France v. England: Simmonds' culture wars...

The tale of Gemma Bovery's tragic demise was a great story in and of itself, but I was particularly interested by the undercurrent of culture clash between the British and French sensibilities of our dear characters. Simmonds seems to have fun playing with stereotypes, especially in the "graphic" side of the novel. Joubert, for example, is a classic round-nosed old Frenchman, surrounded by his baguettes the first time we see him (2) and several times after throughout the book. Simmonds continues with the awkwardly rumpled (and charmingly British) Charles, and the cool eyes and aristocratic nose of Herve's wealthy French mother (77).

I found the culture clash most interesting as it manifested in the transformation in Gemma. She begins as a slightly plump British woman, clothed in floor-length skirts and oversized t-shirts (23). Her idea of France is romantic at first, a way to escape Charlie's ex-wife. "She begins to dream of a place unclogged by traffic, a landscape of tranquil communities"--in contrast to London, which she now perceives as full of "'nauseating middle-class ghettos full of dimmer switches, panic buttons and kids behind burglar bars.' As for the English countryside, 'nothing left of it, just one big suburbia overrun with cars and garden centres'" (28).

However, the mysticism dissipates soon after she arrives and realizes that France is just as "real" a place as the one she left behind. "I did not come to Normandy to think of bum creams," she complains (39). Failed by the French countryside, she finds her romantic countryside in the arms of Herve, under the failing roof of his aging chateau. This is when she begins to come around, to abandon her British sensibilities--her British husband, the unabashedly in-your-face middle-class Wizzy Rankins (see page 43!), and especially her looks. She gets slimmer and slimmer, gets a more stylish haircut, and streamlines her wardrobe, at the same time daydreaming about becoming "like an 18th-century mistress" (70).

So if Simmonds is showing the process of a character abandoning their culture in pursuit of another, is there a moral? What does Gemma's death mean? And what does it have to do with the role of "Madame Bovery" in the text, especially as it plays out as a symbol of "Frenchness" that Gemma isn't--and is unwilling to become--aware of?

The Jealous Lover

In the last section of the graphic novel, I couldn't help but notice how similar Joubert and Charlie are. On page 102, the last image of the page has the two revisiting the day Gemma died. Separated by a wine bottle, the two men look strikingly alike. Both have a similar shaped nose, glasses, and a look that we've seen on both men's faces numerous times. This image appears three more times on the opposite page (103). It is interesting that we surprisingly learn that Charlie is just as jealous as Joubert. He suspects the worst from Gemma. When he comes back to Normandy and hears a man panting he automatically assumes sex. Unfortunately, Gemma is choking and Charlie's rash actions ultimately cause her death. Joubert acts in a similar, yet not so violent way. His brash actions include the mailing of the pages to Gemma to stop the affair with Herve and then the mailing of the pages to her acquaintances. Both men fit into the jealous lover category, acting out in a ridiculous way. Moreover, Gemma is an unattainable woman for both men. Joubert in obvious ways. He looks at her as a character in a novel that comes to life. To Charlie, she's the distant wife he can no longer connect with. Charlie is the opposite of Herve. Finally, she causes the demise of both men. She leaves Charlie in emotional despair and financial debt. She leaves Joubert with uneasiness and in many ways an unfinished story.

While Charlie explains to Joubert what really happened, Joubert is still stuck in a world of fantasy, or fiction. In this way, the image also works to show how the characters are opposites of each other. Charlie understands the reality of the situation. His wife cheated on him, died, and left him with nothing. Joubert holds on to the fiction, insisting that the Flaubert novel is the story of Gemma's life. The ending of the novel is a confirmation of this when we learn that Jane Eyre has moved in next door. The story continues for Joubert.

