An Analysis of Homais as an Instrument of Satire in Flaubert's, Madame Bovary

A satire is a piece of work that is designed to ridicule or tease a group or organization, generally for the purpose of being humorous. “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a play by Oscar Wilde, is a satire, ridiculing class, gender, and marriage. This essay will describe some points from each of these sections, as well as give a brief synopsis of the play these examples come from.

The women of the story are not treated with the respect, which reflects their social standings. The first image of the women that the reader gets is a typical housewife. They are imaged as “wearing faded house dresses and

Oedipus intelligence could not see the truth, but the blind man, Teiresias, saw it plainly. Sophocles uses blindness as a theme in the play. Oedipus was uninformed and as a result blind to the truth about himself and his past. Yet, when Teiresias exposes the truth he is in denial. It is left to Oedipus to conquer his blindness, accept the truth, and realize fate. But instead Oedipus ridicules Terirsias blindness and accuses him of being on the side of Kreon and helping him become King. He accuses Teiresias for being paid to tell a fraudulent prophecy to him. Quickly Teiresias answers him back and tells him he is BLIND, and tells him about his past of who his actual mother and father was.

In Baudelaire's poem "The Eyes of the Poor," the poet Charles Baudelaire creates an image for himself as a poet longing to create a union of souls with a woman whom he loves until the end of the poem. As a dissolute man-about-town he talks about the cafes he and the woman spend time in. He yearns to be one with her soul in a manner that eludes both of them. While part of the Romantic aesthetic was the idealization of the pastoral, Baudelaire shows the side that reflects the urban side of the Romantic. Baudelaire projects himself onto the image of other souls, but rather than the pure, untouched souls of rural folk, he sees an image of the urban poor that tears at his heartstrings, although he does not say so explicitly in the poem.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is considered a work of satire towards medieval society by many literary critics. Chaucer uses the Wife of Bath as a prime way to quip a key fourteenth century practice wherein medieval society is patriarchal from noblemen to peasants. Women are one of the most restrained groups. The Wife of Bath narrates a story mocking male superiority and spouts a pro-women narrative. In this tale, the Wife of Bath shows women not submitting to a man’s world. For this period in time, she is a progressive who implies men are not in control of society which does not fit the mold of women at the time. She infers women are running everything from behind the curtain with men merely being used as puppets.

In understanding the complex nature of the American Dream, Tom is the most egotistical of them all. His family has enormous wealth. Tom represents “old money” and the intergeneration transfer of wealth; which he offensively exploits. He lives in East Egg where the old aristocrats live. Tom is also a hypocrite, and his constant use of racist comments towards other ethnic groups and those less fortunate than himself indicate to me the reader that he feels he is superior.

A main factor in the storyline is the way the writer portrays society's attitude to poverty in the 18th century. The poor people were treated tremendously different to higher classed people. A lot of people were even living on the streets. For example, "He picked his way through the hordes of homeless

Expressions such as these only distance Tom from benign human tendencies, leaving him less worthy of receiving any compassion from his audience. By creating a character like Tom, Fitzgerald leaves the reader with the impression that one born into and consumed by wealth will become the most unappealing and bland character of all. In this way the author leaves a sense of emptiness associated with Tom and continues to sew the thread of emptiness in all other characters consumed by wealth in his story.

    In Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a main target of satire is the romantic view of life. Though the characters and symbols, it is evident that the idyllic views are being disparaged. Some of the people in this book are simply deluded, while others cause major tribulations during their lives. Literary romanticism can be pleasant, but it is not real and can confuse those not sage enough to distinguish the difference between a writer's fantasy and their reality. For a person who sees the delusions that humans allow themselves, this can be aggravating. The annoyance caused is not the problem, however. It is the harm caused. The romantic problems brought to light in The

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines satire as: “literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.” Besides this definition satire can also be seen as the particular literary way of making possible the improvement of humanity and its institutions. In the three works: Moliere’s “Tartuffe,” Voltaire’s “Candide,” and Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” the authors indirectly criticize and ridicule human behavior and characteristics but with the goal for improving these faults rather than just demolishing them.

Two novels use satire to criticize human weakness. In ‘Gulliver’s Travel’, Swift makes up a horse society Houyhnhnm and a brutal animal Yahoo. Gulliver has to admit that human beings are yahoos after a series comparison between human and yahoo. Vices of human beings are exposed by the Swift’s satiric

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn puts great emphasis on corruption in a materialistic society, where many decisions are directly influenced by economics. In fact, theft and trickery for the sake of economic gain are recurring elements in the novel. Furthermore, the novel exposes the prejudice behind the economic institution of slavery. In some instances, greed is used for driving the plot, but more often than not it serves as an indictment of 19th century materialism.

Human emotions remain as one of the world’s biggest secrets. Like sleep, we know what happens to our body when we experience these emotions whether it be a release of hormones or a certain area on the body becomes more sensitive. But we don’t know why we have them, experience them, or what purpose they serve. All we know is everyone’s emotions behave differently. Different types of arts can elicit completely different emotional response from people. Some art may have the ability to appeal to dangerous emotions in certain people. Whether it be the corruption of a once faithful and beautiful young girl, plagued by the desire for romanticism and lofty ideas, or a handsome young nobleman who is obsessed with living life to fullest. Both are fueled by the emotion that a certain type of art elicits in them, leaving them in a never ending chase that ruins there life’s. In the Novels Madame Bovary and The Picture of Dorian Grey the protagonists in these stories perfectly exemplifies the danger of arts emotional appeal by showing the corruption and eventual downfall of two once young and beautiful souls by exposing them to art that pleases dangerous emotions such as desire, pleasure, entitlement and disappointment.

The food served was not as grand as the dishes that would be present at a high-class banquet; however, it was still sophisticated enough that the food was relatively unavailable for the lower class to be able to afford. This allows for the Bovary’s to have an air of aristocracy that masked their middle class reality. Moreover, although living comfortably, the actions of those in the middle class are still considered very basic; many of the bourgeoisie had lackluster table manners. Frustrated with Charles’ eating habits, Emma describes him “to be getting coarser in his ways;... after meals, he used to suck his teeth; eating his soup, he made a gurgling noise with every mouthful” (58). Such behaviour would be unheard of in the higher class, but to Emma, this was her unfavourable reality. Through this portrayal, she reveals her dissatisfaction with the behaviour of her own middle-class lifestyle. Furthermore, Emma’s constant sophisticated desires are incomprehensible by the rest of the middle class as the elder Madame Bovary “found her style too grand for her situation” (40). Emma views herself more as an aristocrat than a bourgeoisie, hence attempting to boast her seemingly more refined characteristics. Hoping to escape the mundane middle class, the bourgeoisie pine after the luxurious life of an aristocrat.

In the story of Alice in Wonderland we follow Alice down a rabbit hole into a land of pure wonder, where the logic of a little girl holds no sway. In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, we witness exactly the opposite as Emma Bovary, a most romantic creature, is purposely cast into a harshly realistic world. In either case, a creature is put into an environment unnatural to her disposition, yet in Flaubert’s example, Emma shares the world we inhabit, and thus the message her story brings is much more pertinent. To convey this message, Flaubert replicates not a world of fantasy, but rather the real world, with all its joy, sadness, and occasional monotony intact. Then he proceeds to dump an