How Does Flaubert Present The Internal Conflict In Madame Bovary

Recognized for its ideas challenging reality and romanticism, Madame Bovary, was written by Gustave Flaubert in 1857 Victorian France. Flaubert explores the discontented life of Emma Bovary. Flaubert portrays the minor characters as physical representations of Emma’s internal conflicts. The internal conflicts that she faces are presented through several minor characters. The internal struggle that Emma faces regarding the reality that she rejects, Flaubert represents through her daughter. Emma consistently falls to the challenges of temptation throughout Madame Bovary, clearly displayed through the fortunes of the apothecary, Monsuire Homais. Emma’s romantic ideals of a life like those in her stories, that Homais achieves for himself, further

Emma’s idealistic view of relationships and love make the reality of her life unappealing. Flaubert makes the dissatisfaction evident through Emma’s constant rejection and disregard for her responsibility and reality, Berthe. Flaubert expresses the extent of this rejection when he writes, “Berthe between the window and the sewing table, tottering in her knitted shoes as she tried to approach her mother and take hold of her apron string. ’I told you to leave me alone.’ Emma repeated angrily” (100). Following this episode, Emma physically pushes Berthe away. Berthe represents the reality that Emma desperately discards on the edge of her romantic ideals. Being Emma’s neglected child, Emma consistently overlooks Berthe and disassociates herself with the child. At one point the reader begins to lose sympathy for Emma, “‘It’s amazing how ugly that child is!’ thought Emma” (100). Emma’s confession emphasizes this distaste for the reality. While Berthe’s position as a minor character directly relates to being Emma’s daughter, another minor character supports this conflict of reality on a more internal

His physical appearance consumes the entirety of her corrupt mentality. The Beggar and Emma’s interactions bring awareness to his role as reflecting how the reader views her emotional breakdown. Her visionary romantic life has slipped through her fingers as she faces the reality. This concept, so plainly displayed as Flaubert writes, “The blind man squatted on his haunches, tilted back his head, rolled his greenish eyes, stuck out his tongue, rubbed his stomach with both hands and let out a kind of muffled howl, like a starving dog”, indirectly compares Emma to a demented dog (260). Her damaged perception of reality has left her with an outer shell of a put together Victorian women with her internal state equivalent to the beggar’s appearance. The description of the beggar depicts Emma when she internalizes the irony of being one with the beggar. Flaubert highlights this moment of realization writing, “…imagining that she could see the wretched beggar’s hideous features looming in the shadows of eternity like the face of terror itself,” (282). Both Berthe and the blind beggar unite Emma’s internal conflict of rejecting her reality and discovering the extent of her self-destructive