Madame Bovary: A dissociative identity interpretation of Flaubert’s phrases “without conscious awareness” and “like someone waking from a dream”

Since Gustave Flaubert is famous for trying to get le mot juste (the right word), perhaps I may be excused for noticing not only the presence of a particular phrase in Madame Bovary, but its recurrence:

“…and it was without conscious awareness that she made her way toward the church, inclined to any devotion, so long as her soul might be absorbed in it and all of life disappear into it…and [after having tried to ask the priest a question] she looked like someone waking from a dream” (1, pp. 96-99).

“Indeed, [momentarily reviving on her death bed, in reaction to the priest] she looked all around her, slowly, like someone waking from a dream; then, in a distinct voice, she asked for her mirror…” (1, p. 289).

What is meant by “without conscious awareness”? Obviously, she is not asleep or in a coma. She was, clearly, conscious. So the phrase evidently means that her behavior was not under the control of her regular personality, but was being controlled by an alternate personality of which her regular personality was only dimly aware. Then, when her regular personality came back into control, it was, for her regular personality, like waking from a dream.

The deathbed scenario (of the second quote) makes me think of the kind of myth or fairytale in which someone is trapped in the body of a beast, but then magically reverts to their true, human identity. Be that as it may, Emma seems once again to be switching from one personality to another, with the two personalities differing from each other in voice and appearance.

The idea “inclined to any devotion, so long as her soul might be absorbed in it and all of life disappear into it” might mean that she was prone to switching into alternate personalities; that is, she had dissociative identity (multiple personality).

1. Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary: Provincial Ways. Translated by Lydia Davis. New York, Viking, 2010.