Female Representations in Flauberts Madame Bovary and Woolfs Mrs.

Dalloway

This essay will compare in Gustave Flauberts Madame Bovary (1856) and Virginia

Woolfs Mrs. Dalloway (1925) in regards to the portrayal of female representations.

While both texts subvert the notions, I would like to prove that gender stereotypes

remain unsolved. To conduct this critical analysis, I would like to focus on certain

characters from each text representing the masculine and feminine sides.

Introduction: The Aesthetics of Flaubert and Woolf

A realist writer like Flaubert aims to give their impression of recording faithfully an

actual way of life. In order to have a better understanding on how both texts differ

from the pre-established canon, we need to first contextualise the Realist framework.

In his essay The Reality Effect (1986), Roland Barthes notes that the model of those

[Realist] narratives [] based on the incessant need to authenticate the real

(quoted in Walder 1995: 260). The aesthetics of Realist authors are based on

verisimilitude, meaning that the portrayal of the plot, characters and setting are a

faithful account of lives in current society. Taking Honor de Balzac, the father of

realism as an example, his novel Pre Goriot (1835) is a projection of nineteenth-

century France during the time of industrial, social and political revolution. The great

amount of property depiction displayed in the text, such as Pre Goriots rich

possessions at the beginning, then later on in his daughters house (to whom he

sacrifices most of his fortune) (Balzac 1999: 16), reflects the moral bankruptcy that

human relationships are valued by monetary terms. Hence, from what Balzac has

founded in his works, we can see that the function of Realist writing is to reflect and

1
to criticise the social ideals of the time. Likewise, Flauberts Madame Bovary gives

the audience a picture of the age of property (Forster quoted by Brooks 2005: 15),

with a protagonist who is obsessed with money and with material objects as

substitutes for happiness (Roberts 2003: vii).

Woolf, on the contrary, is regarded by many critics a writer who overthrows Realist

traditions with a Modernist breakthrough. In her essay Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown

(1924), Woolf points out that the characters created by former novelists are never at

life, never at human nature (quoted by Brooks 2005: 204). In other words, she thinks

that their works are not authentic enough to reflect human lives. In another essay

Modern Fiction (1919), Woolf explains that the essence, [w]hether we call it life or

spirit, truth or reality (88) is missing in previous novels. This spirit refers to the

human consciousness and Modernist writers like Woolf are renowned for their

stream-of-consciousness technique: highlighting subjectivity through their

characterization. She criticises the former masterpieces as having a strange air of

simplicity (86) because according to her, those writers are materialists (87) and

they are concerned not with the spirit but with the body (87). Therefore, in Mrs.

Dalloway, the characters thoughts are central in the narration, which is in huge

contrast to Flauberts narrative technique of impersonality. Although Woolf attempts

to reject realist writers, the Realist legacy can still be found in her novel. For instance,

the title Mrs. Dalloway echoes Madame Bovary (Brooks 2005: 206), both are the

titles of married women. Hence, as readers, we can immediately deduce that the

married life of these women will be discussed in the novels; and that they are

probably entrapped in marriage as most writers in the Realist canon have depicted. In

addition, Woolf is still very sensitive to the subjects mentioned in Realist texts,

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namely class difference, [] money, [material] objects, social imposture and its

weight (206) and the setting in her novel still revolves around them. Here I would

like to reinforce that my focus in my analysis is gender and acknowledge the effort

both authors made in terms of counteracting gender stereotypes. While some critics

considered Woolf as allowing female emancipation for her female protagonist in her

modernist breakthrough, I would like to argue that her approach is not constructive

enough to rebuff gender stereotypes. Indeed, Clarissa is very different from Emma,

the traditional image of the woman under the male gaze. However, the stereotypes

that she tries to dismiss are reiterated despite her seemingly transformative effort.

