A Good Read: Redeeming the Cliché, Flaubert’s Way

“‘It’s because I love you,’ she would interrupt. ‘I love you so much that I can’t do without you—you know that, don’t you? Sometimes I want so much to see you that it tears me to pieces. ‘Where is he?’ I wonder. ‘Maybe he’s with other women. They’re smiling at him, he’s going up close to them …’ Tell me it isn’t true! Tell me you don’t like any of them! Some of them are prettier than I am but none of them can love you the way I do. I’m your slave and your concubine! You’re my king, my idol! You’re good! You’re beautiful! You’re wise! You’re strong!’
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“He had had such things said to him so many times that none of them had any freshness for him. Emma was like all his other mistresses; and as the charm of novelty gradually slipped from her like a piece of her clothing, he saw revealed in all its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion, which always assumes the same forms and always speaks the same language. He had no perception—this man of such vast experience—of the dissimilarity of feeling that might underlie similarities of expression. Since he had heard those same words uttered by loose women or prostitutes, he had little belief in their sincerity when he heard them now: the more flowery a person’s speech, he thought, the more suspect the feelings, or lack of feelings, it concealed.”

—from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Francis Steegmuller (1957)

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Emma Bovary is not impartial to clichés. When she declares her passion for the tall, dark, and handsome Rodolphe, the prince she assumes will save her from her monotonous marriage to the aloof and unassuming Charles Bovary, she emits stock, flat phrases such as “tears me to pieces” and “I can’t do without you.” Flaubert’s use of such clichés might betray Emma’s lack of development as a character—but therein lies his trick!

Flaubert writes Emma rose-colored clichés to characterize her as a hopeless romantic and her desperation as child-like. Though her clichés do not impress Rodolphe, Flaubert will not say directly “he is not impressed.” Instead, he sets Emma’s language against Rodolphe’s playboy ways: all his other lovers—which include prostitutes and loose women—have said the same things!

Thus Flaubert encourages us as writers not to be afraid of clichés. Even the master embraced them and used them to fabricate characters, dialogue, and situations. Next time you see a cliché, do not assume it is a fault. Instead, entertain the idea that it is developing a character or plot. The writer may be channeling the spirit of Flaubert. —Kimberly MacCormack