Madame Bovary Essay

Madame Bovary: Homais
Mikael Janko
March 19, 2013
Critical Practice
Draft
Characterization in Madame Bovary: Homais
In literature, there are various (and many) ways of introducing a character. The simplest way, as
Lodge proposes this "most important single component of the novel," is by providing a biographic
summary or a physical description of a character. (Lodge, 67)
The name Homais derives from the word 'homai,' more than often traced and linked to Bhagavad
Gita (A Hindu Scripture), and whose translation predominantly refers to the notion of ego, self, and
selfishness. Needless to say, in the narrative's discourse such traits become inseparable from
Homais's character sooner rather than later, and the question becomes–why was Flaubert inclined in
...show more content...
Lodge identifies this as a tool used to "accelerate the tempo of a narrative, hurrying us through events
which would be uninteresting, or to interesting – therefore distracting, if lingered over." (Lodge 122)
In evaluating Homais's centrality in the Novel's thematic sphere (outside of its plot) we arrive at its
conclusive moment:
He has an enormous clientele. The authorities cultivate him and public opinion protects him. He has
just received the Legion of Honor. (Flaubert, 324)
Such conclusion, both ironically and critically, pinpoints the existence of social stresses which
cultivate within Homais's character. Homais, although not a central figure in the plot, is a milieu for
representing crude reality imposed by Madame Bovary's underlying thematic, as his inseparable
countenance in mediating the novel's plot.
Yet, Homais is more than a mere mediator. He is the usurper of minds and the one who, although
only marginally, influences the outside view by using such every possible medium for disseminating
own prejudices. His significance (although destructive) thus stretches far beyond his mediating role
(which he achieves with supplying the novel and its respective characters with irony)– it is Homais
who manipulated Charles into taking Emma to the opera in Rouen, an event that
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Desire till Death
Sec 007
Human emotions remain as one of the world's biggest secrets. Like sleep, we know what happens
to our body when we experience these emotions whether it be a release of hormones or a certain
area on the body becomes more sensitive. But we don't know why we have them, experience them,
or what purpose they serve. All we know is everyone's emotions behave differently. Different types
of arts can elicit completely different emotional response from people. Some art may have the
ability to appeal to dangerous emotions in certain people. Whether it be the corruption of a once
faithful and beautiful young girl, plagued by the desire for romanticism and lofty ideas, or a
handsome young nobleman who is obsessed with living life to fullest. Both are fueled by the emotion
that a certain type of art elicits in them, leaving them in a never ending chase that ruins there life's. In
the Novels Madame Bovary and The Picture of Dorian Grey the protagonists in these stories
perfectly exemplifies the danger of arts emotional appeal by showing the corruption and eventual
downfall of two once young and beautiful souls by exposing them to art that pleases dangerous
emotions such as desire, pleasure, entitlement and disappointment.
In the Beginning Both Madame Bovary and Dorian Grey are kind, respectful and innocent souls.
Although Emma is excited by the idea of romantics and love long before Charles meets her, she is
still an innocent, polite farm girl who is religious

