Authors: Gustave Flaubert trans Lydia Davis
Madame Bovary (53 page)
| 26 | addressed her as tu: In French, tu is the informal, affectionate, or intimate form of the word “you,” as opposed to the formal vous . The distinction is disappearing, but even thirty years ago it was carefully preserved and complicated. Husband and wife might continue to address each other by the formal vous . An important stage in a friendship or love affair was marked by the change from vous to tu . Certain individuals, of a particular age and class, would never abandon the formal vous , except when addressing a child. |
| 26 | bodice: The upper part of a woman’s dress, covering the body from the neck to the waistline or just below. |
| 27 | Cauchois headdress: At the time of this story, the Caux region, like every other region of France, had its own typical costumes, including women’s headdresses, and the latter were particular to each individual town and even village. |
| 28 | Dictionary of Medical Science: This is the Dictionnaire des sciences médicales , edited by Charles-Louis-Fleury Panckoucke and published in Paris in twenty-five volumes (1812–22). |
| 28 | whose pages were uncut: Until fairly recently, books in France were customarily sold with their pages uncut (i.e., the printed sheets making up the book were folded, sewn together, and bound, but their edges were not cut). Slicing through the edges of the pages with a knife—as one sat in a café, for instance—used to be a happy ritual to perform before one could begin reading the book. Here, of course, the implication is that none of the books’ many owners had ever read them. |
| 28 | espaliered apricots: That is, apricot trees trained to grow flat against a wall. |
| 28 | boc … tilbury: The word boc is from the Norman patois, or dialect, and refers to a little open cabriolet, or light, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage. The tilbury , another type of light, two-wheeled carriage, had recently been introduced from England and was considered very fashionable. In those days one’s fortune and elegance were easily measured by the luxury of one’s carriage and horse or pair of horses. |
| 29 | scarf he wore around his head: See note to p. 13. |
| 29 | guard stone: A stone set close to a wall, at the corner of a building or next to a gate or door, to protect it from being damaged by a passing carriage. In French it is called a borne , which is also the word for “milestone,” from its resemblance to the latter. |
| 29 | highway: This word is used along with “big road” or “main road” throughout the novel to mean the road that connected the surrounding villages and towns and the city of Rouen. |
| 29 | like a man … after dinner: The French for this curious comparison is comme ceux qui mâchent encore, après dîner, le goût des truffes qu’ils digèrent. Comparing Charles’s blissful “ruminations” (the word “ruminate” also means, with respect to a cow, chewing its cud—that is, something already swallowed) with the aftertaste of a truffle is certainly an antiromantic gesture on Flaubert’s part. Not to everyone’s taste, and yet highly esteemed by some and very expensive, truffles are strongly flavored blackish fungi that grow on the roots of oak trees and are sniffed out by specially trained dogs and pigs. They have many culinary uses, being shaved over pastas or salads, combined with roast meats or cheeses, or, where a working farmer hunts them for himself, simply mixed into an omelet. |
| 29 | muffs: In cold weather, in addition to wearing gloves or mittens, a woman might carry a muff—that is, a warm, tubular covering, often made of fur—either to keep her hands warm or merely as a fashion accessory. |
| 30 | Paul and Virginia: A love story by Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre published in 1788. The story is set on the Isle of France (now Mauritius) in the Indian Ocean, depicted as a paradise far from corrupt civilization. The two young lovers are doomed: Virginia dies in a shipwreck, and Paul then dies of grief. The story, highly romantic and very popular, became enduringly famous. |
| 30 | Mademoiselle de La Vallière: Louise Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc de La Vallière (1644–1710), mistress of Louis XIV from the age of seventeen, bore him four children. She was eventually replaced in his affections and retired to a Carmelite convent, becoming celebrated for her piety. |
| 30 | catechism: A manual of religious instruction in Christian doctrine consisting of questions and answers to be memorized. |
| 31 | Abbé Frayssinous’s Lectures: Abbé Denis de Frayssinous (1765–1841) is famous chiefly for the lectures he gave at Notre-Dame and other churches in Paris and for his instrumental part in the religious revival during the Restoration (1814–30). |
| 31 | The Genius of Christianity: A defense of Christianity by François-René de Chateaubriand against attacks by French Enlightenment philosophers and revolutionary politicians. Its publication in 1802 made Chateaubriand one of the most important writers in France. His writings, full of melancholy, exotic description of nature, and evocative language, were highly influential on nineteenth-century French culture generally; specifically, he is considered a founder or forerunner of romanticism in French literature, which flourished under the Restoration. |
| 32 | postilions killed at every stage: In the period during which Madame Bovary takes place, one form of long-distance travel was by stagecoach: a fare was paid for a seat in the coach; the coach was pulled by one or more pairs of horses; the tired horses were exchanged for fresh horses at relay stages, where there would be an inn with stables; postilions were men who rode one of the front horses to guide the team. |
| 32 | Walter Scott: Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), a Scottish poet and novelist of the Romantic period, was an important influence on the development of the historical novel. |
| 32 | ogives: An ogive is a diagonal arch or rib across a Gothic vault; it is one of the characteristic features of Gothic architecture. |
