This article was downloaded by: [University of Newcastle (Australia)]On: 03 October 2014, At: 05:35Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK

Symposium: A QuarterlyJournal in Modern LiteraturesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vsym20

The Role of the Blind Beggar inMadame BovaryMurray Sachsa

a Brandeis UniversityPublished online: 06 Sep 2013.

To cite this article: Murray Sachs (1968) The Role of the Blind Beggar in MadameBovary, Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 22:1, 72-80, DOI:10.1080/00397709.1968.10732987

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00397709.1968.10732987

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all theinformation (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform.However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness,or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and viewsexpressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of theContent should not be relied upon and should be independently verified withprimary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages,and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of theContent.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes.Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan,

sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone isexpressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

MURRAY SACHS

THE ROLE OF THE BLIND BEGGAR INMADAME BOVARY

THE BRIEF but intense role of the blind beggar, wholly confined toPart Three of Madame Bovary, reaches its memorable high point with hisappearance under Emma's window in Chapter VIII, singing his gaylittle song as she is breathing her last. His supreme moment is thus alsothe novel's climax, a fact which seems plainly intended to confer uponhim a special aura of symbolic meaning and an importance to the novelfar out of proportion to the brevity of his few moments on its stage.It is doubtless for that reason that the blind beggar has received somuch more than his commensurate share of critical attention. Unhap­pily, that critical attention has resulted in more confusion than enlight­enment, particularly on the key question of what the blind beggar isintended to symbolize in the novel.

The spectrum of opinions on the meaning of the blind beggar'srole has been disconcertingly broad for a novel whose symbolism hasnever been considered especially obscure or difficult to penetrate.At one extreme, for example, one finds such an interpretation as thatof Albert Thibaudet, who sees in this repellent figure a satanic presenceproclaiming that Emma's soul is damned:

Le roman de Flaubert est aussi [anseniste que la Phedre de Racine, et ila donne ala mort d'Emma une figure de damnation. II a voulu que ledemon y flit present, sous la figure de l'aveugIe, du monstre grima­c;ant entrevu dans ces voyages aRouen qui la menaient al'adultere,du mendiant a qui elle a jete sa derniere piece d'argent comme Iesuicide jette au diable une ame perdue,"

Apart from the eccentricity of imputing Jansenist notions to Flaubert,Thibaudet's view of the blind beggar's role is, at bottom, akin to thatof a number of other critics equally willing to see him as the symbol ofsome supernatural force, of some form of destiny controlling Emma'slife. Professor D. L. Demorest, for instance, in his pioneering study of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

MURRAY SACHS 73

Flaubert's symbolism, concluded that the blind beggar "devient pourEmma l'incarnation de Nemesis.t" More recently, both Uon Bopp andProfessor B. F. Bart have felt justified in using words like damnation and1JItJlhJiction to express their sense that the blind beggar is meant to con­vey to the reader the idea that a fatal curse hangs over Emrna.s

At the other extreme are those critics who are unable to see superna­tural implications in a Flaubertian symbol, and who prefer to interpretthe symbolism of the blind beggar in more human and earthboundterms. Margaret Tillett, for example, in her sensitive reading of thenovel, is content to suggest that the blind beggar probably signifies"the embodiment of Emma's degradation."" Alison Fairlie is of theopinion that the beggar "conveys the menace of the grotesque behindall human pretensions."6 Professor Harry Levin goes somewhat furtherin this earthbound direction, invoking the menace of death in connec­tion with the blind beggar, whom, he declares, Flaubert envisaged as" a memento mori, an incarnation of fleshly frailty."6