Similarities Between Madame Bovary and The Awakening
Centuries ago, in France, Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary. In 1899, Kate Chopin wrote
The Awakening. The years cannot separate the books, and the definite similarities that the two
show. Madame Bovary is the story of a woman who is not content with her life, and searches for
ways to get away from the torture she lives everyday. TheAwakening, much like Bovary, features a
woman who is unhappy with her life, and wishes to find new adventures. The two books bear very
strong similarities to each other, and the plots are almost exactly the same, though there are some
subtle differences.
Set in two old cities in France, Emma Bovary, the main character in the first...show more content...
She describes herself as walking through life in a half stupor, not totally aware, not totally alive.
She finds a man, who "Awakens" the urges that are hidden in the deep recesses of each person's
being, recessed deep inside them. "The present alone was significant; was hers, to torture her as it
was doing then with the biting conviction that she had been denied that which her impassioned,
newly awakened being demanded." (59) A new age begins for both women, a period where they try
to find the lives they think are eluding them.
The women seem to wander through a sort of haze, looking for something. The something that they
both find happens to be a man. Emma stumbles upon her first man in a tavern. He is one of the first
things she comes upon in her new town. They have dinner together, and immediately, the two form a
bond. Unfortunately–depending on the standpoint you take–the relationship did not work out. Emma
was not yet brazen enough, and Leon, the young gentleman with whom she was dumbstruck for,
did not wish to advance it because she was married. This situation is matched almost exactly when
Edna meets her first "fling" as it were. The circumstances though, are slightly different. Emma
knows all her life that she wants a romantic sort of life. Edna does not know what she wants, only
that she is bored. Until her "awakening" she just trips through life with no goal. Robert, her first
man, is much like Leon, in that he does not wish to advance

Gender Roles In Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Madame Bovary is a novel by author Gustave Flaubert in which one woman's provincial bourgeois
life becomes an expansive commentary on class, gender, and social roles in nineteenth–century
France. Emma Bovary is the novel's eponymous antiheroine who uses deviant behavior and willful
acts of indiscretion to reject a lifestyle imposed upon her by an oppressive patriarchal society.
Madame Bovary's struggle to circumvent and overthrow social roles reflects both a cultural and an
existential critique of gender and class boundaries, and her unwillingness to tolerate the banalities of
domestic life in a predetermined caste culminates in several distinct means of defiance. Emma
Bovary exploits traditional cultural values such as marriage,...show more content...
Her relationship with the wealthy, charming Rodolphe Boulanger is a diversion from tedious
country life as well as an intentional subversion of the establishment of marriage and an attempt to
undermine her husband's authority. After her first conjugal transgression, Emma distinctly feels "the
satisfaction of revenge" and "savoured [sic] it without remorse, without anxiety, without worry"
(161). Though her husband Charles is guiltless of cruelty or vice he is representative of a
patriarchy that is entirely neglectful of the emotional, psychological, and intellectual needs of
women and assertive of its superiority and power. She is expected to fulfill the duties of a
simple–minded, submissive, and sexless creature who is devoted to the comfort of her family and
upkeep of the home. By pursuing a sexual relationship with Rodolphe, Emma invalidates the
authority of the prohibitive government institution over her actions and demands autonomy in the
face of a banal provincial life.
Material possessions are both a comfort and a preoccupation for Emma Bovary and she is largely
defined by her identity as a consumer and her efforts to subvert traditional materialism through
excess. Attending a ball at the home of the Marquis de Andervilliers is one of the defining moments
in Emma's life, in which she receives a glimpse into the life of the aristocracy and experiences a
fleeting sense of

Conclusion Of Madame Bovary
first wife was old and passed away shortly after he met with Emma. After her death, they Emma
and Charles got married and they moved to live in the small town in France. After the couple is
married, Madame Bovary finds happiness in her home, because Charles is rich, and she can do
whatever she wants with his fortune. She married Charles because she thought that Charles was a
rich man and loved him, but she realized that she did not love her husband. After the while she
realized that Charles was boring and her marriage life was not like she expected before. Charles did
not felling to his wife, and he was busy because his job as a doctor, so it hurt their relationships,
and made to them far away from each other. She never succeeded like a wife because he did not
love her husband. On the other hand, she did not successful as a mother. She had a little girl, but
she never took care about him because at first she wanted to have a boy. She thought that the boy
will be grow up more freely and makes his dreams to become true. She failed with...show more
content...
In Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary depicted as a slave to her desires, and she named as a slave for
her desires, especially for love and romantic. Emma Bovary is a middle class country girl, and she
is poor and tastes for rich things. She married a doctor, named Charles Bovary, and had a little
daughter. Her husband loved her so much, and he thought that his wife can do no wrong at her
marriage life. She took those desires from reading novels in her childhood, and she wish a perfect
life for her future. She ended her life in the end of the story because she did not have power to see
Charles after those ridiculous jobs that she made. Emma Bovary was selfish and unclear mind
women at that time in France because she just care about her happiness which she did not found in
her entire life, and she killed herself in the end of the

