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WONG Theo Davis, Advisor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors In English WILLIAMS COLLEGE Williamstown, Massachusetts 19 MAY 2008 Acknowledgments To Professor Theo Davis, my thanks is overdue for your dedicated advisorship, timely encouragement, critical insights, and for generously donating a copy of Leaves ofGrass to my cause. Your support in its myriad forms was essential to the growth and completion of this thesis, and it has been an absolute privilege. To my family and friends, the constancy of your support is my lifeline -thank you. Finally, my lifelong gratitude to Barbara Williamson, for first believing I could string together a decent sentence. Believe it or not, this project is the fruit of your inspiration. Wong ii Table of Contents Introduction Locating a Female Subjectivity in Male Representations of the Modern City 1 Chapter 1 \Vhitman's Prostitute: The Woman as Unnatural 8 Chapter 2 Relocating Paris and the Urban Subject in Flaubert's Madame Bovary 2S1 Bibliography 53 Wong iii Introduction: Locating a Female Subjectivity in Male Representations of the Modern City Recent feminist criticism is quick to acknowledge the influential precedent of the jlaneur in discussions of nineteenth-century urban subjectivity. Much of the socio- historical and theoretical foundation for this figure is found in the work of Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin. Janet Wolff grounds her sociological critique of the absence of women in the literature of modernity in Baudelaire's view of the modern, which he intimately identified with city life.! She argues that Baudelaire's beau-ideal artist inhabits a distinctly "modern consciousness," one that "consists in the parade of impressions.,,2 To help contextualize her art historical analysis in the prevailing representations of modern femininity, Griselda Pollock additionally invokes the following passage in Baudelaire's essay to emphasize the importance of the urban crowd to the jlaneur' s existence: The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfectjlaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world -such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family? 1 In his seminal essay "The Painter of Modem Life," Baudelaire states that "by 'modernity' I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable," qualities he closely identified with his experience of mid-nineteenth century Paris. Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modem Life," in The Painter ofModern Life and Other Essays, tr. and ed. Jonathan Mayne (Oxford: Phaidon Press, 1964), 13, quoted in Janet Wolff, "The Invisible Fliineuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity," Theory, Culture, & Society 2 (1985): 38, http://tcs.sagepub.com/cgilcontent!abstract!2/3/37. 2 Wolff, "The Invisible Fliineuse," 40. 3 Charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," in Griselda Pollock, Vision and Di[lerence: Femininity, Feminism and Histories ofArt (London: New York: Routledge, 1988),70-71. Similarly, in her study of the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century literature of female writers, Deborah Parsons points to Baudelaire's artist as a prime "example of a new urban mentality that coincided with a new physicality of the city, both characterized by fragmentation and ephemerality.,,4 The "theorization" of the urban spectator at the hands of Benjamin naturally draws from but also extends Baudelaire's representation ofthejZaneur.5 Susan Buck-· Morss discusses the significance of the Benjaminianflaneur not just as an artist-figure, but one who, as Benjamin himself describes, "goes botanizing on the asphalt." His detached yet scrutinizing gaze toward the city reduces the urban to an ingestible spectacle, one that in turn reconstitutes the jlaneur as the quintessential image of consumption. She rightly claims that Benjamin conceived of the flaneur as providing "philosophical insight into the nature ofmodern subjectivity...by placing it within specifichistorical experience. In the flaneur, concretely, we recognize our own consumerist mode of being in the world.,,6 As an image of the modern consumer-subject, Benjamin's understanding of the flaneur is depicted by Dana Brand as "a kind of capital of nineteenth-century consciousness just as Paris can be understood to have been 'the capital of the nineteenth century.",7 The above critics all share a similar sense of what is fundamentally at stake in Baudelaire's and Benjamin's conceptions ofthejlaneur: namely, a paradigm for the 4 Deborah Parsons, Streetwalking the Metropolis: Women, the City and Modernity (Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2l. 5 Benjamin's texts that deal most specifically with his conception of the fHineur are his essays on Charles Baudelaire ("The Fliineur" and a later revision, "On Some Motifs on Baudelaire") and Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project). 6 Susan Buck-Morss, 'The Fliineur, the Sandwichman, and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering," Nevv German Critique 39 (1986): 104-105, http://www.jstoLorg/stable/488122. 7 Dana Brand, The Spectator and the City in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Cambridge: New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991),8. nineteenth-century subjectivity as a response to the phenomenon of the modern city. However, one critical point of divergence concerns whether the flaneur is an exclusively male figure. Wolff and Pollock both argue that the jlaneur is unequivocally male, and the basis for this stance is the perceived gendering of public and private spaces in the city.8 Wolff draws on sociological and historical sources to assert that the "line drawn increasingly sharply between the public and private was also one which confined women to the private, while men retained the freedom to move in the crowd or to frequent cafes and pubs.,,9 Even near the end of the century, it was largely socially unacceptable for a Parisian woman to frequent cafes absent a male companion. 1O The flaneur' s solitary movement and ability to remain "incognito" in the crowd were exclusively male privileges at this historical juncture and are indispensable to the above definitions of the flaneur. As the literature of the flaneur implicitly deals with experience and subjectivity in the public realm of the city, Wolff asserts that there can be no female equivalent. Parsons, on the other hand, is deeply skeptical of this claim. While acknowledging the severely restricted access of females to public space, she stresses the evolving, variable, and oftentimes, contradictory, nature of both Baudelaire's and Benjamin's depictions. In particular, the pervasive, complex presence of female observers in Baudelaire's poetry suggests a preoccupation with a feminine gaze. Encounters between the poet and woman also have a way of exposing qualities of the opposite gender in each, contesting the notion of uniform masculinity as a prerequisite of subjectivity in the public sphere. She also observes a fundamental difference between the In this, Wolff is the more elemental source, as Pollock derives this conclusion directly from Wolff's analysis. 9 Wolff, "The Invisible Flaneuse," 41. 10 See note 9 above. two versions of the jlaneur that are presented in Benjamin's essays on Baudelaire. In the later revision, Parsons acutely notes the transformation of the urban observer from a '''man of the crowd'" to a "man at the window," a shift that can also be understood as one fromflaneur as male authority to marginalized figure. 11 Importantly, she argues that this social marginalization feminizes the jlaneur, as it aligns him with the perpetual social outcast of the city, the public woman. Furthermore, the issue of the jlaneur' s masculinity is naturally intertwined wilh that of the potential existence of aflaneuse. As Wolff declares that the flaneur is only male, the concept of aflaneuse cannot exist for her: There is no question of inventing the flaneuse: the essential point is that such a character was rendered impossible by the sexual divisions of the nineteenth century...Whatis missing inthis literature is any account oflifeoutsidethe public realm, of the experience of 'the modern' in its private manifestations, and also of the very different nature of the experience of those women who did appear in the public arena: a poem written by 'lafemme passante' about her encounter .hB d1. h ,,12 WIt au e aIre, per aps. In contrast, Parsons' "reassessment" of the flaneur in the work of Baudelaire and Benjamin reveals an inherent gender ambiguity, an "androgyny [that] undercuts the myth that the trope of the urban artist-observer is necessarily male.,,]3 Thus, she contends for the possibility offlaneuse figures, and moreover, locates in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century literature of female writers an emergence of the flaneuse as a distinctly female artist-observer of modernity. Rather than assess these contentions against each other, however, I want to underscore a chief misconception underlying both: the presumption that a modern female subjectivity cannot emanate from a male authorial subject. Both Wolff and Parsons move II Parsons. Streetwalking the Metropolis, 34. 12 Wolff, "The Invisible FHineuse," 45. 13 Parsons, Streetwalking the Metropolis, 42. away from the literary canon of modem male authors, whether that means advocating a new literature entirely divorced from the perspective offlanerie or turning exclusively to the works of women. In any case, both stances fail to address the centrality of the male perspective to the pre-existing literature of modernity. All theory aside, literary constructions of nineteenth-century city spaces and subjects are principally conceived by male authors, if not the Benjaminianflaneur per se. The masculine vantage point, no matter how distorted his vision, is integral to the conception and representation of the modem city. As a result, it is essential that this basic framework be confronted in considering modes of nineteenth-century urban experience and subjectivity, even those that are uniquely female. In acknowledging this masculine-dominant mode of representation, I instead focus on how a female subjectivity might be conceived in spite ofthis hegemonic framework. While directing her own efforts toward extracting a modem female subjectivity from the literature of women, Parsons herself grants that "rather than the female having no place in the city, male writers of the period seemed to emphasize the role of the feminine throughout it.,,14 In the texts of Baudelaire and Benjamin, the "role of the feminine" is often reified in the figure of the prostitute. Both men are content to entirely objectify her, and despite the fact that she is a fellow streetwalker, the prostitute is portrayed as an image "in opposition to, rather than a reflection of, thejlaneur.,,15 Buck-Morss also claims that Benjamin saw prostitution as "the female version of flanerie ... For Benjamin, while the figure of the flaneur embodies the transformation of 14 Ibid., 38. 15 Ibid., 37. perception characteristic of modern subjectivity, the figure of the whore is the allegory for the 'transformation of objects, the world of things.,,16 But while the prostitute is unquestionably the locus of the urban female experience, Deborah Nord is quick to point out: "[The prostitute's] meaning is by no means monolithic. The sexually tainted woman can stand variously as an emblem of social suffering or debasement, as a projection of or analogue to the male stroller's alienated self, as an instrument of pleasure and partner in urban sprees, as a rhetorical and symbolic means of isolating and quarantining urban ills in the midst of an otherwise buoyant metropolis, or as an agent of connection and contamination.,,17 Thus, the following chapters are an attempt to supplement this network of potential meanings by tracing out variations of her existence as projected through the lens of two monumental nineteenth-century male authors, Walt Whitman and Gustave Flaubert. In doing so, my intention is to conceive the prostitute as a model for understanding the modern female subject as a figure in her own right: that is, outside her juxtaposition to the subjectivity of the flaneur, to the extent that this is possible. Such a project largely revolves around a reconsideration of the male/female, subject/object, and consumer/commodity binaries that are inherent in Benjamin's conceptual opposition of theflaneur and the prostitute, as proposed by Buck-Morss. The super-subjectivity ofthe flaneur largely depends on his resistance to objectification and the assumption of a purely consumerist relation to the spectacle of the city. IS Conversely, the prostitute is perceived purely as an object of the all-consuming male gaze. But significantly, Parsons notes that even in Benjamin's own writings, these dichotomies are already being destabilized, as the J6 Buck-Morss, "The Fliineur," 120. J7 Deborah Nord, "The Urban Peripatetic: Spectator, Streetwalker, Woman Writer," Nineteenth-Century Literature 46, no.3 (1991): 353, http://www.jstoLorg/stable/2933746. J8 Snpport for this is also found in Nord: "The heightened subjectivity of the urban observer depended, if you will, on the erasure of his status as object: intellectual free play and independence lay in not being remarkable." Ibid., 352. Wong 6 female alternatively functions as a trope for both the urban commodity and consumer. 