The Alibi in the Universe of Flaubertian Dedublation

The unity of Gustave Flaubert's work resides in the consciousness unravelled by equally strong contrary tendencies. Flaubert's dedublation can be encountered both in the puzzling form of the discrepancy between the characters’ psychological significance and the psychological meaning of the literary comment typical to Flaubert. When writing his correspondence, he is situated between the angle drawn by his real self and what he consciously lets his friends perceive, just like in the ancient Greek mask theatre. Furthermore, he swings between the temptation to emphasize his propensity towards the idea of implacable determinism and the resilience by means of the impersonality illusion. Facing numerous controversies which he himself has generated, the author rejects any “guilt”, considering that the guarantee of objectiveness lies in the fact that literature is kept within the limits of a case; but it is the very choice of the “slice of life” which uncovers the writer's orientation. Imagining a case that proves nothing, Flaubert directly and indirectly reveals his own pessimistic view on reality. The writer wholeheartedly wishes to believe in the existence of a world dominated by love and morality, but his book, Madame Bovary, proves the very contrary. Drawing on the psychic mechanism of the alibi, as a complex and refined cultural constant, the paper looks into Flaubert's dedublation universe, presenting this psychic phenomenon as a strategy to listen to one's own ego. As he refuses both reality and dream, Flaubert defies reality from the point of view of the dream, and mocks at the dream from the point of view of the reality. Using a total contradiction and turning impartiality into an alibi, Flaubert succeeds in changing emptiness into plenitude in a remarkably unique manner.