The opinions cited do not exhaust the different interpretations of theblind beggar's role which have been proposed, of course, but they areadequately representative both of the wide range across which they arespread and of the two polarized categories into which most opinionstend to fall, the supernatural and the human." The case of the blindbeggar would appear, then, to be unique in all of Madame BovtJry, for itis the one symbol whose meaning is not immediately clear and under­standable to all careful readers, and which has markedly divided thecritics. Is this a deliberate vagueness on Flaubert's part, or perhaps afailure of his usually well-controlled art? Either view seems too unchar­acteristic of the author to be plausible. Has the novel, then, beenmisread? Inasmuch as Flaubert's intentions, in creating the character ofthe blind beggar, emerge quite unmistakably from a careful scrutinyof the scenarios, the early drafts, and the novel itself, it is the conten­tion of this essay that the novel has, on this point, been generallymisread, and that because of that misreading the role ot the blindbeggar has, over the years, failed to be fully appreciated for what itadds to the structure and meaning of the novel as a whole.

The principal source of this persistent misreading is probably to befound in the fact that the death scene is undeniably the most importantand memorable of the blind beggar's appearances in the novel and haspre-empted attention even though it is not the scene for which he wasoriginally created nor the one in which the novelist's intended meaningis made most manifest. It has been an understandable tendency of cri­tics and scholars to focus mainly on the death scene and to take, as theprime critical task, the problem of explaining the meaning of the sym­bol as it operates in that one scene alone. This tendency has the unfor­tunate consequence that other scenes in which the beggar appears are

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

74 Spring I968 SYMPOSIUM

neglected, and that critical interpretations are thus constructed withoutdue regard for the author's intentions. It is a fact that the text of thedeath scene contains not one word or phrase which hints at what theblind beggar is intended to symbolize. Diverse interpretations mightseem therefore quite legitimate. But this spare writing in the deathscene is neither deliberate nor accidental vagueness on Flaubert's part.It comes quite simply from the fact that he made his intentions quiteclear regarding this symbolism in two earlier scenes and nothingadditional should have been required to give the death scene its fullforce. While some exercise of the reader's subjective imagination isinvited by the dramatic circumstances of the death scene, in interpret­ing the symbolic meaning of the blind beggar, no interpretationwould be justified which is not a close and logical extension of the coremeaning which Flaubert implanted in his symbol when he first cre­ated him. It is that core meaning which has been so neglected by thecritics, and which can be clearly grasped only if one returns to an atten­tive reading of the scene for which the beggar was originally created.

The scene in question occurs in Chapter V of Part Three, whereinFlaubert is intent on giving the reader a general sense of the qualityof Emma's experiences on those regular Thursday visits to Rouen tosee her lover, Uon. The chapter begins, it will be recalled, with anaccount of Emma's morning preparations and the coach trip itself,culminating in the celebrated description of the first glimpse of thecity, appearing in Emma's eyes as a glittering Babylon of pleasures.Here, as the journey ends, Emma's anticipations are at their highest:"Qgelque chose de vertigineux se degageait pour elle de ces existencesamassees, et son cceur s'en gonflait abondamment comme si les centvingt mille ames qui palpitaient Ill. lui eussent envoye toutes ala foisla vapeur des passions qu'eHe leur supposait.i" After a day which in­evitably falls short of these expectations, the blind beggar is pointedlyintroduced. He is the ugly and disturbing apparition that greets Emmaas she begins her homeward journey in the coach. The contrast isdeliberate: The Babylon of pleasures and the one hundred and twentythousand souls palpitating with passion which fill her imagination inthe morning have by late afternoon given way to a. solitary, mutilated

. beggar, whose wailing song intensely distresses Emma: "Cela lui des­cendait au fond de l'ame comme un tourbillon dans un abime, et l'em­portait parmi les espaces d'une melancolie sans bornes" (p. HO). Thejourney home at night is a sad, chilling counterpart to the excitingjourney to Rouen she had made in the morning. The structure of thescene makes amply clear what the blind beggar's basic function ismeant to be: he stands quite simply for reality. In limited, specific termshe represents the ugly truth of life in Rouen, after Emma's romanticillusions about it have been stripped away. By extension, he can sym-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

