Mœurs de province: Essai d'analyse bakhtinienne de Madame Bovary (review)

Helge Vidar Holm's new study on Mœurs de province, the subtitle of what is likely to be considered Gustave Flaubert's best-known novel, Madame Bovary, is a refreshing addition to critical debate in the field of Flaubert Studies. Referencing numerous editions of the novel, Holm demonstrates that even though Flaubert insisted on using a subtitle for his work (he added it to the publisher's copy in his own hand), later editions of the novel continued mysteriously to omit it. Further, Holm affirms this absence in an informative section at the end of the text in which he reproduces the covers of several editions of Flaubert's novel, with and without the subtitle. To this end, it turns out that "Mœurs de Province" is much more than a Balzacien allusion to the local color of rural life, or an attempt to highlight the juxtaposition between Emma's desire to be a "grande dame" and her social station as wife of a poor country doctor. For Holm, this subtitle has a direct correlation with the language of the provinces and its impact on the novel.

Drawing from Claude Duchet's observations on the signification of the subtitle in two different articles ("Discours social et texte italique dans Madame Bovary" in Langages de Flaubert (1976) and "Étranges mœurs de province" in Le magazine littéraire (2006)), Holm adds his own interpretive twist to the importance of Flaubert's choice of subtitle by approaching it through the work of Mikhaïl Bakhtine. Specifically, Holm utilizes Bakhtine's notion of dialogisme as a critical lens that highlights the metatextual dialog between Madame Bovary and Mœurs de Province, a unique perspective discernible from the very title of Holm's text that promotes for the first time the subtitle to a position similar to that of the title of the novel itself. For Holm, this change is paramount to his argument on the importance of the subtitle, which describes, as he states: "[. . .] l'importance cruciale des mœurs langagières sur lesquelles le romancier normand fonde sa critique de la société de l'époque" (3). In this case, it is not just Emma's penchant for transposing the fictive onto the real that impedes her progress in society, but also the language she uses that is an integral part of her character, as well as of the novel itself.

Dividing his study into three distinct parts: "Le texte dialogique," "Les dimensions axiologique et temporelle," and "Le destinataire," Holm guides his readers logically into what would otherwise present a labyrinth of nebulous critical perspectives from notable scholars, past and present, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Ricœur, Ferdinand de Saussure, Tzvetan Todorov, and many others. However, this organization of the text also helps the reader to discern what is perhaps Holm's most significant contribution to the importance of Mœurs de Province: the possibility that the target at which Flaubert aims in his subtitle is not merely the dichotomy between cities and provinces, but also, especially, the language that permeates these spheres. To this end, Holm suggests that Emma is a porte-parole of the clichés and stereotypes that populate the language she employs throughout Flaubert's text, a fictional character who should not be criticized for her use of these hackneyed expressions, but who is rather a mise en oœuvre of their examination. In Mœurs de province, Holm proposes that Emma's discourse originates, as she herself does, from the province of Normandy. As a result, according to Bakhtine's analogy, her speech is recuperated and directed at someone else, le destinataire. It is through this process, akin to a recycling of language, that Emma becomes the focal point for an interrogation of the linguistic cliché that goes beyond the character's futile quest for an idealized happiness, and into the discursive realm.

Indeed, Holm's impressive research and...