Disappointment In Madame Bovary

As the sky continues mourning, tears are running down her face. She caresses her beloved's face and stabs her heart with a dagger, for she would rather die than be alive without the love of her life. Every human being goes through heartbreak and the joyus wonders of ‘true love.’ Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, is the perfect embodiment of both unrequited and romantic love. Paris trying to get the affection of Juliet and Romeo being so in love with Juliet are types of love that are very different but in a way alike.

Albeit, this sense of authority Emma enjoys is quite fragile, considering the delimiting authority allowed a woman of Austen’s time. Therefore, Emma wishes to preserve and enhance her social status, while still being bound to the rules of her class, which inevitably place women in an inferior position to their male counterparts. The following paper will attempt to prove that despite marrying at the end of the novel, Emma does not seek love, but is much more interested in protecting her position in the patriarchal social hierarchy.

Even though he does not know the true reason for Romeo’s sudden change in attitude, he asks no questions and embraces the change. Love and the idea of love makes Romeo a much happier young man, which causes others to take notice. Even the simplest of actions and plans turn the excited teenager to a frenzy. Rosaline has completely slipped Romeo’s mind, but love has not. The busy young man quickly throws a wedding together and makes plans for the future, which allows him to completely dwell in the happiness he has found in love. The Montague family and Romeo’s friends work hard to maintain the joyful attitude and protect Romeo; however it does not last forever. The threat of separation leaves the young newlyweds in distress, but a simple wedding ring makes Romeo say, “my comfort is revived by this” (3.3.175). The anxious teenager has yet to let go of his dramatic ways so when Romeo receives a message and a ring from his fiance, all is well. Love gets rid of all rational thought in Romeo and causes him to obsess over his beloved. The poet continually speaks in rhymed verse riddles on love and happiness, happiness which he receives by the opportunity to be with his love. The dramatic soul only sees happiness and ignores all the bad

Emma gains her provincial ideals early on in her life. When she receives news at the convent that her mother has died, she weeps for several days as a show of how sad she is (or should be). When her father comes to see if she is okay, she is “...inwardly pleased to feel that she had so quickly attained that rare ideal of a pale, languid existence, beyond the reach of mediocre spirits...she was finally surprised to discover that she felt quite tranquil again and that she had no more sadness in her heart than wrinkles in her forehead.” (Flaubert, 38). Flaubert paints her as a maiden who is obsessed with how romantic she looks to other people at all times of the day in all situations. Even when her own mother dies, she puts on a show to make sure

Flaubert depicts Emma as having subtle masculine characteristics emphasizing her masculinity not only mentally but physically as well. In some cases, Flaubert uses irony to characterize Emma’s masculine features. “Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines” (Flaubert 28) the narrator describes Emma as lacking the soft subtle femininity that high-class women have. The contrast of her beauty lessens her femininity in this case making her appear more tusk and masculine. Emma’s femininity gets challenged on the pivotal day of the Victorian women’s life. When the narrator describes her on her wedding day, “Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledown” (Flaubert 18-19). On her wedding day, Emma’s description walking down the aisle diffidently wearing a dirty unfitted dress metaphorically portrays Emma

Absentia is ever present where matters of the heart are concerned- however it was not Louis nor Boudreaux that occupied my thoughts or that my body longed for- no, it was her- the flaming haired beauty whose touch had been as fleeting as a summer rain, but soaked deeper than a slow long drizzle that lasted all the day long. Those few hours with her haunted my every waking moment once I left Boudreaux’s plantation. I wanted her lips- her tongue - I wanted to feel her touch on my flesh again. I wanted to touch her- to taste her sweet juices. Come dark, cloaked in the garments of a commoner, I prowled the city streets in search of her. I felt her near several times but when I searched the darkened doorways and alleyways, I did not find her. On one occasion, I come upon two men embracing- their lips searching each other’s; their hands frantically tugging at the others clothing. Fascinated, I stepped into the shadows to watch. I knew what they were feeling; the need, the insatiable hunger; I had