MURRAY SACHS 75

bolize the hard reality of life anywhere, the pitiable residue that re­mains after experience has deflated the dreams by which those withEmma's imginative needs tend to embroider life. With his first irrup­tion into Emma's line of vision, the blind beggar acts as a catalyst whoprecipitates the collapse of the last vestiges of her illusions and plungesher into a melancholy recognition of reality. But the beggar remains inher line of vision for an achingly long interval in this scene. Moreover,the imperfect tenses used throughout the scene convey the feeling of ascene repeated every Thursday over a considerable period of time.The beggar becomes, therefore, by his persistent presence, the eloquent,inescapable symbol of that reality in all its raw and brutal truth. Andwhen he takes on this dimension, the blind beggar becomes a fully inte­grated symbol in the overall pattern of the novel, just as the scene itself,with its motif of the journey and return, continues the novel's basicmovement and underlying theme: the determined flight from reality,followed by the inevitable descent back to the painful truth.

While the beggar's role in the death scene may well inspire suchnotions as the devil, damnation, degradation, or death in the reader'smind, no such extension of his core symbolic meaning seems needed forthis scene in Chapter V which was the occasion for his original crea­tion by Flaubert. His role is clear enough as the means by which Emmais forced to confront reality after one of her flights into illusion. We canpersuade ourselves more fully that that was indeed Flaubert's intentionby tracing as well as available documents allow the gradual processby which the blind beggar came to be created by Flaubert. The earliestscenarios show no trace of any figure like the beggar, either in thedeath scene or in the proposed account of the Thursdays in Rouen,?One does find already, in these initial outlines, the notion of contrast­ing the joy of the morning journey with the melancholy of the eveningtrip home, and, for the death scene, a reminder to include exact medicaldetails for vividness (pp. 18-19). Subsequently, when filling out thescene of the return journey with details, Flaubert made an interlinearaddition as though it were a sudden inspiration: "mendiant dans lacote du Boisguillaume" (p, 30). It constitutes the first mention of thebeggar in Flaubert's working papers. There is no comparable mentionwhen the death scene is evoked in the course of this and other scenarioscomposed about the same time. The purpose the beggar is to serve inthis first incarnation seems unmistakable: he is to be used as a visibleexternal cause for Emma's plunge into melancholy at the end of the day.For as a conscientious artist who knows he must show rather than tellwhat is happening to Emma in this scene, Flaubert seeks ways to com­municate the onset of this mood to the reader.P Pondering this prob­lem, he hits on the device of a beggar, whose appearance at the sideof the road can plausibly occasion Emma's sudden melancholy.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

Spring 1968 SYMPOSIUM

Thus far the beggar is characterized in the scenarios in no other waythan by the single word "mendiant." There is no mention of blindness.In a somewhat later version, the word "mendiant" is suddenly replacedby "cul-de-jatte" (p, 96). The idea of a legless cripple must have appeal­ed to Flaubert as much more vividly horrifying and therefore moreappropriate to his purpose. For several scenarios after that, "cul-de­jatte" is the phrase that recurs at this point in the plot. Meanwhile, thedeath scene still shows no sign of any beggar added to the cast of char­acters. After Louis Bouilhet called his attention to a legless cripple inVictor Hugo, the scrupulous Flaubert decided to reconsider, impor­tuned Bouilhet for suggestions, and in short order the "cul-de-jatte"was replaced in the scenarios by "l'aveugle" (p, 113). II It is in this samescenario that the death scene carries the word "l'aveugle" for the firsttime (p. 114), as an interlinear addition-again suggesting a suddeninspiration.

