I Am Love and Solaris

I Am Love

I Am Love shared many common threads with Madame Bovary. Both convey the darker, more sinister nature of desire; they show the way desire can distort your perspective and result in serious, sometimes fatal consequences. In I Am Love, Eduardo and Betta both suffer the consequences of their mother’s desire; In Madame Bovary, Berthe is the ultimate victim. Class is an underlying issue in both plotlines, with Recchi resenting it and Bovary yearning for it.

Emma Bovary and Emma Recchi are fundamentally very similar. They are obligated to uphold a particular class and image that they internally resent to others in their social group. Both are stuck in marriages to miserable men who lack any sort of attractive qualities. Charles might as well have been a mannequin and Tancredi doesn’t exactly possess a broad collection of positive attributes. Emma longs for a more passionate love affair, and Antonio enchants her instantly. Some of the lengths she goes to simply to run into him are embarrassing and slightly creepy. Emma Recchi was a cougar on the prowl in the purest sense of the term.

Emma doesn’t want to be one of the Recchi wives anymore. She’s under the spell of the ‘grass-is-greener’ syndrome and desperately wants to leave the Recchi’s decadent estate for Antonio’s simple, secluded country house. Emma allows her desire to destroy her family and relationships from the inside out. Her relationship with Eduardo was at stake and she treated it with an indelicate hand. I do not fault her for desiring something better for herself, but I do resent that she abandoned her family in a state of distress. Eduardo’s death was at her hands and her betrayal was a selfish one.

Solaris

Solaris is specifically concerned with melancholia and it perfectly demonstrated the theme of death as the only means to end the suffering caused by insatiable desire. Each member of the crew has a visitor, a phantom copy of a loved one or relative whose absence haunts him or her.  Rheya reappears as a mirror of some part of Chris Kelvin’s brain. She is a phantom onto whom Chris can project his idealized image of her. However, parts of his memory still taint the image, as shown by her defiance and suicidal tendencies.

One recollection of Rheya’s stands out in my memory – the memory of her imaginary friend Mikashelli. Rheya’s mother would only speak to her through Mikashelli, who lived under the wallpaper in the corner of her bedroom. Rheya knew that her friend was imaginary, but she still counted on it as a means of communication with her mother. It may have seemed silly, but it allowed for an exchange that would not have otherwise been able to happen. In the same way, Chris uses the phantom as a vehicle for communication. He knows that Rheya is contrived from his imagination, but it’s the only way he knows to communicate with her and her memory.

Something that caught my attention was that at the beginning of the movie, Rheya describes their apartment together as having no pictures or decorations on the wall, not even on the fridge.  However, there is a photo of Rheya on the wall in the abortion fight scene, shortly after her death, and in the final scene when they are reunited in death or something in between. If Rheya were a projection of Chris’s memory, wouldn’t she know that there are pictures on the wall?

The phantom of Dr. Gibarian's son haunts Kelvin as his own aborted child. In the scene where Kelvin chooses to stay on the station instead of going back to earth with Gordon, the little boy approaches him and holds his hand. We are then transported back to Chris’s apartment, where he lives with Rheya. In the last scene, he cuts his finger and it heals itself while he runs it under water. He, like Rheya, is no longer human. If Chris is a phantom now as well, then whose memory are they mirroring? Is Solaris a planet that fulfills your desire? Must you exchange your humanity in order to unite the idealized image of desire with the seeming reality?

Madame Bovary: Parts II and III

Madame Bovary: Parts II & III

The theme of love as an illness has continuously appeared in the reading we’ve done so far. After receiving Rodolphe’s letter, Charles is certain that the apricots initially brought on Emma’s illness. For the next few months, Emma is on the brink of death, afflicted by some psychosomatic disease. She only begins to come out of it when she attempts to fill the void that Rodolphe left with religion. At one point in Act II, the narrator describes her faith as a sort of romance in itself: “When she knelt at her Gothic prie-dieu, she would address the Lord with the same sweet words she used to murmur to her lover in the ecstatic transports of her adultery.” (p.188)

As Emma began to feel better, Charles resolved to take her to the Opera to lift her spirits. The choice of opera was interesting, because Lucia Di Lammermoor is a story about a woman who marries the wrong man and ultimately kills her husband and herself and her lover commits suicide. I thought this was kind of a neat way for Flaubert to drop a hint to foreshadow Emma’s suicide.

