prepare
. . . comme un long destin intime".33 In its various transformations water
reflects the changes in Emma that form the surface structure of the work
(J. Kristeva's "signifiant narratif"f* but, figuring in proleptic imagery, it
also helps to establish the unchanging deep structure (the "signifie narratif")
 80

which in Madame Bovary, as in other novels, consists of the passage of the

main character from life to death.
Water imagery is also used oxtensively in episodes whero Emma seeks
to escape from the present A vast and empty expanse of water is often
used to represent the blankness of the future; Emma at first waits for the
void to be filled ("elle promenait sur la solitude de sa vie des yeux dcsesperes.
cherchant au loin quelque voile blanche dans les brumes de l'horizon", p
382) but with Rodolphe becomes accustomed to the vacuous monotony of
her dreams: "Copendant, sur 1'immensite de cet avenir qu'elle se faisait
apparaftre, rien de particuher ne surgissait: les jours, tous magnifiques, se

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ressemblaient comme des flots; et cela se balancait a rhorizon infini, harmo-
nieux, bleuatre et couvert de soleil" (p. 505). Better the blank emptiness of
the ocean than the dark constriction of the "corridor noir qui avait au fond
sa porte bien fermee" (p. 382) which is the future's other imagined form, for
over its smooth surface can waft a figurative "briso parfumde", more exotic
and loss disquieting than the "brisos do la mer" of the first scene: "Les bon-
heurs future, comme les rivages des tropiques, projettent sur 1'immensite qui
les precede leurs mollesses natales, uno brise parfumee, et Ton s'assoupit
dans cet enivrement, sans meme s'inquidter do l'horizon que Ton n'apercoit
pas". The "immensite" of the ocean which represents Emma's idealizing
vision of the future with Rodolphe is conjured up by her unlimited expecta-
tions, whilst that projected as a barrier between tho present and future
fulfilment with Leon grows out of a reluctance to come to terms with the
physical reality of erotic experience. In neither case, however, does Emma
have an inkling of tho turbulence of tho ocean she will finally be thrown upon
The known reality of the past, in contrast, is associated with the more
familiar and restricted confines of the river. The flowing water of La Rieule
continues to remind Emma of tho experiences it has almost taken part in:
"la riviere coulait toujours . . . Quels bons soleils ils avaient eusl Quelles
bonnes apres-midi, seuls, a l'ombre, dans lo fond du jardin!" (p. 437). In the
fourth scene the river both promotes and pictures the resurgence of past
experience, shared this time with Rodolphe: "La tendresse des anciens jours
leur revenait au coeur, abondante ot silenoieuse comme la riviere qui coulait".
But tho river undergoes tho same change as the ocean when, at the end.
Emma is "emporteo dans ses souvenirs, commo dans un torrent qui bouil-
lonne" (p. 606). Once again an imago suggesting something pleasing if
illusory gives way to one which evokes a harsh, painful experience.
The extensive figurative use made of water is facilitated and sanctioned
by its literal presence within the referential space of tho novel. On
one occasion the river itself is referred to. In the comparison "abondante
et silencieuse comme la riviere qui coulait" the definite article is anaphoric,34
pointing to a specific feature of the fictional world which has already been
described, whereas the river alluded to in the comparison "comme l'eau d'«?i
fleuve" does not set out to capitalize on tho diegetic*8 space of the novel
 81
Two interpretations of the first intra-diegetic comparison are possible. If
the passage in which it is found is viewed as the narrator's analysis of the
emotions of the characters, it is arguably yet another example of the curious
form of trespassing which occurs repeatedly in Madame Bovary. J. Neefs
has examined the large number of instances when the narrator draws for
the purpose of comparison upon thefictionalworld he has created, and which
contrast with the more routine type of comparison in which the "comparant"
has not been specifically mentioned in the novel (e.g., "sa conversation 6tait
plate comme un trottoir de rue"). The most important feature of the first
type of comparison is that the narrator moves out of the "univers de refe-
rence" which is his proper domain into the "univers de la di6gese" which

