YOU/EMMA

after Flaubert
(but aren’t we all)

© Paz Pardo
pazita@gmail.com
650-380-0768
 YOU/EMMA
a play

CHARACTERS
YOU/EMMA
FLAUBERT
HOMAIS
A STUFFED SHIRT

SETTING
A theater in New York City in 2018
That is imagining it is the back-end of the French Countryside
In the 1830’s and 1840’s

LOGISTICAL NOTES
/ indicates where the following line should begin overlap, both in text and the soundscape.
Sounds in the soundscape are given in stage directions in italics, so /mooooo indicates that the
Actress should talk over the moo-ing sound.
When Flaubert reads from Madame Bovary, it is from Lydia Davis’ 2010 translation.
The text refers to the following adaptations of Madame Bovary:
Carlos Schlieper’s 1947 adaptation starring Mecha Ortiz
Vincent Minelli’s 1949 adaptation starring Jennifer Jones
Hans Schott-Schrebinger’s 1969 I Peccati di Madame Bovary starring Edwige Fenech
Claude Chabrol’s 1991 adaptation starring Isabelle Huppert

MORE IMPORTANTLY
This is a postmodern fever dream of Flaubert’s masterpiece, reimagining Bovary for 2018
Rubbing it up against a future that’s female
A future with film, with Anthropologie, #MeToo and Project Runway

This play is written for one actress.

She plays all the parts. She voices the stuffed shirt.
She appears as Flaubert on video
Sometimes she appears as just Emma
But
Remember: above all, the voice of Emma is yours.

YOU/EMMA was conceived by actress Valerie Redd for Wandering Bark Theatre Co. The
company produced the world premiere of the play as part of IRT Theater’s 3B development
series in April 2018, directed by Devin Brain.

1
 YOU/EMMA

Lights up
Terrible lights
Like fluorescents
Like the bleakness of Penn Station
On a bare stage
On an actress
In a hoop skirt and gloves
In a 1950’s housewife gingham apron
In a tank top that says “Don’t Tell Me to Smile”
She stares at the audience in the bad light.

ACTRESS
You.
Blackout. Lights up.

ACTRESS
I am—

Blackout/Lights up.

ACTRESS
You are—

Blackout/Lights up

ACTRESS
We were—

Blackout/Lights up

ACTRESS
She is—

Blackout.
Lights up. This time they’re theatrical lights.

ACTRESS
You
Are fifteen.
You are fifteen and you are aching with it—
The hunger, the passion
The hunger for passion
The hunger that’s a coat just looking for a hook to dangle from—

2
If it were now, you’d write song lyrics on your sneakers
You’d be getting sexy in the back seat
Making out trying to make it out, what’s the meaning, what’s it all for—
But you are in a convent.

It is the mid 1830’s, and you are in school in a convent.

But you are still fifteen. You are still aching.
So hang it on Jesus!
Hang that hunger on the beautiful martyred death of Saint Teresa
Hang it on the hymns
Hang it on the sunlight streaming in through stained glass
Somewhere in a novel smuggled into the hallowed halls by an old maid who comes for dinner,
find a ruined heroine wilting for pious love and hope to wilt, wilt wilt yourself as the Mother
Abbess drones through the bible
In the words already said so many times over
In the overused phrases of the sad religious songs
You can sniff out the lingering scent of a true feeling
If you were my grandmother, you might say “feelings never fed a dog,” but you’re not my
grandmother.
You’re going to be Emma Bovary
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

BREAK
Loud noise
Different lights
On the video, ACTRESS is wearing a dumb stick-on moustache
She’s FLAUBERT, being interviewed in a reality TV show

FLAUBERT
I am Emma Bovary
Yes, I’m her creator, her author
But I’m
Also
Emma Bovary.
I mean, in a manner of speaking.
I’ve been called all sorts of things
Obscene
Blasphemous- I love that one.
I didn’t start out to cause a scandal… although honestly, it’s not like the whole going-to-trial
thing has hurt the book.
But my book, really….it’s just ….
A reflection of life’s straightforward
Superficiality
Stupidity
And the useless dreams we use to keep going, day to day—you know. You’re born, you live in a
muddy shithole, you’re not special, then you die.

3
Faced with that, who wouldn’t dream of something better?
So yeah….I’m Emma Bovary.

Back to stage action

The ACTRESS is YOU/EMMA from here on out

YOU/EMMA
YOUR LIFE IS OVER
You got married.
You thought you loved him, really
Maybe
If you stared hard enough at his face you could convince yourself the plaintive look made it
interesting
My grandmother might’ve warned you— “His conversation’s flat as a sidewalk”
But your grandmother’s dead, so you married him.
Charles Bovary.

moooooo

YOU/EMMA
You tried to love him—really you did—sang songs to him in the garden in the moonlight

Plastic roses drop from the ceiling

Moonlight!
A fan blows, whipping YOU/EMMA’s hair around romantically as she sings the
Doris Day version of “When I Fall in Love”

YOU/EMMA (sings)
When I give my heart it will be completely
Or I'll never give my heart
And the moment I can feel that you feel that way too
Is when I fall in love with you.

Sound—Mooooo

YOU/EMMA
But he’s the same after your romantic ministrations
Honestly, so are you
And now every day he rides out, ruminating on you like a man re-chewing his truffles after
dinner
And you are SO BORED
If only he’d notice
If only he’d see—
Even just once—
That you’re not—

4
If only he’d say—
Anything
Interesting—
Boredom is a spider spinning cobwebs in the corners of your heart
SO BORED
Like
This bored

YOU/EMMA walks offstage. And stays offstage. Long enough that the
audience has gone from laughter to silence. It’s awkward. She walks back
on.