Madame Bovary Essay
The confinement of females under mental and physical distress is the central theme in Gustave
Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White. Flaubert's Emma Bovary is a
narcissist whose self–induced obsession with literature restricts her from having a happy fulfilling
life, as nothing compares to the excitement and adventures she reads in her novels. While the plot of
Wilkie Collins The Woman in White depicts two women incarcerated against their will in a private
mental institution. These private asylums proliferated in the mid nineteenth–century as alternatives
to the established large–scale public hospitals/asylums. This assignment will compare and contrast
the methods used by both authors to define confinement, including...show more content...
Indeed, Emma is a narcissist who is dying in her own solitary world. Her father takes the earliest
opportunity to marry her off to a doctor for his own pecuniary measures, as the narrative states,
'Pere Rouault would not have been vexed to have his daughter off his hands, for she was hardly any
use to him in the house' (p, 23). Emma's long process of dying endures throughout her life, but
nothing she does matches the 'felicity, passion and rapture' (33) she reads about in her novels.
Emma's disappointments arise from her frustration to aspire to a more refined and sophisticated class
than the one she actually is. Furthermore, the fairy–tale ending she thought would come through her
marriage does not transpire, instead, all sense of her own individuality disappeared and society
expected her to act in a certain way. Emma does not appreciate the love she has around her and she
is constantly discontented, 'Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him'

Emma Bovary : Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Emma bovary was born in a middle class society. Emma believed in her imaginations more than her
reality. She was confused when she started reading books about fantasies, sex and other things. What
destroyed Emma that she doesn't know the different between her reality, and her illusion. Emma
starts to have different affairs with different men. But at the end, Emma finds out her life with
Charles is boring, and she tries to escape form it. Then she fell in love with a wealthy landowner but
at the end, she decides to leave him because she doesn't see nothing about their relationship is
romantic. But at the end, Emma becomes ill because Rodolphe leaves her, and she decides to kill
herself because she thinks it will be a romantic death, and because she owe people money. Emma
was disloyal to her men, she was passionate to her religion, and she was very irresponsible.
First, Emma was disloyal to her men; she finds that Charles is uninspiring, and at the end she tries
to leave him, because she was not interested in his love. She tries to love Charles and marry him,
because it doesn't work for her, because she loves her imaginations more than she loves him. She is
also embarrassed by her husband, because she believes that Charles is clumsy, because he doesn't
satisfy her. While she was in relationship with Charles, she fell in love with a guy name Leon, a
young clerk, then they become friends, and they started dating. He got her pregnant, she

Madame Bovary Style Analysis
A day of a common doctor, Charles Bovary, is described in Gustave Flaubert's passage from
Madame Bovary. The author uses great detail to show the reader the typical house call in 1902.
Due to this detail, the author establishes the tones of calmness and intensity. Throughout the
passage from Madame Bovary, the tones established through detail, imagery and figurative
language reveal the character of Charles to the reader. The detail in the beginning of the passage
allows the reader to feel a serene and calm tone. The woman with the "blue dress with three
flounces" welcomes Charles into her home with a "big open fire", just as the "first rays of sun"
peaks through the windows. This allows the reader to feel the serenity of a typical...show more
content...
He also shows Charle's attentiveness and attention to detail. In the moments of calm, after the
man's fracture had been dealt with and healed, Charles takes a moment to really study
Mademoiselle Emma's eyes and hands. The imagery in this section makes it possible for the
reader to see Emma as Charles sees her and to understand the quiet peacefulness of the section.
Flaubert also establishes an intense tone in his passage. When Charles first meets the patient
"sweating under the blanket" and "cursing", he sees a "large decanter of brandy" that the patient
had been drinking to "dull the pain and remain strong". The pain was so overwhelming for the
patient that he had to drink to overcome the pain and curse to gain strength. This provides an
intense tone because the reader senses the pain the man is in from the descriptions of the man, and
his surroundings. Charles realizes that "the finest thing about her was her eyes," the way that they
draw him in and appear "black under the long eyelashes" and have a "fearless candor" to them. The
detail here represents an intensity shown between Charles and Mademoiselle Emma because
Charles in drawn in by the deep darkness of Emma's eyes and finds them intriguing dark and
beautiful. Charles also realizes that even

