Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary Essay

As stated in the book, “I sit on her lap, put my head on her chest and put my arms around her and we start rocking. She holds me tight like Mama used to” (Lester 36). This is being told by Sarah Pierce and just shows the kind of person Emma is. She cares for her young ‘masters’ and acts as a mother figure when their actual mother cannot. Although slaves are frowned upon when having a relationship with white masters, Emma takes it upon herself to love and make sure Frances and Sarah are in good hands. According to the novel, it also asserts, “(She hugs her father tight.) Tell Mama I won’t forget nothing she taught me. Tell her I’ll be alright. And I’ll be strong Papa. I’ll be strong” (Lester 94). This demonstrates the courage and perseverance Emma possesses, even when she is being ripped away from her loving family. When she’s being sold, she keeps her head up and tells herself not to look defeated. Emma is very strong and will not let anything show her (very few) weaknesses. As demonstrated, this protagonist has positive characteristics based on what thirteen years of ups and downs she has gone through. Emma Henry is simply an

The central argument that Emma uses to justified her actions is based on the fact that she has depression, but instead of communicating it immediately at the beginning of the play, she looks for an easy way to evade her problems manipulating Shelley and Oscar to get their affection at any price. In the scene 12, she confesses that she “was depressed” and for this reason deserves compassion (Schreck 96, 97). Nevertheless, this confession occurs until she is yet in problems due all the previous lies that she uses to evade all the problematic situations she must face. For instance, when Shelley starts scolding her, she spontaneously tries to avoid it by lying saying she has cancer (Schreck 18) and lies about her mother is driving her “like crazy” (31). So, Shelley takes a more compassioned attitude to her. Later, to redeem her lack of self-esteem, get Oscar´s attention leading Oscar to be unfaithful to his girlfriend. Then, when he has troubles with Rosa, Emma just evade the situation by lying again saying, “since I´ve been sick Everything feels so out of my control.” (Schreck 78) This way, Emma achieves to feel better about herself and fix

“Emma could not resist. Ah! Ma’am but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me- but you will be limited as to number- only three at once”; Emma insults Miss Bates, who is a dear friend, in order to quench her desire for social credit. When Mr Martin’s proposal arrives for Harriet, Emma shakes her head with disdain. Emma has the highest social status, apart from Knightley, and uses this to diminish those of lower class. Chapone asks us to “Observe her manner to servants and inferiors” and whether she treats “them always with affability”, but we know, Emma does not. Emma thinks Mr Martin is a “very inferior creature” and when Harriet asks for advice Emma says “the letter had much better be all your own” but sneaks in “You need not to be prompted to write the appearance of sorrow for his disappointment”. Harriet refuses Martin, and Emma proclaims that Harriet, if she accepted, would have been “confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar” and “could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin” since she deems the lower class as unsophisticated primitives. Emma would have lost her latest amusement and her chance to prove her intelligence. Emma’s subtle manipulations illustrates the absence of inner morality, and is thus, an ill-qualified mentor.

The psychological effect of colorism drew Emma to cover her black identity from the judging eyes of society, instead of solving the original problem which was revealed to Emma at the end of the novel; her incapability to accept her true dark-skinned self. When Emma was in college, she gave up pursuing her education because she was uncomfortable with the environment. She was not able to be friends with the mulattos in the campus, because they all saw her as a black girl. Emma however refused to see herself as a black woman, and decided to remove herself from a situation that made her feel uncomfortable. Despite the disruption in education, Emma’s ambition helped her become a public school teacher which made her part the middle-class. She believed money would help her achieve happiness, and when that did not prove to be true, she decided to look deeper into the situation.

Emma is preparing Harriet for society, she adopts the role of Harriet’s mentor to instruct her in life choices, which is not very difficult with Harriet, who is easily manipulated. Emma has another suitor in mind for Harriet, and her pride will not give in to any other option. This second suitor then turns his attentions to Emma, and she is horrified. Her purposes are being destroyed by others' autonomy. Emma is too ignorant to fully understand why Harriet and Mr. Elton do not want each other. She likes to take the credit

The ensuing disconnect between Emma’s perception and the reality of her surroundings forms the crux of Austen’s novel. Just as Cher convinces herself that Elton loves Tai and Christian loves her, everything that Emma imagines is occurring in her small village turns out to be wrong, and she manipulates people and events with disastrous results. Emma suffers little limitation as she goes to the Cole’s party, to the ball at the Crown, and to the excursion at Box Hill, "provided all was safe at Hartfield." The fact that this represents Emma 's change of response to her father rather than being a change in Mr. Woodhouse himself is made clear by details which would have felt inconceivable in book three, for instance, we casually hear that Emma had replaced the small uncomfortable table at Hartfield with a modern round table sometime in the unspecified past.

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.

In Madame Bovary, Emma creates conspicuous goals based off romantic novels she reads. In reaching her goals, she requires a level of

Emma, is the story of the education and growth process of Emma. Throughout majority of the novel, Emma involves herself in bad situations in which she misconstrues facts and blinds herself from the truth, at the expense of others. After Emma has discovered that she has been terribly wrong about Mr. Elton, and she was mistaken to encourage Harriet's affection of him, Emma says, "It was foolish, it was wrong to take so active a part in bringing two people together, it was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious- a trick of what ought to be simple!." Emma

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

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

about her flowers and what would happen to them if she were to die. Emma bringing up

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.