19 This analysis will attempt to pursue further negotiations across these binaries, as I argue that their very deconstruction may enable a vision of modem subjectivity with enough room to accommodate the urban experiences of both genders. 19 Parsons, Streetwalking the Metropolis. 38. Chapter 1 Whitman's Prostitute: The Woman as Unnatural The prostitute is a figure often overlooked in Whitman's poetry, as much of the popular and critical attention afforded to his work justifiably focuses on its provocative, male-centric homoerotics. However, she is a formative presence that operates against his conceptions of the self and the individual's experience to the city. Thus, the crux of this chapter involves dissecting her subversive relation to the poet's representations of urban subjectivity. Her existence as the fundamental Whitmanian anomaly of a figure that does not belong ultimately serves to redefine the limitations of the poet's democratic reach and the fluidity of his poetic spaces of both the self and the city. The Urban as All-Natural Whitman's perception of New York City, while obviously rooted in a particular kind of human experience, is also very much invested in the literal space that the city occupies. His pervasive use of the Algonquian term "Mannahatta" in referring to Manhattan seems significant to this understanding of a concrete, largely geographic, physicality. The word, meaning "large island," is employed multiple times throughout his poetry and is also the namesake of two poems.,,20 It is a clear expression of endearment and his affection for New York, and is closely associated with his appropriation of the city. The speaker in "Mannahatta" begins, "1 was asking for something specific and perfect for my city" and similarly ends with the exclamation, '''my city!" (1, 20). As such, his fervent identification of the city as "his" is rooted in its literal 20 A footnote to the poem "Me Inperturbe" states that "the name [Mannahatta] is an Algonquian word meaning 'large island.'" Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, ed. Sculley Bradley and Harold W. Blodgett (New York: London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1973), 11. Wong 8 existence as an island, a coherent geographic entity. In addition, the speaker's possession of the city signifies a dual appropriation of space: his own claim to the city, as well as his assignment of the physical land to the city itself, such that the city, in effect, owns and is inextricable from the very space it inhabits. This intimate, almost impulsive, association of geography with the city is also witnessed in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," in which the speaker declares: "I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine, / I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan island, and bathed in the waters around it" (57-58). In this description, the region's geographic features are integral to his experience of New York. The name "Mannahatta" is also significant in its evocation of the place before it became known as city, of the time when Broadway was a Native American trail rather than a major urban thoroughfare. It presents the city as an intrinsically natural environment devoid, in its conception, of the typical connotations of artifice and edifice. At the beginning of "Mannahatta," the speaker exclaims, "upsprang the aboriginal name" (2). In addition to his awareness of the native derivation of the expression, the word "upsprang" signifies the wholly organic quality of this linguistic entity, as if derived directly from the very earth it marks. As Whitman strongly identifies the metropolis with the land, these geographic landmarks implicitly outline the scope of the city by demarcating the spaces that can appropriately be called "Brooklyn" or "Manhattan." In a sense, then, Whitman's New York is limited to a certain geographic region; it cannot simply exist anywhere. However, that is not to say that the poet's Manhattan is restricted only to the actual island. While the land is physically contained by water and its shape dictated by the ocean's influence, his poems seem to extend out and embrace this natural boundary, such that the ocean is as much the city as the land itself is. This is evidenced in the language of both poems, as they abound with imagery and terminology of the sea. "Mannahatta" is a place "thick all around with sailships and steamships ... [of] Tides swift and ample ... flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands...the countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the / ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd" (6, 8-10). The poem concludes by deeming Mannahatta the "[c]ity of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts! / City nested in bays!" (19-20), effectively assigning the physical qualities of its immediate surroundings to the city itself. Likewise, the following passage in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" is thick with similar scenes and descriptions: Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving, Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me, Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor, The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars, The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine pennants, The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot­houses, The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels ... The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests and glistening. (36-42, 44) Here, people and things of the city overflow into the adjacent waters, integrating the river into the fabric of urban life. The water is conceived as a setting for the urban, functioning as an extension of the actual land. The abundance of movement in the passage transposes the fluidity of the water onto the actions taking place above it, supplementing the sense of mobility already attached to the physicality of the city. This horizontal extension of the city is mirrored by a transcending verticality, as these two poems are also replete with upward-extending images that indefinitely lengthen thecity'sverticalreach. In"Mannahatta,""highgrowths ofiron...splendidlyuprising toward clear skies," are coupled with the "summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft" (7,14). As with the city's extension into the ocean, the city's physicality again transcends the boundaries seemingly imposed on it by nature. The speaker in "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" demands that the city embrace its towering heights: "Stand up, tall masts of Mannahattal stand up, beautiful hills of / Brooklyn!" (105). The "reflection of the summer sky in the water" (31) is a particularly striking illustration of this verticality. Here, the sky is literally reproduced in the body of water situated at the heart of Whitman's city, which simultaneously divides and links Manhattan and Brooklyn. As such, the likeness of the sky mirrored in the river is a centerpiece in the poet's vision of New York. Rather than viewing the metropolis as a construction of man, the poet quite radically redefines it as a naturally formed landscape. It is important to emphasize that public spaces, in particular, are re-presented as natural, especially considering the dominant presence of man-made structres such as sidewalks and skyscrapers. Moreover, the metropolis is empowered as a physical medium, as well as an environment for organic modes of being. Multiple times throughout "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," Whitman collectively addresses the urbanites as a "flood-tide" or a current" (1, 10, 24). His directive, "[fllow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-/ tide! / Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves" (101-102) also unites the movement of the river with that of the crowd. Such connections are more than just ubiquitous, as they demonstrate Whitman's fundamental perception of the crowd as an organic entity. Thus, the city's physical association with the natural is extended onto the crowd as well, as both the urban physicality and collective mirror the fluid mobility of the surrounding waters. The Crowd and Urban Subjectivity in "Song of Myselr' Whitman's catalogues are a defining feature of his poetics, and in the context of his urban poetry, they exemplify the fundamental nature of his relation to the city. As such, it is unsurprisingly that the poet's perception of the crowd as an organic life form is further revealed through his use of the catalogue, which beautifully encapsulates the utter randomness with which individuals are presented. Always, the inclusion of persons in the poems feels inherently arbitrary: types are easily replaceable and such substitutions do not compromise the flow of movement on the streets or in the literary passage. Oftentimes, the spontaneity with which he seems to imagine the world actually strengthens the logic, rhythm, and cohesion of the multifarious urban experience. The following excerpt from Section 15 in "Song of Myself' illustrates this kind of procession well: The one-year wife is recovering and happy having a week ago borne her first child, The clean-hair'd Yankee girl works with her sewing machine or in the factory or mill, The paving-man leans on his two-handed rammer, the reporter's lead flies swiftly over the note-book, the sign­ painter is letting with blue and gold, The canal boy trots on the tow-path, the book-keeper counts at his desk, the shoemaker waxes his thread, The conductor beats time for the band and all the performers follow him, The child is baptized, the convert is making his first professions. (294-299) Here, sight after sight materializes in unpredictable yet persistent fashion, such that the relentless arbitrariness of each individual act becomes the overarching force that holds this spectacle together. One association between the catalogue poem and the natural is found in Ralph Waldo Emerson's "The Poet." Emerson declares that "[b]are lists of words are found suggestive, to an imaginative and excited mind," that of the poet?! Emerson insists that to a large extent, the function of the poet is to bring less elevated beings closer to the natural origin of things, the variegating "thoughts" underlying and operating beneath the "symbols" of the world. In doing so, he "turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession"..."his speech flows with the flowing of nature.,,22 His determination of the utterly natural instincts of the poet suggests that the term "right" does not necessarily mean "accurate," but implies some sort of organic order inherent in the language of the poet. If this is the case, then even the barest of lists created by the poet will yet project things "in their right series and progression." Such catalogues are an inspired way of experiencing the world, of recognizing the meaning of things not just in and of themselves, but also in the potentialities of their juxtaposition to others. In addition to their presentation of the crowd as a natural entity, the catalogues portray each encountered subject as a performed type rather than a single, individualized entity. The use of "The" to preface each description, as opposed to "A," supports this association with types; while the latter would intimate the sight of a specific person at a precise moment in time, "The" implies a more generalizable or categorical term applicable to a plurality. At first, the typification of other humans seems incompatible with the organic nature of Whitman's representation of the city, as it connotes more contrived, dehumanizing associations. However, Whitman's catalogues distinctively conceive of types as entities that actually uproot such dehumanizing implications by 21 Ralph W. Emerson, "The Poet," in Essays: Second Series (Boston: lR. Osgood, 1877),22. 