"Reality does not conform to the ideal, but confirms it." Who better to establish such a great quote than one of the greatest writers in the world of literary realism as a genre. The book I explored also happens to be his debut novel and the only one which took over five years to put together. His other works, equally as remarkable as the first one which broke through significant barriers, are The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Three Tales, Memoirs of a Madman, and Sentimental Education. Flaubert's style is generally referred to as the perfectionist style. This reference is due to the fact that he steered clear from all abstracts, inexact, and a vague sense of expression and scrupulously eschewed the use of cliche in his works. One of the most significant factors of this book for me was his writing style since my preference is books that are, as Flaubert once said, "written in harmonious sentences, avoiding assonances." Unfortunately in the time his books came out, that is around the mid to late 1800s, the kind of awards that books and their authors received, instead of publicly presented prizes which were mostly introduced in the late 1900s, were titles that they earned by the audiences of their books as well as the critics. However, being deemed and addressed as the prime mover of the realist school of French literature and with works described as masterpieces, even around 120 years after his death, I believe it equally gratifying and self-sufficient.
Madame Bovary, one of Flaubert's many fantastic works, is best known for exploring multiple themes otherwise unheard of in 1857 France, in fact so outrageous that it had to go through the gruelling process of being put through a trial before being open for viewing by the masses. This novel follows the story of a certain Madame Bovary whose life is nothing but a tale full of hopeful beginnings, unhappy marriages, and tragic endings. Charles Bovary is a kind-hearted but utterly dull and meagre in behaviour doctor who has a not so flourishing practice. He goes on to marry a beautiful farm-girl, Emma, who had been raised in a convent. Emma wishes for a life full of adventure and believes that can be achieved when she decides to marry the doctor. However, she eventually finds out that her only excitements have originated from the standards that have been set by the sentimental romantic novels she used to read often. She grows increasingly bored and unhappy with this newly imposed middle-class existence of hers and even the prospect of parenthood, and their daughter Berthe, could not quell the melancholy and dissatisfaction of this young woman. Trying to get a grasp on her fantasied intimacies, Emma proceeds to act out her romantic ideals and embarks on a solicitous yet also a sordid love affair with Rudolphe and, later, Leon. With Rudolphe, she has great plans of running away together, which ARE abandoned due to his cruel rejection. With Leon, Emma embraces abstractions- passion, happiness- and ignores the material reality itself, which is symbolized by money. She seems incapable of distinguishing between her romantic ideals and the harsh realities of her life. Soon her debts, fault of her lavish and irresponsible lifestyle, start piling up, and everyone rejects her when she comes asking around for money, including Rudolphe and Leon. Unable to deal with this horrific aftermath of her "life of adventure," and on the verge of financial ruin and public disclosure of her private life, Emma ingests arsenic and dies a painful death. A grief-stricken Charles is unaware of his wife's affairs and remains devout to her even after her death and also as he struggles to pay off her debts. Charles eventually goes on to discover Emma's love letters with Rudolphe and Leon, and although he becomes utterly despondent upon finding out, he blames Emma's affairs on fate. Shortly after, however, he dies, and their child, Berthe, ultimately ends up working at a cotton mill factory.
Gustave Flaubert incorporated many subplots in Madame Bovary, which is a tale of two adulteries and a life that ends in a suicide. The first one we come across is in the introduction of Charles Bovary, at the extreme beginning of this story. It introduces a storyline, which gives us a view of Charles’ mediocre lifestyle and ambitionless but strong sense of duty. In the early descriptions of Charles and his father, Monsieur Bovary Senior, the novel introduces two contrasting male archetypes. There is the dull, mild, sweet man, who impresses no one but who performs his work dutifully. On the other hand is the dazzling, sociable man who impresses everyone, but in his selfishness, brings upon misfortune to the ones closest to him. Charles has no capacity for the trappings of manliness, the ostentatious toughness that both made and ruined his father. His mother's disappointment and hurt feelings have more weight to Charles than his pleasure. This is why he goes along with his mother's devised plan of his marriage. He enters marriage without any expectations or demands. He experiences it and then draws his conclusions from it: an inductive method that moves from detail to abstraction.
The second storyline that is introduced, shortly after the previous one ends, is that of Charles Bovary's marriage to the wealthy, unattractive middle-aged woman, Heloise Dubuc, and also the introduction of Emma Rouault in his life. This further solidifies the seemingly dull character that is Charles Bovary, who interestingly has many complex and fascinating intricacies that make him an engaging, flat character in this story. Charles is the kind of person who follows his instincts without overtly analysing them. He knows that he wants to go to Les Bertaux, where Emma lives with her father, Monsieur Rouault, so he goes there diligently. Only when his wife suggests it and keeps nagging him for it does he realize that he has feelings for Emma. Charles lacks ego and any sense of self-image. He realizes that his wife makes him unhappy, but he does not feel that he deserves better, and that is why he treats her life and death as they come, without any distortions of ego. Charles' character is so fascinating because he lacks the conviction that he deserves happiness, and this is not because he hates himself, but because he simply does not love himself. It is, to me, a very understandable and recognizable character trait, which is something brilliant that Flaubert has managed to offer.
