HOME
This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
Interested in What I Create?
Bibliography
The Great Little Hunter
Pinspired Philippines, 2022
The Boy The Girl
The Rat The Rabbit
and the Last Magic Days
Chapbook, 2018
Republic of Carnage:
Three Horror Stories
For the Way We Live Now
Chapbook, 2018
Bamboo Girls:
Stories and Poems
From a Forgotten Life
Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018
Don't Tell Anyone:
Literary Smut
With Shakira Andrea Sison
Pride Press / Anvil Publishing, 2017
Cupful of Anger,
Bottle Full of Smoke:
The Stories of
Jose V. Montebon Jr.
Silliman Writers Series, 2017
First Sight of Snow
and Other Stories
Encounters Chapbook Series
Et Al Books, 2014
Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop
Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman
Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013
Inday Goes About Her Day
Locsin Books, 2012
Beautiful Accidents: Stories
University of the Philippines Press, 2011
Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011
Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006
FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
Follow the Spy
Recent Crumbs
Blogs I Read
© 2002-2021
IAN ROSALES CASOCOT
Thursday, April 14, 2011
9:16 PM |
Madame Bovary in Little Children
This is my favorite scene from Todd Field's
Little Children [2006], adapted from the wonderful book by Tom Perrota. In this scene, bored housewife (and secret adulterer) Sarah Pierce (Kate Winslet) talks about Gustave Flaubert's
Madame Bovary, that epic of small French lives and the hankering for better things, with her book club. The other women in the club have attacked the book as a tale of an unrepentant slut who gets her proper comeuppance, but Sarah gets a sudden enlightenment about Emma's plight...
Sarah Pierce: I think I understand your feelings about this book. I used to have some problems with it, myself. When I read it in grad school, Madame Bovary just seemed like a fool. She marries the wrong man ... makes one foolish mistake after another... But when I read it this time, I just fell in love with her. She's trapped! ... She has a choice: she can either accept a life of misery or she can struggle against it. And she chooses to struggle.
Mary Ann: Some struggle. Hop into bed with every guy who says hello.
Sarah Pierce: She fails in the end ... but there's something beautiful and even heroic in her rebellion. My professors would kill me for even thinking this, but in her own strange way, Emma Bovary is a feminist.
Mary Ann: Oh, that's nice. So now cheating on your husband makes you a feminist?
Sarah Pierce: No, no, it's not the cheating. It's the hunger. The hunger for an alternative, and the refusal to accept a life of unhappiness.
Mary Ann: ... Maybe I didn't understand the book.
Labels: books, film, gender, issues, quotes
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
GO TO OLDER POSTS
GO TO NEWER POSTS