The exact nature of this inspiration is surely not far to seek. For, if itis true, from the evidence, that the blind beggar was, in the first in­stance, created for the scene of Emma's return journey from Rouen toYonville, and not for the death scene, it follows that the subsequentinspiration to use the blind beggar in the death scene must have arisenbecause the need was in some way parallel. When he began to composethe death scene, Flaubert must have recognized that he found himselfonce more confronted by the same problem: how to plunge Emmaback to the chill of reality. The situation is this: having swallowedpoison, Emma is dying, attended by Bournisien who administers thelast sacraments. True to her nature, and inspired by the last sacraments,Emma expends her last resources of energy and will power to propelher imagination on a flight to that state of beatitude which she desiresin death, as she has longed for it in life. For a brief moment she achievesa kind of serenity. But in harmony with the pattern of the whole novel,this flight into illusion must also end as had the others, in an abruptreturn to the cruel truth.P The problem was that this return must beforced while she is still conscious of what is happening. For a similarneed, a similar solution: the blind beggar's song, if it could plausiblybe made to reach Emma's ears at that moment in the action, would pro­duce the desired effect. 13 And the reader, already prepared by the blindbeggar's previous appearance, would need no explanation of the effectthis would have on Emma. It is surely by some such reasoning thatPIaubert arrived at the conception of the blind beggar's role in Emma'sdeath scene as we now have It.14 His appearance symbolizes, fo~~_.~d for the reader, the abrupt displacement of an illusion bL~e grim,uglytrutJ,l. - - -

But Flaubert had not yet exhausted the creative invention of whichhe proved capable with respect to the blind beggar, once he had con-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

MURRAY SACHS 77jured him into existence. To motivate his presence in Yonville at thetime of Emma's death, Flaubert was obliged to invent an additionalscene, involving the ineffable M. Homais, who boastfully offers to curethe beggar of his scrofulous eye disease if the beggar will present him­self at his pharmacy. This invention offered a sufficiently plausiblemotivation.P Consequently the scene to be written needed only to in­clude those essential details. Instead, Flaubert saw a chance to enrichhis novel still more through the presence of the blind beggar, and thescene as written (Chap. VII, 413-415) manages to add a dimension tothe book's meaning.

What emerged was a careful, deliberate study in contrasts, point­ing to the denouement, and revolving around the figure of the blindbeggar. It is late Sunday afternoon in Rouen. Emma, financially inextremis, has unsuccessfully tried to obtain money from Uon to wardoff disaster. Arriving to take the coach back to Yonville, she meetsHomais. When the beggar puts in his customary appearance, Homais,in the name of progress, protests against "de si coupables industries."This fails to rid the travelers of his presence, whereupon Homaisproceeds to diagnose the beggar's ailment, and to prescribe for it, in adouble maneuver designed to impress his fellow travelers with hislearning and perhaps distract the beggar from his purpose,: The beggarpersists. Reluctantly Homais finally opens his purse, offers one sou­and asks for change. He has not escaped the expense. What can he getback for his money? At this juncture, Homais announces boldly thathe can cure the beggar himself with a special pomade he has invented,and as the final flourish to this self-advertisement, loudly informsthose present of his name and address. By using the occasion for somefree publicity, Homais has contrived some return on the money giventhe beggar. The coachman demands even more return: "pour lapeine ,.. tu vas nous montrer 10 comMie," he says. Emma has been thehorrified silent witness of this entire scene. She is suddenly filled withdisgust, averts her eyes from the contortions of the beggar, and throwshim her last five-franc piece, over her shoulder and without lookingback.