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he has created but where he has no right to be, with the result that the two
worlds become co-ordinated or confused.37 Much of the force of Neefe' argu-
ment is lost, however, if the comparison is attributed to character. In
the passage under discussion it is possible (but by no means certain) that
Flaubert wishes the reader to think that it is Emma herself who draws
upon the contiguous presence of the river for a "comparant" as she tries
to account to herself (though she would not necessarily be able to verbalize
her experience with the same skill) for the properties of the remembered
past. If this interpretation is put upon the passage, there is no question of
an "enjambement de la frontiere di6getique"M since Emma's consciousness,
unlike the narrator's, is not located beyond the limits of the diegetic
space. In the case of water imagery, however, most of the comparisons are
not intra-diegetic, adducing as a "comparant" a vague "ocean" or undefined
"fleuve" which, although they may be in keeping with the many watery
locations in the work, have not been previously described. Here again it is
often unclear to whom the image belongs, with the result that the narrator's
indistinct "univers de r&Krence" merges with the hazy mental horizons of
the characters, making the constant availability of water as a "comparant"
unexceptionable. Water, by a process of osmosis facilitated by persistent
ambiguity, passes from the level of "histoire" to that of "discours".89
The figurative possibilities of water, mobilized at the level of "discours",
allow the narrator to provide the reader with a subtle and inconspicuous
commentary on the heroine's predicament. The sequence of Emma's move-
ments in relation to water are made to suggest the heroine's progressive
involvement in erotic experience. In taking to water Emma is, however,
both fulfilling her erotic vocation and sealing her fate: she will be drowned
or drown herself in the element in which she must immerse herself to survive
The same problem is reflected in changes in the liquid which figuratively
fills Emma; sexual desire Uke alcoholic liquid cannot be bottled up indefinitely
but once it begins to flow it leaves inner reserves depleted, leads to an-
"ivresse" in which the self seeks annihilation and finally destroys from
within. The fire imagery which intensifies at the end of the novel when
Emma is "plus enflammee" (p. 582) and "brulee plus fort par cette flamme
 82

intime que 1'adultere avivait" (p. 588) makes her resemble Le Pere Tellier,
the first victim of Lheureux, who, in the apt if mixed metaphor of his perse-
cutor, "s'est calcine avec l'eau-de-vie" (p. 420). Embracing the polarities
of pleasure and pain, and life and death, the water imagery points to the
fundamental ambivalence of erotic experience which is the source of un-
trammelled delight with Rodolpe but leads inevitably to self-destruction.
It is also correlated with the central opposition of illusion and reality. Shim-
mering water sustains Emma's unreal expectations (her dreams of the
future) and in the form of a limpid river embodies her idealized interpretation
of her experience, past and present. But oceans become storm-wracked and
limpid waters either lower to reveal a muddy bed or turn livid, exposing

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sordid sensual reality. Against the illusions of youth and innocent sensuality
expressed in the image of Emma's licking drops of Curacao which delights
Charles are balanced the realities of physical decay and sensual corruption
symbolized by the black liquidflowingfromEmma's mouth after her death.
Taking on a wide variety of forms and appearances, and yet essentially the
same basic substance throughout, water both activates and allays the suspi-
cion that Emma's erotic experiences possess a monotonous sameness. Water
may be a common factor of these experiences, lending them the consistency
of pearls on a necklace, but this does not prevent each one from having an
individual colouring which emerges more clearly by virtue of the variations
projected onto common ground.