Personality In Madame Bovary
The character Emma Bovary is the protagonist of the novel Madame Bovary written by Gustave
Flaubert (1856). Emma is a convent–educated farm girl. During her childhood, she becomes devoted
to reading romantic novels and listening to ballads of love. Emma spends her time fantasizing
about a glamorous lifestyle, and dreams of love and wealth. She finds farm life boring, so when
Charles Bovary, a country doctor comes to assist her father, they fall in love and marries. Emma
marries hoping to experience a romantic life, but the marriage does not live up to her
expectations. After a while, a wealthy nobleman invites them to attend an extravagant ball. Emma
is captivated by their wealthy lifestyle and dreams of a sophisticated life, but she grows bored of
her life and becomes depressed and ill. They move to Yonville in hopes of curing her illness. In the
town, she gives birth to her daughter Berthe, and meet Leon who is a law clerk....show more content...
Freud argued that the mind composed of three aspects, namely the id, ego, and superego, which
interacts to create complex human behavior. The three aspects are not physical entities within the
brain, but a concept of fundamental mental functions. Before the structural model, Freud (1990)
developed the topographical model of the mind which is an important aspect of id, ego, and
superego. Freud uses the term conscious, preconscious and unconscious to explain the different
surface configuration of the brain. The conscious is what the mind is currently aware of, whereas,
preconscious is the memories that can easily be brought to awareness. The unconscious is a region
that is inaccessible to the conscious memory, which Freud saw it as the source of desires where
many problems arise. Therefore, the structural theory also stresses the role of unconscious conflict
between the three components in shaping

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary Essay
Madame Bovary
In Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary is a victim of her own foolish disposition, and
fueled by her need for change. Emma's nonstop waiting for excitement to enter into her life and her
romantic nature eventually lead her to a much more realistic ending than in her romantic illusions.
All of these things, with the addition of her constant wavering of one extreme to another, contribute
to her suicide in the end. Throughout the story, Emma's foolishness and mood fluctuations lead to
the eventual breakdown of her stability in life.
In the beginning of the story, Emma has a desire to change around the house. A popular view on this
aspect is that Emma experiences a stroke of...show more content...
A woman who can simply lose all interest in her child based on gender has serious emotional
problems, and Emma is the case in point.
Though Emma's inability to interpret the emotional gravity of new life and the potential for new
love suggests a deficit in her reading of life, Flaubert entails that Emma has a natural disability in
appropriate expression. A person would think that such a suggestion would create sympathy for
Emma. However, when she is aspiring to be "the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all
the dramas, the vague she of all volumes of verse" (Flaubert 192), I do not think that sympathy
is deserved.
When Emma decided to go see the priest at the church in search of some spiritual guidance,
another instance of her gullibility is expressed. Upon arriving, the priest does not seem to respect
her pious needs, and quickly assumes that all she needs is a cup of tea and sends her on her way.
As Emma returned home, her daughter acted as if to comfort Emma. In spite of this, Emma simply
declines while pushing her away and scolding the child to keep her distance. Apparently unaware of
the strength she applies, Emma pushes her daughter so hard that the girl falls and injures her head
upon impact. In reaction, Emma cries and screams worriedly for the girl.