An exciting way to view as well as analyse this novel would be to see Charles and Emma Bovary's life in Tostes and Yonville separately. In Tostes, Emma was a dreamer. She felt like her life there was incredibly dull. Her only moment of solace comes when the Bovarys are invited to attend a ball at a nearby chateau. This experience was very symbolic of the romantist ideals she held. This interval of happiness only served to emphasize the general tedium that Emma experiences in Tostes upon her marriage with Charles. Yonville is the place which is symbolic of the more beautiful things in life that she wants to experience.
The most significant storyline, however, is that wherein Gustave Flaubert portrays the distinctions between the social classes that produce a problematic result for the characters. As a part of the bourgeoisie, since her birth and continuing into her marriage, Emma Bovary finds herself extremely bored by the lifestyle of her social class and excited by the aristocratic life. Emma delves in her affairs with Rudolphe and Leon, both highly established men in the society, so as to pursue her fantasies to embark on an aristocratic lifestyle. However, in the duration of the story, her attempts of acceptance by the aristocrats spiral out of control, and her endeavours fail to meet her expectations. Ironically, in her pursuit to climb up the class system, Emma finds herself falling down a class. Emma Bovary's desire to change social classes brings about her ultimate downfall. Gustave Flaubert uses the character's influence over the reader to portray the distinction between the two classes. The reader views the aristocratic class as superior to that of the bourgeoisie because that is what Emma believes. Flaubert, by way of his writing, strives to teach the readers of his novel that the increase in the differences between the social classes can result in dire consequences. He also manages to encourage the readers to keep these said consequences in mind while viewing our own culture to be wary of and to understand thoroughly the impact that these dominant and still existing ideals have on our lives currently.
These subplots, and all that they signify, further solidify my understanding of the main plot, that being, the tale of a woman's dreams of a lifestyle in a repressive environment and the tragic end that is brought about after she pursues those dreams.
The novel is many things, but it's especially deceptive, along with the characters within it, in the way that it leads you in one direction, but then you find yourself stepping onto a completely different course from where you were headed. Initially, it appears to be a floral and frolicking tale of love wherein the woman tries to find happiness by escaping her unhappy marriage. But then this turns out to be false in the way that the story then turns tragic and cautionary. What I find fascinating in the deception of this story is that the characters are very complex, and that leads to many twists in the tale, but they are not given any inhumane traits or characteristics that make them out to be that way. The characters in Gustave Flaubert's novel are complex and tragic as a human is, or rather ought to be. I could effortlessly imagine this happening right now. In fact, it is happening around me as we speak, dreams as bold and seemingly unrealistic as these are being dreamt and ends as morbid as these are being met. Madame Bovary is the perfect embodiment of the concept of endless human desire.
Gustave Flaubert explores many themes through Madame Bovary. The one that I feel is most prominently displayed is Abstraction, Fantasy, and Experience. We use the help of abstraction to interpret our experiences; this then helps us differentiate between reality and fantasy. Emma Bovary works on a fascinating psychology that defeats the very thing we consider a norm. She uses abstractions from the various fantasies she has developed by reading sentimental romantic novels, to lead her "life of adventure." However, even after proving detrimental, she does not utilize her experiences to get rid of these abstractions and ignores everything that does not fit within the ideals that she has garnered from her romance novels. Leon lives in a similar world of abstractions, and Rudolphe has enough experiences to pretend to fit into her ideal lifestyle. The men's artificiality and insincerity paradoxically allow Emma to experience the affairs as real and genuine.
Themes like The Sublime and the Mundane, Love and Desire and Causes, Appearances, and Boredom are introduced further into the story. The first of these speaks of how Flaubert expresses the good and the bad, and the beautiful and the ugly and how all of these are intangible in their rights. He has written everything so true to literary realism. You come out of it thinking, "That's very symbolic of how life is, down to its gritty and ugly parts." And it is so. It's displayed in such a brutal, blatant, yet beautiful manner that one can't help but read through the horrors that have been displayed in this story. The stark comparisons of these realities of life are written in the most alluring literary form, which is the reason to believe why Gustave Flaubert is genuinely one of the greatest realism authors to grace the literary world. The second of the themes mentioned above speaks of the correlation between love and desire, how these concepts are portrayed in this novel, and how the characters, or instead mainly our Madame Bovary, view these concepts. Since in the novel, Emma Bovary described love in only the aristocratic homes, those two aspects were considered dependent on one other. Due to this mindset on what love is, for Emma, love, and desire became intangible. She came to believe, through her affairs, that love is desire, complete with the passion and sex, and she drifted further away from her unhappy marriage as this idea of love seemed to be non-existent in her marriage, according to her. The third of the themes mentioned above speaks of the concept of a cause leading to a particular effect. To Charles Bovary, the cause is love, and the effect is his behaviours of love towards Emma. However, to Emma, there was an inversion in the cause-effect relationship in all aspects. Due to her rigid ideas of what love is, she expected her forced behaviours of love, without any real love backing it up, to provide her happiness. She forced herself to set up appearances to escape what she considered mundane and not real, in her marriage, and what she considered true was what she sought in her affairs. This led to the boredom she often lamented about and what she tried escaping until it drove her to her death.