The Unconventional Sex in Madame Bovary

If we compare the descriptions of the upbringing of Emma and Charles, we can see

that she is more accomplished than her husband. In her early days in the convent

where was brought up, she had a good grasp of the catechism, and she was the one

who always answered His Reverences difficult questions (Flaubert 2003: 33). On the

contrary, when Charles was sent to study medicine by his parents, the lecture list on

the noticeboard is the initial thing which frightens him (9), hinting that he has limited

access to this. Regarding the education that they receive, Emma had a good

education, and that consequently she knew dancing, geography, drawing, embroidery

and playing the piano (17). While for poor Charles, [h]e didnt understand a thing [at

the lectures in Medical School]; listen as best he might, he could not get hold of it

(9); but all he could do was grind [] away in perfect ignorance (9). It is no surprise

that later he totally failed his [] exams (10). Thus, compared to Emma, Charles

has a much lower sense of learning and a lower intellectual ability. Looking at both

characters in adulthood, Charles tries to bring to mind all the fractures that he knew

3
(13) during one of his visits to the patient, hinting that he has almost forgotten all the

knowledge he learnt at the Medical School. While for Emma, she has developed even

more than before. For instance, she is good at sketching and makes fine sketches

which her husband is proud to show off in the living room (39). She has also excellent

musical skills which amazes the bailiffs clerk, who stops on the street to listen to her

playing the piano (39). As a result, although Charles is a doctor and Emma only a

housewife, in which the former may be considered as a more noetic and a more

socially respectable occupation; in terms of intellectual ability and talent, Emma

actually excels Charles.

However, despite how talented Emma is, there is no space for her talents:

[s]he gave up the piano. What was the point? Who would be listening? Since she could

never play at a concert, in a short-sleeved velvet gown, on an Erard piano, running her

fingers over the ivory keys, and feel, like a breeze, murmurs of ecstasy circling around

about her, it was not worth the boredom of practising. She left her sketch-books and her

embroidery in the cupboard. Completely pointless! (59)

The passage shows that her skills are not allowed to fit into the society. It then further

indicates that a womans accomplishments is not of interest to society. This echoes the

conservative, Hegelian theory:

Women may well be educated, but they are not made for the higher sciences, for

philosophy and certain artistic productions which require a universal element. Women

may have insights, taste, and delicacy, but they do not possess the ideal. (Hegel quoted

by Moi 2006: 22)

In other words, women have an emotional sentiment that makes them incapable of

becoming part of the universal (the ideal), which includes science and major art. This

patriarchal theory maintains that women cannot be artists and intellectuals because

4
their work requires an understanding of the ideal, the concept, which in its very nature

is universal (22). There remains only the so-called minor art-forms for women which

are cooking, knitting, sewing and embroidery (Irigaray 1987: 119); which are

excluded from the universal. Thus, as a woman, Emmas art is being excluded from

the outside world and she can only practice them at home. Whereas for Charles,

despite being a medical student who is below average, and is highly doubted for his

skills as a doctor, there is still space for him to practice his art (Flaubert 2003: 11).

Hence, despite the effort to make the woman appear more accomplished than the man,

Flaubert exercises such unfair treatment upon Emma with patriarchal superiority,

excluding her from the universal based on her gender.

Re-Defining the Woman in Mrs. Dalloway

Clarissa is an accomplished woman, like Emma in Madame Bovary. Interestingly,

although Clarissa does not possess multiple talents like Emma, she is still a level

beyond Emma because she is a higher social class and is regarded as a perfect hostess.

She has a renowned reputation for throwing parties and gathering people together.