YOU/EMMA
THAT bored.

a letter falls from the sky

YOU/EMMA
A ball!
Oh my god.
A ball!
At an actual chateau!
Something to look forward to—A peak above the valley that was threatening to become the
plateau of your life—seventeen and a half and it was ALL OVER—
If this were now you’d be arguing with your dad about the pros and cons of a BFA
But it’s the late 1830’s so you spend a month fretting deliciously
over your look
The day arrives
Charles wears his dumb orthopedic shoes
You dance with a vicomte in a tight tight vest—

Lights! Video!
Snippets from ball scenes from all the Madame Bovary adaptations you can find:
1949: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNS8yd5JkBU
1991 Isabelle Huppert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7v4DWcvRSA
The Italian one with the amazing eye makeup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOUsUMyrw80&t=14m27s
The 1947 Argentine one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yHcMzdkEno&t=37m

Etc.

YOU/EMMA
You don’t know how to waltz! You waltz anyway!

5
The vicomte’s pomade in your nose
The lemon hurricane and its vanilla eye, spinning under sparkling chandeliers!

The ACTRESS waltzes

YOU/EMMA
The next day is
The worst
Time keeps going
somehow
Two weeks ago I was there
Three weeks ago
Some of the details vanish but your longing remains—
You fall back into reading
Back into your fifteen year-old-self at the convent
Romantic novels—

On video, Rhett Butler brings Scarlett a green bonnet from Paris in Gone with the
Wind
YOU/EMMA mouths along and at some point we realize she’s reciting the
dialogue, and we can’t hear Vivian Leigh at all, just the ACTRESS and Clark
Gable

YOU/EMMA
Fashion magazines—

Video from Project Runway: Austin Scarlett says to Anthony Williams “The theme
is sort of Fragonard Madame du Pompadour meets twentieth century rock-star
slash Williamsburg Hasidic Gentleman.”
Anthony Williams says “Ok.”
“Any questions?”
“No.” The video cuts away, and Anthony Williams in an interview lets us in on the
full force of the shade he wants to throw with an “Oh, honey honey honey honEY!”

YOU/EMMA
You take your books with you everywhere
Turn pages at the dinner table as Charles talks to you

Sound: Moooooo

YOU/EMMA
Summer sneaks up on gentle feet. If you were my grandmother, you’d be getting voted “Most
likely to become a Hollywood star” in the senior yearbook
But instead you’re stuck
Looking out the window at the dusty road and eternal garden

6
Ten months ago I was there
You want to both die and live in Paris.

FLAUBERT (reading, on video, from MADAME BOVARY—FLAUBERT is always on video)

"But it was most of all at mealtimes that she could not bear it any longer, in that little room on
the ground floor, with the stove that smoked, the door that squeaked, the walls that seeped, the
damp flagstones; all the bitterness of life seemed to be served up on her plate, and, with the
steam from the boiled meat, there rose from the depths of her soul other gusts of revulsion."

YOU/EMMA
It’s September, but nobody comes to invite you to another ball.

Sound of dripping, sound of ticking

YOU/EMMA
If this were now, you’d be decorating your first dorm room
But it’s the late 1830s and your future is a dark corridor with a bolted door at the end.
You remember the women at the ball
Jesus!
I’m prettier than them! Don’t I deserve happiness, too?
Your dog just stares back at you.
You spend the afternoons holding the tongs in the fire until they turn red, or watching the rain
fall.
Eventually even Charles notices something is wrong.

Sound: Mooooo?

YOU/EMMA
He suggests moving his practice to a place called Yonville.

Practice saying it:

YOU/EMMA
Yonville.
Yonville.
Packing for the move, you prick your finger on something in the back of a drawer—a wire in
your wedding bouquet. The paper orange blossoms are covered in dust, the ribbons fraying.
You throw it into the fire. It flares up quick as a sparkler. You watch the cardboard berries burst,
the binding wire twist, the braid melt
And the shriveled paper petals, hovering in the smoke like black butterflies, at last fly away up
the chimney.
When you leave town, in March, you are pregnant.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

EMMA and FLAUBERT in a café
(so it’s ACTRESS acting with video’d ACTRESS)

7
 FLAUBERT arrives

FLAUBERT
Ah, you beat me.

EMMA
You.

FLAUBERT
I know we were to be here at six, I know, I got caught up…
Do you want another coffee?

EMMA
I am—

FLAUBERT
Waiter!
So.
Here we are. The author and his creation.
Not every day it happens, hmm?

EMMA
You are—

FLAUBERT
I know every part of you and you know none of me. Ha. With you I’ve achieved…ineffability.
I must know how God feels, now!

EMMA
We were—

FLAUBERT
God feels like he needs coffee, in case you wanted to know.
So. My dear little lady. Why did you ask me to come?

EMMA says nothing.

FLAUBERT
Come now, there’s no need to be coy with me. Of all people.

No response.

FLAUBERT
Waiter!
Let me draw back the curtain a bit.

8
I am not the sort of man that your little silences can charm. I do not find the social hypocrisy of
woman attractive.

EMMA (cutting)
I thought you would know.

The clip clop of horse hooves

YOU/EMMA
Yonville.
In the rattletrap coach named “Swallow,”
You catch the first glimpse of the town where you’ll spend the rest of your life.
There’s only one street.
It’s the length of a rifle shot.
Your dog bolted from the carriage at a pitstop an hour ago
Smart enough to get out while she can…
At the Inn, a boy with a clubfoot tends to the horses
You’re greeted by Homais, the pharmacist,
The tax collector
And Leon Dupuis, a clerk working for the notary.
While Charles and the pharmacist talk scrofula
You find yourself in conversation with the clerk.

