Madame Bovary #3

There was a strange detail in chapter 6 when Flaubert talked about the women Emma admired. They include Joan of Arc, Heloise, Agnes, Sorel, La Belle Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure buecause of how the "shone out like comets against the lack immensity of history". The strange thing is that Heloise is also the name of Charles's first wife whom he was with when he was cheating with Emma. It seems almost as if Emma purposely chose to flirt with Charles because the name of his wife is the same as the name of one of the women she admires. It's almost as if she wanted to be with Charles not because he was a doctor or for anything else about him, but because she felt that she would become great if she could triumph over someone with the same name as one of the people she admires.

Madame Bovary #2

The moment I began reading chapter 6, it was just like "Oh no, a religion chapter. I'm not going to understand any of the symbolism." Though I probably missed a lot, I love the imagery that I saw in this chapter.

I don't really understand why, but there's a lot of dark, grey-colored imagery in chapter 6. It talked about he moon, dark curtains, a Gothic cage, ruins, and steel grey water". My only guess is that Flaubert is trying to say that Emma grew up in the church admiring things that were dark and grey as beautiful and that's why her personality is a little messed up.

Madame Bovary #1

I really don't understand why people miss people they didn't really like when they're dead.

In Madame Bovary, Charles misses his wife, Heloise, only after she dies just because "she had loved him, after all." Because he hated her so much, it doesn't really make sense that he would miss her just because she died. It makes me think that he's being sad over her death just because it's what's expected of him. He could also just be doing it for appearances since, in chapter 1, Flaubert describes how Charles looked ridiculous because of his clothes that didn't fit properly and how the children in school made fun of him because he was different. There's also the fact that Charles seems to like Emma only because she's beautiful. Other than how she looks, he knows nothing about her.

At this point however, it seems like Charles is going to be running into some "poetic justice" for this, since he cheated on Heloise with Emma and, according to the back of the book, Emma is going to be having affairs as well.

Hamlet Essay (2)

8:30-9:30

Organized thoughts for essay by making 3 sections, 1 for each part of prompt. Still not sure what to put for the "significance of the "madness" to the work as a whole" section.

Hamlet Essay (1)

3:30-ish to 4:30-ish

I got rid of my whole first essay because I didn't really understand what it was asking, especially what the prompt meant by the word "reasonable". I switched the topic of my essay from Hamlet to Ophelia because it's easier to track Opehlia's craziness than Hamlet's and also because it's hard to tell if Hamlet is really crazy.