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. The Awakening, 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 book, is not content with her life. She lives in a small town with a husband who is a well off doctor. She is not like many other women though; early in her life, her father sends her to a convent type school so that she can have an education away from the other less desirable parts of society. She is totally sheltered in this holy world. The only glimpse of the world outside the church walls is the one she experiences through romance novels. These books disillusion her and distort her view of the world. She believes that life should be a continuous fantasy in which she spends her life in constant ecstasy, like the women in her novels. "Why couldn't she be leaning her elbow on the balcony of a Swiss cottage with a husband dressed in a black velvet suit with long coattails, soft boots, a pointed hat, and elegant cuffs." (60) She is so dissatisfied with her life that she cannot see that she might have happiness, if she only tries to contribute to it. On the other side of the coin, Edna, of The Awake...
... middle of paper ...
...ssics. The question can never be asked of the authors; the similarities can merely only be discussed.
Works Cited and Consulted:
Auerbach, Eric "Madame Bovary." In B.F. Bart (ed.), Madame Bovary and the Critics (pp 132-143). New York: New York University Press. 1966.
Brombert, Victor. The Novels of Gustav Flaubert: A Study of Themes and Techniques. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1966
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Ed. Margo Culley. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994.
Flaubert, Gustav. Madame Bovary (Lowell Bair, trans.). New York: Bantam Books 1996
Seyersted, Per, and Emily Toth, eds. A Kate Chopin Miscellany. Natchitoches: Northwestern State University Press, 1979.
Tillett, Margaret. "On Reading Madame Bovary." In B.F. Bart (ed.), Madame Bovary and the Critics (pp 1-25). New York: New York University Press. 1966
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening takes place in the late 19th century, in Grande Isle off the coast of Louisiana. The author writes about the main character, Edna Pontellier, to express her empowering quality of life. Edna is a working housewife,and yearns for social freedom. On a quest of self discovery, Edna meets Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, falls in and out of love,and eventually ends up taking her own life. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening shows how the main character Edna Pontellier has been trapped for so many years and has no freedom, yet Edna finally “awakens” after so long to her own power and her ability to be free.
Allen, Priscilla. "Old Critics and New: The Treatment of Chopin's The Awakening." In The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, ed. Arlyn Diamond and Lee R. Edwards. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1977, 224-238.
Davis, Sara de Saussure. "Kate Chopin." Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 12 pp. 59-71. Literature Resource Center. Gale Group Databases. Central Lib. Fort Worth, TX. 11 Feb. 2003
Later in the book, he again reflects on the war. He catalogs the proofs that he has been given — injured and half-starved countrymen — but persists in his existential doubt. He notes, “So we knew a war existed; we had to believe that, just as we had to believe that the name for the sort of life we had led for the last three years was hardship and suffering. Yet we had no proof of it. In fact, we had even less than no proof; we had had thrust into our faces the very shabby and unavoidable obverse of proof…” (94). Because he has not seen the battles, he has difficulty acknowledging the reality of war.
Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007. 535-625. Print.
New Essays on The Awakening. Ed. Wendy Martin. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.
Harris, Sharon M. "Kate Chopin." Magill’S Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-5. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Females in the late 1800s were expected to know their place in society and stay within parameters that were set by the population. These parameters including being a perfect mother figure, and needing a husband to provide a place to live, food, and money for spending. This meant that females were not culturally allowed to be free. This idea was so ingrained in the culture that the influential female writers of the time wrote stories where the wife was wrong and returned to her husband after she sought freedom. These stories came to an end when Kate Chopin wrote The Awakening in 1899. The Awakening attacks the cultural lack of rights and freedoms for females, specifically the sexual freedoms that females do not have. The novella describes
This year in English class we read many stirring novels, two of which being The Awakening by Kate Chopin and Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. On the surface, these books may look like they don’t have much in common due to their dissimilar plots. However, there are a few noticeable similarities between them; both protagonists in the novels, Edna Pontellier and Ethan Frome, are fighting a constant internal battle. They want things they can’t have, and the potential serenity they yearn for goes against the principled norms of the time periods and would taint their societal reputations forever.
Chopin, Kate. Complete Novels and Stories. Ed. Sandra M. Gilbert. New York: Library of America, 2002. Print.
... was against war and how much he valued not only his own life but his comrades’ life.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as A Dead Butcher and His Fiend-like Queen in William Shakespeare's Macbeth
publicly against the war (and yet returned to it); he influenced and mentored the then
Tucker, Martin. Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism. Volume 4. Frederick Ungar Publishing Company. New York. 1967.
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 the three basic responses made by human beings, Emma’s response is “dreaming of an impossible absolute” while others around her “unquestionably accept things as they are” or “coldly and practically profiteer from whatever circumstances they meet.” (Fairlie, 33). However, Emma’s pursuit of ideals which leads to the imagining of passion, luxury and ecstasy prevents her from seeing the world in a realistic perspective or causes her to confuse reality and imagination with each other.