STUFFED SHIRT (now with artsy cravat)

There’s a place on top of a hill that I go to on Sundays
With a book

YOU/EMMA
Nothing is as nice as a sunset
Especially by the sea.

Maybe YOU/EMMA rolls her eyes a little at EMMA

STUFFED SHIRT
I love the sea.

YOU/EMMA
He also, you learn by the time you leave for your new home,
Loves mountains, poetry and music, and will go to Paris next year to complete his law studies.
Oh, you sigh. Paris…

FLAUBERT (in the reality TV show interview video)

Ok I’ve got 50 fucking pages now where nothing happens. Nothing. Not one single event. It’s an
uninterrupted portrayal of a bourgeois existence and of a love that doesn’t go anywhere because
the guy is too straight-laced. I’m kinda starting to freak out, but I’m like—I gotta do me.
Everything is just a question of style.

9
YOU/EMMA
In those fifty pages, it’s established that your dowry has melted away in the move
Charles has no patients
Oh, and:

FLAUBERT (on video, reading from MADAME BOVARY)

“She wanted a son; he would be strong and dark, she would call him Georges. A man, at least, is
free.
She gave birth one Sunday as the sun was rising.”

Cardboard cut-out of a Norman Rockwell child falls from the ceiling

FLAUBERT (still reading from the book, still on video)

“‘It’s a girl!’ said Charles.
She turned her head away and fainted.”

YOU/EMMA
Minor detail for an eventless stretch of the novel.
You name the baby Berthe and pack her off to a wet-nurse.
Evenings you and Charles head over to Homais’ house for card parties
Leon is there
The other players fall asleep after a hand or two
And you and the clerk lean your heads forward and murmur
About music
Fashion

Sound: “Oh,honey, honey, honey, honEY!”

YOU/EMMA
Paris…
You don’t notice you’re falling in love—you think love is a hurricane that tears the roof off your
heart
You don’t know that lakes form on terraces where the drain-pipes are blocked
And that even a slow drip can bring the house down.
You only take out your secret love to examine when you’re alone—
still—it sends tendrils through your veins, prickles your skin into life, and people start to talk.
Or maybe it’s the walks you two go on, or the long evening conversations about poetry…
But in his actual presence, your emotions subside, and you are left with an immense
astonishment ending in sadness.

You bring Berthe back from the wet-nurse and show her off to guests,
undressing her like a doll to display her arms and legs.
You take care of the house and are so thrifty it’s painful. Monsieur Lhereux tempts you with silk
scarves, offering credit;
You buy nothing from him.

10
Charles is the same old same old—which is to say, the worst.
You are being good. So good. And you are burning underneath.
Desire, hatred, frustration so strong you can taste them,
But you grit your teeth and say “I’m so happy, I’m so happy” as the hypocrisy gnaws at your
heart.
You are about to turn twenty.
If this were now, you’d be posting pictures on Instagram from frat parties.

Pictures of nineteen-year-olds with red cups.

YOU/EMMA
You’d be assigned Madame Bovary in a literature class and think it’s boring, sexist drivel
But it’s almost 1840
And divorce sure as hell isn’t an option—

And then
Leon decides to leave.
Flaubert tells us he’s tired of loving without having anything to show for it.
Anyway, it takes him a month
Riding back and forth on the Swallow to Rouen
Transporting his trunks and trunks of clothing and arranging to go to Paris where he’ll take guitar
lessons
Buy skinny jeans
(GOD it’s so unfair)
And then it’s the day of his departure

A ticking clock ticks

YOU/EMMA
And he’s in the house
And Charles is out seeing patients
You’re alone
Together
For the last time ever

Keeps ticking
Nobody does anything
Finally:

YOU/EMMA
It’s going to rain.
He says he has a coat
You move toward him
He moves toward you
With his
Hand out

11
You…shake hands
It feels like your whole being is descending into that moist palm
Then he’s gone.
After that, it’s like the day after the ball
Every. Day.
Why were you so good? What did you get from it?
When Monsieur Lhereux comes back around you say
Yes, I’ll buy that goddamn silk scarf—
Girl, don’t you deserve it, stuck in this trap of a marriage that no one had the sense to tell you to
stay out of?
You fall back into your books
And Leon is every Lancelot, every bad boy

Sound: Clark Gable saying “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”

YOU/EMMA
His timidity gone off with him to Paris
You can reimagine him a hero
You rush up to your love every morning
Blow on its embers to keep yourself warm—
But even so, eventually, it fades
Charles gets worried, consults with his mother
She makes him take away your library card
Then it’s the bad days all over again, but worse
Because now you know it will never get better.

FLAUBERT (on video)

Sure. Yeah. I’ve spent more hours than I’d like to admit imagining what life would be like with
money. Like, capital M Money. Being famous and being able to buy anything you want. Dude, I
could put diamonds anywhere for you. Diamonds on the soles of your shoes? How about
diamonds on your buskins?
What’s a buskin?
Exactly. I’d put diamonds places you’d never heard of.
Look, anyone who says they’ve never dreamt of being rich and famous is lying.

The stuffed shirt is now dressed in a handsome tailcoat

YOU/EMMA
Rodolphe!
What a name, what a moustache!
He’s rich! He’s vaguely aristocratic
And you’ve caught his eye.
You can feel it on you
Hot as the sun beating down on this country fair
He gestures with his yellow-gloved hand
Making fun of the women of Yonville—not you, of course

12
 In the soundscape we hear the sounds of the county fair (48:22 in the Minelli
movie. The scene appears on video)

YOU/EMMA
You make your way up to the second floor of the empty town hall, looking down at the pavilion.