Reading Gemma Bovery

I was initially a little overwhelmed by the amount of material on any single page in Gemma Bovery, unsure whether to focus on the text, the diary entry, the comics, the letters, etc., and even more unsure of how all of these elements worked together to form a cohesive story. Though the book is told from Joubert's point of view, the other visual elements provide the reader with a different perspective on the events he is describing. For instance, Gemma's diary entries are initially quite vague and only hint at what is going on in her life, though they do contain the occasional outburst about Judi or Charlie's children. Joubert even comments about how surprised he is that she does not go on at great length about her affair, much to his disappointment. However, after Herve ends things and she is in emotional distress her entries get more personal and reflexive, similar to the way they were after her affair with Patrick ended. Gemma's handwritten entries are a nice break from the excessive amount of text that Simmonds provides us.

Like the diary entries, the comics in Gemma Bovery also evolve throughout the course of the book. At the beginning they are merely drawings to accompany Joubert's narrative, with the occasional daydream or glimpse into Gemma's imagination. They are not especially comic in form, but more like sketches or illustrations. The majority of what would technically be classified as comics sequences typically involve Judi and tend to be the more humorous parts of the book. The pictures that accompany Gemma's affair with Herve could hardly be considered comics, for they are drawn in such a dreamy and romantic fashion (see pages 53 and 67 in particular). This lack of consistency made it difficult to know how to interpret the pictures, whether we should take them seriously or view them as comical interpretations that accompany the text.

Similar to Eddie Campbell, Posy Simmonds is extremely ambitious in her experimentations with the comics form. However, I would argue that she is not as successful as Campbell was. Though her story is much easier to follow, I often found that her lack of consistency in narrative voice and form came across as sloppy. I am unsure of what exactly she was trying to accomplish in terms of form, and wish she had chosen a better way to tell such an interesting story.

Gemma Bovery: Oversexed or Balanced?

After finishing Gemma Bovery, it’s interesting to flip back through the novel and glance over the pages. There are many things of note, such as the inconsistent layout, fonts and depictions of characters, but what catches my eye the most are things that seem mostly consistent – specifically the way couples appear in bed and the amount of time characters spend imagining, recreating or engaging in sexual encounters. In this manner, Gemma Bovery thrives on the disconnect or connect of lovers, and I can’t help but question if this constant attention to sex (or the lack thereof) is balanced in the text or overstated.

For example, whenever Charles and Gemma are depicted in bed, both parties are shown in different states of mind (5.5, 6.1, 7.7, 19.3, 44.3-4, 68.3, 79.1). There never seems to be a moment where we see a sexual connection between them in their own bed. Eventually this disconnect is shown between Joubert and his wife as well (68.4, 90.1-4) to suggest the parallel of Madame Joubert’s and Charles’ affair that Simmonds points out in the interview with Paul Gravett. Simmonds intended (and succeeded) to depict other characters besides Gemma as unfaithful, lustful and out of line. Joubert goes so far as to imagine himself and Gemma in bed together (84.4), yet sexual desires are implied even farther than this. When Patrick takes Gemma out to dinner after they reacquaint, the eyes of every man in the restaurant, many of whom are with other women, are fixated on Gemma (87.1). A few pages later, Mark Rankin visits Gemma to check on her stability, and ends up caressing her shoulder (91.15) and suggesting that she might “let” him have sex with her as a means to pay off her debts (91.16). In showing us a consistent line of unfaithful men (or men who at least acknowledge their attraction to a beautiful and alluring woman), Simmonds creates an interesting balance of sexual desire in the text – a balance that detracts from or, in many ways, lessens the impact of Gemma’s adultery.

Yet as Simmonds seemingly places everyone in the community in which Gemma lives on the same plane of sexual desire to help justify Gemma’s actions, the text then becomes something of an oversexed depiction of life and an example of how marriage lacks this sexual desire. Perhaps Simmonds doesn’t want to depict Gemma as any more wrong than anyone else, something that Flaubert’s Madame Bovary may or may not do as well (I’d be interested to know if anyone’s read Flaubert’s work and knows whether or not Emma Bovary is singled out as the adulterer). And does Simmonds showing of numerous characters’ sexual desire in Gemma Bovery help to balance or weigh Gemma's actions, or simply fill the world with sex to “sell” this story in our present day culture that is consciously sexually-driven?