22 Emerson, "The Poet," 22, 24. Wong 13 breaking down the very dichotomy of individual and type, and subsequently offering a more nuanced relation between the two. Rather than signify the complete deterioration of the individual, these carefully constructed types constitute spaces for community and interpersonal interactions. Each description is naturally delimiting, defining a certain, finite range of applicability, while engendering a community of those who do fit that particular sketch. A type is not the identity of anyone individual, but a manifestation of these egalitarian, democratizing bonds that underlie the urban, as well as the universal, experience. The catalogue, as such, essentially depicts a procession of communities rather than single persons, of connective tissues rather than disparate beings. In this light, catalogued types are not holistic, integrated entities, but constellations of fluidly dissociable units. Such a conception of the individual reverberates, and indeed personifies, Whitman's own subjectivity. Weaving throughout "Song of Myself' is the recurring illustration of the poet as a "kosmos." In addition, by introducing the poem with the proclamation, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself' (1), the entirety of what follows is conceivably an attempt to capture the innumerable fragments inherent to his own existence. If so, then the poem itself is a "body" that transparently reflects this multiplicity, something his physical body cannot do. Thus, the catalogue manifests not only the natural quality of the urban crowd; it simultaneously depicts the urban subject as innately multiform, transposing the multifarious consistency of the city onto the individual within it. The Prostitute as "Other" In the cataloged processionals of the city, there is a distinct uniformity to the movement of the crowd and the identification of its subjects, modeling the kind of democratic, interrelated community that the poet idealizes. However, the appearance of the prostitute in "Song of Myself' disrupts this consistency, as she is pointedly distinguished in a number of ways: The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck, The crowd laugh at her blackguard oaths, the men jeer and wink to each other, (Miserable! I do not laugh at your oaths or jeer you). (305-307) Perhaps most conspicuous is the fact that while the poet systematically confines his descriptions of every other figure to a single line, in order to maintain the fluid consistency of the crowd, he finds it necessary to allot the prostitute three times the amount of poetic space given everyone else. This moment signifies a temporal aberration in the processional, as the presence of the prostitute produces a stoppage in the catalogue's movements. While the second phrase begins, "the crowd," it functions more to further depict the prostitute rather than to illustrate any quality of the crowd itself. Also, not only does he feel compelled to linger over her, the poet also speaks directly to her, a gesture he does not make toward any other person in the passage. It is ironic that this instant of direct connection can simultaneously be seen as an isolatory act, as it remains a singular moment in a passage that ends with the speaker boldly proclaiming, "[o]fthese one and all I weave the song of myself' (329). Furthermore, the prostitute is also singled out by the crowd as the object of their collective taunting. Nowhere else in this section does the speaker describe such a moment in which the multitude jointly direct their attention toward a single person. Again, it is peculiar that the only moment of the crowd's active engagement is marked by such negativity and distaste for a fellow urbanite. Her conspicuous existence in the catalogues suggests that the prostitute's relation to others is fundamentally rooted in her distinction apart from them. While she certainly appears within the crowd, she is not entirely of it, and this classification as "other" is crucial to her existence in the Whitmanian city. For one, it relegates her to certain poetic domains; unlike most of the other individuals in the catalogues, the prostitute (and her like companions) must abide by strict physical constraints impressed upon her by the poet. Such boundaries are most apparent in the existence of Whitman's "partial list" poems, such as "You Felons on Trial in Courts" and "Native Moments," which symbolically function as holding cells for these outcast enclaves. The cast of "You Felons" includes: "you felons on trial in courts, you convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins ... you prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms" (1-2, 5). The speaker calls forth a similar crowd in "Native Moments," where he consorts with "dancers...drinkers...lowperson[s].,.[the]condemn'd... [and]shunn'd"(6-10). Their joint poetic exclusion from the sweeping processionals appears to foster solidarity, except that even in these spaces ostensibly constructed for people like her, the prostitute's inclusion always seems precarious. She is not mentioned by name in the latest edition of "Native Moments," and significantly, the footnote in the Norton Critical Edition states that this poem, "took its present title in 1867 and has remained unchanged except for the dropping in 1881 of the phrase 'I take for my love some prostitute -. '" This extraction of the prostitute from the explicit terms of the poem, and its replacement phrase, "I pick out some low / person for my dearest friend" (7), reflects an uneasy relation between the prostitute and her compatriots. While the more generic phrase in the final version of the poem does not necessarily preclude her presence, it does suggest that she does not specifically belong. The spatial separation of the prostitute in "You Felons" further underscores her problematic inclusion in this sub-community. The other figures in this poem are found "in courts...[or] in prison-cells...chain'd and / handcuff'd with iron" (1-2). In the first four lines of the poem, Whitman repeats the phrase "with iron" three times, emphasizing the concrete, inescapable nature of the criminals' confinement. They are physically locked down and unable even to move, a sharp contrast to the earlier notion of the city as a mobile environment. Separated from the others by a stanza break, the prostitutes are instead seen "flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in [their] rooms" (5), not tethered by the same physical restraints of the law. A crucial distinction is also made in line 14, when the speaker declares "1 feel I am of them -1belong to those convicts and prostitutes / myself' (my emphasis). This statement comes directly after he groups them together in the term "delinquents," suggesting an instinctive ambivalence over the issue of whether she truly belongs in this crowd. Clearly, in both this sub-community and the one in "Native Moments," the prostitute is never whole-heartedly accepted, and perhaps it is the very nature of this conflicted, volatile existence that draws the poet into her presence time and time again. "To a Common Prostitute": The Lonely Erotic Not only does he acknowledge her in the context of the urban throng and these outcast sub-communities; the poet also directly interacts with the prostitute on a more exclusive, personal level. "To a Common Prostitute" illustrates one such interaction, and harkens back to the poet's direct address to the prostitute in "Song of Myself' (307-310). This extended moment functions as a magnification of the line from the catalogue, one in which the background clutter of the crowd has faded to privilege this seemingly personal, intimate, and erotic interaction. I also want to parallel this moment to the scene in another Whitman poem entitled "A Glimpse," in which a similar instance of direct connection amid a crowd, a "glimpse through an interstice" (1), suspends the speaker and another in a moment of intensely eroticized intimacy. While they initially appear similar, these two encounters make drastically contrasting claims regarding the socio-erotics of Whitman's poetics, which revolves around the notion of "adhesiveness," the irrepressible clinging together of men on every level: as acquaintances, friends, and lovers.23 While "A Glimpse" exemplifies these moments of "adhesion," Whitman's encounter with the "common prostitute" constitutes a marked departure from such interactions, further problematizing her existence in the city. In "Solitude, Singularity, Seriality: Whitman vis-a-vis Fourier," Michael Moon contextualizes Whitman's poetry in the free-love discourses and sex-radical moments of the mid-to late-1800s. He posits that the encounter in "A Glimpse" is one of many "rare but stunning moments of absolute stillness and wordless satisfaction between the poet and another man he loves and desires ... scenes of finding and forming some intense, intimate bond, at least partially visible if not audible to others.,,24 He further asserts that such like instances constitute "the production of a series, a series of shared recognitions 23 Michael Moon, "Solitude, Singularity, Seriality: Whitman vis-a-vis Fourier" in English Literary History 73, no.2 (2006): 310, http://muse.jhu.edu/joumals/elh/v073/73.2moon.html. 24 Ibid., 312. between and among actual and potentiallovers.,,25 Moreover, Moon argues that the French theorist Charles Fourier's work on '''passional attraction' and complexly serial sexualities" deeply reverberates in what he calls Whitman's "epistemology of the 'street and ferry-boat and public assembly.',,26 For Moon, "A Glimpse" is emblematic of these freely associating, serial relations: silent moments forged in public spaces that engender a highly eroticized, intimate way of encountering and experiencing others. On the other hand, "To a Common Prostitute" typifies precisely what these associations are not, a blatant moment within Whitman's own poetry in which this series of socio-erotic connections is subverted. Below is a reproduction of the poem in its entirety: Be composed -be at ease with me -I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you make preparation to be worthy to meet me, And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come. Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me. (1-6) Unlike "A Glimpse," in which he is content to let the air saturate in an unspoken erotic charge, Whitman feels compelled to crudely assert his sexual hunger to the prostitute. Also, the noticeable absence of other people suggests the private nature of the setting in "Prostitute," and thus, that the poet-prostitute interaction is unlikely to be observed by 25 See note 5 above. 26 Moon emphasizes the influence of the concept of "association" in Fourierism, the "idea of the freely constituted group and the serial possibilities of the intermingling of such groups as the basis of all social formations." "Harmony," another Fourier term, is the "state which masses of people would ultimately achieve through the practice of serial association," one in which "mass orgies in broad daylight [would be] the preferred means of sexual gratification." Ibid., 314, 316. Wong 19 others. Rather than taking place in the "public throng of males,,27 where a certain level of visibility is inherent to those associations, this wholly secluded moment instead reflects the "privatization of sex" that Fourier's theories so fervently resisted. The domestification of this sexual encounter, as it were, renders it entirely unnatural in light ofthe"massorgies inbroaddaylight" thatFourierpreferred.28 As is evidenced by the singular form of "appointment," this is an isolated erotic moment in which the prescription of their interaction to a single encounter entirely removes it from any notion of the social. Instead of occurring in the context of serial interactions involving other individuals, as the "glimpse" is witnessed "through an interstice," the poet-prostitute scene is a solitary one. In other words, it signifies the erasure of the "socio-" from socio-erotic, and in the place of the social are the terms of economy, such as "appoint" and "charge," which unambiguously oppose the notion of free-love sexual associations. The replacement of the social with the economic is evidenced in the linguistic ambiguity of the above verbs, which also carry strong sexual undercUlTents in the context of the poem, providing a metaphoric link between the economic and sexual. The social sterility of the terms consequently eliminates the sense of spontaneity and potential seriality of such moments. Moreover, the poet's insistent demands for an arrangement with the prostitute actually imply aforced, rather than a free, sexual encounter. The mutuality of desire embedded in "A Glimpse" is utterly lacking here, as the poet's unrelenting tone rather seems to be willing the prostitute into physical submission; whether or not she desires him is irrelevant. In his unyielding rhetorical advances, Whitman is forcibly trying to 27 Ibid., 313. 