One cannot write about The Bad Girl without first paying hommage to the prior, Madame Bovary. Is not this novel just a more modernized recreation of the tale of desire and obsession only with a new twist? "The Bad Girl" serves as a young Emma Bovary only with more ambition, drive, and overall fuel for passion. The novel begins with the classic story of a young lover being attracted to what he believed to be a young Chilean girl, whom everyone was in love with. Her grace, her beauty, her dance, her curves, her... blah blah blah, were oh so captivating. Turns out the girl wasn't even who she said she was. Which brings me to my first point, a false sense of reality.
We,ve learned that our eyes are our biggest detriment in this thing called "love." We become attracted to what we think we see and from there Cupid strikes us and our passioned desire takes over. As read in the text, Ricardo, as well as every other boy in the town, was love struck by Lily. Everything about her made them want her. This obsession was purely originated by what was perceived about this girl. And while they were desiring Lily, she was desiring a life that was fabricated by her own imagination. Now on to the matter of incessant desire.
Not too far after the Lily's character was introduced was she exposed as a liar, fabricating stories about her life in Chile. What does this tell us? Already the motif created from Ovid's Narcissus is revealed, "...The thing you are seeing does not exist...What you see is only a shadow, image, cast by your imagination..." This reveals that the object of Ricardo's desire and who this mysterious woman, known as "Lily," hopes to be does not exist. As in Madame Bovary, you have a young woman wanting to live a life of high status, a life of societal acceptance, and will do anything to gain it. This desire does not leave Ricardo nor Neo-Emma as they move on in life. As Ricardo is living his dream as an interpreter for Unesco, Neo-Emma becomes "Comrade Arlette," a member of the Cuban revolution. Upon recognition, Ricardo immediately revisits his passionate hopes of having Neo-Emma fulfill his desire. Funny thing is, the girl whom Ricardo described to Neo-Emma, the one he had "fallen in lust with, was no remembered at all. Comrade Arlette denied ever being such girl. Why? The girl never existed. As Ricardo attempts to act upon his desire, Comrade Arlette toys with him; she finds him unworthy of the minimal attention of that is showed to him. One would suggest that Ricardo should just move on and let his childhood crush go but he cannot do such a thing; Cupid's arrow was already heart deep. Ricardo falls in the category of "puppy." Pity.
As we've learned so far while dealing with desire, an encounter is bound to happen with: false sense of reality, incessant lust, blindness, broken dreams, and a life of unfulfilled satisfaction.
I can't wait to engage in the discussion concerning "The Bad Girl."
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