before betty

Sitting snug, reading the classics
encore une fois Madame Bovary,
and her insufferable complacency
with the ridiculous romance of thin-paper novels.

And yet, I understand her need to be something else,
something more, to escape the quaint provincial life,
full of the foibles of the French bourgeoisie.

Sadly, you can see the end coming,
the flights of fancy building to catastrophe,
long before young Emma befuddles Monsieur Bovary.

Most disturbing however, is the gleeful sneering
of the narrator, peering
over my shoulder while reading,
a heartless voice, laughing with glee
at the – albeit predictable – calamity
that is poor Madame Bovary’s.

And yet I turn another page, if only
due to an understanding of her genuine suffering,
silly and selfish to narrator, parish and priest,
yet very real to poor Emma,
that feminine mystique resting darkly
in her desperate ennui.