STUFFED SHIRT
You find happiness one day, one day, suddenly, when you’ve given up on it—in a person you
want to give everything, to sacrifice everything—for her…

YOU/EMMA
You’re so close you can smell the pomade in his hair
The same scent as the vicomte at the ball
The chairman steps up to the podium and talks about the importance of manure.
Rodolphe talks about past lives and destiny.
Maybe this time—maybe this time it will work—you’ll find what you’ve been missing…
You open your nostrils wide and breathe in the smell of vanilla and lemon.

Rodolphe, delightful asshole that he is, stays away for six weeks.
But when he comes back, he takes you on a horseback ride that ends in a mossy grove, and it’s
there that you have the first good sex of your life.

TEACH ME TIGER!
A good sex dance/song of triumph and joy
Oh. My. God.

Afterwards, you lie in the moss, all throbbing nerves, while

Rodolphe, next to you, fixes a bridle while chewing on a cigar.
Nothing has changed, but everything has changed. You have a lover.
In the mirror at home, your fingers, feet, shoulders look different, as if your sudden joy was
written across the fabric of your skin.

If you had a friend you might tell her:

THIS. Oh my god, THIS—just…wow.
This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, ever.
I can’t. I just can’t. He’s so, you know?
The THINGS he DOES with his TONGUE!
And like all his texts are sooo dirty, but like eggplant-emoji dirty?
No, I like it. It makes me feel empowered. Like—lean in to the orgasm, right?
But it is the edge of the 1840’s and a year since you brought your child back from the wet nurse,
and you’re stuck in the mud of a farming town that makes the blandest cream cheese in
Normandy.

13
Rodolphe comes to you every night, throwing sand against your window at night. You wait for
your husband to roll over and start snoring, then slip away into your lover’s arms in the arbor.
The months roll by. You exchange miniatures and locks of hair.
If this were now, you might be arguing with Rodolphe about whether or not he should deactivate
his tinder account.

FLAUBERT (on video, reading from MADAME BOVARY)

“But for Rodolphe, Emma was like all other mistresses; and the charm of novelty, slipping off
like a piece of clothing, revealed in its nakedness the eternal monotony of passion. One had to
discount, he thought, exaggerated speeches that concealed commonplace affections; as if any of
us can ever express the exact measure of our needs, or our ideas, or our sorrows. Human speech
is a like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when we long to
inspire pity in the stars.”

YOU/EMMA
In April, he starts missing meetings.
It drives you crazy. Makes you want to shake him and kiss him harder. You can’t decide if you
hate yourself for wanting him. You wonder if you ought to despise Charles less—

sound of a moo

YOU/EMMA
You imagine loving him. Imagine how it would spite Rodolphe.
But you can’t find an opening to renew your affections until Homais arrives with a plan to make
Charles famous.
He should operate on the town clubfoot, the stableboy at the inn. Simple. Revolutionary!
You imagine a medal sliding over your husband’s receding hairline. Imagine your lover
watching you embrace Charles after he’s admitted to the Legion of Honor.
Maybe the problem is that you never realized he’s a scientist, not a poet
With you as wrangler and Homais as border collie, Charles doesn’t have a chance to say no.

A scared moo.
Did YOU/EMMA enact a medal of honor ceremony with the stuffed shirt while
she was just talking?

YOU/EMMA
The whole thing is an unmitigated disaster. Gangrene sets in shortly after the operation. Another
doctor laughs out loud at Charles’s stupidity before calling for amputation.
In the silence at dinner that night,
the fact that you tried to love him—this bastion of the run-of-the-mill—
makes something in you crumble with every gurgling spoonful of soup he swallows.
Suddenly he starts, hopeful, and says—

Mooooooo?

YOU/EMMA

14
Something nonsensical, technical, an excuse—like he’s asking you to forgive him—for being so
utterly mediocre—
You’ve never hated him more. He’s yoked you to this life. If it weren’t for him, imagine what
you could’ve been!

That evening, Rodolphe finds you waiting for him, chest heaving, tear-filled eyes sparkling like
flames underwater.

For four years I’ve been patient and I’ve suffered—

You are lucky that rage becomes you. Without thinking your lover asks:

STUFFED SHIRT
“What should we do? What do you want?”

YOU/EMMA
Take me away.
Take me away from here.

He gives in.
And so: you order a trunk and traveling clothes from Monsieur Lhereux
and prepare to Run away!

Singing while packing: Judy Garland’s “I don’t care”

On video, the youtube clip plays:

I don't care, I don't care

What they may think of me
I'm happy-go-lucky, they say that I'm plucky
Contented and carefree
I don't care I don't care
If I do get a mean and stony stare
If I'm not successful
It won't be distressful
Cause I don't care

(spoken) Rodolphe needs an extra two weeks to prep—

(sung, but more quietly) FLAUBERT (on video)

A girl should know her etiquette Tomorrow I report to the
Alas, alack Criminal Court to face
Propriety demands we walk a narrow track charges of obscenity and
When fellas used to blink at me blasphemy for my book.
I'd freeze 'em and they'd shrink at me Everyone’s invited!
But now when fellas wink at me Garden party dress, please.
I wink at them right back!

15
(spoken) Now Rodolphe has the flu—one more week
Then he has to go on a trip….

(sung) FLAUBERT
I don't care I don't care Oh I’m not expecting
If people frown on me anything like justice.
Perhaps it's the lone way But honestly, they’ve made
But I go my own way a rookie mistake. With all the
That's my philosophy scandal, my book is a fucking
I don't care I don't care bestseller. People call it a
If he's a clerk or just a millionaire masterpiece! Masterpiece!

(spoken) Now August has passed—

But the date is finally set! September 4!