| 32 | Mary Stuart … Joan of Arc, Héloïse, Agnès Sorel, La Belle Ferronnière, and Clémence Isaure: Mary Stuart was better known as Mary Queen of Scots (1542–87), the only child of James V of Scotland; because of her strong claim to the throne of England, she was a threat to her half sister Elizabeth I, who eventually had her put to death. Joan of Arc, a heroine of French history, led her army to victory against the English in Orléans in 1429 while still a girl and was subsequently burned by the English as a witch. Héloïse (1101–64), a beautiful and learned woman, became known for the love letters she wrote to her husband and former tutor, the philosopher Pierre Abélard, after they were forcibly separated; she had entered a nunnery and he a monastery. Agnès Sorel (c. 1422–50), the politically powerful mistress of Charles VII of France, was said to have been poisoned by the dauphin, Louis XI. La Belle Ferronnière was the nickname of one of the mistresses of François I; he was devastated by her sudden death. Clémence Isaure, a wealthy fifteenth-century patroness of poetry in the Languedoc region of France, though she has statues in Toulouse and Paris, appears to have been purely legendary. |
| 32 | Saint-Louis … Bayard dying … Louis XI’s ferocities … Saint Bartholomew, the Béarnais’s plume … Louis XIV: Saint Louis, or Louis IX (1214–70), was a pious, ascetic, and diplomatic king of France, 1226–70; he was said to have held court and delivered judgments sitting under a large oak in the forest of Vincennes. Pierre du Terrail de Bayard (1474–1524) was a French military hero who died in battle. Louis XI (1423–83) became king of France (1461–83) after many years of rebellion and intrigue as dauphin (see Agnès Sorel above). Saint Bartholomew was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus; the reference here is probably to the famous Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre (August 24, 1572), in which large numbers of Huguenots, or French Protestants, were killed and which resulted in the resumption of civil war in France. The popular Henri IV, first of the Bourbon kings, nicknamed “the Béarnais,” led his troops into battle (most notably at the victorious Battle of Ivry in 1590) with a snow-white plume on his helmet. Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” was a lavish patron of the arts and literature; his long reign (1643–1715) saw a great flowering of French civilization; see also note to p. 30 on Mademoiselle de La Vallière. |
| 32 | keepsake: In English in the original. |
| 32 | New Year’s gifts: The custom, in France, of giving gifts on New Year’s Day began as early as the thirteenth century and did not die out until late in the nineteenth, when it was supplanted by gift giving on Christmas Day. |
| 33 | ladies: In English in the original. |
| 33 | Turkish slippers: Boots or shoes with a very long, pointed toe. |
| 33 | Giaours: From the Turkish giaur , “unbeliever,” a scornful term once applied by Turks to infidels—that is, usually, Christians. |
| 33 | Argand lamp: A lamp invented in the late eighteenth century that burned whale oil and gave a brighter light than earlier oil lamps. It was the lamp of choice until it was replaced by the cheaper kerosene lamp c. 1850. |
| 33 | hackney cab: The equivalent of today’s taxi. |
| 33 | Lamartinean meanderings: That is, reveries in the style of Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine (1790–1869), a poet, writer, and statesman regarded as the first truly romantic poet in French literature. His subjects were nature, religion, and love, all subjectively presented. Flaubert scorned him: in one letter to Louise Colet, he remarked, “We must look to wellsprings —Lamartine is no more than a faucet.” In another he referred to Lamartine’s verses as “garbage.” |
| 34 | post chaise: A four-wheeled traveling carriage with, usually, a closed body seating two to four persons. It was either hired from stage to stage or drawn by horses hired from stage to stage, and the driver or postilion rode on one of the horses. For those who could afford them, they were speedy and convenient. |
| 35 | cottage: In English in the original. |
| 35 | pellets of bread crumbs: These pellets were used to erase charcoal drawings. |
| 36 | mouth-rinsing bowls: Bowls containing warm, flavored water presented at the end of the meal for rinsing the mouth and the fingers. They were considered a refinement reserved for high society. |
| 38 | barrier ditch: This is saut-de-loup in the original; also called a “ ha-ha,” it is a fence placed in a deep ditch so that from a distance there is no apparent break in the meadow. This passage is one of those in which Flaubert abruptly switches tense from past to present, as though to imply that his landscape is real and still exists today. Proust saw these sudden irruptions of the present tense as signaling a more enduring reality. |
| 38 | prunella-cloth shoes: Prunella is a heavy woolen fabric used for the uppers of boots and shoes. Prunella shoes were softer than leather but good only for summer wear. |
| 38 | barouches: A barouche was a fashionable four-wheeled carriage with a driver’s seat high in front, two double seats inside facing each other, and a top that folded accordion-style over the backseat. |
| 39 | Djali: Emma’s dog is evidently named after a pet goat that figures in Victor Hugo’s novel Notre-Dame de Paris (1831; The Hunchback of Notre-Dame ). |
| 39 | lancet: A small, sharp, flat-bladed surgical instrument used for bloodletting, vaccinations, and small incisions. |
| 40 | in front of the apron: The apron of a carriage was a piece of waterproof cloth attached in front of the driver’s seat as a protection from rain or mud. |
| 40 | park: The private grounds attached to a château or prosperous country house, usually including lawns, woodland, and pasture. Access to the house would be along what the French would call an avenue , which Henry James would also have called an avenue, and which we would describe as a drive or road. Within the park would be allées , or alleys—walks bordered by trees or bushes. |
| 40 | decorated: That is, having medals or ribbons denoting various honors either in their buttonholes or pinned to their jackets. |
| 40 – 41 | “Jean-Antoine … 1693”: Although the names are fictitious, the battles did actually take place. |
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