Separating from the novel's visceral, brutally honest, horrifying and ugly descriptions, Flaubert also paints stunning images of France, of the countryside, of the adored Paris, and everything that Emma dreams of witnessing. Gustave Flaubert has a flair of account and literary illustrations of places he writes about and wants the readers to view along with him. I would compare his expertise in this writing like a painter painting beautiful sceneries he has seen and passing it to small children who dream of seeing the beauty that he is trying to culminate into his work and spread to everyone else.
Something I enjoyed about this book was the multiple references used and the little explanations at the back of it. It is truly one of my favourite parts of reading a novel set in a completely different era. Those seven pages at the end of the book hold proof to the sheer knowledge Gustave Flaubert possesses as well as the commendable amount of research that must have gone into him writing this novel. He speaks of books set in his era, and ones before them, as well as prominent figures and crucial events. Every little thing he mentions, everything he makes up, with a bit of backing of historical reference, is planned very thoroughly and comes together beautifully. All the texts he introduces in his references are to help the reader place the era in which the story progresses. It also helps develop the character and its personality as I believe the kind of books one is inclined to read speaks a lot of one's disposition.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert received a pretty dramatic reception. Flaubert, the owner, and the printer of La Revue de Paris were accused of insulting public morals and offending decent manners by the serialized publication of Madame Bovary. The public prosecutor criticized the lascivious nature of the character, Emma Bovary, and the suggestive descriptions, but they were, however, acquitted. As a tribute to his lawyer who helped him win the case, he dedicates the novel to her. The book did quite well, although it was met with a bit of outrage. It has long been established as one of the greatest novels and is often described as a "perfect work of fiction." It later went on to influence many other realist authors in their works. It is one of the few novels from the 1800s that has around twelve film adaptations and one opera, one miniseries, and one graphic novel representation. Although there have been many renditions of the story in the form of films over the years, there is only one that holds my heart( of course this opinion is based on me viewing only this one and the 2014 one entirely and the rest all in the form of short clips), is the 1949 rendition. I believe the most considerable advantage of the release of this novel in the 1800s is that there were many eras that it went through and led to it being differently interpreted and depicted. The film is riveting in its gorgeous black and white visuals and the casting of the incredible Jennifer Jones. I cannot put into words, however overused this line may seem, how fascinating and chilling it was for me to view this book I had so thoroughly invested myself in, in such beautiful films. Although I don't think the films did justice to the novel, it was entertaining to watch. It made me appreciate a lot of what Gustave Flaubert wrote in that difficult time period and how brave and how forward of an author he was.
There were many memorable scenes that I enjoyed reading in Madame Bovary, but the most notable of them all would be Emma Bovary's death scene. It was indeed one of the most terrifying, yet magnificent death scenes I have had the chance to read of and witness in a way. It was so grotesquely graphic and yet held such beautiful symbolism. She spent her last few days, pale-faced, red-eyed, and screaming in pain. Then it all ended, and her corpse oozed black fluid out of her mouth. This is realism at its best. How better to write a story in which a woman has killed herself by arsenic. So many days of pain and agony, fitting since although she felt all this physically, this same fate is what the people who loved her were left behind with after her passing. Madame Bovary is becomes more real and its representation so much more cementing because she dies. Because of the way she dies. Because she chose to solve her problem her way. Because her death didn't make her anything but selfish, but we already knew that. Because she didn't resolve anything and left behind as much chaos as she had created when she was alive. But I think Madame Bovary did get the freedom she craved. She was the most free at her death.
We are necessarily no better than Madame Bovary. We are just another Madame Bovary. We are just as flawed but also just as hopeful. Madame Bovary is just another person. Sure she has the worse traits of greed and selfishness, but there is such beauty in her will and hope to be set free from the confines that she believes she is suppressed by. She is just a character. But also so much more. She is an action, a representation of the freedom we all hope for, just in different manners, and she is the only one courageous enough to spend her life trying to attain it. Isn't her searching for her freedom not much different from some people trying to achieve their nirvana? Books like these have such great power. They help you understand and empathize with the complexities that exist that just make us human. Madame Bovary is but the most human of us all.
Sources:
www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/close-up/a-close-up-on-the-flaubert- madame-bovary-trial/
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