Reality vs. Imagination in Emma Bovary's Predicament
Madame Bovary, a novel by Gustave Flaubert, describes life in the provinces. While depicting the
provincial manners, customs, codes and norms, the novel puts great emphasis on its protagonist,
Emma Bovary who is a representative of a provincial woman. Concerning the fundamental
typicality in Emma Bovary's story, Flaubert points out: "My poor Bovary is no doubt suffering
and weeping at this very moment in twenty French villages at once." (Heath, 54). Yet, Emma
Bovary's story emerges as a result of her difference from the rest of the society she lives in. She is
in conflict with her mediocre and tedious surroundings in respect of the responses she makes to the
world she lives in. Among...show more content...
In her marriage to Charles, the main motivations are her expectations derived from the cases of
marriages which she reads in romances. However, the next morning after the ceremony, the illusion
fades away and Emma returns back to reality and everlasting dissatisfaction appears:
Before the wedding, she had believed herself in love. But not having obtained the happiness that
should have resulted from that love, she now fancied that she must have been mistaken. And Emma
wondered exactly what was meant in life by the words 'bliss', 'passion', 'ecstasy', which had looked
so beautiful in books. (1/5 p.47)
Disappointed by what she really experiences in marriage and household management, Emma looks
for consolation in her books again. Accordingly, Paris points out concerning Emma's escapist
attitude: "Although she is repeatedly disillusioned, she is extraordinarily resilient and soon finds a
new dream...She becomes more and more self–destructive as her desperation grows and increasingly
divorced from reality in her pursuit of escapes and consolations." (196). After presenting Emma's
disillusion with her marriage, the next chapter starts with the description of a novel she reads: "She
had read Paul and Virginia, and seen in her dreams the little bamboo hut, Domingo the nigger and
Faithful the dog..." (1/6 p.48). Without

Essay on Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
When Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary, the Romantic Movement was in full swing. This
enabled writers to be more concerned with feelings and emotions rather than form and artistic
qualities. Flaubert considered some of the novels written to be good, but others (e.g., romance
novels) he viewed to be poor. Flaubert's satirical view towards romantic novels is shown throughout
this work of fiction. The title character cannot distinguish reality from fantasy. The relationships that
Emma partakes in are doomed because of her desire to live in a fantasy world. The reader sees her
inability to behave in a decent manner between her relationships with Charles, Leon, Rodolphe, and
even her...show more content...
87). This passage illustrates Flaubert's opinion that romance novels have clouded her mind and
shaped her expectations of how love must enter her life. If love does not occur in this manner, then it
cannot be called love.
Shortly after Leon departs for Paris, Emma meets Rodolphe. When he sees her for the first time
he thinks to himself: "And she's bored! She wishes she could live in town and dance the polka
every night. Poor woman! She's gasping for love like a carp gasping for water on a kitchen table.
A few sweet words and she'd adore me, I'm sure of it! She'd be affectionate, charming….
Yes, but how could I get rid of her later?" (p. 113). Emma has dreamed of hearing these words her
entire life. After they have started their affair, Flaubert illustrates the humor of romance novels by
Emma saying: 'I have a lover! I have a lover!' and the thought gave her a delicious thrill, as though
she were beginning a second puberty. At last she was going to possess the joys of love, that fever
of happiness she had despaired of ever knowing. She was entering a marvelous realm in which
everything would be passion, ecstasy and rapture…" (p. 140). Rodolphe begins to "treat her
coarsely, without