D. A. WILLIAMS
Hvll

NOTES
1
The initial project is outlined in a letter written in 1850 (Corretpondance, Conard,
II, 263): "Mon roman flamand de la jeune fille qui meurt vierge et mystique, entre son
pere et sa mere, dans une petite viUe de province, au fond d'un jardin plante de ohoux
et de quenouilles, au bord d'une riviere grande comme l'eau de Robeo."
1
All referenoes will be to the first volume of the Pleiade edition of the CEuvres de
Flaubert ed. A. Thibaudet and R. Dumesnil, 1951. The above quotation is from p. 334.
* They are mentioned in connection with Rosanette's new found beauty in Fontaine-
bleau: "II lui decouvrait enfin une beaute toute nouvelle, qui n'etait peut-etre que le
reflet des ohosea ambiantes, a moins que leurs virtuahtes secretes ne l'eussent fait
s'epanouir." Pleiade, II, p. 359.
4
Water imagery has been examined in detail in D.-L. Demorest, L'Expre&ston
figurie et symboltque dans I'oeuvre de Ousiave Flaubert, Conard, 1931, and J.-P. Riohard,
XAtterature et sensation, Seuil, 1954. The former comments on the "frequence exoeption-
nelle" of water images but does not investigate the symbolic function of literal descrip-
tions of water whilst the latter offers a brilliant analysis of the theme of fluidity in
Flaubert's work but is not specifically concerned with the final version of Madame
Bovary (many of the quotations are taken from the "nouvelle version" of the novel,
the Correspondance and other novels). M. Church, "A Triad of images: Nature in Madame
Bovary", Mosaic, Spring 1972, pp. 203-213 contrasts water imagery with two other
groupings of natural images (animal, vegetable).
 83
* P. Danger, Sensations et objets dans It roman de Flaubert, Armand Colin, 1973, p. 85
* Ibid., p. 88. Cf. R. Debray-Genette, "Du mode narratif dans les Trots Conies",
Litterature 2, 1971, 39-62 for a luoid discussion of "fooalisation".
* In "La figuration realiste", Poetique, 1973, p. 469, J. Neefs exposes "la tautologie
qui fait lire l'univers spatio-temporal du recit en congruence avec la psyohologie qu'il
a preoisement la fonotion de signifier", mauitauiing that it rests on the unfounded
assumption of "une primaute de la psyohologie". For a different view of the function
of description of. P. Bonnefis, "Flaubert: Un Deplacement du disoours critique", Litter-
ature, 1971, 2, 66.
* J. Culler (Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty, Paul Elek, 1974, p. 93) argues that in
a correct reading of the description of Charles' hat "ordinary symbolic interpretation
is excluded".
* Cf. R. Barthes, Essais critiques, Seuil, 1964, p. 232: "le meilleur moyen d'etre
indirect, pour un langage, c'est de se referer le plus constamment possible aux objects

