Madame Bovary, Critique, and Writing

Today, for like the third time this month, my professor in my CSCL class went on a tirade about Baudelaire and Flaubert. Okay, tirade is unfair - that makes it sound like he doesn't have a point. He does have a point - it's just a very angry, bitter one.

In the realm of culture, we've been talking about how, allegedly, writers such as Baudelaire and Flaubert are hypocrites. They are not writing a critique of bourgeois life - instead, they pull towards preferring Romantic fiction over modern life. Though a student in my class argued that by showing crisis, that having love fail and Bovary die and torment and tormenting that they are working through this crisis of modern live versus Romantic fiction. My professor disagreed and instead said that Flaubert despised his audience and that his prose was designed to be mistaken for realism, that the "novel in the end is about the creation of beautiful sentences" and "opaque prose, free of indirect discourse" with an omniscient narrator that is actually prejudiced by the characters. What seems to be a critique actually trumps us, tricks us, and is not what it seems to be.

This is the point in my notes where I wrote: OMG... how the hell can I be a novelist with this shit?

Now, I haven't read Baudelaire. And I don't recall much of Madame Bovary, unfortunately - it was one of those novels I tried reading during AP Literature my senior year in high school and I just didn't have the time to actually read it - it was sadly more of a skimming process. Yes, I know, shame on me. Senior year was a nightmare, though. Point is, I can't really argue whether or not Flaubert writes in such a way. What I can argue is what I know as a writer. And boy, oh, boy - do I dislike what my professor has to say.

For one, what writer actually hates his audience? Who DOES that? Okay, so Flaubert might have, I don't actually know. But here's the point that another student made that I really agree with - at least with our personal interpretation of the novel, does it matter what Flaubert thinks, what he was aiming at, what he was trying to do? Not so much - what matters is what we come away with. And if we think that it happens to show a different message than what Flaubert intended, we can reshape it's purposes. Our professor agreed with this in a "yes, but..." kind of way, and then went on a tangent about Ulysses, which I didn't understand because I haven't read it yet (sometimes I feel like the only person in that class who hasn't read every classic novel ever, but I think that's just me. Nevertheless, I feel like I'm failing in some way. But please tell me when I'm supposed to have time to read it).

For another, does our endless critiquing of EVERYTHING really get us anywhere? Does insulting Baudelaire and Flaubert really help us get a better understanding of culture? I don't think so. What happens when we feel like we have to critique everything all the time and we can't just ENJOY something any more?  I'm worried that I won't be able to read a novel now without wondering if it's just trying to sweep me off to a fantasy world and make me forget about present reality (which it of course it's doing in some ways - isn't that the point? But apparently that's a terrible thing now...) According to my professor, there's something wrong with "art for art's sake" - but is it, REALLY? In every situation, at all times? I don't think so. I'm sure my professor would have really good come-backs for all of this, and maybe he's right... but I just feel like I'm being pushed towards the whole "everything you know is wrong" - which is NOT what I understood cultural studies to be, when I started this excursion in my past classes.

Also, I have a personal motivation in this topic. If I write a book and I am so lucky and blessed as to have it published and people actually read it, the first person to tell me that I am not realistically portraying life is going to get smacked. THERE'S A REASON I'M WRITING IT THE WAY I AM. And I certainly don't hate my audience. Maybe, in just a few situations, things need to be unrealistic. I don't care if I'm the only CSCL student in the world who will defend fantasy and sci-fi and the purpose of some fiction, but GODDAMN, the only thing I want to do right now is sit back and watch Doctor Who instead of wondering if my writing is actually destroying the world because I'm just perpetuating stereotypes and running away from problems instead of working through them. Well, I can't watch Doctor Who tonight - so this is one problem I'm just going to have to think through.

But as of right now - I still think I'm right :P