28 Ibid., 315. Wong 20 extract from the prostitute Fourier's promise of the "'sexual minimum' .. .like a minimum wage -to every adherent in association, male or female, old or young, homely or comely.,,29 Fourier argues that because this sexual minimum exists in all, no one can be excluded from his conception of Harmony.30 Whitman's own vision of complete inclusion, one arguably extending from good intentions, is ironically the source of his persistence in accessing Fourier's promise. In establishing the notion that the prostitute is like everyone else and not to be denied, he logically attempts to pursue her as he does the others, assuming that she also must possess what presumably lies in all. The poet displays a single-minded resolve in pursuit of this "sexual minimum," and thus dictates the terms of this encounter without a hint of reciprocity or a concessionary gesture to his partner in this affair. Paradoxically, the title gives off the logical impression that the prostitute will be the poem's main focus, but Whitman himself is the grammatical subject of every sentence in it, rendering the prostitute the direct object and mere target of his directives. The prostitute as the embodiment of female sexual objectification is, of course, nothing new. Her sexual subjectivity cannot be entirely divorced from her role as an object; crudely put, this is what she is paid to be. What is also interesting about the notion of her objectification in this poem is its association with the expectation of monogamy. For the prostitute, the endlessly exponential possibilities that abound for Fourieristic individuals are effectively nonexistent. There is only one person with whom she can "meet," the poet, since she must remain "patient and perfect till [he] come[s]." His desire to have her for himself shuts her off from the rest of the crowd, from all other potential associations 29 Ibid., 315. 30 See note 10 above. Wong 21 and thus, from the serial bonds that are so critical to his conception of the urban experience. Enforcing this monogamous sexuality on the prostitute also violates one of Fourier's twelve passions of the human nature: the Butterfly passion, or "the toward change and novelty, variety and contrast -the fundamental human urge to 'flit. ,,,31 As such, the repression of this core human desire further feeds into the notion of the prostitute as unnatural. I further want to suggest that the unnaturalness of their encounter is, on some fundamental level, anti-urban. That is not to say that the unnatural is necessarily equated with the anti-urban, but that the city, in which the potentialities for these Fourieristic encounters are endless, serves as the epitomatic location for this organic mode of being. One's disengagement from the socio-erotic seriality so vital to Whitman's notion of the urban experience thus severely detracts from the extent to which the individual can be perceived as an expressly urban subject. Just as her appearance in the catalogue is atypical, the prostitute's direct encounter with the poet, again, signifies a deviation from the norm, indicating her figure's resistance to his standard conception of urban subjectivity. "The City Dead-House": The Equivocal Femininity and Humanity of the Prostitute "The City Dead-House" essentially presents the prostitute's as a pathologized existence, further supporting the depiction of her as "other." The building's connotations of disease, physical deterioration, and death are readily apparent.32 Furthermore, the 31 See note 10 above. 32 The title literally refers to two potential settings: the 1857 addition of a pathology wing to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, that housed "victims of noxious illnesses where physicians can-ied out medical procedures, such as autopsies," or the 1841 addition to Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn that was prostitute's body, as the poem's title implies, is wholly united to the "dead-house," such that every poetic image of the house is implicitly a description of the "divine woman" as well. In lines five to six, Whitman makes a seamless transition from one to the other as the target of his gaze: "The divine woman, her body, I see the body, I look on it alone, I That house once full of passion and beauty, all else I notice not." In fact, this move seems to engender a permanent transformation of the prostitute into a purely physical structure; for the remainder of the poem, she is always conceived of as some architectural building, whether a "house...capitol.. .cathedral.. .[or] tenement." Thus, not only is her presence inextricably bound to physical and mental illness, she actually houses the manifestations of such disease within her, acting herself as a hospital to contain such afflictions within her walls. The association of the prostitute with mortality and disease seems to reject outright the notion of "Whitman's ideal woman, [who] was first and always a mother.,,33 He claims in "Song of Myself' that ''there is nothing greater than the mother of men" (427), but here, the feminine fertility and life-giving beauty that the poet so deeply reveres is nowhere to be found. The metaphor of woman as a life-giving vessel is inverted, as the prostitute is one who does not give life, but takes it; as such, she is antithetical to the Whitmanian paradigm of female beauty that is rooted in her natural capacity as a mother. In addition to her rejection of Whitman's feminine aesthetic, the issue of objectification raised in "To a Common Prostitute" is again witnessed here, undermining her presence as a fully human one. The pronoun replacement of "her" with "originally intended as a lunatic asylum but gradually took on functions similar to those of the pathology center at Bellevue." Joann P. Krieg, "Walt Whitman and the Prostitutes," Literature and Medicine 14, no.1 (1995): 43, http://muse.jhu.edu/joumals/literature_and_medicine/vO14/14.1krieg.html. 33 Ibid., 1. Wong 23 "it" (12) seemingly indicates the completed objectification and dehumanization of her existence. The fact that she lies "unc1aim'd" speaks to the complete undesirability of her figure, an anomalous moment in Whitman's poetry in which a human body is left untouched by another. While much of his interactions with others overflow with rhetorical and metaphorical ejaculations, symbolic of the ecstatic and passionate nature of his encounters, he leaves the prostitute with only "one breath from [his] tremulous / lips...oneteardroptaside"(13-14). Hisabundance ofbodilyfluidsseems todryout even as he "sees the body [and] looks on it alone" (5). Thus, sympathetic as he may appear to be, the poet cannot claim to desire her, and perhaps this realization ultimately prevents him from viewing hers as a human body. However, this poem at once seems to encourage and resist this straightforward reading of the prostitute as a dehumanized object. The notion that she is dead even as a "house of life" alerts the reader to the fact that the prostitute does not fit neatly into the traditional binaries of existence, such as life/death. The apparent object-ness of her body may not be entirely indicative of or consistent with her internal, subject state; in fact, the poet's rhetorical adamance on her corporeal death, interspersed with images of her as "divine" and "immortal," unquestionably point to a more complicated account of the relation between her body and her subjectivity. The description of the body as "unclaim'd" may refer not to her undesirability in the eyes of others, but more accurately to the body's lack of an owner-subject inhabitant: in effect, the release of her body from the prostitute's own subjective consciousness. That it is "Months, years, an echoing, garnish'd house -but dead, dead, / dead" (17), insinuates that the body is bereft of internal substance long before its physical decease. An alternative rationale for the pronoun change from "her" to "it" is that it signals the poet's acknowledgment of the dissociability of the gendered subject from its body, rather than an attempt to actively objectify what lies before him. It would be inaccurate to assert that the prostitute's subjectivity is completely severed from her body, as such an irreconciliable disconnect would render one's consciousness entirely indifferent to the acute bodily sensations that are indispensable to the Whitmanian notion of urban experience. But his recognition of the prostitute's unwillingness to remain wholly unified to her bodily manifestation becomes a source of poetic restlessness that borders on contempt. The metaphoric dearth of his body fluids, instead of signifying the undesirability of her being, more provocatively stands as a deliberate act repudiating her presence, a hostile refusal to give of himself to her that reflects his antagonistic internal state. Over the course of the poem, the benign curiosity for her form that births the verse is transformed into an intense desire to propel himself away from the prostitute. The poet declares "I go for thought of you" three lines before the actual ending, such that the last few lines can be read as the poet muttering to himself as he hurriedly escapes and seeks relief from the disconcerting, even threatening, presence of her figure. Whitman's Female as Anti-Whitman Throughout this analysis, the prostitute is referred to in strictly female terms, as Whitman's poetry gives good reason for doing so. In "Song of Myself," 'The City Dead­House," and "To a Common Prostitute," he makes clear that the prostitute(s) to or about whom he speaks is female. The delineation between "convicts and prostitutes" (14) in "You Felons" could be interpreted as a gender distinction as well. Despite his efforts to desexualize her body in "The City Dead-House," Whitman persists in identifying her as female throughout his poetry, and along with this rigid view of the prostitute's gender is the implicit assumption that the act of prostitution is exclusively heterosexual. It is highly improbable that she is servicing partners of the same sex, as moments of female homosexuality are profoundly absent from Whitman's text. As such, the prostitute's gender and sexuality seem immutably preprogrammed in the context of Whitman's poetics. This rigidity of her female gender and heterosexual identity starkly contrasts with the twenty-eight bathers passage in "Song of Myself," which is typically seen as the classic Whitmanian moment of "the 'fluidity', substitutability, and indeterminacy of masculine identity and sexuality.,,34 In his reading of the scene, Michael Moon posits that the voyeuse and the presumably male speaker merge to form a hermaphroditic figure, and that the "unseen hand," being stripped of a body, is at once bi-gender and a-gender. By identifying the twenty-ninth bather as sexually androgynous, he argues that both genders essentially serve as the subjects and objects of desire, "projecting a space in which both women and men are free not only to direct such a gaze at (other) men, but also to fulfill the desires that impel the gaze?5 He also underscores the fluid possibilities of gender and sexuality in this passage by pointing out its gender inversion of two biblical bathing scenes that epitomize male voyeuristic tendencies and females as the traditional objects of the gaze.36 Undoubtedly, the poet is able to appropriate the voyeuse and assume her existence in a way that he cannot the prostitute. But it is worth pressing 34 Michael Moon, "in Walt Whitman, Leaves ofGrass, ed. Michael Moon (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002),856. 3S Ibid., 861. 