GEMMA BOVERY 251
Th e Gay League. (1998). http://www.gayleague.com/; Th eophano, Teresa. “Comic
Strips and Cartoons.” glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and
Queer Culture (2005). http://www.glbtq.com/arts/comic_strips_cartoons.html.
Denis Yarow
GEMMA BOVERY. Written and illustrated by Rosemary Elizabeth “Posy” Simmonds,
Gemma Bovery was fi rst serialized on a weekly basis in 100, one-page installments in
the U.K. newspaper Th e Guardian before being published in book form in 1999 by
Jonathan Cape, and then published in America by Pantheon in 2005. Gemma Bovery is
a heteroglot work: more text heavy than most comics, it uses prose narration combined
with diary excerpts, fi ctional media clippings, and passages from Flaubert’s Madame
Bovary , supplemented by soft monochrome drawings in which the characters speak pri-
marily English with the occasional snippet of French. A satirical tragicomedy, Gemma
Bovery follows the late titular Gemma Bovery’s recent life up until her untimely death.
In England, Gemma Tate is a moderately successful illustrator who, in the wake of a bad
breakup with food critic Patrick Large, marries the clueless and passive Cyril “Charlie”
Bovery, a furniture restorer. Eventually tiring of urban England and the demands of
Charlie’s fi rst family, Gemma persuades her husband that they should move to rustic
France. In Bailleville, Normandy, fi ckle Gemma quickly becomes disenchanted with
France and her husband, beginning an aff air with Hervé de Bressigny, a member of the
minor and fi nancially ailing gentry who is studying for his law exams. Th e aff air ends
when Hervé leaves for Paris. While the Boverys struggle with their mounting debts,
Gemma reencounters Large through their mutual acquaintances, the wealthy Rankins.
Gemma and Large reignite their carnal relationship, although Gemma is resolute in not
becoming more involved; during an argument with Large, Gemma chokes on a piece of
bread and dies when Charlie mistakenly interrupts Large’s attempted Heimlich maneu-
ver. Raymond Joubert, a French baker who has obsessed over Gemma since her arrival
in France, narrates the story, which is primarily comprised of his voyeurism, speculation,
and his reading of Gemma’s pilfered diaries.
Gemma Bovery is not a simple modernization of Flaubert, though it deals, in an
updated context, with many of the same issues as Madame Bovary ; rather, Simmonds
cleverly exploits the connection between Gemma and Emma to question the relation-
ship between text and life. Th e French characters inevitably parse Bovery as Bovary,
with Joubert and his literary pretensions being the most prominent example; a failed
writer and currently an editor, Joubert obsessively imposes Flaubert’s story onto Gem-
ma’s life. Joubert is not content with merely imagining Gemma as an updated Emma:
he meddles with Gemma’s life using Flaubert’s text, hastening the end of Gemma’s
aff air with Hervé by anonymously sending her excerpts of Madame Bovary , as well
as indirectly setting up the circumstances of Gemma’s demise by sending excerpts
from the parts about Emma’s debts and suicide to Charlie, Large, and the Rankins.
Th is leads to the encounter between Charlie and Large wherein Gemma chokes to
death on bread that, signifi cantly, was baked by Joubert. (Incidentally, Gemma herself