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et non a leurs concepts: oar le sens de l'objet tremble toujours, non celui du oonoept."
10
The image is more explicit in an earlier version: "comma le vm d'une bouteille
dont lea flcelles sont coupees, l'amour de son coeur, si longtemps oontenu, partait tout
entier aveo des bouillonnements joyeux", Madame Bovary, NouveUe verston, ed. J.
Pommier and G. Leleu, J. Corti, 1949, p. 382.
11
C. Duohet ("Romans et objets", Europe, 1969, p. 195) argues that objeots are
organized in a similar way: "Honzontalement, dans le fil du recit, des objete reparaissent
ou se relaient, se changent de sens ou ohangent de signe, s'alterent."
11
L. Bopp (Commentaire sur Madame Bovary, La Baconniere, 1951, p. 157) desonbes
certain details of the second scene as those of "un miniaturiste myope" who "regarde
les chosea de plus pres qu'on ne le fait en general".
u
This comment appears m the first Sdnario, Madame Bovary, NouveUe version, p. 3
14
Flaubert is here drawing on the experience he described in a letter to Louise Colet.
"Je me rappelle . . . quelle dilation j'ai eue en aspirant de loin l'odeur salee de la mer."
Quoted
11
by Danger, op. cit., p. 62.
Immediately after the description of the pool Emma expresses an atypical aware-
ness of her wrong-doing ("J'ai tort, j'ai tort").
" L'Education senttmentale, p. 283. Richard, op. oit., p 136, has commented on the
link between the fish motif and the serpent motif: "le poisson s'msere, se ooule dans la
nappe hquide. . . On le reve meme permeable, frere du serpent dont le corps mime
l'ondulation de la vague et symbolise si souvent chez Flaubert la sinuosite molle du
desir." For a discussion of water imagery in L'Education senttmentale, cf. B. Masson.
"L'Eau et les reves dans L'Education sentimentale", Europe, 1969, pp. 82-100.
17
C. Duohet uses the phrase "une structure metonymique" in connection with the
opening scene of the novel in "Pour une socio-ontique ou variations sur un incipit",
Lttterature 1, 1971, 11.
18
The association between Emma and birds is made repeatedly.
" A complete list of examples of trembling oan be found in Demorest, op. oit ,
pp. 460-1
10
In the second scene the river "coulait sans bruit" and in the fourth it is described
as "silenoieuse". In the forest bcene "le silence etait partout" and in Rouen the sound
of the oars in the rowlocks "marquait le silence".
11
Cf. W. J. Kirton, "Flaubert's use of sound in Madame Bovary", FMLS XI, 1976,
42-3.
11
Limitations of space preclude a oompleto discussion of all the symbolic details
associated with water.
u
Madame Bovary, NouveUe version, p. 78.
M
The Bame flowers are brushed by Emma's sunshade as, careless and carefree, she
returns from La Mere Rollet's with Leon.
11
There is, of course, nothing particularly original about this image, of. G. Bachelard,
L'Eau et les rives, J. Corti, 1942, p. 118: "Les herbes retenues par les roseaux ne sont-
elles pas deja la ohevelure d'une morte?"
" Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7, 180-2.
•» Cf. G. Baohelard, op. cit., p. 136
" Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 7, 186.
 84
a
The opposition is found in Riohard, op. oit., p. 140. Cf. also Demorest who argues
(op. oit., p. 464) that water represents both "Venus la delectable" and "ce que l'amour
a de terrible et de funeste".
M
Op. cit., p. 112. Also of. Riohard, op. oit., p. 141: "La mort n'est qu'un acquiesce-
ment a cette maree hquide qui, tout du long, a soutenu a la fois et absorbe la vie."
n
Bachelard, op. cit., p. 112: "L'eau eat l'element de la mort jeune et belle, de la
mort fleurie."
" M. Churoh, art. oit., p. 213.
** Baohelard, op. oit., p. 116. The three coffins in whioh Emma is buried symbolize
the hypertrophy undergone by the process of dying in Madame Bovary.
11
Cf. Le Texte du roman, Mouton, 1970, p. 45: "Le roman se jouera dans le remplissage
vie-mort et ne sera qu'une inscription d'ecarts (de surprises) qui ne detrcusent pas la
oertitude de la boucle thematique vie-mort qui serre l'ensemble."
•* Cf. M. Maillard, "Anaphores et oataphores", Communications 19, 1972

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*• For the distinction between diegetio and extra-diegetio of. Neefs, art. oit., p. 470.
" Neefs, art. cit., p. 471: "Ces passages de la diegese au niveau de l'enonoiation sont
ce qui "naturalise" le reahsme, dans la mesure ou l'univers refere de la diegese est co-
ordonne (puisque oomparable) a l'univers de reference de la narration (et de la leoture)."
** Neefs, art. oit., 471: "De tels enjambements, discrete, de la frontiere diegetique,
ventables metalepses referentielles, la confortent, en ce que l'histoire y oonquiert bien
sa vraisemblance."
*• Cf. T. Todorov, "Les Categories du r6cit htteraire", Communications 8, p. 126:
"L'CBUVTO htteraire a deux aspeots: elle est en meme temps une histoire et un disoours.
Elle est histoire, dans oe sens qu'elle evoque une oertaine realite, des evenements qui
se seraient passes . . . Mais l'oeuvre est en mfime temps disoours: ll existe un narrateur
qui relate 1 histoire, et ll y a en faoe de lui un leoteur qui la percoit." For a discussion
of comparisons in the Trois Contes, of. R. Debray-Genette, op. oit., pp. 55-7.