36 The two scenes Moon references are that of David watching Bathsheba in 2 Samuel II and the passage of Susannah and the Elders. the extent to which this appropriation truly represents fluidity between the genders. Moon himself asserts that the poet may only be using a female gaze to temper the male homoerotic undertones of the passage, a conscious act of self-censorship to avoid directly challenging the contemporary anti-homosexual cultural norms.37 In the passage itself, she is introduced only to serve as the agent through which the poet can access the bathers. Significantly, the twenty-ninth bather is never explicitly desired, as the very notion of the gaze presumes the unidirectionality of her/his desire: "The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them" (209). Furthermore, the sexual tension that the woman feels is arguably never resolved, as Moon also acknowledges that "the section may not represent female orgasm at all.,,38 While Whitman's emphasis on the "wet," "little streams ... [and] spray" trumpets the males' sexual fulfillment, the female climactic equivalent is lacking. This is a critical distinction between the genders in this passage, as it ultimately suggests that she is unable to partake in the moments of sexual fulfillment in these erotic encounters. Her disappearance in the latter half of the poem, after the "unseen hand" has been introduced, suggests her complete extraction from the scene and, as a consequence, her fundamental detachment from any kind of climactic release. In this sense, the twenty-eight bathers passage fails to signify a truly fluid space of gender and sexuality, as it simply replaces the female, heterosexual gaze with a male, homosexual one. By extension, the voyeuse, like the prostitute, is also prohibited from the opportunity to engage in polygamous sexual associations. In fact, it becomes rather apparent that Whitman's conception of women in his poetry is invariably entrenched in this notion of the monogamous female heterosexual, from the prostitute to the mothers 37 Ibid., 86l. 38 See note 18 above. and wives who are almost inevitably holding, bearing, or suckling "babes." The prostitute thus epitomizes the limitations of sexuality to which all his women subjects are restricted. It is a rather remarkable irony in Whitman's project that the prostitute exposes: his acutely masculine poetic stance, the forceful assertion of his maleness that empowers his homoerotic voice and symbolizes an unabashed, noncomformist sexuality, is precisely what imposes this unflinching heteronormative subjectivity on the women in his poetry. In light of this, the claim of the prostitute's sexual subjectivity as unnatural -one in which the organic urges for erotic seriality and primal passions are repressed -can be extended onto all other women in his poetry as well. The monarchy of the natural in his city almost demands that the burden of the unnatural be as overwhelming as the natural is ecstatic, and moreover, just as essential to the fulfillment of his poetic vision of the city. Consequently, the forceful assignment of the unnatural to woman may signify an implicit recognition on Whitman's part that what is natural can only be fully realized in its juxtaposition to the inversion of itself. Chapter 2 Relocating Paris and the Urban Subject in Flaubert's Madame Bovary For a novel proclaiming "provincial life" as its subject matter, the absence of Paris from Madame Bovary seems logical enough. The only event that actually takes place in the French capital is Leon's legal education; even then, he is conspicuously absent during his stay there, temporarily ceasing to exist in the realm of the novel. The authorial act of sending him there is one of exile, as it functions like a holding cell away from life in the provinces. For Emma, whose straitjacket of a marriage imposes severe limitations on her physical mobility, the sheer distance to the French capital renders it entirely inaccessible to her, and by extension, to the narrative itself. Worth noting is that Flaubert had included "a trip to Paris" for Emma in his original sketch of Madarne Bovary.39 One can only speculate as to why Flaubert ditched this initial design, but it is certainly plausible that the omission was a deliberate attempt to purge the novel of Paris' physicality. In any case, it is consistent with and reinforces the city's nonexistence in the text. For all its physical absence, Paris looms large in the mind and heart of Emma Bovary. Her conviction that Paris is the answer to the "wearisome countryside, the petty-bourgeois stupidity, the mediocrity of existence" establishes it in her imagination as the locus of her desire.4o The fact that it is all but impossible to attain does not stop her from perceiving Paris as the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, and it is even described in 39 Gustave Flaubert, "Earlier Versions of Madame Bovary: Scenarios and Scenes," in Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen and tr. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Paul de Man (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005),280. The scene replacing the visit to Paris in the final version of Madame Bovary has been debated by critics without clear consensLls. 40 Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen and tr. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Paul de Man (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005), 51. Wong 29 such a way as to invite this comparison: "Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Emma's eyes with a silvery glow," a source oflight piercing the dimness of her mediocre surroundings.41 That the city's name is qualified by its vague-ness suggests that this quality is the primary source of its attraction for her. Its existence "as a confused spot" at the "end of some indefinite distance" is precisely what fuels her imagination's obsession, and what she lacks in knowledge she more than compensates for in fantasy.42 The combination of Emma's compulsive longing for Paris and the city's physical inaccessibility to her establishes a crucial tension that drives much of the narrative: namely, if and how Emma's desire can be fulfilled when the object of her desire is literally unobtainable. I argue that this seemingly irresolvable conflict is mediated by the existence of Paris in metonymic form. 43 While the city as a physical entity signifies the unattainable, referential markers to it are manifested in specific places, events, and interactions accessible to Emma within her delineated geographic sphere. Importantly, her hyperactive imagination is supplemented and informed by her Parisian books and magazines. Not long after her marriage, she is found entirely absorbed in her readings of the city: She subscribed to La Corbeille, a ladies magazine, and the Sylphe des Salons. She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees, took an interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and George Sand.44 41 Ibid., SO. 42 Ibid., 49-50. 43 "A figure in which one word is substituted for another on the basis of some material, causal, or conceptual relation." The New Princeton Handbook ofPoetic Terms, s.v. "Metonymy." 44 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, SO. The accompanying footnote in the Norton Second Edition of the book states that the readings evoked in this section are "newspapers and novelists concerned with fashion and currentevents, above all inParis...Balzac, Sand, andSue were among themostprominentnovelists ofthe July Monarchy depicting contemporary society." This base of "knowledge" enables Emma to attach metonymic significance to certain aspects of her immediate environment, investing them with meaning beyond that which they possess in and of themselves by transforming each into a representation of the city for which she desperately longs. The very notion of a distinctly urban experience is metonymically portrayed in Emma's association with Rouen, the local capital of the provinces. The viability of this particular representation hinges on the gradient of urbanity that is implicitly present, as it allows for a perception of the urban in relative terms. Paris is a metropolis arguably considered urban in the most absolute sense of the word, the polar opposite of everything rural. But because the degree of urbanity of a setting like Rouen is less easily defined in and of itself, it relies more on its stance in relation to other geographic locations. Compared to Paris, this town, as almost any other, would be considered the less urban of the two and more closely aligned with the rural. Conversely, its juxtaposition to places like Tostes or Yonville unquestionably distinguishes it as the more urban. While the reader is aware of Rouen's status in relation to Paris, Emma's entirely rural-grown perspective lacks this comparative awareness and is thus entirely removed from the context of relativity. As a result, her response upon entering Rouen seems inflated and almost comical in its grand proportions, but is also one that conveys the impression of her partaking in some reproduction of Paris itself: Something seemed to emanate from this mass of human lives that left her dizzy; her heart swelled as though the hundred and twenty thousand souls palpitating there had all at once wafted to her the passions with which her imagination had endowed them. Her love grew in the presence of this vastness, and filled with the tumult of the vague murmuring which rose from below. She poured it out, onto the squares, the avenues, the streets; and the old Norman city spread out before her like some incredible capital, a Babylon into which she was about to enter.45 45 Ibid., 207. The visceral quality of Rouen's effect on Emma suggests the highly sensual nature of her connection to the town, as her body instinctively responds to and engages the atmospheric charge of the urban milieu ("Her love grew...She poured it out"). She interacts with the place as though it were a living entity, authorized into being by the passions endowed by this vast collective of souls. Also, Emma perceives the force of Rouen to multiply in direct proportion to the quantity of people that inhabit it, as if the impressive numerical display of a "hundred and twenty thousand" somehow provides legitimacy to her claims of feeling such an overpowering, sensation-filled rush. Moreover, her formulation of Rouen as an "incredible capital, a Babylon" reveals the way in which Emma envisions the location as more than it actually is, one whose urbanity conceivably compares to that of Paris. Endowing Rouen with the magnitude of these terms thus transforms her experience into one of absolute urbanity. The allusion to the biblical capital of Babylon brings to mind scenes of decadence and grandeur incongruous with a provincial capital in the countryside.46 While the reference may also serve to emphasize Rouen's reputation as a historical city, the loaded implications of "Babylon" move beyond its significance as ancient, pointing more toward a sense of the ethos of the place. The debauched, pagan lifestyle for which the Babylonians were known, including their liberal sexual practices, further invests Rouen with the potentialities for passion and excitement that Emma initially senses upon her entrance. The idea of a "Babylon" as a backdrop for her extramarital love affair with Leon seems appropriate, and the fact that she does not stand alone in her libidinous drives, but is 46 Babylon can be applied "rhetorically to any great and luxurious city." O):ford English Dictionary, s.v., "Babylon." http://www.oed.com. surrounded by a community of like individuals, enhances both the anticipation and satisfaction of the experience for her.. Specific events also function as metonymic representations of Paris. For example, the two balls that Emma attends invoke the masked balls that are a defining feature of the Parisian landscape. In her imaginary wanderings about the streets of Paris, Emma never fails to end up "in front of the theatre-entrances," and such events frequently recur in her readings-up on the city.47 They also resonate in the brief description of Leon's association with Paris: "Paris beckoned from afar with the music of its masked balls," drawing Leon to the capita1.48 Conversely, upon his return to Rouen, "he no longer remembered the suppers with girls after masked balls.,,49 As they are interwoven in the fabric of Parisian life, these affairs inevitably refer back to the city, even when they are displaced outside of it. La Vaubyessard and the Mid-Lent ball at Rouen can be seen as adaptations on the Parisian masked ball, operating as metonyms for the city itself. At la Vaubyessard, "Madame Bovary noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses," indicating the cosmopolitan nature of her company,50 and her observation of the woman making advances toward a man presumably not her husband, as well as the inclusion of the waltz to conclude the evening, both inject the country ball with the kind of sexual energy characteristic of those in Paris (as exemplified in Manet's Masked Ball 47 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 50. 