Throughout this entire section Emma becomes a lot more attached to Rodolphe. She is counting down the days until she gets to leave the life she is living now with Charles to go with Rodolphe. As it gets closer and closer to the day she gets to leave, the more she is crazy about Rodolphe. She starts to get very annoying especially when Rodolphe has to leave her each night he comes to visit. Part of the reason Rodolphe sent her the letter breaking things off is because of how annoying and over protective she becomes of him. Rodolphe does not want to bring Emma along if she is going to be acting that way. Rodolphe is fed up with the fact that even if they go one day seeing each other, Emma acts like it has been years when they do meet up. Rodolphe

Flaubert forces the same detachment between Charles and his family through the obstacle of silence. Similarly, Charles suffers from separation anxiety when Emma dies, even though Emma failed to pay much attention to him when she was alive. Charles expresses his grief for Emma through his depressing thoughts, “Emma was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her – the silence, the ground, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground” (Flaubert 307). Charles hopelessly sacrifices whatever little power Emma allowed him in their relationship. The silence steals from Charles not only any charge he is entitled to due to his masculinity in the Victorian time period, but also from his sanity and logic, which he bears in his failure to take care of Berthe. Contrastingly, Flaubert draws on the picture of silence through Charles’s obsession, or lack of silence, towards Emma. His obsession towards Emma computes to his lack of attention towards his mother, which she comprehends as abandonment and silence when she

Though at first glance, Emma appears to be a generic romantic novel about virtue and ladyhood, Austen actually challenges what the meaning of “ladyhood” is to the reader. We view Emma’s follies, trials, and triumphs through the eyes of the omnipotent narrator who first describes Emma as a stereotypical, wealthy young lady who is “handsome, clever…with…a happy disposition” (1). Through the use of irony, Austen employs a series of situations in which Emma, a “lady” of high standing within her community, challenges conventional thinking of what it means to be a young woman in the early nineteenth century, particularly her ideas concerning marriage and

In this one sentence Flaubert not only gives example of how the works are repetitive, with similar plots, and dying horses "on every page," but he also manages to capture the clichéd, melodramatic style of romance novels that makes them all seem the same. The repetitiveness extends into real life as well, as Emma’s love affairs constantly lose their fire and begin to become routine, or, as Rodolphe notes, "the charm of novelty, falling down slowly like a dress, expose[s] only the eternal monotony of passion, always the same forms and the same language (154).

In Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert shapes Emma, the protagonist, into a woman who deceives herself, through romantic novels, into believing her life is better than it actually is. Emma—like most things in her life—romanticized what marriage would do for her. At the start of her marriage to Charles, she believed marriage would be the means at which she transitioned from a farm girl to a wealthy woman. She believed that marriage would bring her all she had longed for. However, her marriage to Charles is opposite to that. Thus, she is constantly searching for something or someone to satisfy her. She spends majority of the novel aspiring to be a part of the upper

"[Later] Rodolphe is shown to be a coarse provincial Don Juan, attracted only by Emma's physical charms" (Roe 40). When Emma learned she was just one in a long line of conquests, she was devastated, emotionally and physically. Her later affair with Leon filled a void in her life, but as she herself noted, it was not enough. "No matter! She was not happy-she never had been...nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it...the sweetest kisses left...only the unattainable desire for a greater delight" (Flaubert 200). As one critic noted, "...the shattering of her Romantic ideals...[caused her to carry] to the second amour fewer illusions...that Leon had grown tired [still] filled her with bitterness..." (Green 233). The affair with Leon involved many trips to Rouen, and it is interesting to note that "...the outings to Rouen lose their charm as her love for Leon turns to disgust" (Turnell 106). Her affair with Leon ended when it became stagnant, although she was in no less pain than before.

In Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary is unknowingly a slave to her desires. Emma is so infatuated with the thought of falling in love that it causes her to experience many problems in every aspect of her life. For example, Emma is married to Charles Bovary, however, she is not particularly in love with him. Most people get married because they are in love with each other and want to spend the rest of their lives together. Nevertheless, the thought of spending the

the wedding. Throughout the novel Emma Bovary, Charles' wife, is trapped inside a life that

This image and atmosphere of mundane imperfection is a far cry from what Emma expects after reading the romantic novels she smuggled in at the convent. From those foppish texts she gathers the impression that ladies such as she should be “lolling on carriages” or “dreaming on sofas,” or perhaps embracing some dashing “young man in a short cloak” (Flaubert 32). Yet such is not the reality in which she lives.