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 predicament.

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 who wishes him goodbye and greets him when he arrives home. Even though Emma becomes increasingly depressed that she cannot find the love she thinks

He is a doctor and Emma’s husband. Their feelings for each other do not reciprocate since his wife does not love and appreciate him as much as Charles feels about her. His ignorance is the biggest flaw of his character, but he is also very serious and conventional, which foils his wife. He never realizes Emma’s discontent in his house, so “he thought she was happy, and she was angry at him for this placid stolidity…” (Flaubert 40). His complacent self would be happy as long as Emma seems to be so, which he misinterprets throughout the entire novel. Because he prioritizes his wife over himself, “it meant a lot to Charles to abandon Tostes…” (Flaubert 64). Since he is a very respectful and selfless man, he is ready to move residencies in hopes to improve Emma’s health even if he puts his career in jeopardy. After all of Emma’s acts of adultery and her suicide, Charles then discovers what she has been up to. He finds her love letters from Rudolph who is another man she had an affair with. Still strong with his trusting instincts, he believes that the two “loved each other platonically,” (Flaubert 317) when they did indeed have sexual relations. When Charles finally understands the true situation, he dies with a broken heart, though the cause of his death is unknown.

My favorite part in the book that involves Charles is when Rudolph comes to visit Emma asking about her health. He is able to convince her husband to grant him permission to take his wife out for horseback riding because he claims that it helps with her health, but his true motive is to spend more time with her alone. Charles is so trusting of his wife with other men when he should be skeptical of her accompaniment of a man who shows a clear desire for