(sung) Oh, I don't care, I don't care Anway, come visit my

When it comes to happiness dungeon. We’ll take a selfie
I want my share —“the author in chains!”
Don't try to rearrange me It’s all so stupid that I’m
There's nothing can change me really enjoying it!
'cause I don't care!

YOU/EMMA picks up the suitcase she’s packed—and apricots fall everywhere—

(orange ping pong balls?)
MAYBE: Ominous things suddenly join the soundscape—rattling sheetmetal,
sound of a lathe

YOU/EMMA
Oh no.
Oh no.
Apricots—
A basket from Rodolphe in the rush of your preparations.

YOU/EMMA picks up a letter off the floor.

Soundscape cuts to something ironically peaceful. Birdsong, for example.

FLAUBERT (reading from a letter printed out, clearly not the book)
“Be brave, Emma, be brave! I don’t want to become the ruin of your existence…”

YOU/EMMA
That’s rich.

FLAUBERT
Were you aware of the abyss into which I was drawing you, my poor angel? Why did I ever have
to meet you?

16
The world is cruel, Emma. When you get this I shall be far away, for I am punishing myself by
exile for all the harm I have done you. Where am I going? I have no idea—I have lost my
reason! Adieu! Teach my name to your child, so she may repeat it in her prayers.
A Dieu!
Your friend.”

The horrible lathe/sheetmetal soundscape returns

FLAUBERT (to somebody off camera)

This isn’t—you cut out all the best—what I wrote was so much better. Who the fuck—

Camera cuts out.

A moment as YOU/EMMA contemplates ending it all
A “Moooooooooooooo!” breaks the soundscape

YOU/EMMA
Charles calls. It’s time for lunch.
You try to eat. The food makes you choke.
Charles

/Mooo

YOU/EMMA
Bites into one of the apricots.
“Oh, it’s perfect! Taste one! No, no, smell them! What a fragrance!”
You can’t breathe. A blue tilbury crosses the square—Rodolphe’s carriage.
The asshole didn’t even bother leaving before sending his letter.
You fall straight backward onto the floor, convulsing.

The next forty-three days you spend in bed. The world is fuzzy. You are diagnosed, in a
thoroughly 1840’s way, with “brain fever.” Do you hear the pharmacist come visit you, tell
Charles that it’s the apricots that caused your seizures, since women are naturally impressionable
when it comes to odors?
Probably not. Do you notice that Monsieur Lhereux comes to the house with the bill for your
traveling goods and gets a bewildered Charles to sign a thousand-franc promissory note—

mooooo

YOU/EMMA
At whatever interest rate the merchant sees fit?
No, definitely not.
If this were now, you would be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and put on medication.
Someone wrote a book about that.

The book falls from the ceiling. The ACTRESS looks at it, throws it offstage

17
YOU/EMMA
The winter is harsh, and your convalescence is long.
The priest comes to visit you every day.
You remember your childhood dreams of Jesus at the convent
Yearn to be a saint
You murmur the same sweet words to your Lord in Heaven as you whispered to your lover.
The priest is a little worried that your ardous piety might border on heresy or nonsense.
If this were now, you would read books on mindfulness:
The Power of Now, How to Love Yourself, The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse
Go on your first silent retreat
But as you recover and no divine delectation descends from heaven,
some part of you begins to wonder whether you are the victim of a big hoax.
You stop going to church so much
Homais heartily approves and suggests Charles take you to the theater.
Surprisingly, the priest agrees—theater is less dangerous to morality than literature.
The great tenor Lagardy will be performing, in from England.
Charles

Mooo

YOU/EMMA
Likes the idea, and the next day you find yourself bundled into the Swallow.
Going
To the
Theater.
Your heart begins to pound even in the lobby.
It’s been so long since you went anywhere.
The liquid warmth of Lagardy’s voice
Melts the faith-frozen hoarfrost of your wounded heart
Oh my god! How you could have LOVED
Given someone to love!
It’s hot. You can’t breathe
Charles goes to get you a glass of barley water and returns with
Leon?
Here? In Rouen?

The clerk puts his hand out, casual from his time in Paris
You clasp it
Feeling it
Like that spring evening when the rain was falling and you said goodbye forever—
The second act begins, but now the music comes from farther away.
You remember the whole course of that modest love—card parties and walks—
Sweet
Tranquil
Discreet
Which you had…forgotten.

18
Leon says it’s hot, suggests you leave.

Mooo

Charles doesn’t want to go.

It’s unbearably hot, you say.
Your husband gives in.
Outside, in the cooler air, you sit at a café.

Moooo

I wish we’d stayed, Charles says. They say he’s so great in the last song!
And then he turns to you: Would you like to stay an extra day?
Leon suddenly starts praising Lagardy’s performance in the final aria.
You feel the smile sneaking onto your lips, know how it looks under your calm, wide eyes.
You’ll decide in the morning, you say to Charles.

BACK into EMMA and FLAUBERT meeting in a café

Only this time, FLAUBERT is the one on video waiting at a café
EMMA arrives.

FLAUBERT
The appointment was at 6.

EMMA
I am—

FLAUBERT
Waiter!
Well, my little lady. Now that we’re both here. Why did you ask me to come?

EMMA
I thought you would know.

FLAUBERT
I may be your creator, but I am not god.
Come, my pretty dear, do not make me beg.
I have no time to offer you charming falsehoods.

EMMA (sitting)
You don’t offer me charming anything.
Not even a coffee.

FLAUBERT
Waiter!
I came out of curiosity, to see you moving, in life.

19
Not for some perverted version of a lover’s spat.

EMMA
Even my worst lovers hurt me less than you.

FLAUBERT
I described you. That is all.

EMMA
You married me off to a boor and gave me no friends.