This makes her the focal point of the social domain, which sheds a new light upon the

conservative social structure to which only men are granted access. Hegel writes that,

[e]nclosed in "family piety," women neither have nor care about having access to the

universal (the state, the law) (Hegel quoted by Moi 2006: 21). Here, Clarissa has

access to the universal, unlike Emma who is excluded from that and is confined

within the household. However, is Clarissa really as universal as any man in the

novel? If we look at other descriptions regarding her social status, she goes inevitably

with her husband, Richard Dalloway. The title perfect hostess seems impossible to

be separate from the wife of Dalloway; as she marries the Prime Minister and stands

5
at the top of a staircase (Woolf 1996: 6), becoming the perfect hostess (6). In

another description, it says that her husband had fostered wordliness and snobbery

in Clarissa and was trying to make a hostess of her. These parties were all for him;

or for her idea of him. (66) Hence, it is implied that Clarissa being the perfect hostess

is the duty of being a wife to her socially respectable husband; her capability as a

hostess serves the purpose of maintaining her husbands honour. In such sense, she

has not entirely escaped from the family piety imposed upon the female role, as long

as her husband remains the foundation (22) of her exquisiteness. Consequently, it

seems in this text, the woman is still less universal than the man because she is a

social construction of the man, just like in Madame Bovary - Emma being referred to

as the wife of Bovary.

Clarissa thus lacks a solid identity and has an ethereal presence in the novel. Although

this could appear to support the feminist claim that Woolf rejects any definition of

woman, certain descriptions regarding her mentality paint her perilously lacking

humanity. For instance:

How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge [] she could not think.

She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now [] she would

not say of herself, I am this, I am that (7).

This seems to suggest two things: firstly, she has no knowledge, no language, and no

history; and secondly that she does not define herself. This relation between

knowledge and defining herself is interpreted by critics as showing a vital instinct

about life without the need of knowledge, and henceforth reflects the innate strength

of womanhood, which is a critique against male intelligence which is based on the

accumulation of knowledge (Sharma 1975: 64). The acknowledgement of a womans

6
instinct brings to mind what Woolf writes in one of her autobiographical text, Sketch

of the Past (1939):

This intuition of mine it is so instinctive that it seems given to me, not made by me

has certainly given its scale to my life (Woolf 1985: 85).

Woolf seems to shed pride upon this feminine intuition as a woman, just as she

immerses this into the character of Clarissa. Here, we enter into a paradox: on one

hand, there is the rejection of any definition of the female, showing an attempt to

deconstruct any given gendered identity to a woman; while on the other hand, the

female instinct is celebrated as essentially different from the male psyche. Intuition is

thought to be a feminine quality while its opposite, rationality, is the masculine. These

are considered as essential qualities of both sexes, denoting the natural difference

between men and women (Rivkin and Ryan 2004: 529). This emphasis on the female

narrators intuition has the potential risk of mistaking womens inferiority as a truism

two binary categories essentially separate, and will always remain as collective

beings, not individuals (Delphy 1987: 84). Thus, Woolf contradicts herself by

attempting to deconstruct stereotypical gendered traits while at the same time

celebrating the woman as the Other (Moi 1987: 5), reinforcing the preexisting barrier

between gender divisions.

Furthermore, Clarissas rejection of knowledge has the potential danger of

marginalizing her own identity. It has an impact on her existence:

this body she wore [] this body, with all capacities, seemed nothing nothing at all.

She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; there being no

marrying, no more having of children (Woolf 1996: 8).

Clarissa attempts to create a space for herself, rejecting the values taught by the

patriarchal society upon women only capable of being wives and mothers. Borrowing

7
Irigarays terms, the woman here refuses to be enveloped (1987: 122) as a wife or as

a mother. However, without having her own knowledge or volition, she is threatened

by what she lacks: a proper place (122). In other words, she has further

marginalized herself from the society, being invisible and far from integrating herself

with other men and women in a collective environment. The woman preferring

evanescence, is then challenged with the question, am I a woman as distinct from a

human being? (Riley 1988: 6). In that case, as Moi suggests, it is a logical error that

I am a woman and therefore not universal (2006: 20). This is a lapse into

imprisoning the woman, the female, the feminine [being] always the particular,

always the relative, never the general, never the norm (20). Hence, for a woman to

reject male-dominated norms, to distance oneself from history and society is not

constructive. It undermines ones humanity; rather women need to confront and re-

interpret the preexisting historical entities imposed upon them.

