Gustave’s Flaubert Madame Bouvary and Theodor Fontane No Way Back are two classic books that have a variety of connections. To begin with the context will be discussed with a close reference to plot and characterisation in general. Following the techniques and themes will be critically analysed and discussed what a comparison of these two passages will tell us about the novels as a whole.
Throughout the novels there are many similarities and differences which can be compared against each other to receive a greater depth of understanding of the novel as one. Holk and Christine- a family- are the main characters in No Way Back. Holk receives a letter from the princess and he is forced to leave his family where during his stay he falls into the trap of adultery. Once he’s back their life is no longer the same and consequently Christine commits suicide. Moreover, the plot is similar to Madame Bouvary’s where she married Charles yet never feels satisfied with her love life and has an affair with two other men during the novel. The ending is parallel to Fontane’s novel as the woman again commits suicide. Mutually the novels are considered classically themed as adultery to what happened yet during the set passage there is a closer…………………………….
It is only through the techniques that the readers can see a three dimensional character and ……………………. All the way through No Way Back the main narrator is Holk and the only time that the narrator gives Christine a chance to covey the novel
Powerful and well-crafted novels spin from archaic yet timeless tales. Thus leaving readers to find their solace between the conflicts and turmoil within the plot. A vast majority of stories contain paradoxical themes and morals that consequently, temporarily confuse the reader, and creating their interpretation of the novel. The Time Traveler’s Wife contains themes of love, fate against free will, time, and more messages written between the lines. Henry DeTamble has a genetic disorder called Chrono-Displacement, which causes him to become temporarily displaced in time against his will. Therefore, it is possible to meet his determined soulmate, Clare Abshire when she is six, and he is thirty-eight- also when she is twenty, and he is twenty-eight. Alternating between childhood and adulthood perspectives, Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife contains a problematic love story that portrays the consequences of isolation due to a predetermined belief in love, evident in Clare’s monotonous life. Moreover, the novel illustrates that living according to destiny oppresses a fulfilling lifetime. Many instances throughout the book that demonstrate this are The List, Alba’s conception, and Henry’s final letter.
Set in 1942 during World War II, Sarah was just a little girl when she and her parents got taken away by the French police. She hid her younger brother in a closet and promised him she’d come back. De Rosnay added the promise Sarah made to her brother to make the reader wonder if she will ever get back to him. The struggles Sarah starts going through at her age gives the audience a sense of sympathy for her. As soon as she gets separated from her parents, the author makes the story take an unexpected turn that the reader should not anticipate. As Sarah begins to be on her own, this makes De Rosnay’s audience want to keep up with the
Moliere’s Tartuffe, and Voltaire’s Candide are each exemplary literary works of the 18th century in their own rights. Tartuffe is a satirical comedy, and Candide a thought-provoking travelogue. While each adheres austerely to its genre, various similarities as well as contrasting differences
“Le Cygne” is a poem by Baudelaire, published in the “Tableaux parisiens” of “Fleurs du Mal. Between 1853 and 1870 the city of Paris underwent vast amounts of renovation by order of Napoléon III. It included the destruction of many poor and unhealthy old neighborhoods to be replaced by avenues, parks, squares and large boulevards. Many of the writers at the time where unhappy with these changes and “Le Cygne” can be read as Baudelaire’s reaction to these changes which make him feel alone and lost in this new city. In my commentary, I will suggest that Baudelaire attempts to create a virtual encyclopedia of exiled individuals, and thus have felt similar emotions to that of Baudelaire’s response to the changing city. The poem is also dedicated to Victor Hugo, who at the time of the poem was in exile on a channel island. I will first try and explore the meaning behind the different stories in the open. I will then try to understand how each of these stories share a certain type of parallel or similarity in the terms of the emotions felt, and finally what the main themes of the poem are altogether.
Attempting to define how Flaubert wanted the reader to view religion in his short story “A Simple Heart” is frustratingly beautiful. The title figure, Felicite has been variously interpreted by many regarding her representation of religion. Her unsophistication is not to be viewed as a hindrance as it allows her to share a saintly relationship with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Sprit had been reduced to taxidermy as it is portrayed as Felicite’s pet parrot Loulou. Felicite’s quasi-satirical world of spirituality had been diminished to something so non-permanent it made the story difficult to evaluate seriously with regards to religion. However, upon reevaluating the role Loulou played in Felicite’s life and her hardships “A Simple Heart”
In his novel Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert connects the social, political, and historical period that he writes in, as seen through the archetypal, sociological, and psychological critical lenses, to leave a lasting impact on society today. He masterfully works his life and the circumstances he endured into the novel and takes the reader on a journey through this character that he has claimed is very similar to him. Many aspects of the novel allow the reader to make the connection between the social, political, and historical period that he writes in.