What Flaubert has made clear in this brief scene is that Homais andEmma represent contrasting ways of coping with the crippling uglinessof life as symbolized by the blind beggar. Homais instinctively probesfor ways to avoid giving the beggar money, and, better still, to exploithis very existence somehow for personal gain. Flaubert shows us Homaisskilfully employing the spectacle of the blind beggar to advertise his"progressive" social views, his medical skills and knowledge, and evenhis name and address. Emma, on the other hand, instinctively turnsfrom the spectacle, hoping to shut it from her consciousness and pre­tend it isn't there, just as the reckless gesture of throwing the beggar her

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

Spring I,63 SYMPOSIUM

last coin is a desperate attempt to pretend that her financial problemisn't real. Emma flees reality, Homais exploits it. As a result, Emma willbe destroyed, Homais will triumph. The blind beggar has thus provedto be for the reader a revealing touchstone of character and destiny.Fittingly, he will preside over the ultimate fate of each before the novelends. Not only does Homais's offer bring him to Yonville in time forEmma's death, but in the last chapter of the book Flaubert furtherrecords Homais's final exploitation of the beggar and his consequentrise to power and prestige. Having failed to cure the beggar, Homaiscleverly turns the medical defeat into a political victory by campaigningto have the beggar locked up for the protection of the public, thus earn­ing fame and influence for himself as a journalist and public benefac­tor. The decoration he "wins" in the end is but the logical recognitionof his successful way of coping with the ugliness of reality symbolizedby the beggar. As the scene in Chapter VII shows, Homais is of thatbreed who batten on the misery of life and who are best equipped totriumph in an increasingly materialistic world, while Emma is of thatopposite breed who are repelled by the misery of life, and who, in seek­ing irrationally to flee it, are in the end destroyed by it.

The contrasting destinies of Emma and Homais are, of course, atthe heart of the novel's meaning. Flaubert's underlying purpose inthe novel, as his subtitle indicates, was to depict provincial life, apattern ofexistence he detested personally and which he felt to be grow­ing more oppressively stifling daily. Homais and Emma complementeach other, filling out the picture of provincial life as Flaubert saw it:how it destroys, what it takes to succeed in it. To dramatize these twosides of the same coin, Flaubert utilized the symbolic figure of the blindbeggar in a brilliant series of eleventh-hour inventions. Thus, from anepisodic character originally conceived for the purposes of one isolatedscene, the blind beggar was transformed by Flaubert's creative imagina­tion into a symbol of central significance for all of the novel's closingevents and into a haunting and memorable presence by means of whomthe ultimate meaning of the novel is revealed.

Brandeis University

1. Gustave F/aubert (Paris, 193 S), 10Z.z, D. L. Demorest, L'Expre.rsion ftgurie et symbo/ique dons /'~lIvre de Gustave

F/aubert (Paris, 193 r), 466.3. See Leon Bopp, Commentaire sur Matiome Bovary (Neuchatel, 19'1), ,06; and

B. F. Bart, "Aesthetic Distance in Madame Bovary," PMLA, LXIX (1954), 1125.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

MURRAY SACHS 794. On Reading Flaubert (London, 1961), B.5. Flaubtrt: Madame BoIlary, Studies in French Literature, No. 8 (London,

1962.), 37-6. The Gater of Horn (New York, 1963), 2.65.7. It is amusing to note that Martin Turnell, obviously aware of this polarized

difference of opinion, remarks in a centennial reassessment of the novel that theblind beggar is "said to stand for Death or the Devil" (Sewanee Rwiew, LXV, NO.4[October-December 1957], 546), but carefully avoids taking any position on thematter himself.

8. Gustave Flaubert, Madame BoIlary, in CEuvrer Comp/iter de Gurtave Flallbtrt(Paris, L. Conard, 1930), 364. Further quotations from the novel will be from thisedition, and the reference will be given by page number alone, within the text.

9. Scenarios, outlines and early drafts will be cited within the text by pagenumber from the volume Madame Bovary. NOlIVelie version pr'eldle der u'narior inlditr,Jean Pommier et Gabrielle Leleu (Paris, Jose Corti, 1949).