8
Imagining Emma in Flauberts Narrative

Emmas appearance and physicality seems to suggest that she is an embodiment of

male desire. If we look at descriptions of Emmas physical appearance, it is

interesting to note that they are all portrayed in the eyes of the male characters. For

example, her first appearance is described by Charles, who is surprised at the

whiteness of her nails [which] were lustrous, tapering, more highly polished than

Dieppe ivories, and cut into an almond shape (15). His intrigue with her beauty

continues:

If she were beautiful, it was in her eyes; though they were brown, they seemed to be

black because of the lashes, and they met your gaze openly, with an artless candour (15).

That she meets his gaze openly seems to suggest that she is merely an embodiment of

desire complement to the male gaze. Her physical features are compared to an object,

Dieppe ivories; hinting at the process of her objectification. Their first encounter, this

scene of their conversation and moment of contact is deliberate. She asks Charles if

he is looking for something, he answers her that he is looking for his riding crop.

Then as she picks up the object for him, she brushes past him, which is his initial

physical touch of her. Right after that, his desire is formed. Here, she becomes the

object of his desire, and thus what Emma has found for Charles is not the riding crop,

but the male desire. Since that moment, Charles finds that the image of Emma kept

coming back to him, kept appearing before his eyes (22). This is proof he that he

desires her. The woman becomes the imagination of the man, and is no longer a solid

human being. Charles has the tendency to idolise his adoring, beautiful, but

unsurprisingly miserable wife, thinking her to be content with his behaviour (39) and

ignore[s] her in favour of his own desires and philandering (Fox 2009: vi). He keeps

9
loving her in his preferable way, giving her kisses and caresses; pleased with himself

for possessing such a fine wife (39) while does not care about her personality traits or

her psychological needs.

Her lover Rodolphe thinks that she has the long body of some feudal chatelaine; and

she looked like the pale woman of Barcelona, but supremely she was the Angel

(247). The young Justin is astonished at the paleness of her face, vivid white against

the blackness of the night [], majestical as any ghost (293). All these show a focus

of a perpetual excited interest (Wall 2003: xxxvii) and thus suggest that their vision

of Emma is fetishistic (xxxvii). They idealise Emma as angelic, ghost-like; with a

supernatural sense of beauty, almost not as a real human being. She is the mirror of

male desire that almost every male character desires her. Hence, she becomes a bodily

object subjugated by the men, under the male gaze. In other words, women are

represented as amalgam of mens illusion. As noted, the woman is the other against

whom male desire and erotic perception are constituted (Dallery 1985: 197). Thus, in

spite of subverting the norm that male sexuality dominates the female, Flauberts

writing does not free womens self-identity from the imposed male eye.

Besides having a body complacent to male desire, her soul is conditioned with a male-

oriented mindset. In the novel, Emma loves reading, very much so to the extent that

she has her book with her even when dining with her husband (Flaubert 2003: 54). In

her early days in the convent, she enjoys reading long stories of love, [] martyred

maidens swooning in secluded lodges, postilions slain every other mile, horses ridden

to death on every page, dark forests, aching hearts, promising, sobbing, kisses and

tears (34-35). It shows her veneration for this idealized notion of romantic love,

10
yearning to be like one of those illustrious or ill-fated women (35), and adoring

chivalry and martyrdom in gentlemen brave as lions, tender as lambs, virtuous as a

dream (35). Trapped in an unhappy marriage, Emma turns to reading as a consoling

drug (Roberts 2003: viii), starts reading Balzac and George Sand, seeking to gratify

in fantasy her secret cravings (Flaubert 2003: 54). However, her unhappiness seems

to stem from her belief that life should run sweetly as a romantic novel (Roberts 2003:

vii), thus endowing herself a sentimental temperament inclining towards the

tumultuous (Flaubert 2003: 34). This quixotic behaviour is apparently mocked by

Flaubert: her love for romances; and in descriptions where Emma fantasises real life

with a romantic notion, such as seeing herself like a courtesan awaiting a prince

