[madame bovary and the failure of language]

Today I enjoyed a treat; I was whisked off to the Grayshott pottery for some wonderful coffee and a chat. It's a working pottery and all the cups and plates used in the cafe are all made there. It felt "authentic." When my companion left to order our drinks, I surreptitiously plucked out my now battered copy of Madame Bovary. It was purely fate that I read a particular passage while mulling over the cafe surroundings - fountain, flowers, seat cushions, table cloths, assorted pottery cups, mugs, teapots etc..., and two windows providing lengthy views of work tables, handiwork, and ovens - seemingly faithful to my concept of a working pottery. Emma is reading a letter from her father: "She stood a few minutes with the rough paper in her hands, following the kindly thoughts which went cackling through the tangle of spelling mistakes like a hen half-hidden in a thorn hedge" (184). On the one hand, Emma is reflecting on the thoughts of her half-illiterate father. One the other hand, Emma is implying the inadequacy of language to represent. Seemingly at odds with the "realism" of the time, Emma is hinting (with despair?) at the inability of language to properly or accurately communicate. Here, Emma is sharing with us, in what can be termed a modernist approach, the fact that language shapes our world(s). That language is analagous to a cackling hen not only reduces language to a primal/animalistic trait, but accentuates the always already guiding subjectivity of any language use: the hen is half-ridden after all. Perhaps there is an element of hope then, being only half-ridden, that humans might still "strum out tunes to make a bear dance, when we would move the stars to pity" (203). However, dancing bears instead of twinkling stars reduces not only the experience of the event but suggests, again, that language cannot be faithful or authentic to "real" life.