FLAUBERT
Would you have accepted a companion?
Don’t be naïve, Emma. You would have seen any woman as either competition or a cramp on
your style.

EMMA
You didn’t have enough imagination to come up with a woman who could have stood by me.

FLAUBERT
Don’t fool yourself. The whole point of the exercise was to make great art while describing
mediocrity.

EMMA
Mediocrity—was that why you trapped me in Yonville?
I was just a martyr to your style.

FLAUBERT
You do not know how I suffered, making you.

EMMA
I don’t care about your suffering!
You made me just as pretty as the women at that ball and gave me none of the happiness they
had! Only boredom and disappointment!
You gave me a child and turned her into a doll.
You even took away my dog!

FLAUBERT
And I clearly didn’t give you enough religious education to know that railing against your
creator never leads anywhere.

EMMA stands.

EMMA
Goodbye, sir. I’d hoped to find my author an honorable man, not an insulting snake who can’t
even get me a coffee.

20
 She flounces off. FLAUBERT watches her go, amused.

YOU/EMMA
The next evening,
Shocker
Leon comes to your hotel.
You’re wearing a dimity dressing gown, with your hair in a soft chignon
(if this were now, you’d be in lululemons and a velvet kimono from Anthropologie)
You jump straight back into a delicious conversation with Leon
Like no time had gone by
He was so bored in law school
You don’t mention Rodolphe
He doesn’t mention he’d forgotten you
You tell him of your illness—
I sometimes think—it would be better if I’d died…I mean, really, what is there to live for?

STUFFED SHIRT
Sometimes, in these years, I’ve dreamed of dying—
In my will, I asked to be buried under the velvet coverlet you gave me—
Because I love you so much!

YOU/ EMMA
He’s holding your hand again
Listing out all the places he almost told you, the doorstep, the corner, the card table
And you look back into that misty past
before
and feel
so
old.
I’m too old, you’re too young…someone else will love you!
If this were now, you might be throwing your mortarboard into the air, staying with your dad for
the summer while you save up to move to New York, but it’s the 1840s and you put the weight
of your almost three years of motherhood into saying to Leon:
My child! Forget me!
(you’ve always wanted to say that)
You explain the impossibility of this love
Even in the face of those fucking EYELASHES—
He begs forgiveness, gets up to leave.
Your heart is pulled out of you by the shy slight stoop of defeat in his back.

STUFFED SHIRT
Just let me see you once more—

YOU/EMMA
You’ve been so good. You can give yourself that.

21
Tomorrow, in the Cathedral.
You spend the night writing him an endless letter
For the sake of both our happinesses—
I cannot see you—
But you don’t have his address
Well, give it to him at the cathedral. It’s a cathedral. You’ll be safe there.
From what? Don’t answer that…
Flaubert doesn’t tell us what you dream about that night.

In the morning, your letter wrinkles in your gloved hand as you make your way to the cathedral.
If this were now, you might written in your morning pages:
Be my best self
But in this now,

Angelic romantic music

YOU/EMMA
Leon is there
The church, like a gigantic boudoir, arranging itself around him
The vaults lean down to gather up, in the shadows,
the confession of your love—
You hold the letter out to him—he looks at it—You pull it back, remembering another letter
You could never cause such pain—
Stay strong—
You don’t know what to do!
He pulls you into the street and hails a cab.
Your indecision is clawing out the inside of your ribcage.
Oh, Leon! Really—I don’t know—if I should—

STUFFED SHIRT
Why? They do it in Paris!

YOU/EMMA
You spend the next six hours in the carriage,
Blinds drawn. Flaubert doesn’t tell us what goes on in there.

SEXY TIME!
Whatever the contemporary equivalent of Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back”
is plays
There’s a sexy dance
Jessica Rabbit, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Boop clips play on video
It happens, it climaxes
It ends in a ringing silence

YOU/EMMA

22
Yonville is silent
as usual
when you return.
At the inn, you’re told to go straight to Monsieur Homais’s house. It’s urgent.
There you find sticky-sweet chaos—The annual jam-making halted because the assistant brought
in a pan that was stored—heaven of heavens!—next to the bottle labeled DANGER:ARSENIC
in the laboratory!

On video, ALL THE CLIPS OF ARSENIC

From the movies—from other movies—from wherever!
flash a few times.

YOU/EMMA
Homais is shouting. You interrupt—Didn’t you have something to tell me…?
Yes, I did, Madame! Your father-in-law is dead!
Charles had asked him to break the news to you gently.

FLAUBERT
Yeah, it’s taken me from July to the end of November to write one scene! I fucking hate this
book. Now that I have a clear view of it as a whole, it disgusts me. All of it. My sordid little
leading lady included.
I am Emma Bovary?
Yeah, I said that—I say a lot of things.
Whatever. I guess at least writing this thing has been good practice.

YOU/EMMA
Your father-in-law’s death is hard for you to mourn—
You won’t miss him catching you a little too close on visits after a few eau-de-vies
And worse, it means that Mere Bovary comes back to stay with you.
Monsieur Lhereux takes advantage of the melancholy circumstances to come by and get you to
renew the promissory note Charles signed during your convalescence. He congratulates you on
the upcoming inheritance, chatters about black fabrics for your mourning wardrobe.
And he brings the means of your escape—
A contract drawn up by the notary, a power of attorney
“so you won’t have to bother your husband with money cares, when he’ll be so busy now with a
host of other worries…”
When your mother-in-law finally leaves,
You pounce.
It will be so useful, Charles
But if only there were someone to double-check it!

Moooo

Why don’t you take it to Leon? Asks your husband.

