Madame Bovary Comparison

Mr. Knightley says to Mrs. Weston: “ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits her mother’s talents, and must have been under subjection to her” (48). Emma then is linked to her mother as similar in temperament and talent and, presumably, in her capacity to control Mr. Woodhouse. With the mother gone, a force of “subjection,” and with very little evidence to suggest this absence as in any way traumatic to Emma.

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

Emma sent her child in refuge to Normandy while she stayed behind in England. She tried to secure England’s power but was captured by Cnut. To secure her spot in power, she accepted a marriage with Cnut in 1017. “Emma was linked not merely with Normandy but with the English past; the widow of the dead king of the English and their queen”. It was a political power play for both of them because they got to legitimize their power. “The reason for Emma’s resolve to remain in her adopted country must have involved claims over property. Without her estates and wealth in England, she would have been entirely dependent on her Norman family, once again, have become little more than a pawn for her brother Richard”. She knew that it was a risk because Cnut had not fully taken power in England but she knew she had no other choice. In comparison to her first marriage, “Emma had been a peace weaver between hostile states, this time round she was a figure of both subjugation and détente. From her perspective it would not have been an entirely humiliating situation: her importance would be recognized; her conciliatory role could place her in a position of great power, and, of far more immediate concern, she would retain her own estates across the country”. Her marriage to Cnut was the moment that she was able to display and use her political knowledge of England

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

In the passage above, it is explaining Emma. She has moved to the stage where lying is all she really knows how to do. She has been lying to her own family about the places she has been going, and who she has been with. When she first started with her affairs it was something new for her to try. When she first began having her affairs, she got a taste of freedom. She has a maturity phase during the beginning of this section that pulls her away from her freedom. Charles is a major influence on why it is so easy for her to have an affair and why she has no remorse. If it were not for Charles telling Emma she could stay at the Opera while he goes back home for work, then her affair with Léon would not have began. Emma loved having her life in

In Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary is confined to an unhappy life as a result of the society she dwelled in. Social status was imperative during the time period; the more money one had, the higher up they in class. Throughout the novel it mentioned about Bourgeois ways because of Charles and Emma. They are put into that social class because of how much money they possess as well as expend. The story revolves around Emma buying and selling luxurious items either to give them to her lovers of her numerous liaisons or to pay for her debt. Knowing what type of person Emma is, she possibly would never be happy with whoever she settled with, but she did not chose to marry Charles. Her father had decided her future with Charles because during the time, parents had the authority of choosing their children’s spouses. Similar to Hedda

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

Mentions of death and flowers suggest seriousness and respectfulness, standards of Victorian society that Emma chooses not to

Despite being married, Emma pursues Leon,seeking "to learn what was really meant in life" by the word happiness, only for Leon to leave her and for her to get sick. Soon another man, Rodolphe, takes interest in Emma, and, as one might expect of a romance novel, her sickness is cured, and she becomes more bold in her attempts to find her happiness by cheating on Charles. Rodolphe grows tired of Emma, much like she grew tired of Charles, and he writes a letter to Emma telling her that, because he loves her, he cannot be with her. Emma is devastated, and plunges herself into debt buying luxury items to try and fill the void Rodolphe created by leaving her. When Emma can't repay the debt, she conceives the idea of killing herself as a way to escape her life. While she anticipates that her death will be poetic, and even romantic, instead it is disgusting and painful, and when she eventually dies, she leaves nothing but debt and despair for her husband and

It is white and beautiful and I don't wish to get it soiled" (Rhys, 34). The dress is a metaphor for herself as she is merely an adolescent, still sexually pure. Her subconscious expresses her internal disquietude on this matter as "[she] attempt[s] to keep her white dress unsoiled, suggest[ing] her concern with maintaining sexual purity" (Gordon). However, upon seeing the man's loathing face and sly smile, she lets her beautiful dress drag on the ground. This denotes that she is surrendering herself to the hateful person, similar to her and Rochester's consummation.

Charles, though his practice is doing well, decides to move to Yonville. He wants only to please Emma, and feels the move will be beneficial to her health; she is pregnant. Emma's selfishness even prevents her from experiencing the happiness of motherhood. Charles considers the pregnancy "another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and . . . a continued sentiment of a more complex union" (115 and 116). Emma is at first astonished, and then eager to deliver, so she can experience motherhood.

The relationship between Charles and Emma is a push and pull between love and dissatisfaction. Emma marries Charles out of boredom of her life on the farm with her father. She hopes to find happiness and an escape with her marriage to him. Charles finds himself to be in love with Emma, while Emma does not feel the same strong feelings as her husband does. “Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken.”(23). The Bovary’s are invited to a ball hosted by Marquis d’Andervilliers, and Emma gets her first taste of wealth and luxury at the mansion. Seeing the more luxurious side of life makes Emma more hateful towards her life with Charles. Emma finds Charles ill-mannered and dull. “As he

Being female meant being dependent on a man (father or husband) and doing the usual womanly duties. There would be no grand escapades that Emma dreams of or a lavish cultural life. What is expected of her is to raise a family and take care of her husband. Only Emma’s mind has been corrupted by romantic novels that spoke of passion, bliss and adventure. She marries Charles, but soon begins to question herself: “Before she married, she had believed herself to be in love; but since the happiness that should have resulted from this love had no arrived, she thought she must have been mistaken”(1.6.1238). While she has a doting, loving husband, she can only see his flaws. He isn’t the well-rounded man she wants him to be. His clothing was plain, talk was stale, he doesn’t want to go anywhere exciting or do anything different, which makes Emma distance herself. She is a dreamer caught up in an ordinary life that most would be happy to have. But Emma’s corruption begins its slippery slope down when she and Charles are invited to the Marquis’s ball. There Emma experiences the lavish lifestyle she has read about and craved: “Her trip to La Vaubyessard had created a kind of hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a storm can sometimes carve out in the mountains in a single night” (1.8.1252). You can feel Emma’s great need for something more than she has and the vast boredom in her everyday life that threatens to consume her. Flaubert has made Emma to be a character

One of Emma’s main flaws is the fact that she is extremely impulsive with her actions, and she doesn’t stop to think about what she’s doing until the damage is already done. This happens multiple times throughout the novel, especially when Emma tries to play matchmaker. This is partially due to the fact that she is unable to see reality clearly, which is what happens during her attempt at bringing Harriet and Mr. Elton together.

Shortly after her marriage, Emma attempts to escape her ennui through writing and the power of words. When Emma marries Charles Bovary and becomes Madame Bovary, she falls into a “life [that] was cold as a garret facing north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness, in every corner of her heart” (38). Emma’s life is as empty, dark, and isolated. Her loneliness surrounds her and she recognizes and