10. It is worth noting that in an early draft of the text of this scene, laterdropped, Flau bert described Emma taking her seat in the coach for the returnjourney, trying desperately to savor in her imagination for one last moment theillusion that she was happy, then "l'atroce realite revenait" (Pommier et Leleu,530). A few lines further along she sees the blind beggar, and one may venture theguess that Flaubert eliminated that phrase "l'atroce realite revenait" because by thepresence of the beggar he was "showing" precisely that, and the phrase had there­fore become redundant. The words of this early draft constitute one more link in thechain of evidence that Flaubert expressly intended the blind beggar to symbolizewhat he calls "I'atroce realite."

1 I. Flaubert's correspondence provides what information we know about thisdecision to change from the "cul-de-jatte" to "I'aveugle." See Correrpondance,IV, 88, 90, and 96--97. It is to be noted, however, that the last passage cited ismisdated and should precede the other two, if one wishes to follow the sequence ofevents accurately.

12.. Until he had the inspiration of bringing back the blind beggar for the deathscene, Flaubert may for a brief time have been planning to depict Emma as dyingwhile still suffused with this beatific vision of serenity in death. The evidence ofthe scenarios is not conclusive, but such phrases as "le calme lui revient quand elleest sure de mourir,' "belle mort," and "consolations de la religion," occurring atthe moment of death (Pommier et Leleu, p. 320), suggest something of that sort.When actually composing the scene, however, Flauberts seems to have recognizedthat it would be artistically invalid to allow Emma to die in this state of happyillusion, for the reader would sense that the book's rhythmic pattern had been bro­ken and that the aesthetic effect of what in music is called resolution would be lack­ing.

13. The words of the blind beggar's song are a significant aspect of the scene'ssymbolism, of course. For a careful analysis of the purpose and effect of these wordssee Fairlie, op. eit., 37.

14. Yet another version of the way the death scene evolved in Flaubert's mindshould perhaps be mentioned here. Professor B. F. Bart, in a somewhat ambiguousfootnote to his penetrating study of the problem of aesthetic distance in MadameBovary, seems to imply that in early versions of the death scene, the role which theblind beggar was eventually to £ill was assigned by Flaubert to the coach which wasto pass under Emma's window: "Flaubert had not originally envisaged this returnof the Blindman. In a long succession of the scenarios it is the coach (the Hirondel­Ie) which is to pass under Emma's window (e.g., Pommier and Leleu, pp. 19 and32.). The greater emotive and symbolic power of the Blindman is the obvious

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014

80 Spring Ij63 SYMPOSIUM

explanation of Flaubert's later preference for him" (PMLA, LXIX (1954), 1124,n, 21). Professor Bart's wording is unfortunate, for there can be no question ofFlaubert ever having preferred the beggar to the coach for his symbol. The twosymbols were always quite separate in Flaubert's mind, as far as the evidence shows.From the moment he first thought of using the coach, Flaubert intended that itpass under the window after Emma's death, the symbolic impact of its passingbeing felt by Charles and the reader. The scene occurs in the finished novel (p. 4S 3in the Conard edition) substantially as first outlined in the scenarios. The symbolicuse of the blind beggar is an entirely separate invention, for a quite different purpose,a purpose for which Flaubert at no time envisaged the use of the coach.

IS. While the motivation Flaubert invented for the beggar's presence in Yon­ville is sufficiently plausible, it is only fair to add that many critics (see, for example,Tillett, On Reading Flauber/, 33) have nevertheless criticized the scene as contrivedand melodramatic because the timing is too perfect to be believable. One mustallow, of course, that the split-second coincidence of the intrusion of the beggar'ssong into Emma's last seconds of consciousness is improbable, but surely thiscomplaint is irrelevant. The elaborate coincidences of timing which are the core ofthe famous comiru agricoJes scene are equally unbelievable, but the scene has wonunanimous acclaim from the critics because a process of poetic stylization is re­cognized to be at work. The same recognition ought obviously to be accorded thedeath scene and the blind beggar's role in it. Flaubert's purpose at that point ispoetic truth, not realism.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f N

ewca

stle

(A

ustr

alia

)] a

t 05:

35 0

3 O

ctob

er 2

014