Perception Of Reality In Madame Bovary By Gustave Flaubert

In eighteenth century which feminist in social status was not popular by that time, author can only through literature to express her thought and discontented about society. Jane Austen’s Emma advocates a concept about the equality of men and women. Also satirizes women would depend on marriage in exchange to make a living or money in that era. By the effect of society bourgeois, Emma has little self-arrogant. She is a middle class that everyone could admire, “Young, pretty, rich and clever”, she has whatever she needs. She disdains to have friends with lower levels. However, she is soon reach satisfaction with matchmaking for her friend. Story characterizes a distorted society images and the superiority of higher class status. It

During Flaubert’s lifetime, the Revolution of 1789 and the autocratic reign of Napoleon were recent memories. With the revolution came the end of the feudal system and a rise to a new group: the bourgeoisie. This group was made up of merchants, capitalists, and other professionals who did not inherit their fortune and were not born into the nobility. Emma and her husband belonged to this group. Her disappointments in life stemmed from her dissatisfaction with the lifestyle of the French bourgeoisie. She aspires to be a part of the aristocratic lifestyle of the nobility; a lifestyle more sophisticated, refined and glamorous than her own. The bourgeoisie craved the same treatment as the nobility, and were constantly attempting to exhibit their wealth creating tastes that were often characterized as gaudy. As a member of the educated elite with inherited money, Flaubert despised the moral conservatism, rough manners, and unsophisticated taste of this new class. Frustrated by the mediocracy of rising middle class, Flaubert uses Emma’s disgust with her lifestyle to convey his own dislike for the bourgeoisie. Emma felt the full suffering of the middle class as "the appetites of the flesh, the craving for money, the melancholy of passion, all blended together in one general misery” just like France’s

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

Human emotions remain as one of the world’s biggest secrets. Like sleep, we know what happens to our body when we experience these emotions whether it be a release of hormones or a certain area on the body becomes more sensitive. But we don’t know why we have them, experience them, or what purpose they serve. All we know is everyone’s emotions behave differently. Different types of arts can elicit completely different emotional response from people. Some art may have the ability to appeal to dangerous emotions in certain people. Whether it be the corruption of a once faithful and beautiful young girl, plagued by the desire for romanticism and lofty ideas, or a handsome young nobleman who is obsessed with living life to fullest. Both are fueled by the emotion that a certain type of art elicits in them, leaving them in a never ending chase that ruins there life’s. In the Novels Madame Bovary and The Picture of Dorian Grey the protagonists in these stories perfectly exemplifies the danger of arts emotional appeal by showing the corruption and eventual downfall of two once young and beautiful souls by exposing them to art that pleases dangerous emotions such as desire, pleasure, entitlement and disappointment.

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).

Written by Gustave Flaubert and published in 1856, Madame Bovary tells a story about the life and death of Emma Bovary, a middle class woman living in mid-nineteenth century France. This novel is known as one of the best examples of literary realism ever written, and for good reason. Through his writing and attention to detail, Flaubert does an excellent job of giving the reader an idea of just how mundane everyday life was like in France during the mid-nineteenth century. Through the various characters in the novel, Flaubert is also able to portray many positive and negative characteristics he saw in the people living during this time. Of the many different characteristics and ideas that Flaubert uses to describe characters throughout the novel, I think that the many aspects he saw in the bourgeoisie class and materialism are uniquely important. I believe that the ways Flaubert uses the ideas and issues of materialism and similar principles he saw in the bourgeoisie to tell the story of Madame Bovary, to criticize the bourgeoisie, as well as show how harmful and destructive he believed these issues could be to a society.

Flaubert use of “they” and “them,” further separates Emma from the festivities of the upper class. Additionally, as Emma is preparing for the ball, she is striving to appear as “extravagant” as possible. She “did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress” (Flaubert, 42-44) Thus, Flaubert emphasizes that Emma’s is unable to prepare for the ball without “directions” implying that she is not able to be a part of the upper-class events without guidance. Therefore, her only connection to the upper class at the ball are her clothes. Also, Flaubert further separates Emma and Charles from the rest of the guest, by having them arrive in a “dog-cart” (Flaubert, 41). Hence, Flaubert advocates that no matter how much the middle class aspires to be a part of the upper-class—through material items—they will never have the means to do so. Flaubert further emphasizes the separation between Emma and the rest of the guests when he writes: “Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand” (Flaubert, 45). Flaubert is highlighting how out of place Emma is, yet how aloof Emma remains. She is still “listening” even though she doesn’t understand what they are saying. Overall, Flaubert utilizes perspective in order to highlight Emma’s aspirations to be a part of the upper class, through her appearance and material items. Ultimately, Flaubert is critiquing the French middle-class in that

Material possessions are both a comfort and a preoccupation for Emma Bovary and she is largely defined by her identity as a consumer and her efforts to subvert traditional materialism through excess. Attending a ball at the home of the Marquis de Andervilliers is one of the defining moments in Emma’s life, in which she receives a glimpse into the life of the aristocracy and experiences a fleeting sense of

One motivation for Emma's suicide was her financial problems. She spent extravagant amounts of her husband, Charles', money on

(Flaubert 78), she begins her little quest to find the right man through a binge

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 food served was not as grand as the dishes that would be present at a high-class banquet; however, it was still sophisticated enough that the food was relatively unavailable for the lower class to be able to afford. This allows for the Bovary’s to have an air of aristocracy that masked their middle class reality. Moreover, although living comfortably, the actions of those in the middle class are still considered very basic; many of the bourgeoisie had lackluster table manners. Frustrated with Charles’ eating habits, Emma describes him “to be getting coarser in his ways;... after meals, he used to suck his teeth; eating his soup, he made a gurgling noise with every mouthful” (58). Such behaviour would be unheard of in the higher class, but to Emma, this was her unfavourable reality. Through this portrayal, she reveals her dissatisfaction with the behaviour of her own middle-class lifestyle. Furthermore, Emma’s constant sophisticated desires are incomprehensible by the rest of the middle class as the elder Madame Bovary “found her style too grand for her situation” (40). Emma views herself more as an aristocrat than a bourgeoisie, hence attempting to boast her seemingly more refined characteristics. Hoping to escape the mundane middle class, the bourgeoisie pine after the luxurious life of an aristocrat.

described in that manner because of Emma's affairs. When Charles is staring at her in her

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.