It’s been two weeks but it feels like an eternity that melts away during your first kiss.
You stay in Rouen for three days—full, exquisite, splendid

23
A real honeymoon.
You stay in the Hotel Boulogne with flowers on the floor and iced drinks from morning on.
Toward evening, you take a covered boat and go have dinner on an island
As the warm September moon rises, you sing as the boat glides along the water.

(singing wistfully) I don’t care, I don’t care, when it comes to happiness I want my share…

But the three days end and then it’s back to Yonville.
You are barely home before you start looking for another excuse to return to Rouen.
Piano lessons!
That’ll do the trick.
On the cusp of winter, you are seized by a passion for music.
But oh, you are so rusty—Ah, my poor piano!
After a few weeks of this, you get permission from your husband to go to the city once a week to
see your lover.
It is even thought, after a month, that your playing has improved considerably.

FLAUBERT (on video)

My ideal woman?
She’s …not feminine.
She lacks the social hypocrisy of women.
If she’s a poet, she’s a poet, not…a poet shackled to a woman, you know? Not all soft-brained…
If I could make a woman into the woman I dream of….what a human being she’d be.

YOU/EMMA
You go on Thursdays.
You meet at the same hotel, with its mahogany, gondola-shaped bed.
You lunch by the fire, prattling affectionate nonsense, feeling Leon’s eyes on you
As you laugh voluptuously, champagne frothing over the rim of your glass and onto your rings.
He kneels in front of you, his elbows on your knees,
gazing up with a smile.
You say “our room,” “our carpet,” “our chairs.”
You are so lost in your possession of him
That you believe you are destined to live there, like that, until you die,
An eternally young husband and wife.

Fridays are awful, Saturdays intolerable.

You’re impatient to recapture your happiness.
It’s like an itch under your breastbone, a bubble of wildness waiting to escape.
You hide it by charming your husband
You make him pistachio creams and play waltzes after dinner.
Your life becomes a confection of lies.
And why shouldn’t you lie?
Each fib is a pleasure
Each fabrication a little corner of the world you’re staking out as your own.
Even more than your constant redecoration of the house—new furniture, new carpet—

24
(if this were now, West Elm would be your homepage)
The lying gives you a sense of control
In a world you’re starting to suspect will never be yours.

Because in spite of your love, life continues

And life requires money.
Lots of it
Especially when you need new curtains.
Lhereux appears, asking for money—
Somehow you’re two thousand francs in debt—
He helps you to sell, using your power of attorney, a little farm left by Bovary elder
Gets you four thousand francs for it
But then says numbers and makes calculations
And look, with these four notes of credit you could keep all the cash…
There’s a ringing in your ears like you just won at slots
You look at the all the zeroes after those numbers
Dreaming of the meetings the money could buy
In the convent they never taught you about compound interest—
So you sign on the dotted line.

Then, one Thursday,

Leon doesn’t appear at the hotel.
First you sit
Then you pace
Then you cry
Not a note, not a sign, just absence—
Does it mean he doesn’t love you?
No, he loves you
But doesn’t he know this will make you wonder?
Doesn’t he know it’ll hurt you?
How could he do this to you?

YOU/EMMA lets out a wordless yelp of frustration.

YOU/EMMA
The worst part is he’s probably just trapped in some stupid meeting
Too timid to get out of it.
And this is the man you’ve spent months fluffing up
Those shy glances that seemed so disarming after Rodolphe’s bluster—
He’s just…
Ordinary.
You spend the next two hours pressing your face against the windowpane and trying decide
whether you hate him
or yourself
for falling for such a wimp.
Limp dick.

25
Sock puppet.
Gutless tepid chickenshit coward.

Every week, you tell yourself you’ll be truly happy next time;
Every week, you have to admit it didn’t happen.
But the disappointment is quickly replaced by hope, and the cycle continues.
Your life is completely occupied by your passions, and you think no more about money than an
archduchess.
Do you?
Do you?

A notice of non-payment shows up, sent by Lhereux’s banker friend

You hide it, sign another note.
Tradesmen leave the house with furious faces, now.
If Charles says anything

Moo—

YOU/EMMA
It’s not my fault!

You grow wilder in your love for Leon,

Searching for that sweetness you once found in his gaze.
You want your meetings to be gala days
If he doesn’t have the money for the champagne, well, you’ll cover the bill
Chasing the dream of who you want to be…
The next day a summons will arrive and you’ll ignore it
You’re tired all the time
And somewhere you know that you and Leon are tired of each other
You’ve rediscovered in adultery all the platitudes of marriage
A noose is tightening
The noose you made yourself
It’s not my fault—
You wish you could stop living or sleep all the time—
LET’S GO TO A CLUB

CLUB MUSIC thump thump oonz oonz

CLUB VIDEO oonz oonz strobe strobe

YOU/EMMA
It’s a masked ball
Halfway through Lent
You wear breeches and red stockings
If this were now, it’d be a mesh shirt, a pleather skirt
No underwear and a stripper wig
You dance on the tables with strangers

26
Someone grinds against you
You’re in the middle of a circle
You’re twenty-four, trying to find it sexy
Seeking out that hunger
The hunger, the passion
The hunger for passion
That same ache you’ve always had
The ache to be alive
In control
To have a plan, not just a destiny
To make the life you want—

A mediocre restaurant down by the harbor

The guys, in sailor costumes, worried about the cost
A shop assistant, two med students, and your clerk Leon
Glamorous company.
And the girls:

Oh my god, I went to House of Yes on Friday and the cocktails there were sooooooo weak
I mean, seriously
It would be like a hundred fucking dollars to get a buzz on
If I had that kind of money I’d be buying coke!