(174) when committing adultery with her lover and constantly asking her lover to

swear his love for her. In Flauberts times, romance is regarded as a despised

feminine genre (Roberts 2003: vii), a polar opposite of realism. By putting such

despised femininity in a female character, Flauberts purpose leads to different

thoughts. Some critics think that the purpose of it is to criticize the patriarchal culture,

where women become the product of the male-conditioning education. However,

considering there is no dramatic scene of self-knowledge (Wall 2003: xxvii), this is

put in question. Emma misses the point of the female emancipation in feminist

readings of George Sand, that she continues to be haunted by the romantic beliefs read

in her upbringing, that she needs a male saviour in order to be liberated, which is

deeply rooted in the patriarchal mindset. This proves that Flaubert believes that

women are perpetually credulous and subordinate to mediocre fantasy, assuming that

womens problems derive merely in the nature of the feminine itself instead of being a

political problem of education and conditioning (xxv).

11
The Possibility of Female Autonomy in Woolfs Clarissa

Throughout the whole narrative, Clarissa hardly has a voice, but the reader mainly

hears her unspoken thoughts. One might argue that it is part of the modernist

technique introduced earlier on, the characters stream-of-consciousness. However,

most depictions of her are only vivid in Peter Walshs stream-of-consciousness instead

of Clarissas. Clarissa is being idealized as a noble feminine figure in his thoughts:

There was [] a sort of ease in her manner [] something maternal; something gentle

[] with her perfect manners, like a real hostess (46).

He thinks that she would talk to people if she thought them unhappy (58), and receive

people with such maternal warmth and patience in her social gatherings (59), being a

hostess with great generosity and hospitality. This brings to mind the popular image of

the angel woman in the nineteenth-century, with the noblest femininity who despite

having no story of her own, gives advice and consolation to others, listens, smiles,

[and] sympathises (Gilbert and Gubar 1984: 22). Indeed, what Clarissa does in life

always revolves around people: but she needed people, always people, with the

inevitable result that she frittered her time away (Woolf 1996: 58), living her life in

pathetic ordinariness (Gilbert and Gubar 1984: 22-23). Ironically, we fail to find

consciousness in her own thoughts, apart from dismissing any rendition of her being,

[s]he knew nothing about sex nothing about social problems (Woolf 1996: 25),

showing that she does not possess any knowledge of the society she is living in. It

seems like she lacks the depth to understand life and does not worry about social

problems, [s]he cared much more for her roses and her parties (67). She cares about

what others perceive her more than her self-identity:

What would [Peter] think, she wondered, when he came back? That she had grown

older? Would he say that, or would she see him thinking when he came back, that she

had grown older? (27)

12
Clarissas personality falls into the stereotype of a clichd upper class woman who

only revolves around superficial matters such as marriage, beauty and ageing - and

has no concern for society.

At the end, she is referred to by her first name Clarissa, while previously she was

always Mrs. Dalloway, an identity signifying her role as a wife and mother, given by

the patriarchal system. Hence, being referred to as Clarissa, her original name, may

suggest the possibility of an individual self, thus a transcendence of her gendered

identity. As one critic suggests, [t]he womans being was emerging into a new

transcendence of spirit (Sharma 1975: 64). However, I personally doubt the liberating

quality of such transcendence. This is because we need to bear in mind that this part

of the narrative is portrayed in Peters subjectivity:

What is this terror? What is this ecstasy? He thought to himself. What is it that fills me

with extraordinary excitement?

It is Clarissa, he said.

