Examination Paper

Braithwaite administers an examination probing the reader's understanding of Flaubert, life, and the role of literature. The test is in two sections, and the reader is allowed three hours to answer both questions in the first section and two questions (from a choice of ten) in the second section. Presentation and handwriting do not count. Marks are based on correctness, with deductions for silly answers.

Section A is labeled Literary Criticism. The first part is prefaced by the observation, based on recent examinations, that "candidates" are losing the ability to distinguish between life and art. The candidate is to consider the relationship between art and life suggested by two of the six quotations or situations given. The second part asks the candidate to trace the softening of Flaubert's attitude regarding literary criticism; eight quotations are provided, more or less chronologically, though there is no apparent mellowing over the years.

The ten questions in Section B are labeled Economics, Geography, Logic (with Medicine), Biography (with Ethics), Psychology, Psychoanalysis, Philately, Phonetics, Theatrical History, and History (with Astrology). Each question presents a quotation and/or situation to be considered:

1. Economics—Bouilhet and Flaubert were similar in many ways, except that Bouilhet had to earn his living. What if their financial situations had been reversed?
2. Geography—Discuss Andre Gide's proposal that Flaubert's struggle with words was really the result of Rouen's climate.
3. Flaubert's father asked Gustave what purpose literature served; the son replied by asking his doctor father what a spleen was for. At the time, the spleen was little understood but considered indispensable. Modern medicine now knows all about the spleen, including that it is not an essential organ. What does the candidate conclude from that?
4. Biography—Du Camp published a reputation-damning epitaph of Colet. Whose reputation suffers greater from the remark?
5. Psychology—Two women are born the same year, have similar upbringings, temperaments, socially unacceptable sexual proclivities, and financial stressors, and commit suicide by poison. One is Emma Bovary; the other is Eleanor Marx, the English translator of Madame Bovary. Discuss. 
6. Psychoanalysis—What does the candidate think is the significance of Flaubert's dream in which his mother scolds him for shooting a monkey who, she says, loved him and looked just like him.
7. Philately—Flaubert did not appear on a French stamp until 1952, well behind Ronsard, Hugo, Anatole France, and Balzac, and even behind Alfred de Musset—Colet's lover after Flaubert. Is this a slight toward Flaubert? What are the odds of Du Camp, Colet, or Bouilhet getting their faces on a stamp?
8. Phonetics—Are the character names "Bovary," "Bouvard," "Bouvigny," and "Bouvignard" deliberate variations of "Bouvaret" (the proprietor of the hotel where Flaubert stayed in Cairo)? Are the many misspellings of Flaubert's name all coincidences? Is there any reason to follow Du Camp's pronunciation of "Bovary" with a short "o"?
9. What are the technical problems in staging Act VI, scene viii of Le Château des Cœurs, in which a stock pot sprouts wings and hovers over the town while its vegetable contents turn into constellations? 
10. What does the candidate think about the following predictions of Flaubert? England will take over Egypt. The improvement of humanity means the degradation of individuals; economic balance displaces virtue; the role of art becomes unclear when nature's original forms are subjugated. Within a hundred years, racial conflicts will return to Europe, East versus West, Old World versus New, and millions will die in single conflicts. Humanity is dancing on a rotten latrine lid, and when it goes, there will be a lot of shouting.