Gender Roles In Madame Bovary
MADAME BOVARY AS A SOCIAL COMMENTARY
Perused as a social editorial, the novel portrays Flaubert's perspective of the ordinariness and
platitude of the French white collar class amid the nineteenth century. Rosemary Lloyd has
expressed: "From the opening pages, with their delineation of the path in which both youngsters and
instructors force on people examples of conduct they are obliged to duplicate carelessly, to the
finishing up lines, which record Homais' reward for adjusting to the picture of the fruitful man,
Madame Bovary uncovers the components of white collar class society, the route in which it makes
a type of casualty." The depiction of sex parts has additionally gotten consideration as of late. A few
faultfinders have accentuated the novel's portrayal of a general public in which ladies got a
moderately futile, "decorative" training, with Emma Bovary's to a great extent pointless social
position being seen as one of the wellsprings of her discomfort and despondency. Tony Williams
has remarked: "The anecdotal universe of Madame Bovary is set apart by the over–separation of the
genders which portrays patriarchal society." Other critical topics in the novel incorporate the
obscured relationship amongst dream and reality and the...show more content...
Her first adultery is committed with Rodolphe. It is her act that makes her fallin love with
Rodolphe when he teases her by using romantic words that she never hears from her husband. T
hestrength of that drive has weaken her superego that she has to follow her sexual instinct and
breaks the morality. 'This is wrong, wrong,' she said. 'I'm insane to listen to you.? 'why?... Emma!
Emma!' 'Oh, Rodolphe!' said the young woman slowly, leaning against his shoulder. The cloth of
her habit clung to the velvet of his coat; her white throat filled with a sigh as she let it fall back
and, half fainting, weeping, hiding her face, with a deep shudder she gave herself to

Madame Bovary Character Analysis
In "Madame Bovary," Emma and Charles Bovary are two characters that are very important to the
story. Though there are very few characters in the novel, all of them play very significant roles, but
Emma and Charles are the most important. Their relationship is the start of the story's problems.
Emma Bovary is the heart of "Madame Bovary." She lives a steady lifestyle as a doctor's wife, but
her greatest downfall is her uncontrollable desire for pleasure and excitement which she finds in
the fictional stories she reads. When her husband leaves for work, she makes sure that she is the
loving wife that wishes him goodbye and greets him when he arrives home. Even though Emma
becomes increasingly depressed that she cannot find the love she thinks she deserves, she still
continues to show her best for her husband. She tries her best to "look forward to the next day"
(Flaubert 60), but she is unable to mask her pain and falls sick.
When there is a change in scenery, Emma becomes bold and decides to find her own passions
behind her husband's back. At first, she would daydream of loving another man and would never
admit it, but she later shows her love with actions and excessive spendings. For example, Emma
gets very excited when Leon is present, but "the emotion subsided in his presence, and only an
immense wonder remained, which faded into sadness" (Flaubert 101). Those thoughts and desires
are never enough to satisfy Emma, so she decides to show Leon her love in a

Madame Bovary Foreshadowing Essay
In Madame Bovary, the minor characters represent Emma Bovary's moral failures and emphasize her
inability to obtain satisfaction. Gustave Flaubert connects these characters to Emma to reiterate the
uniformity in the state of dissatisfaction with society. Many of these characters parallel Emma's life,
thus foreshadowing the fate of her marriage and life with Charles. The characters' actions and
characterization, in the beginning and the end of the book, foreshadow and emphasize Emma's state
of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Heloise's nonexistent satisfaction with Charles and their
marriage foreshadows Emma's dissatisfaction with her marriage to Charles. Before her marriage
"she had been warned, she would be unhappy," however, her fantasy of love blinds her from the
truth (7). Charles never satisfies her cravings for love, which foreshadows Emma's dissatisfaction
with Charles and his inability to satisfy her appetite for love and passion. During their marriage "she
constantly complained" about pain and her state of unhappiness (7). Her constant complaining and
desires reiterate her...show more content...
She "makes him swear, with his hand on the prayer–book," which underlines her attempts to change
him and obtain happiness (12). She manipulates him while she lays on her deathbed, to try to obtain
happiness and satisfaction, which never happens, and she dies without gratification. In pursuit to
change Charles, Heloise loses "all the fortune that had been so trumpeted [...] nothing except a little
furniture..." (13). Heloise's financial downfall foreshadows Emma's loss, in the attempt to change
Charles, and highlights the inability of obtaining full satisfaction. Heloise's life and marriage with
Charles fails due to a lack of satisfaction, which foreshadows Emma dissatisfaction with her marriage
and

