Madame Bovary

Thesis Statement

At the heart of the novel is Bovary's desperate boredom of her circumscribed situation. Bovary's romantic illusions are the prime example of human stupidity, which is reflected by all the characters.

Introduction

Gustave Flaubert's genius lay in his infinite capacity for taking pains, and Madame Bovary, so true in its characterizations, so vivid in its setting, so convincing in its plot, is ample testimony to the realism of his work. This novel was one of the first of its type to come out of France, and its truth shocked contemporary readers. Condemned on the one hand for picturing the life of a romantic adulteress, he was acclaimed on the other for the honesty and skill with which he handled his subject (Giraud, 46). Flaubert does not permit Emma Bovary to escape the tragedy she brings on herself. Emma finds diversion from the monotony of her life, but she finds it at the loss of her own self-respect. The truth of Emma's struggle is universal and challenging.

Since the time of Charles Baudelaire, many critics have noted, either approvingly or disapprovingly, Flaubert's application of an accomplished and beautifully sustained style to a banal subject matter in Madame Bovary. In Flaubert's own time, many readers objected to an adulterous heroine as not only banal but vulgar as well. Baudelaire, however, offered the telling defense against this criticism in his acknowledgment that the logic of the work as a whole provides an indictment of the immoral behavior (Gans, 69).

Analysis

Flaubert himself viewed his book as “all cunning and stylistic ruse.” His intention was to write “a book about nothing, a book with no exterior attachment . . . a book that would have almost no subject.” Flaubert's goals, however, were not as purely aesthetic as they might initially seem, for he did not mean to eschew significance entirely. Rather, he meant that any subject matter, no matter how trivial, could be raised to art by language and pattern. Like Stendhal and Honoré de Balzac, Flaubert believed that quotidian matters could be treated seriously, but he goes further than his predecessors in refusing to provide narrative guidance and interpretation (Fairlie, 10).

Flaubert describes in detail Emma's background and education, for the fact that her outlook has been conditioned by reading novels is important in understanding her subsequent disappointments in life. She has high expectations of marriage and looks to it to fulfill all her dreams and ideals. When reality does not live up to these hopes, she is quickly dissatisfied. She imagines that satisfaction can be found in motherhood, romantic affairs, religion, material possessions, and any number of other fads that temporarily inspire her enthusiasm, but she is disappointed every time. At the end of the novel, when she despairs of finding happiness and realizes that she has ruined her family's life through the debts she has incurred, she poisons herself with arsenic, turning her disillusionment inward in a self-destructive gesture of defeat (Bloom, 85).

Critics have disagreed over how Emma's character should be interpreted. According to some, her ...