The blind beggar appears several times throughout the novel; I took him to be a representation of what Emma had become on the inside. He sings of ‘birds, sunshine, and green leaves’ but the song is coming from a scary place, much like Emma has beautiful and decadent dreams, but they originate in a part of her that might be a bit darker than the rest. His blindness conveys Emma’s inability to see the effect she is having on the people around her – she is a woman controlled by desire. I found his last song as Emma dies especially interesting,

“How the warmth of the sun above

Makes a pretty young girl dream of love.”

The warmth and the sun are representative of the light at the end of the tunnel – relief after years of being confined to a dark, unalterable path. She was so consumed by the weight of her desires that the only way she could see to relieve the pain was death. Only in death, upon the release of her desires, is Emma able to dream of love again. Charles has Emma buried in her wedding dress, a reminder that the first time she put the dress on, she started dying. It’s only fitting that she wear it to the grave.

Charles and Justin react very emotionally to Emma’s death; both weep at length. These characters were the two that never obtained their object of desire and satiated their thirst. Charles was far too plain to capture his wife’s attention and Justin spent years watching from the sidelines, never having the courage to approach Emma about his affection. Their strong response is a sharp contrast to the lackluster reactions of Rodolphe and Leon, both of whom had acquired Emma’s love. Neither cried and both got a full night’s sleep after they were told of her death.

This showcases the elusive nature of desire. Rodolphe and Leon have both realized how empty the illusion of Emma Bovary is and feel no despair at the loss. Justin and Charles, however, are still clinging to that illusion. They will be haunted by a certain sense of melancholia long after she’s gone. Charles discovers Rodolphe’s letter to Emma and discounts it. When he finds the rest of the incriminating letters between Emma and her lovers, he does not resent her for it, but rather blames it on fate. In Charles’ eyes, Emma Bovary walks on clouds and can do no wrong, even long after her death. 

Madame Bovary: Part I

On the first page, Charles is a child at school. Instead of throwing his hat to the floor like the other students, he holds it in his lap. When the teacher tells him to, “get rid of that helmet of yours”, he once again chooses to hold it in his lap. This is interesting because there is a constant battle between the head and the heart; it’s a matter of logical thinking versus passion and desire. A hat covers the head, which can indicate a blinding of logical thinking. Despite attempts by the teacher to make him let go of his hat, he refuses – not out of stubbornness, but simply because he is confused and doesn’t know what else to do. In keeping the ‘helmet’, Charles is condemning himself to a life ruled by his heart’s desire. He is choosing to remain blind to logic, which is in large part, the reason he stays in a miserable relationship with Emma when she clearly does not return his love.

Emma and Charles are invited to a party at Vaubyessard and Emma is ecstatic to rub elbows with the upper class. She meticulously plans her outfit and basks in every single decadent second of the party. On their way home, Charles finds a cigar box dropped by what Emma thinks is the vicomte she had waltzed with at the party.  The cigar box is used as a means to contrast Emma’s dream with her reality. The vicomte, an image of class and wealth, dropped the lavish cigar case with two cigars inside. He doesn’t turn back for it or show any signs of distress over his loss; after all, what is a cigar case to a vicomte? On the other hand, when Charles discovers the last two cigars in the box, he is quite pleased, telling Emma that they will save them for a treat after dinner. What the ordinary Charles considers a treat is trivial and almost instantly forgotten by the exotic vicomte.  

The cigar box that Charles finds on the way out of the party at Vaubyessard is lined with green silk and embroidered with a coat of arms. Satin and silk are generally associated with luxury and the coat of arms Emma described is reminiscent of the monogrammed coats of the wealthier guests at the party. The color of the fabric is interesting because green is traditionally considered to be the color of greed and envy. The object itself is a box, which is used to contain and hold something.

Emma keeps the cigar box hidden away, only indulging in it when she’s alone. It contains her dreams and her desires, and in turn Emma herself. It holds all of her fantasies about afternoons in Paris and luxurious balls, but because she has confined all of these desires, she has also confined herself. Emma has no choice but to live with Charles as her husband and to only enjoy snippets of her dreams when she can sneak time alone because women weren’t afforded a great degree of independence in the 1800s. Her desires are out of her own control, as is her fate, which is usually defined by the men in her life.

