Madame Bovary, a Woman Struggling Among a Patriarchal Society

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In the novel Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert criticizes sexist societies. He implicitly suggests that women should be given more freedom and should stop being oppressed. Throughout the novel, Flaubert uses various strategies such as cliché, tone and the specific symbolism to carry out this criticism.
To begin with, Gustave Flaubert uses cliché in his book; he portrays Emma as an unhappy and oppressed woman whose marriage has been arranged, but she dreams of eloping with other lovers. In the past, parents chose their daughter’s husbands without their consent. Women were expected to be happy with their husbands, but very often they weren't. Evidently, this happens in the novel Madame Bovary: Emma is clearly unhappy with her father's choice in Charles when the author states “He seemed to her contemptible, weak and insignificant, a poor man in every sense of the word. How could she get rid of him? What an endless evening! She felt numb, as though she had been overcome by opium fumes.” (III.2.35) He disgusts her and she wishes she could run away from him. This is cliché because Emma is unhappy with the husband who was chosen for her and she decides to cheat on him to “free” herself from the endless requirements of marriage. Flaubert chose to use this strategy in order to criticize society and emphasize how depressed and powerless women used to be. He emphasizes this cliché through repetition of the monotony Emma experiences and her dreams of a better life, "She was no doubt held back by indolence or fear, and by shame"(II.5.43), "Yet she was full of covetous desires, anger and hatred. The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment." (II.541-42) In these two quotes, F...

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...aced into. He uses symbolism to criticize this social issue because he implicitly suggests that what leads Emma to eventually becoming indecent is not is her foolishness as a woman and her desires of money and luxury but rather the oppression she has endured throughout her life.
When Gustave Flaubert wrote Madame Bovary he indirectly criticized extreme patriarchal societies. He suggests that women shouldn’t be so oppressed nor should they be given specific roles; they should be allowed to think for themselves and make their own decisions. He doesn’t refer to it implicitly but he subtly uses different strategies, such as cliché, tone and symbolism, to explain what he wants to say about this social issue.

Works Cited

Flaubert, Gustave, Mildred Marmur, Evalyn S. Gendel, and Mary McCarthy. Madame Bovary. New York, NY, U.S.A.: Signet Classic, 1964. Print.

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