Thoughts on Ethan and Emma

I'm actually going to start with Emma.

First off, let me begin by saying that no, I am not speaking of Emma Watson, Emma Thompson or Emma Woodhouse. I am speaking of Emma Bovary from (you guessed it) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert. For those who don't know the book, I'll give you a Reader's Digest version of the plot. (Spoilers ahead.)

Emma is married to one Charles Bovary, a doctor, who, with his wife, lives a rather provincial life in France. The story revolves around her loathing of her existence (most importantly, her husband), and she expresses this loathing through a mild shopping addiction (which racks up a ridiculous amount of debt) and subsequent affairs, all of which turn out sour in the end. When her debt is made known to her town, and everyone knows the tax collectors are coming, she figures the best possible way out is suicide. So, she takes some arsenic and the rest is...the end of the novel.

Why am I talking about this book? Well, one reason is because I feel so proud of myself that I actually finished it, and I feel I need to discuss it in some way. Two, I need everyone to know how sick and tired of these pathetic women who are the stars of literature. Emma is constantly selfish and unsatisfied and naïve. Throughout the novel, the narrator tells us of her boredom and her abhorrence for her husband. Charles may not be a hero from a book, but he’s a good man who takes care of her. I just feel like she wants so much more than what she has, and she’ll hurt anyone to get it. Parts of her remind of (don’t judge me for the comparison) Bella Swan from the Twilight series. Her decisions are always the most important, everything is about Bella. In the series, these men fall for a girl who quite literally has no redeeming qualities. She’s not even supposed to be beautiful. Yet she has two men who are willing to do anything for her. Emma is the same way. She may be gorgeous, but she treats her husband and her second affair so terribly that I don’t understand why they love her so. Maybe that’s just how real life is.

Just because, here is one of my favorite quotes from the book. I wish a man could write something like this about me one day.

"With her ever-changing moods, by turns brooding and gay, chattering and silent, fiery and casual, she aroused in him a thousand desires, awakening instincts or memories. She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague "she" of all the poetry books."

I don’t have too much to say about Ethan Frome. If you haven’t read it, please do. (No Reader’s Digest version here; I want you to actually read it.) It’s an amazing book, short and easy to read, but worth it nonetheless. All I have to say on this one is how incredibly, torturously sad it is. The story seriously has one of the most horrible endings I’ve ever read, because nobody ends up happy. Everyone is miserable. All three of the main characters are stuck forever in this existence that constantly reminds them of the erroneous choices they’ve all made.