48 Ibid., 97. 49 Ibid., 185. so Ibid., 42 (footnote). "Frances Steegmuller explains this sentence...The ladies in the provinces, unlike their Paris counterparts, did not drink wine at public dinner parties, and signified their intention by putting their gloves in their wine-glasses. The fact that they fail to do so suggests to Emma the high degree of sophistication of the company." Wong 33 at the Opera).Sl The adjacent juxtaposition of the conclusion of the ball with the birth of Emma's infatuation with Paris also supports this notion of la Vaubyessard embodying the traces of a distinctly Parisian spirit. Her souvenir from the ball, the cigar-case that she attributes to the Viscount, is what first turns her imagination specifically to Paris. In daydreaming over the Viscount's whereabouts, she muses, "he was in Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like?"s2 Moreover, the metonymic representation of Paris through events such as the masked ball, as well as the general milieu of Rouen, dictates that certain parallels can also be drawn between Emma's interactions within these spaces and the kinds of relations that characterize and are implicitly identified with the city. Indeed, particular qualities of Emma's interactions within these metonymic spheres remarkably resemble the nature of those that lie at the heart of Edouard Manet's Paris, as it is depicted in his painting, Masked Ball at the Opera (1873). Linda Nochlin argues that Manet is similarly interested in the synecdochal portrayal of and access to object(s) of desire. She observes that several women are presented as "provocatively fragmented figures," a narratorial strategy that both "suggests a continuing reality beyond the frame [and] allude to the nature of the transactions going on within it."s3 Significantly, Nochlin also notes the correlation between the use of synecdoche in his work and the metonymy that is "central to the literary imagery of nineteenth-century Realism."s4 51 Ibid., 46 (footnote). "Already popular and frequently performed among the cosmopolitan elite of Europe by the 1790s, the waltz was subject to moral censure well into the nineteenth century because of the unprecedented close embrace in which the couple dances." 52 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 49. 53 Linda Nochlin, "Manet's Masked Ball at the Opera," in The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth­ Century Art and Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 78. 54 Nochlin, "Manet's Masked Ball," 78. Here Nochlin refers to Roman Jakobson's essay, "The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles." It should be noted that the relationship between metonymy and synecdoche is Wong 34 It is plausible for one to argue that since the Ball literally illustrates only a single snapshot of Parisian life, it cannot necessarily be seen as a representative depiction of the whole of Paris. Ifthis is the case, then any hypothetical similarities drawn between Emma and the players in the Ball would not automatically denote similarities between Emma's interactions and those of the city at large. What circumvents this potential objection is Nochlin's assertion that the Masked Ball is the "most vivid example of Manet's 'slice of life' vision, his conception of this particular group of foyer strollers and their companions signifying a larger and more extensive world beyond the painting's boundaries.,,55 What she is calling artention to is the fact that Manet's painting does, in fact, reveal something of an overall conception of the city, rather than just one segment of its population. In support of this are the fragmented figures that appear along the edges of the work. Among other things, they "suggest a continuing reality beyond the frame": that the city can essentially be rendered a multiplicity of like images, movements, and interactions.56 Consequently, distinct aspects of Emma's experience within these spaces, in their resemblance to those of Manet' s Ball, themselves function as metonymic signifiers for the city. For one, Emma operates within these representations of the urban in hyper-sexualized terms, mirroring the associations with Parisian life connoted in Leon's claim, "'Everybody does it in Paris!,,57 That this, "like a decisive argument, entirely convinced her" to have an affair reflects a deliberate attempt on her part to actively abide by this unclear: more specifically, whether synecdoche is a subdivision of metonymy or a distinct trope in itself. What is most important is that in the use of both, "there is an evident connection, conceptual or physical, between the figurative word and what it designates." (The New Princeton Handbook o/Poetic Terms, S.V., "Metonymy" and "Synecdoche") 55 Nochlin, "Manet's Masked Ball," 80. 56 Ibid., 78. 57 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 192. "Parisian" code of sexual conduct. Furthermore, the persuasiveness of Leon's claim only makes sense if one assumes Emma's belief that "doing it" is a metonym for Paris itself: that is, a way of accessing the city through its metonymic representation as a sex act. In this light, her affair with Leon is more than just the consummation of their mutual attraction, as it is invested with representative significance as a metonymic signifier for the city. Emma's overall state of heightened sexuality, thus, can be at least partially rationalized by her tendency to infuse such sexual/sex acts with this metonymic significance. All her interactions with men outside her immediate community -the Viscount, Rodolphe, and Leon -seem to involve varying degrees of sexualization, which is distinctly lacking in her marriage, arguably suggesting that her sexuality functions as a means of escaping the rural existence and transporting herself to Paris. It is also especially palpable in opposition to the sexual inertness that pervades the countryside, which is emblematized in Madame Homais. Leon asserts that "although she was thirty and he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next to each other and he spoke to her daily, he never though that she might be a woman to anyone, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown.,,58 Another moment that clearly exemplifies the eroticized nature of her encounters is her waltz with the Viscount at la Vaubyessard: They began slowly, then increased in speed. They turned ... On passing near the doors the train of Emma's dress caught against his trousers. Their legs intertwined; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her and she stopped. They started again, at an even faster pace; the Viscount, sweeping her along, disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where, panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head on his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands.59 58 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 80. 59 Ibid., 46. In addition to the erotic suggestiveness of their movements, the progression of their dance actually mimics that of sexual intercourse, with a climactic release at the point "where, panting, she almost fell." The legal charges brought against Madame Bovary for offense to public and religious morality also speak to the way in which Emma's actions are hyper-sexualized to the point of seeming indecent, even pornographic. For example, her cab ride with Leon was one instance cited by the prosecution as immoral, and was also subject to removal by the Revue for its "unacceptability.,,6o While no sex act is explicitly mentioned, the undertones of the scene leave no doubt as to what is happening. Emma's "bare hand" reaching out of the cab is so sexually charged that it functions to signify the bareness of her entire body.61 Sexually charged interactions between the sexes are, in Nochlin's view, what Manet's Ball is all about. She writes, "The densely packed mass of figures is constantly punctuated by interesting nuances of touch, physical pressure, leanings against, intimate glances; all these subtle and not-so~subtle moves mark the various stages of making OUt.,,62 One can easily imagine Emma situated within and participant of these sexualized interactions that make up the "modern, urban, explicitly Parisian imagery" of the Ball.63 As with Flaubert, Manet never explicitly depicts the physical act of sex in this painting, but the sexual overtones permeating the work are indisputable. Emma's eroticized waltz with the Viscount also underscores the fact that these instances of sexual intimacy can 60 Gustave Flaubert, "Madame Bovary on Trial," ed. Bregtje Hartendorf-Wallach, in Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen and tr. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Paul de Man (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005),346. 61 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 194. 62 Nochlin, "Manet's Masked Ball" 86. 63 Nochlin, "Manet's Masked Ball," 77. occur in public spaces, just as in Manet's Parisian Ball.64 That Emma's most memorable sexual encounters occur outside the privacy of her home corresponds with the Ball's public display of such intimacies, and lends further support for the notion of such sexualized moments as metonyms for the city. Additionally, Paris is evoked by the centrality of her dress to Emma's presence in its physical representations. In both of the balls, Emma is characterized by her meticulous preparations of appearance; at la Vaubyessard, "Emma made her toilette with the fastidious care of an actress on her debut," and by referring to her as an "actress," Flaubert alludes to the deceptive transformations in identity that can follow from changes in one's appearance.6S He also pays keen attention in relaying the details of her fas:ade: "Her hair, gently undulating towards the ears, shone with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green.,,66 Likewise, at the masked ball in Rouen, Flaubert specifies that she "wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a peruke, and a three-cornered hat cocked over one ear," a costume, more or less.67 The description of her companions at Rouen, "five or six other masked dancers, dressed as stevedores or sailors," also emphasize the assumption of disguise in these scenes.68 Just prior to entering the theatre in Rouen, Emma makes sure to buy "a hat, gloves, and a bouquet," props to prettify herself for the occasion. 69 The specifics of her dress vary with the occasion, but the point is that she never attends the 64 Nochlin notes that the specific setting of the Ball is "the promenade, or the gangway, behind the boxes of the Opera on the rue Le Peletier." Ibid., 82. 65 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 42. 66 Ibid., 44. 67 Ibid., 231. 68 See note 29 above. 69 Ibid., 177. affairs as she is, and the deliberation with which she fixes herself up implies that such alterations of appearance are always artificially contrived, yet essential to her existence in these spaces. The notion of dress is also crucial to Nochlin's understanding of Manet's Masked Ball. Despite the title of the painting, she observes that only "the women are actually masked and wearing fancy dress; the men wear ordinary evening clothes.,,7o The consistency of outward presentation between Emma and Manet' s women suggests that she would fit in well with the general aesthetic of the ball. As with Emma, dressing up is inherent to the presence of the women, as not one of them is seen in "ordinary evening clothes," as are the men.7l That it is largely a female-specific act it sets the tone for the nature of the relations that are portrayed. Even though there are male exceptions to the gendering of dress-up, such as Polichinelle in the Ball and Rodolphe, neither one is any more sexualized as a result of his appearance. Rodolphe's dandyism is self-indulgent more than anything else, though its novelty undoubtedly "charms" Emma.72 The implication that dressing up is provocative, or erotic, only if one is female, reveals that not only is the act itself a gendered one, the perception of those who are dressed up is gender-dependent as well. Paris is metonymically signified by the very manner in which the city's various representations are conceived, and taken in, by Emma. The intensity of Flaubert' s attention to detail is vital, as it points to an overall scheme for Emma's relation to these spaces. Such details are often relayed in a form of the catalogue proper to Flaubert. This 70 Nochlin, "Manet's Masked Ball," 77. 