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Flaubert as Emma in Madame Bovary Essay

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Flaubert as Emma in Madame Bovary

During the Nineteenth Century, Europe experienced a literary movement known as Romanticism. This movement "valu[ed] emotion, intuition, and imagination" (Rosenbaum 1075). Gustave Flaubert, born in 1821, grew up during this innovative movement and became entranced by the romantics. Unfortunately, Romanticism was a "passing affair in France," and young Flaubert realized it consistently encouraged illusions it could not satisfy" (Bart 54). His later disgust for the movement would lead Flaubert to writing his greatest novels.

His most famous and widely renowned novel, Madame Bovary, is largely an autobiography; however, it also contains partial biographies of Flaubert's most intimate …show more content…

She gave Flaubert "a sachet, her handkerchief, a lock of hair, and a pair of bedroom slippers" (Bart 146). She also gave him a family "jewel . . . set in a cigar case with [the] motto: Amor nel cor" inscribed on it (Bart 294). This gift would become the signet ring that Emma gives to Rodolphe. Louise was also insistent on receiving a letter a day from Flaubert. Like Emma's lovers, Flaubert became tired of this routine and showed his aggressions more openly. Rodolphe "began to treat [Emma] coarsely, without consideration" (Flaubert 165). Eventually, the affair waned and came to an end, after Flaubert wrote Louise a goodbye letter. Rodolphe would come to write Emma such a letter as well. He would not let himself ruin her life (Flaubert 174).

Through all of his affairs with women, Flaubert began to make "a series of maxims about women" in general (Bart 258). He even tried to explain these ideas to Louise. Flaubert believed all women "were never frank with themselves, because they would never admit the purely physical aspect of attraction and must always deny the existence of evil or vice in their loved ones" (Bart 258). "In reality [women] longed in everything for the eternal spouse and always dreamed of the great love of a lifetime" (Bart 258). Eventually, Flaubert would make this "Emma's confusion" (Bart 258). Emma imagined a man:

A phantom composed of her most ardent memories, her strongest desires and the most beautiful things she had read. He

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