Your ears still throbbing with the memory of music

Your forehead on fire, eyelids prickling—
You get out of there
Get out of your costume
You’re alone, finally
But still itchy and unbearable in your own skin
You don’t think of the summonses
You can’t stand anything
You can’t stand yourself
Sleep the day away
Hope it will be better when you wake up

Scarlett O’Hara on video: “Tomorrow is another day!”

YOU/EMMA
It’s not
You already knew that, right?
You know where this is going.
The final notice of seizure is waiting for you in Yonville.
Furniture, dresses,
The house itself
If you don’t pay—
Eight thousand Francs?!

27
You go to Lhereux
Is this a joke?

No, that’s the actual number

You’d tried to do some calculations but you never believed them
But what am I to do?

With as many friends as you have?

He looks at you
And you see yourself as he sees you
Corrupted
Filthy

Nausea

YOU/EMMA
The next day the Bailiff runs his fingers through all your possessions
You can’t eat
You go back to Rouen, go to every banker whose name you know
No
No
No
No
“No’s” continue in soundscape/video
Doors slam

YOU/EMMA
Finally, in despair, you go to Leon
I need eight thousand francs

STUFFED SHIRT
You’re crazy!

YOU/EMMA
Not yet!

YOU/EMMA
He says he’ll ask a friend and come back.
He doesn’t come back.

The maid holds a yellow sheet of paper

A notice that was nailed to the door
Everybody knows now, except Charles who’s doing his daily rounds

There’s only one person left—

28
 YOU/EMMA puts the tailcoat back on the Stuffed Shirt—it’s Rodolphe now

YOU/EMMA
He’ll help, surely
He was so good, so generous—
(Really, Emma, you think that? When was Rodolphe ever generous?)
And you walk into his house, head held high even though you almost faint with your hand on the
gate latch
He’s smoking a pipe, feet up against the hearthstone
You see yourself from outside as you approach him
The pallor of your skin makes your big eyes darker
Not eating has sharpened your cheekbones
Rodolphe, I need your advice—
Hear yourself
Perfect tone
You’re always outside yourself, haven’t you always been?
As you lay a hand on his hand
“How could you expect me to keep living without you?”
More of you is calibrating your performance
Than is touching him
He’s softening, you can see that
You can’t unclench your teeth
He touches your eyelids and asks
You’ve been crying? Why?
Because I’m ruined—
And you sob, and sob, and almost fall back into yourself but don’t quite
Hold out
Stay out
I need three thousand francs

He stiffens at the mention of money. You feel it happen before he says—

I don’t have it.

You don’t have it.

Rockets begin dropping out of the sky in the soundscape

YOU/EMMA
I could have spared myself this last humiliation, then.

Leave
Go

Sound of dripping water and ticking joins the rockets

29
YOU/EMMA
That’s it
All over
You remember—
the pharmacist, the bottle called “Danger”

sound of the lathe layers into the soundscape

YOU/EMMA
Walk
Walk
Arsenic
Walk

Sound of metal rattling joins

YOU/EMMA
Night falls
Rooks fly overhead
Forget
Don’t forget
Can’t forget
To the left
Homais’ house
Justin
The assistant
Need the key

Sound of piano practice

YOU/EMMA
To upstairs
For the rats
Just some arsenic
Kill some rats
Before my husband…
Up the stairs
To the room, the third shelf
On the right
The blue jar
Wrench it open
Take a handful
In your mouth
Justin, wide eyed, tries to stop you
Don’t tell anyone! They’ll blame your master!

30
 Sudden silence

YOU/EMMA
You’ve done your duty
Now go home
And go to bed.

If this were now

You might be on the N with a lamp
At midnight
After your landlord decided to raise your rent
Carrying moving boxes in the snow
After rehearsal
With an audition at 7 the next morning

Six years from now

You might pick up Madame Bovary again
On that same N train
Reading under an ad for mattresses
And be nineteen, hating it
and be thirty, wondering
How Flaubert could get it so right
And get it so wrong

But now, death is a minor pain

At first
And then convulsions and brown spots on your skin
as the arsenic breaks apart your cells
Then calm
Then heat
Then cold

The night goes on and on

The doctors come and go
The pharmacist
The priest
You vomit blood

You don’t think about your daughter’s ruined future

You don’t hate Charles anymore now that you won’t have to put up with him
You don’t—

They lay you out in your wedding dress

Your hair spread on your shoulders
In state
They lift your head to put on your wreath

31
and black liquid runs from your mouth, staining the lace and satin.

FLAUBERT has been watching, on video.

YOU/EMMA
Isn’t it always the same question?
Why did you make me like this?

FLAUBERT
What?

YOU/EMMA
It’s only the this that changes.
I know you couldn’t have let me be happy.
Happy people make for bad books.

FLAUBERT
Oh. Emma.

EMMA
You put so much of yourself into me. Your dreams…transmuted, of course, but the same ones…

FLAUBERT
Your dreams were not the same as mine.

EMMA
No, no. You left out the dignity of your dreams.
Your dreams were of glory achieved.
Mine…I wanted pretty clothes and someone to talk to about novels.
Was that so bad?
I wanted to be special—

FLAUBERT
None of us are special.

EMMA
You thought you were.

FLAUBERT
I hated life, my dear. Not just you.

EMMA
No, no, I don’t think that’s right.
I think you hated your life, not life.

FLAUBERT

32
Who are you to tell me that?

EMMA
Didn’t you say it yourself?

FLAUBERT
I’ve said many things.
Most of them lies.

EMMA
I am Emma Bovary.

FLAUBERT
Of course you are, my dear.

EMMA
You are Emma Bovary.

FLAUBERT
You are—

EMMA
You said it.

FLAUBERT
I am—

EMMA
We were Emma Bovary.

FLAUBERT
We were—?

EMMA
I am you.

Blackout.
THE END.

33