Madame Bovary

This DVR feature of cable television is great. We can record any movies or programs we'd like to watch at our convenience. The Turner Classic Movies channel is one of my favorites. Over the past few months I have watched lots of wonderful movies like The African Queen, Spellbound, Jezebel, A Woman's Face and more.

Lately I have been watching a film version of Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary with James Mason as Flaubert and Jennifer Jones as Madame Bovary. I remember reading the book when I was a teenager and feeling a lot of sympathy for Madame Bovary. She was trapped, yearning for freedom, full of dreams of self-fulfillment and social climbing. While social-climbing wasn't in my goal set, as most teenagers, I yearned for freedom. Since my family had self-destructed as a result of what I thought must have been unfulfilled yearnings and ambitions, somehow I must have considered this all very expected and even acceptable. Flaubert tries to portray Madame Bovary as sympathetic, but I remember also thinking of her as selfish. Watching the movie today she just seems selfish and narcissistic. I find myself wondering about the etiology of that sort of narcissism. Is it undeveloped mirror neurons? Is it being spoiled as a child? Is it associating with selfish role models? I'm not sure.