71 See note 32 above. 72 Flaubert, Madanze Bovary, 124. Wong 39 narratorial device is the primary mode of conveying Emma's experience, as illustrated by the following account of la Vaubyessard: Along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in half-clenched hands, with white gloves outlining the nail and tightening on the f1esh at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on blouses, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair, well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, wheat-sprays and corn-f1owers.73 Such lists are grounded in Emma's perspective as the subject: that is, she is the one taking in the smells, fabrics, sounds, and colors of these objects. Her noticeable absence from the majority of these accounts strengthens this claim, as it signifies that she is the lens through which the scene is unfolding. Also, though the objects are often implicitly perceived on individuals, the nouns in the catalogue reveal a focus on the things themselves, not the persons on which they are displayed. Individuals are never depicted in complete totality, only loosely identified by the objects on their person. The nature of this description can be likened to a moment soon afterward, in which Emma is musing over the different classes of Paris and envisions the world of ambassadors as one defined by its "polished f100rs in drawing-rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths.,,74 In this description, objects are also privileged over individuals, as there is no mention of the ambassadors themselves, only the material things with which they are associated. Like Whitman's, Flaubert's catalogue is assembled as a succession of types; each thing is tallied as a plurality. In the above example, the nouns of the list include: "fans...bouquets...scent-bottles...lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallionbracelets, 73 Ibid.. 44. 74 Ibid., 50 etc." However, these groups are not communities of individuals humanizing the urban existence, as are the types in Whitman. Instead, the classification of persons by their things presumes that the latter are the most memorable features of the individuals that Emma encounters. These catalogues arguably convey her most visceral and heartfelt impressions of the tableau, and their foundation in such object-based similarities connotes that whatever else the individuals may consist of is secondary, perhaps even insignificant. The intensity of Emma's reaction to these material things thus overwhelms any possibility of distinguishing persons on the basis of more human characteristics. The nature of the catalogue as a collection of pluralities tums the humanity of each individual into a mere afterthought. Emma's nearly instinctive objectification of others parallels that which permeates the Masked Ball. But while the act of disguise situates Emma with the females in Manet's painting, her tendency toward objectification conversely equates her with the male subjects of his piece. Also, her noted absence from th,e above catalogue identifies her as a potential observer of the scene rather than the persons who are wholly contained within it. In this sense, she resembles Manet's Polichinelle, who Nochlin describes as a "partially visiblefigure...cutoffby theframe attheleft, who seems morelikean observer than a participant.,,75 Here again, she is seen traversing the gender division erected by Manet's painting, as presented by Nochlin. Like Polichinelle, Emma is presented as half-in and half-out, operating both as a subject within and an observer outside the scene. Thus, Emma's interactions in these metonymic spaces importantly adhere to, but also push against, the rigidly defined gender roles in Nochlin's understanding of Manet' s Ball. 75 Nochlin, "Maner's Masked Ball," 77. The implications of Flaubert' s rigorous attention to each detail also seem to extend beyond its metonymic significance of Emma's experience in the terms I have been describing. Since the catalogues in these moments effectively stand for the scenes themselves, each scene is also depicted not as a unified whole so much as merely an accretion of highly specific objects. Take, for another example, the catalogued depiction of Leon and Emma's hotel room in Rouen, the home base for their affair: The bed was a large one, made of mahogany and shaped like a boat. The red silk curtains which hung from the ceiling, were gathered together too low, close to the lyre-shaped headboards...The warm room, with its subdued carpet, its frivolous ornaments and its soft light. ... The curtain-rods, ending in arrows, the brass pegs and the great balls of the andilrons.76 The first sketch of the bed as "large," "made of mahogany" and "shaped like a boat" exemplifies the effect of the catalogue's detail in underscoring the materiality of the scene. The description of the bed is such that it comes across as an entity in its own right, one that can independently exist outside the context of this scene. In effect, the bed's presence in the hotel room is rendered secondary to its existence per se. The other items can be understood similarly, such that while the particulars are strung together to create an ambience "made for the intimacies of passion," what comes across most effectively in this excerpt is the weight afforded to each individual object as such.77 Privileging the individual objects within the list over the list itself subverts the catalogue as a holistic entity, as it diverts emphasis instead onto the catalogue's constitutive components. The lack of cohesiveness in the depiction of such scenes, combined with the relentless focus on their materiality, demands a reconsideration of their metonymic significance. It seems essential that any metonym be conceived as a 76 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 208. 77 See note 38 above. holistic unit, as in order to function as a representation, it must first be able to function as a whole. The magnification of the internal materiality of these moments diverts from their representational capacity. In this sense, such moments are emptied out of metonymic significance, which, in turn, problematizes the status of Paris itself in the novel. Up to this point, my analysis has proceeded under the assumption that the city is an abstraction that can exist through metonymic associations: in other words, a concept that can be disconnected from its physicality. Critically, the metonymic accessibility of the city hinges on whether or not it can be dissociated from the physical, being possible only if the represented can be fully embodied in abstract terms. The novel does support this notion, most evidently in the city's abstract representation in the appearance of a map. For Emma, the map clearly stands in as a metonymic replacement for Paris: "with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turn, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses.,,78 Simply touching it transports her into the city, demonstrating its function as a symbolic representaltion of Paris. However, other instances seem to establish the concept of Paris as one inextricably rooted in its physicality. That Emma sees it as some point "at the end of some indefinite distance" as she follows the sound of the fish carts heading toward Paris indicates that her conception of it is at least partially rooted in physical space.79 Additionally, Emma contrasts her ideal of Paris with "nearer things...her immediate surroundings, the wearisome countryside," implicitly attaching certain qualities of the city with its physical location: namely, far away from her and the "8 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 50. 79 See note 40 above. provmces. While the references to it are littered throughout, Paris itself always remains intangible for Emma and for the reader as well, who is never awarded an actual glimpse of the city in the narrative. Certainly, the physical absence of the city from the novel in conjunction with its largely indefinable presence leaves open the possibility that any conception of the city must, in fact, be rooted in its physical existence. That tension over whether Paris is separable from its physicality is also born out in the conflicted nature of Emma's desire for the city. Assuming that Paris can be metonymically represented, the catalogues' disruptions of these potential significations transpose her desire for Paris onto the various objects located within the catalogued moments. In this sense, her specific longing for Paris becomes a multiplicity of desires, the object of each being the individual details of the city that she actually experiences. This mass dissemination of her desires is exhibited in the sheer quantity of Emma's whims, which either take the form of wanting things or of wanting to buy things for others. For example, the "rose-colored satin [slippers] bordered with swansdown" were specifically a "gift Leon had bought to satisfy a whim of hers.,,80 Her relationship with Monsieur Lheureux, the local shopkeeper, is entirely premised on the need to satiate her consumerist impulses, which include "the curtains, the carpet, the material for the arm­chairs, several dresses, and diverse articles of dress. ,,81 The uncontrollable debt that Emma accumulates in attempt to fulfill these spontaneous urges is perhaps most indicative of the rampant proliferation and self-sLlstainability of such individual desires. At the same time, however, Emma's desire is first explicitly articulated as a longing to "live in Paris," suggesting that the desirability of Paris is grounded in its identity as a 80 Ibid., 209. 81 Ibid., 214. place, a geographic destination of interest as opposed to an entirely abstracted concept.82 Her firm belief in Paris as an "immense land of joys and passions," a land of paradise, implies that Emma's desire is bound to Paris' physical existence as a place.83 Despite the bombardment of details that may detract from this vision, there still remains this impression that being in Paris is, in her mind, the ultimate cure-all for her discontent. Over the course of the novel, Flaubert persists in identifying Emma as the primary subject of desire. This stance directly contradicts Peter Brooks' unidimensional notion of Emma as the object of desire (and vision) in Madmne Bovary. Brooks argues that her husband and lovers only "seem to know her by way of the details and the accessories of her beauty,,,84 resulting in the "atomization of her person.,,85 His characterization of Emma solely as the object of desire is flawed. Like Nochlin, he unquestioningly places her in the predominant female position within the subject/object spectrum and brushes aside alternative possibilities to the status quo. Brooks' view completely dismisses the fact that Emma's perspective is the one dictating the things, people, and places that are presented here. Madame Bovary is her world, as seen through her own eyes, making her role as the subject, rather than the object, the driving force behind the novel. I am arguing not that Emma herself is not an object of desire, but that as readers, our attention is constantly being directed to the objects of Emma's desire more so than to Emma herself. Flaubert's consistent privileging of Emma's vantage point also contradicts Brooks' assertion that the "desire subtending the gaze" in the novel belongs to the "men 82 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 52. 83 Ibid., 51, my emphasis. 84 Peter Brooks, "Flaubert and the Scandal of Realism," in Realist Vision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 55. 