"Elle portait, comme un homme, passé entre deux boutons de son corsage, un lorgnon d'écaille."
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"She wore, like a man, tucked between two buttons of her bodice, a tortoiseshell loignette."
Madame Bovary
(1856)
Gustave Flaubert
I won't ever manage to forget about this line. It says so much about the time in which this book was written, about relationships between people, about our perceptions and feelings regarding both women and men, about ourselves in our present time, and says so much - of course - about Emma, about Charles.
Image 1
Femme lisant/Woman Reading. Henri Matisse (1894)
Lovely! So illuminating to interpret the passage from Madame Bovary via Matisse's painting (or is it interpreting Matisse through this moment from Flaubert?). Like turning Matisse's sitter around to face the viewer, and then receiving her withering stare! :)
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