For there she is. (Woolf 1996: 141)

In other words, the formerly ascertain still applies: her character is only vivid in

depictions of Peter Walshs recollections or imaginations. While previously calling

her the perfect hostess, Peter seems to be finally able to see Clarissa as herself

without any social label attached to her and this revelation of her individuality fills his

mind with ecstatic excitement. This is ironic as it is not Clarissa herself who posits the

self-discovery of her own individuality, but again a man who grants her this

recognition of her humanity. It shows that the female image has been trapped within

the male imagination all along. Some critics argue that, in Clarissas thoughts, the

sociological and political frontiers have been scaled and left behind; new aesthetic and

imaginative horizons have been opened out for the sensibility and soul of the new

13
woman (Sharma 1975: 64), and thus feminism is transcending itself into a higher

plane of artistic experience and articulation (64). However, although the social and

political knowledge in her thoughts are effaced (and as aforementioned, this suggests

a dangerously marginalising attempt of her intellect), we hardly find spiritual

moments experienced either - as the vital aesthetic epiphany at the end is not given to

the female vision. As no self-awakening is possible here, Clarissa seems more like a

male creation: the male artist and thinker in the process of creating culture as we

know it has made of women [] and about a womans slow struggling awakening

to the use to which her life has been put (Rich 1971: 18). This is a regression into the

sexist thought of a woman lacking the ability to reason and to think critically, as well

as the capacity for independent and original thought (Walkowitz 1980: 34) Therefore,

female autonomy appears to be impossible here as it is subjected to the male thought.

14
The Extent of Transcendence in the Female in Both Novels

In Madame Bovary, Emmas personality fluctuates a lot sometimes she is a virtuous

housewife, but sometimes she is a degraded woman committing scandalous offences.

The fact that Flaubert allows her to have moral transgression might appear to be the

subversive act towards moral norms. He seems to be mocking at the domestic

mediocrity (Flaubert 2003: 101) which is upheld among social beliefs at that time,

that might drive desperate women to sumptuous fantasies (101), an adverse effect to

being trapped within the suffocating scrutiny. Emma, at first, is an angel in the house,

performing well her wifely duties as a woman:

Emma [] knew how to run her house. She sent out the doctors bills to the patients, in

nicely phrased letters that scarcely mentioned money. When, on Sundays, they had one

of the neighbours to dinner, she wold contrive something rather special [...] From all this

there redounded considerable acclaim for Bovary (39).

However, Flaubert reveals the truth beneath this chaste facade:

[t]hat elegantly pleated dress concealed a heart in turmoil, and those lips so chaste told

nothing of her torment (100)

Her inner state, is in fact burning with lust and rage and hatred (100) because she is

frustrated with her sexual desire for men outside her marriage. Ultimately, she cannot

conceal this incarnate passion and has affairs with two male lovers, Rodolphe and

Lon. This might show that Flaubert disregards the moral regulation as too

restraining upon women. We need to bear in mind, though, that only when Emma

performs within social expectations is she well-received by society. When she plays

the wife and the woman of virtue (174), [t]he housewives admired her thrift, the

patients her manners, the poor her charity (100). Whereas when she becomes non-

15
conforming in her speeches and actions, praising perversion and immorality (62) and

parading with her lover with a cigarette in public (178), the social reputation of her as

well as her Bovary household is destroyed, scadalised among the respectable wives

(178). Hence, the patriarchal social order is still there to suppress the woman, as the

novel sometimes mocks and sometimes accepts, a male-dominated society, a male-

defined double standard of sexual morality (Wall 2003: viii).

Emmas case suggests that a womans destiny is fixated within the circuit of male

dominance. Adultery seems to be the only choice and a must for the woman in light of

the restraining moral regulation, while upon such moral transgression she is thwarted

and punished by the male law. It seems that it is inevitable for her to succumb to this

restoration of patriarchal order. By living within social expectations of a dutiful wife

and mother, Emma is being tormented by her own frustrations and dissatisfaction: the

unspoken words find utterance in bodily symptoms such as coughing and loss of

weight (xxviii). The physical convulsions are figuratively a form of punishment upon

her, as if mocking at her clichd submissiveness towards the inequity of the law.