Gemma Bovery's Verticality

I really enjoyed Gemma Bovery (it seemed oddly invigorating after Jimmy Corrigan), and while I was caught up in the overall story (so much so that I’ve already finished), I did try to notice along the way how Posy Simmonds would strive for the little peaks at the end of each page (something that obviously was dictated by the original newspaper limits).

I think artistically Simmonds was forced to go “vertical” and in the end adapted quite well. While many of our readings this term have concentrated on how our eyes moved from left to right on a mainly square page, Gemma Bovery was the first to force our eyes up and down over a much longer vertical surface.

I’ll take one aspect of this which I found particularly captivating – the “stacked” level of artwork that would appear during the course of the novel, as can be seen in pages 6, 17, 28, 49, and 70, among others. We talked a bit in class about how it was often difficult to tell whether to read, then look at the artwork, or vice versa, or a bit of both, and in the end, I chose to do the last, reading a paragraph at a time before looking for the appropriate picture. It may violate our sense of how comics work (paging Scott McCloud), but I think in the end, Simmonds really manages to establish her own interesting stake in the larger graphic novel world.

And the vertical artwork seems to get stronger as we go on. Page 6 is really the simplest (just a series of panels illustrating each detail of the left-hand text), but in page 10, we’re already seeing some playfulness, as the photos appear to tumble out of Joubert’s hand. In 17, objects are beginning to overlap, and on page 28, there’s a subtle change to the artwork, as gray wash gives way to the black ink of the bottom right corner.

Page 70 is the best of these, in my opinion. Here Simmonds manages to convey a “crown” of sorts above the main character (no gray wash here either), a black-inked Francophile daydream sprouting upward as a tree. Everything works here, and by placing this in the upper left, Simmonds has really highlighted this montage. Our eyes fall upon it as we first turn to the page, and as we read through the text, we are drawn back piece by piece to the artwork, our eyes moving from the main character to the second level, and lastly to the nest and baby at the top. We return to the bottom, and see Herve's reaction to all this - his "deer caught in the headlights" look of shock. This is one of my favorite pieces of art from the book and not coincidentally, it signals the beginning of the end of Gemma’s fortunes.

Voyez-vous lundi!

POV in Gemma Bovery

Granted, I'm only half way through Gemma Bovery, but I just wanted to throw out a question regarding Simmonds' unconventional use of point of view in telling the story. For a graphic novel, there seems to be a disproportionate amount of prose here. These sections the reader has no problem taking as originating from Joubert's point of view. He is telling Gemma's story based on information that he has gleaned from Charlie, Gemma's diaries, or his own first hand experience.

More troubling are the "comic" portions of the novel. Here the reader is presented with a wealth of information that Joubert could not have possibly known. Do these scenes arise from Joubert's imagination or a completely seperate consciousness? For example, on page 13 Joubert wonders what Charlie is remembering about the Christmas that followed his first meeting with Gemma. Then we get a full page of Charlie's converstion with his ex-wife Judi. Joubert later surmises that Charlie's relationship with Judi must be "civilized" (20), but this assumption belies the information that we're given in the comic portions of this page. Was Joubert merely being sarcastic or are the drawn panels conveying a truth to which he's not privy?

On a related note, later in the first half of the book, it appears as if Joubert is conducting the action of the narrartive (giving some insight into why he feels responsible for Gemma's death), as he commands Gemma to turn into Herve's driveway. It does, just as the skies thunder (48). Accorsing to her diary a few pages later, however, the thunder happens once Gemma is already inside Herve's house. This information would seem to rob Joubert of his role as "writer" of the narrative.

Posy Simmonds interviews galore

There's a recent Posy Simmonds interview in the Telegraph that you should read. It is occasioned by the recent publication of her latest graphic novel, Tamara Drewe, which was serialized in the Guardian last year.

Simmonds was also the subject of a lengthy cover-story interview in the latest issue of The Comics Journal. You can read an excerpt from that interview here.