While the theme of love itself, may it be positive or negative, is reoccurring, Marie’s presentation of romantic relationships and their differing qualities can be considered a theme alone. In “Guigemar”, the relationship between the knight and his lady represents loyalty, and an ability to heal or cure. Yet, the relationship between the beast and his wife in “Bisclavret” demonstrates the selfish and traitorous behavior that can occur between partners, especially if one has proved to be adulterous.
“His work is a unique phenomenon, important as the voice of a “silent generation” in revolt against a “phony world” and in search of mystical escapes from a deteriorating society rather than “causes” promising political revolution or reform”(French 4).
In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, it is difficult to know what to think of Monsieur Binet and his lathe. His constant devotion to such an unrewarding pursuit would seem to act as the bourgeois backdrop to Emma Bovary’s quest for eternal passion and excitement, a polar opposite with which Emma can stand in sharp contrast. However, it turns out that Binet and his lathe have more in common with Emma and her rampant desires than what would first appear obvious. Binet’s lathe still serves as a background with which to compare Emma’s quest for love and riches, but instead of acting as a complete antithesis to everything she does, the lathe is meant to be subtly different
With each letter in Les Liaisons dangereuses, Choderlos de Laclos advances a great many games of chess being played simultaneously. In each, the pieces—women of the eighteenth-century Parisian aristocracy—are tossed about mercilessly but with great precision on the part of the author. One is a pawn: a convent girl pulled out of a world of simplicity and offered as an entree to a public impossible to sate; another is a queen: a calculating monument to debauchery with fissures from a struggle with true love. By examining their similarities and differences, Laclos explores women’s constitutions in a world that promises ruin for even the most formidable among them. Presenting the reader glimpses of femininity from a young innocent’s daunting debut to a faithful woman’s conflicted quest for heavenly virtue to another’s ruthless pursuit of vengeance and earthly pleasures, he insinuates the harrowing journey undertaken by every girl as she is forced to make a name for herself as a woman amongst the tumult of a community that machinates at every turn her downfall at the hands of the opposite sex. In his careful presentation of the novel’s female characters, Laclos condemns this unrelenting subjugation of women by making clear that every woman’s fate in such a society is a definitive and resounding checkmate.
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
Madame Bovary is a novel by author Gustave Flaubert in which one woman’s provincial bourgeois life becomes an expansive commentary on class, gender, and social roles in nineteenth-century France. Emma Bovary is the novel’s eponymous antiheroine who uses deviant behavior and willful acts of indiscretion to reject a lifestyle imposed upon her by an oppressive patriarchal society. Madame Bovary’s struggle to circumvent and overthrow social roles reflects both a cultural and an existential critique of gender and class boundaries, and her unwillingness to tolerate the banalities of domestic life in a predetermined caste culminates in several distinct means of defiance. Emma Bovary exploits traditional cultural values such as marriage,
Often in literature, a character is found that is quite memorable. Never was this more true than in Flaubert's Madame Bovary. To some, Emma Bovary's action at the end of the novel was drastic and unnecessary; others believed her death to be the end of the natural progression of the story. However, Emma's decision to commit suicide was relatively simple, yet came as a last resort. She had exhausted all the other options she felt were available, and in the end made her plan based on finances, lost love, and the sheer boredom of her life.
Marcel Proust was a twentieth century French writer best known for his novel In Search of Lost Time (À la recherche du temps perdu) and at over 3000 pages, it is one of the longest novels ever written. This book is difficult to summarize but essentially the work is about learning to appreciate life and existence, rather than focusing on the superficial aspects of the mundane. These ideas are portrayed through Marcel, who is the narrator and the principal character of the novel and by the secondary characters he meets during his life. This work was published in the nineteenth century but Proust’s ideas are reflected in Claude Lorrain’s Pastoral Landscape with the Ponte Molle and in Hyacinthe Rigaud’s Portrait of Louis XIV. Even though these
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