18th CKY issue

Teaching Kindness through
The benefits of reading literature are many and varied in its ability to transport readers to
very different places where students can gain a colourful insight into diverse cultures and
times that are worlds apart from their own. Literature also offers its readers a rich array of
characters from whom students can learn. Our students have reflected on how the
characters and contexts they are empathising with during their literature studies have
made them more aware of the need for kindness in our lives.
Emma Bovary – Empathizing with 19th Century
What would you call a woman cheating on her husband?
Something unsavoury, I would imagine.
James Tissot’s “Young Woman in a
Boat” (1870), a painting chosen as
the cover image for Margaret
Mauldon’s translation of Madame
Bovary.
Written in 1856, Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary narrates the tale of
Emma Bovary, the desperate housewife of a provincial doctor. Raised on the
romantic novels of her age, she survives on idealised fantasies of an elegant life
rushed with passionate love until she realised the unattainability of her dreams,
and found her life dull in comparison, leaving her achingly disappointed towards
married life. To cope, she commits adultery behind her husband’s back,
entrenches herself deeply in financial debt, until at last the consequences accrued
from her actions become too much for Emma herself.
When I began reading Madame Bovary, I found our tragic heroine inexorably
selfish and pathetic. I despised how she sees marriage and maternity in an angle
of pure vanity, and neglects all moral obligations when they don’t fit her expensive
tastes–she cared for no one but herself.
However, I slowly realised the shocking normality of her character: What first
shaped her way of thinking was her reading and daydreaming about novels of
romantic fancies. As do I and many other people. The only difference is that no
one informed Emma of the absurdity of her dreams, nor provided her with a
healthy method to adjust to reality, which led her to satisfy her hunger on her own.
Jessie Cho 11A
Emma Bovary taught me how to appreciate the world’s evolution of education,
which kept me–a similar daydreamer–more solidly grounded in reality. More
importantly, her tragically oppressed background made me realise the thrilling
progression of contemporary society, where the expanding horizon of opportunity
now allows more females to act upon their interests and passions in a productive
manner.
Perhaps we all ought to show Emma Bovary some kindness, for her fall down the
trap of over-romanticism guided us to leap over it.
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