INTRO TO CONCEPT OF FEMINISM, GENDER ROLES
Madame Bovary," by Gustave Flaubert, was one of the most significant novels during the period of
the French Revolution. This work of art was one of the most provoking of its time due to its
unromantic nature, which was very eccentric compared to his contemporaries. Instead of centering
this literary work on romanticism, Flaubert depicted adultery and literary theories such as feminism.
These aspects of literature were not common in France, and were taboo at the time. Flaubert
constructed this work to represent his perception of the French society through the characters in
Madame Bovary. Flaubert allows the reader to observe the routines and the psychology of the
characters in correlation to the setting of the novel. Madame Bovary gives the realistic view of the
French way of life for a woman at this time with a feministic approach. However, although Flaubert
depicts feministic theory in Madame Bovary, one can research more historical facts about feminism
in France during time frame that the work was published.
The origination of French feminism begins with the French Revolution. Prewar, French were null of
political rights and were considered passive citizens; they had to depend on men to make decisions
for them. Women were expected to play their traditional roles: the wife, mother and housekeeper.
However, during the French Revolution women gained several important responsibilities, and played
critical roles of patriotism.

Flaubert as Emma in Madame Bovary Essay
Flaubert as Emma in Madame Bovary
During the Nineteenth Century, Europe experienced a literary movement known as Romanticism.
This movement "valu[ed] emotion, intuition, and imagination" (Rosenbaum 1075). Gustave
Flaubert, born in 1821, grew up during this innovative movement and became entranced by the
romantics. Unfortunately, Romanticism was a "passing affair in France," and young Flaubert
realized it consistently encouraged illusions it could not satisfy" (Bart 54). His later disgust for the
movement would lead Flaubert to writing his greatest novels.
His most famous and widely renowned novel, Madame Bovary, is largely an autobiography;
however, it also contains partial biographies of Flaubert's most intimate...show more content...
She gave Flaubert "a sachet, her handkerchief, a lock of hair, and a pair of bedroom slippers" (Bart
146). She also gave him a family "jewel . . . set in a cigar case with [the] motto: Amor nel cor"
inscribed on it (Bart 294). This gift would become the signet ring that Emma gives to Rodolphe.
Louise was also insistent on receiving a letter a day from Flaubert. Like Emma's lovers, Flaubert
became tired of this routine and showed his aggressions more openly. Rodolphe "began to treat
[Emma] coarsely, without consideration" (Flaubert 165). Eventually, the affair waned and came to
an end, after Flaubert wrote Louise a goodbye letter. Rodolphe would come to write Emma such a
letter as well. He would not let himself ruin her life (Flaubert 174).
Through all of his affairs with women, Flaubert began to make "a series of maxims about
women" in general (Bart 258). He even tried to explain these ideas to Louise. Flaubert believed all
women "were never frank with themselves, because they would never admit the purely physical
aspect of attraction and must always deny the existence of evil or vice in their loved ones" (Bart
258). "In reality [women] longed in everything for the eternal spouse and always dreamed of the
great love of a lifetime" (Bart 258). Eventually, Flaubert would make this "Emma's confusion" (Bart
258). Emma imagined a man:
A phantom composed of her most ardent memories, her strongest desires and the most beautiful
things she had read. He

