Madame Bovary
Uploaded by baadasskid69 on Oct 27, 2011
This essay discusses the classic novel Madame Bovary.
I Introduction
Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary caused a scandal when it was published for its frank portrayal of a woman’s infidelity. Although it’s fairly tame by today’s standards, its portrayal of the clash between fantasy and reality makes it timeless.
This paper discusses several questions about the novel. It also examines the way in which money is portrayed in the book.
II Discussion Questions
The questions for discussion here are: What goes wrong in the novel? What is the downhill slide that occurs in the book? What should life be? And how does that outcome occur?
What goes wrong in the novel? The short answer is that Emma marries for all the wrong reasons, and thus cannot possibly be happy, or faithful. One of the most important points of Emma’s character is that she is devoted to romance novels, which she reads constantly. Flaubert devotes almost all of Chapter 6 to a description of Emma’s reading habits while she’s in the convent, and we are told that:
“She would have loved to dwell in some old manor, like those chatelaines with the long bodices who, beneath the trefoil window with its Gothic arch, spent their days with their elbow on the parapet and their chin in their hand, gazing far away into the distance for the coming of a cavalier with a white plume in his hat, galloping on a black charger.” (Flaubert, Chapter 6, PG).
When she leaves the convent and returns home, she finds herself once again in her father’s farmhouse, where she is bored rigid. Thus, when Charles Bovary comes to set her father’s broken leg, and falls in love with her, she is so starved for any sort of distraction that she mistakes her unrest and the novelty of a masculine presence for love, and agrees to marry him. By the time they have set up house together, she knows she doesn’t love him. But Charles is completely in love with her. The horrible dynamic at work is that the tighter he clings to her, the more she tries to break free. This is what goes wrong, and it sets in motion the entire downhill juggernaut that ends in disaster and death.
It’s also important to note that Emma is a sensualist; by that I mean that she...