When she has gathered her courage to transcend herself across male privileges, such

as the power of attorney (the economic domain which traditionally only men have the

power of) and sexual pleasures (the moral boundary which is only accessible and non-

punishing for men); she is confined within the sexual punishment: fiery red globules

[] clustered together [and] penetrated her [...]And her next action is to stuff her

mouth with the powdery white arsenic that kills her (xxix). This implies the

patriarchal fear of the female potention for its social disruption (Overton 1996: 14),

that when the female gains access to male power, her potential emancipation becomes

threatening to the traditional order where male has complete access of all powers. As

16
Roberts depicts accurately, stealing masculine power and masculine privilege, Emma

mixes up the categories of male and female; and thus becomes, in the terms of her

world, less of a woman and more of a monster (2003: x). Consequently, she is not

allowed to live and must be put into the deathly punishment.

On the contrary, Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway does not have to suffer from the death

punishment like Emma Bovary, but this is only because she has not committed moral

offences. Unlike Emma who commits adultery, she remains a woman of virtue

throughout the novel. She dismisses love and corporal passion as [h]orrible [and]

[d]egrading (93), despite being secretly attracted to her female friend and an old male

acquaintance, Sally and Peter. She chooses to remain by her lawfully married

husbands side, continuing to be the perfect hostess and upholding his honour.

Although there is no violation of moral codes, she has danger of becoming an eternal

feminine, encompassing virtues of modesty, gracefulness, purity, delicacy, civility,

compliancy, reticence, chastity, affability, politeness all of which are modes of

mannerliness that contributed to [an] angelic innocence (Gilbert & Gubar 1984: 23).

This is also the reason why Clarissa does not have to suffer from the deathly

punishment like Emma does, as her muteness within social and moral confinement is

like an indirect gesture favouring patriarchal values.

However, genuinely speaking, she is betraying her own happiness. She is not satisfied

with her marriage, because she has the thought of eloping with Peter:

[t]ake me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if [Peter] were starting directly upon

some great voyage (Woolf 1996: 35).

When she is confronted with Peters question of whether she is happy in her marriage,

17
she dodges it by making an overly emotional and histrionic introduction about her

daughter (35). It seems a gesture of self-denial and self-defence by exaggeratedly

reminding herself of her womanly duties as a mother. Sallys rhetorical question at the

end are we not all prisoners? (140) seems to have spoken of Clarissas genuine

thoughts that are constantly denied; as the latter is indeed imprisoned within social

expectations as an upper-class woman, that she is burdened with the pressure to

uphold such honour and to keep her frustrations confined to her innermost thoughts.

Hence, Clarissa is a restricted female being within her society, that made her to bear

everything: [her mothering duties towards] children, [and her own] sorrows, (Overton

1994: 22).

From both texts, we can see that the representation of the female can go into the

extreme, either as a monster or an angel. Neither one makes her human. In other

words, patriarchal culture is dominant which marginalise the female existence: either

way she is subjected to male norms. From realist depiction to the modernist

breakthrough, the female being is rendered inhuman.

Conclusion

Despite the effort both authors made in terms of counteracting gender stereotypes,

they fail to entirely dismantle gender stereotypes. Emma is an unconventionally

accomplished woman, while her talents are not recognised by the society. Clarissa,

although differing from the traditional woman under the male gaze, is still enclosed

within family piety to her husband. Both of their titles, Madame Bovary and Mrs.

Dalloway, reduce their individual identity. There is no possible female liberation in

18
either text, as both female protagonists are entrapped in patriarchal culture the male-

conditioning education for Emma and no the rejection of knowledge in Clarissa. The

portrayal of the female is either an angel or a monster in either novel, and thus this

lack of humanity endangers their existence in society. In conclusion, the female

representations in both novels show how sexual differences appear to be shattered but

reproduced eventually and inevitably.

(5346 words)

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Walder. London: Routledge.

Brooks, Peter. 2005. Realist Vision. London: Yale University Press.

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