The Timeless Truth of Madame Bovary
Written in 1857, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary has become a literary classic. Emma Bovary is a middle class country girl with a taste for rich things; she marries a doctor and has a little girl. Her husband, Charles, adores her and thinks that she can do no wrong. He overlooks the sign of her adultery, telling himself that her unhappiness is caused from her poor health, and forgives her excessive spending. Madame Bovary's excessive desires seem to come from her excessive reading of novels in which life seemed, to her, perfect. She "tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books" (45). Through Emma, Flaubert illustrates that not being satisfied with what one is given in life leads to a sorrow.
Soon after Emma marries Charles, she finds that she is not satisfied with her new life, due to Charles' lack of romantics. Emma thinks to herself early on in the marriage, "A man, . . . should he not know everything, excel in the manifolds activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one [Charles] taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her [Emma] happy; and she resented this calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him" (54). Her need for Charles to be more romantic and his ignorance of her feelings lead her to despise him.
After a few years of their marriage, Emma has become so bored with her life that she has made herself sick from want. Her boredom is so great that she wishes she could talk to her servant, "but a sense of shame restrained her" (81). She held herself above everyone, therefore isolat...
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...ath does Emma come to realize that the best things in life is family and the happiness that it can provide. The selfishness that had ruled her life was nothing now all the things that were importune to before are now nothing. The things she had bought and the lovers she had been with are not with her now. Only Charles and her little girl, the ones she had tried to flee from are with her now.
The simple truth portrayed in Madame Bovary still pertains to the present, selfishness will lead to a life of discontentment. The Flaubert illustration of the unhappiness that thinking only of oneself can bring to others can still be seen in the world today. This is why Madame Bovary has lasted through the years as a novel full of timeless truth.
Works Cited
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovery. Translated by Marx-Aveling, Eleanor. Grolier Incorporated, New York. N.D.
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After recollecting her memory of the romance novels, Madame Bovary remembers the few precious moments in her life: the waltzes, lovers, etc. Suddenly, while remembering these cherished moments, she decides that she was never happy. Even though sh...
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Emma's personality is largely shaped by the nature of her upbringing. Emma had no motherly figure guiding her as she grew up, due to the fact that her mother passed away at a young age, and her governess, Miss Taylor, became her best friend instead of an authority over her. At the start of the novel Miss Taylor gets married to Mr. Weston, leaving Emma with her despondent and hypochondriac father, Mr. Woodhouse. Although Mr. Woodhouse often confines Emma to the house because of his paranoia of her being harmed, he gives her little guidance. Emma becomes accustomed to being the "princess" of her house, and she applies this role to all of her social interactions, as she develops the ability to manipulate people and control them to advance her own goals. Emma views herself with the highest regard, and feels competition and annoyance with those who threaten her position. Emma has much resentment toward Mrs. Elton, as Mrs. Elton becomes a parody for Emma's mistakes and interactions. Mrs. Elton's attachment to Jane Fairfax is much like Emma's attachment to Harriet Smith; both Mrs. Elton and Emma attach themselves to young women and try to raise their...
to see more and more of each other until Charles asks Emma's father for her hand
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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.
Emma Woodhouse: Emma is the main character of the novel. She is a beautiful, smart, and wealthy 21-year-old woman. Because of her admired qualities, Emma is a little conceited. She is the daughter of Henry Woodhouse. Since her mother has died, Emma has taken the role of taking care of her father, who is old and often sick. Because she feels she is obligated to stay by his side, Emma decides not to marry. Emma believes that she is a good matchmaker, and tries to put together several couples throughout the novel. Emma believes that social classes are very important and refuses to see anyone cross over to marry someone lesser than themselves In chapter 8-page 52, Emma is talking about Harriet’s situation with the farmer with Mr. Knightley. She says, “Mr. Martin is a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Harriet’s equal. As the novel progresses, Emma becomes more mature, and realizes how silly she had been in the past. In the end, she finally stops matchmaking others and marries Mr. Knightley, who was perfect for her all along.
The main cause of WWI was Nationalism. First, new discoveries in militarism created a sense of nationalism for some countries going to war. Secondly, war amongst countries and their allies gave them a sense of nationalism while at war. Finally, a country’s strong imperialism made them and other countries gain nationalism.
Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert’s first novel and is considered his masterpiece. It has been studied from various angles by the critics. Some study it as a realistic novel of the nineteenth century rooted in its social milieu. There are other critics who have studied it as a satire of romantic sensibility. It is simply assumed that Emma Bovary, the protagonist, embodied naive dreams and empty cliché that author wishes to ridicule, as excesses and mannerisms of romanticism. She is seen as a romantic idealist trapped in a mundane mercantile world. Innumerable theorists have discovered and analysed extensively a variety of questions raised by its style, themes, and aesthetic innovations. In this research paper an attempt has been made to analyse life of Emma Bovary as a paradigm of Lacanian desire.
Europe was a continent of mixing races, cultures, beliefs and ideas. Every country had its own style and way of doing things. When industrialization came and shaped a few countries into an economic powerhouse, struggles arose. Nationalism, imperialism, alliances and militarism were the biggest cause of World War I. Europe was a powder keg about to explode with all the conflicting interests and competition that had been brewing for years it was only matter of time, and at last one man would be the shot that started it all. The start of World War I was like a domino effect, one thing after another fell until chaos had consumed Europe.
The men in Emma’s life are subpar: her father essentially sells her so he can live comfortably without thinking about her needs, Charles, her husband is bland and inattentive to her needs, Rodolphe, her first lover is a player and uses her for sex even though he knows she is in love with him, Leon, her other lover satisfied her only for a short amount of time and then could not keep her interested. Because of the disappointing men in her life, Emma must turn to novels to encourage her will to live. She clings to the romance shown in fiction because she cannot find any in her own life. Whenever Emma indulges herself and dreams of romance, she has just been heartbroken. The first scene is after Rodolphe breaks up with Emma, she goes to the theatre and thrusts herself into a dreamed life with the main character of the play: “she tried to imagine his life…the life that could have been hers, if only fate had willed it so. They would have met, they would have loved!” (Flaubert, 209). In order to help herself get over Rodolphe, she has to reimagine a life with another man. The second follows Emma fretting breaking up with Leon, as she no longer tolerate him. As she’s writing another love letter to Leon, she creates an imaginary lover to write to. Creating a man from her favorite novels, a man so perfectly imagined she could practically feel him.