85 Ibid., 58. who admire and look at her.,,86 Importantly, while the men are undoubtedly endowed with more physical mobility, they only appear in the context of their significance or relations to Emma. As I noted earlier, Leon's disappearance from the narrative during his time in Paris speaks to his effective nonexistence when he lies beyond the scope of Emma's reach. She, in turn, resembles a hub at which her devotees come together, though they rarely intersect with one another. Their irrelevance outside Emma's line of vision severely limits the extent to which one can credit them with any autonomous internal state, as each exists exclusively on her terms. Moreover, each look, word, and act of longing on their parts only contributes to further unsettling the unidirectionality of her position as the object of desire. Charles frequently expresses his deepest admiration for Emma not by kissing her face or lips, but by kissing her "back,,87 and "shoulder."s8 Rodolphe, in his great anticipation, fixates on the "delicacy of her white stocking," and Emma is described "hiding her face in her hands" as she abandons herself to him. 89 Emma's face is oddly obscured in these moments: casting an image of her face as the object of desire is systematically avoided. It is presumptuous to solely identify her as an object when she occupies such a central role as subject of the novel. Thus, Emma clearly occupies a more complicated relation to the subject/object binary than Brooks allows for. Central to his argument is the male "fetishization of details of her person and accessories of her femininity. ,,90 In this context, Brooks defines fetishism as "the investment of accessory and ancillary objects -objects metonymically 86 Ibid., 56. 87 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 29. 88 Ibid., 44. 89 . IbId., 129-130. 90 Brooks, "Flaubert and the Scandal of Realism," 56. associated with the body -with desire.',91 In light of Emma's principal role as subject, the gaze that he attributes to the men who admire her may actually emanate from Emma herself: she is at once the subject and object of this desire. Understood as such, the perceived fetishism of the men instead more essentially reflects Emma's own fetishism. Rather than exhibiting sentiments derived from within, her male admirers function more like mirrors redirecting Emma's gaze back to the original source. Take the following passage to which Brooks refers: "[Justin] greedily watched all these women's garments spread about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with rulming strings.',92 While Brooks posits that Justin himself is fetishizing these objects, the boy-servant is merely picking up on and perpetuating Emma's pre-existing fetishizations for these objects. The question then becomes: how is such an inversion accounted for? One potential way ofrationalizing Emma's dual existence as the subject and object of desire by recourse to the theoretical framework of the prostitute as it is laid out by Susan Buck-Morss' account of Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project. Buck-Morss claims that the image of the whore, the most significant female figure in Benjamin's project, is "the embodiment of objectivity" as well as the '''seller and commodity in one. ",93 Thus even in a subject role as seller, the prostitute conceives herself as an object to be sold: "As seller she mimics the commodity.,,94 It is crucial to make the distinction between women as non-subjects and women as objects even when subjects; Buck-Morss does not seem to be saying that women cannot be subjects at all, but that their subjectivity is completely 91 See note 52 above. 92 Flaubert, Madame Bovary, 151. 93 Susan Buck-Morss, "The Flaneur, the Sandwichman, and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering," New German Critique, 39 (1986): 120, http://www.jstoLorg/stable/488122. 94 See note 55 above. intertwined with their status as objects. She later states that "[women], like whores, have used their power of agency against itself: they make themselves objects ... .impersonate commodities in order to attract a distracted public of potential buyers," supporting the idea that women do possess some sort of subject power and are consequently implicated in their own objectification.95 In the same way that Buck-Morss sees Benjamin's prostitute as a "seller and commodity in one," Emma might also be perceived as a "consumer and commodity in one." Her primary activity in the novel is that of desiring, which is most often manifested in her various displays of consumption. Each act of consumption logically signifies the fulfillment of a localized desire for the purchased entity. However, the whimsical nature of her purchases, and the way in which such desires seem perpetually renewable, suggests that they stem from a more deep-seated yearning that only reveals itself in commodified form. In light of Buck-Morss' view on the prostitute, one possible source of this underlying desire is that Emma herself seeks to be a commodity: put another way, Emma more fundamentally desires to be the object of desire. As such, Emma as consumer is merely the outward projection of Emma as commodity, and all the garments, accessories, and objects that she buys are each invested with this desire to embody the image of desirability in the eyes of others. Such props like the ones Justin ogles are, in essence, Emma's attempts to enhance her desirability, and as a result, the male recognition or supposed "fetishism" of these objects merely reflects her own self­objectification. Although the notion of objectifying oneself seems unappealing, the alternatives presented in the provincial world of the novel are bleak. Madame Homais is barely a 95 Ibid., 125. woman and all others are either nonexistent or highly undesirable. For example, Charles' first wife is dryly described as "ugly, as dryas a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds.,,96 The only other woman who is distinguished in some way is Catherine Leroux, who is awarded a silver medal for "fifty-four years of service at the same farm," or, in other words, her lack of social and physical mobility.97 She is literally immobilized, petrified in fear, by others' recognition of her existence. Perhaps Emma equates invisibility and unwanted attention with the mediocrity of the countryside that she abhors. While objectively speaking, self-objectification may be undesirable, it is certainly the most preferable of the options available to Emma. Moreover, seeing herself as an object of desire is partially what allows her the opportunities to metonymically access Paris. Only in objectifying herself does Emma feel compelled to be such a determined consumer or to dress herself up in order to attract the male gaze. The sexual attention that she subsequently receives as a result of her self-objectification, in tum, jumpstarts the extramarital affairs that provide her with the most real, however transient, pleasures of her existence. This suggests an addendum to the previous claims regarding these metonymic representations of Paris: namely, that her concurrent desire to self-objectify is central to conceiving them. In driving her subject-existence as consumer, however, Emma's self-objectification problematizes the very coherence of her subject. I earlier argue that hers can be understood as a "multiplicity" of desires that are each projected onto her commodities of choice. To extend this claim, she lives by her desires and arguably exists 96 Flaubert, Madame Bavarv, 13. 97 Ibid., 121. . Wong 49 in them, such that their various dislocations, in tum, disseminate her being into the world. Take the following passage, as the priest anoints Emma on her deathbed: Then he...dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First, upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly goods; then upon the nostrils, that had been so greedy of the warm breeze and the scents of love; then upon the mouth, that had spoken lies, moaned in pride and cried out in lust; then upon the hands that had taken delight in the texture of sensuality; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift when she had hastened to satisfy her desires.98 The repetitive juxtaposition of her body parts with (1) how they function to personify her desires and (2) how they interact with the world, suggests both that she is her desire and that she is in what she desires. In essence, it signifies the breakdown of the boundaries between her body and the world, facilitating a fluidity that diffuses Emma's subjectivity and disembodies it from a coherent subject form. The self-destruction of her body signifies this erasure of the coherent subject, as her physical death seems almost necessary for the complete realization this one-ness in which she is indistinguishable from her material world. That Emma's complex relation to desire precludes a coherence of being thus establishes desire as a focal point for the enumeration, dispersion, and circulation of the constitutive elements of one's existence. Finally, Emma's relation to desire points back to another fundamental flaw in Brooks' account. In calling hers a "failure to be a full, coherent, autonomous person," he takes for granted the incoherence of being as a "failed" state a priori.99 This presumption favors the notion of coherence as the standard for, or definition of, the success of being and furthermore, that coherence is a mode of being that her character even can attain. Brooks' assumption that she can embody such a figure is mistaken, as the implications of 98 Ibid., 256. 99 Brooks, "Flaubert and the Scandal of Realism," 58. her duality as both subject and object of desire render coherence an impossibility. If that is the defining measure of one's subjectivity, then Emma is doomed to fail. Conclusion: Redefining the Terms of a Gendered Urban Subjectivity In considering notions of female subjectivity in the context of the socio-historical and theoretical artist-observer, the fldneur, one inevitably resorts to the terms of the subject/object binary that is central to both Charles Baudelaire's and Walter Benjamin's conceptions offldnerie. However, simply addressing the issue of urban subjectivity in such terms already presumes coherence: that the individual can even be fully classified as either a subject or object. In making such a presumption, this model inherently privileges a male subjectivity, one with the luxury of operating solely as a subject, if he so chooses. In contrast, the representations of female subjectivity in Whitman's prostitute poetry and Flaubert's Madame Bovary demonstrate the female's more complicated relation to desire, in which her subject-existence is indissolubly linked to her perpetual status as an object. As such, a paradigm of subjectivity based on an unequivocal subject state intrinsically disadvantages, and arguably renders impossible, any female construction of such. In The Freudian Body, Leo Bersani offers an appealing approach to conceiving an alternative form of subjectivity. In his discussion of Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents, Bersani states that one of the central arguments of Freud's work is that "'the conquest, the work of civilization involves a certain removal of man from nature, an ability to differentiate his own body from other 'bodies' in his environment. .. a sharpening of the boundaries between the ego and the world." 100 In other words, it posits 100 Leo Bersani, "Theory and Violence," In The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (New Yark: Columbia University Press, 1986), 15. Wong 51 that coherence, which entails a clear distinction demarcation between the self ("ego") and non-self ("world") entities, is an artificially constructed value forged by the demands of civilization. Freud's position, according to Bersani, is one that actually appears to favor non-differentiation, or incoherence, over a state of being that surfaced concurrent with an "'organic repression'" and the fall of our sexuality.JOI As such, he presents the possibility of reconceptualizing Emma's as a reclamation of an organic, pre-civilization mode of being, in which her perceived "incoherence" is a collapsing of the boundaries erected by civilization and the forced "removal of man from nature." Exactly what form such a pre­civilization state of existence might take is unclear, though Bersani relates it back to an "oceanic feeling" of "oneness" with the world.102 What is clear is that grounding a discourse on the nature of urban subjectivity within such a non-gendered model, while acknowledging the different experiences of gendered subjects, would better provide for the realization of both male and female accounts of the modern experience of the city. 101 Ibid., 17. 102 Ibid., 19. 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