Realism In Madame Bovary
Emma Bovary, the main protagonist in Madame Bovary, is a tragic character who attempts to
project the romantic ideals and passion of the novels she reads onto her own life, which leads to her
downfall and ultimately her death. Flaubert's intentions with Madame Bovary, to provide an insight
into the mundane affairs of the 19th century woman, and demonstrate the incompatibility of reality
with unrealistic romantic ideals , were accomplished with the use of new literary concepts such as
free indirect speech, internal monologue, and psychological realism. Previously portrayed as
weak–willed, submissive characters serving only to contrast masculinity, Madame Bovary was one of
the factors that was to change the way women were viewed in 19th century...show more content...
Emma's attitude and behaviour towards the other characters is undeniably human, and so, by
extension, serves to promote the humanisation of women: contempt, hatred, passion, love, despair;
which of these emotions are restricted solely to men? One could argue that Flaubert's description
of Emma Bovary's less savoury side dehumanizes her , but it is more likely that it serves to avoid
her being portrayed as a perfect being, which would actually dehumanise her: readers are more able
to relate to the protagonist if she has flaws similar to their own. "A strange thing it is, thought
Emma, this child is so ugly!" This quotation perfectly emphasises the effect of Emma's flaws on the
reader: instead of disconnecting from her emotions and abhorring her for having such despicable
thoughts about her own child, the reader relates to her; she does not act as one would expect a
mother to act, but rather as an independent human

Noushin Mannan
Marissa Braxton
IB Literature
April 20, 2015
Madame Bovary Opening Gustave Flaubert's renowned masterpiece Madame Bovary is widely
considered to be a cornerstone of the realism movement. The novel tells of a failed dreamer who
resorts to affairs and extravagant spending to satiate her dreams. Meanwhile Flaubert analyzes and
records in detail the society of provincial France during the 1840's. Written during the late 1800s,
Madame Bovary marked the beginning of French literature's reflection of both romanticism and
realism. Using characteristics of both literary periods, such as attention to detail and portrayal of
stark reality, works begin to act as a commentary of realism and romanticism. Flaubert introduces
both Charles and his first wife, Madame Bovary, in order to demonstrate how Charles Got along
with her. Flaubert begins with the background and history of Charles Bovary; describing his
schooling, family history, and mannerisms such as a "youth of even temperament, who played in
playtime, worked in school–hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory and ate well in
the refectory." (Flaubert 14). Afterwards, Charles' first wife appears and he is married off to her
because Charles' mother believes that she was wealthy and all her father's money would be
transferred to Charles. When Charles was married to her, he felt unhappy because she was old and
they had nothing to connect over. Charles constantly felt bothered by her presence because

Theme Of Madame Bovary
In Madame Bovary, Flaubert manipulates the settings in order to illustrate the progression of
Emma's deteriorating state of mind. Each location within Emma's world holds a distinct reality and
expectation she must live according to, due to the strong influence it has on her state of mind.
Within each city Emma undergoes specific types of emotions and attachments that essentially
become the drive to her great depression. Tostes, Yonville,Rouen, and Paris bind together for a
single purpose in order to display the overall theme of dissatisfaction and repression, which
ultimately become the reason for Emma's ironic death.
The city of Tostes commences the start of Emma's journey by serving as an actual representation of
the initial progression...show more content...
THe ball serves as a reflection upon her perfectionism and idealism, cultivated in a separate, outside
world she's left only to imagine. It mirrors her extreme naivete when she observes each and every
detail of the ball such as, "the clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the
shimmer of satin, and the veneer of old furniture" (35). Emma's distinctive vivid imagination results
in an interference within reality when Charles discovers the "cigar–case with a green silk border"
(37) on their way home from the ball at La Vaubyessard. For Emma, the case comes to symbolize all
the allure, sentimental relationship of the ball itself, and the universe of highborn simplicity and
extravagance it represents. Despite the fact that, she sees the physical, subtle elements of the "ideal"
setting of the ball, she doesn't consider the entanglements of what this sort of way of life may bring
– desire, triviality, or depression. The unfulfilled desires experienced from the sumptuous ball result
in Emma's frustration increasing as she comes to notice that her longing for an upscale lifestyle soon
become diminished by the deterioration of her state of

Madame Bovary Essay

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