Ennui

I’m reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and man, the lady is bored.  The way I read it, that’s her main complaint.  

Her husband bores her, her child bores her, the sleepy village she lives in bores her, even her dinner bores her: “But it was most of all at mealtimes that she could not bear it any longer, in that little room on the ground floor, with the stove that smoked, the door that squeaked, the wall that seeped, the damp flagstones; all the bitterness of life seemed to be serve up on her plate, and with the steam from the boiled meat, there rose from the depth of her soul other gusts of revulsion.” (56)

I get it; the routine of life is oppressive: eating, sleeping, waking, breathing—it’s a drag to be sure, day after day, month after month, year after year.  Filling the empty hours (or even the full ones) can seem a depressing chore, especially when you have aspirations, like Madame B., for a life of glamor, art, and culture.

But honestly, what else is there?  We’re all going to be dead soon enough, and so, in the meantime, what’s the alternative to living our lives, however boring they might seem at the time?

Besides isn’t being bored the most boring thing of all?  Mom always said that only boring people are bored and while as a bored eight year-old on a rainy afternoon, I didn’t want to believe her, now, as a potentially bored sixty-five year-old on an overcast day, I see her point.

Pretty much anything can be interesting if you decide to be interested in it.  For instance, I’m quite enjoying Madame Bovary’s boredom; I find it fascinating how contemporary are her feelings in spite of her story being set in a time almost two hundred years ago.  

I’m pretty sure things won’t end well; I’m not at all bored to see how it will turn out for her.