It seems like Emma is always staring out the window, with her forehead pressed to the glass. In the early days of their courtship, Charles sees Emma staring outside and later in the novel, she would always go to the window to watch Leon come and go from her house. At the party at Vaubyessard, the windows shatter and Emma glances outside. She sees peasants on the other side and turns back to the party. Additionally, Emma and Rodolphe stand by a window to watch the speech at the agricultural fair. The windows are a barrier between Emma and what she wants, much like the door between Melibea and Calisto. She can see the other side, where there are parties with dancing and delectable dinners, but she can only be a spectator. She can always see how much greener the grass is on the other side, but she has no means to get there. At the party, the window shatters. She is on 'the other side' and when she sees the peasants outside, she turns away.

I’m not sure the lack of character empathy I’m feeling for Emma is Flaubert’s intention. He does not paint her in an overly positive light – she is generally negative, bitter, and resentful. She is unaffectionate towards her daughter and colder than ice towards her husband, Charles. I’m curious to know the extent of Charles’ understanding of Emma’s situation. He is portrayed as a patient, loving husband who cherishes his wife dearly. It would be interesting to see things from his perspective, though. Would his love for Emma blind him to her bitterness and unhappiness? Or, perhaps he is in the same boat as Emma, but she is too absorbed in her own dismal state to notice. 

Celestina: Acts 11-21

Celestina, like desire, has a way of seeping into the lives of everyone from street sweepers to kings. Sometimes her presence is welcome, and others not, but there is no avoiding Celestina. Throughout the course of the play, Celestina is given a unique description by each member of the cast.  This communicates the elusive nature of desire, as it can be interpreted in an endless variety of ways. It affects each person differently, but none truly understand it. Desire is also fickle, and so each character’s opinion of Celestina changes with their moods and circumstances.

Initially, Alisa welcomes Celestina into her home, but several acts later she bans Melibea from seeing her again – a rather dramatic shift in opinion over the course of a few days.  Similarly, Melibea is cold and unwelcoming towards Celestina in the fifth act, but later when Celestina returns, she praises her abilities and pleads for her to work her magic. This pattern fits nicely into the model of desire as being a series of attracting and repelling forces; to be pushed away from something is to desire it that much more. Melibea goes through phases of denying her desire for Calisto, then giving in to it, only to be pushed away again by her mother, father, and Lucrecia. All of this social foreplay builds her desire for Calisto until she is completely at the mercy of Celestina and desire.

As soon as Calisto receives news that Melibea wants to meet, he gives Celestina a chain in reward. The image of a chain can symbolize restriction and control. Once Calisto knows that Melibea reciprocates his interest, he gives himself fully to desire and allows it to control him. It is significant that the gift of the chain is to Celestina, who signifies desire, instead of Melibea, Calisto’s perceived object of desire.  Although Calisto claims that he essentially wants to worship Melibea and do only her will, this is not what he truly desires. He truly wants to be a slave to desire, not to Melibea.

A parallel could be drawn between Calisto’s chain and Melibea’s girdle in the sense that both gave in to desire and let it claim control of them. The girdle can be representative of confinement and restriction, just as the chain and both were given over to Celestina.

The young lovers meet twice and end up having sex during the second visit. Obtaining his object of desire only makes Calisto more confused, and on his walk home he asks himself, “But what is it I am demanding? What am I asking, crazed, impatient? What never was nor can be.” (Act XIV, Scene 7, p. 196) At this point, he’s realizing that what he thought he desired wasn’t what he wanted at all.

As soon as he obtains what he believes that he desires, he’s overcome with shame, referring to his actions as a clandestine crime. It is interesting that Celestina dies almost immediately after Calisto and Melibea have sex. It seems to be indicative of Calisto’s desire fizzling out as soon as he realizes that sex with Melibea was not what he truly desired. Once the illusion is shattered, so too is Celestina’s life. 

Elicia and Areusa plot to have Centurio murder Calisto and his servants in retribution for the deaths of Parmeno and Sempronio. In the midst of the chaos caused by being startled, Calisto falls to his death from the garden wall, shattering his skull on the ground. Melibea is overcome with agony in his death and runs to the tower, where she confesses her sins to her father before jumping to her death. Melibea is the only one to have a full confession before her death – the other characters merely shout “Confession!” Pleberio is given the final word, where he mourns the death of his daughter. At this point, every character that understood Calisto and Melibea’s relationship has passed and Pleberio is the only living character that knows the true story. Furthermore, Pleberio was remarkably unaffected by Celestina throughout the course of the play, so giving him the last words seemed peculiar to me.