Ê
 

9
 
     

 

 
   

  




Bored with her husband¶s mediocrity and insignificance, trapped

in a marriage that does not live up to her expectations, and
driven by her unquenched romantic passions, Emma Bovary embarks
upon a couple of tempestuous extramarital relationships that she
believes to be offering the passion she has been searching for,
to escape the monotony of her marital life. To disguise her
infidelities and the dullness of her petty bourgeois identity
which she is ashamed of, Emma tries to live beyond her means
through excessive borrowing that descends her life into tragedy
and ruin.

Gustave Flaubert¶s novel of adultery and remorse is

conceptualized as one of the best satirical exposition s of the
romantic fantasies and pretentious bourgeois attempts of the 19 th
Century French Society. The present study is intended to
critically evaluate the thes is: ³Ê
   is a novel which
discusses the never-realized dreams and meaningless passion.´
Given that the above thesis proposes that µunrealised dreams¶ and
µmeaningless passion¶ are the major causes of Emma¶s tragedy, I
will deal with these two aspec ts as well, yet for me, Flaubert
does not simply deal with the so called unrealised dreams and
µmeaningless¶ passion in Emma. The novelist is acknowledged for
the great affinity with which he identifies himself with Emma,
particularly with reference to his sweeping statement ³Ma dame
Bovary, C¶est moi.´ Therefore, Flaubert presents the tragedy of
Emma Bovary as the outcome of various complicated individual,
social and psychological circumstances that I will bring up in
detail in the course of my analysis .

c
ÿsychiatrically speaking , two critical biological conditions seem
to determine the tragic fate of Emma: her innate sensuality and
her romantic imagination. (Mardner, 1997) Flaubert portrays Emma
as an individual carried away by romantic fantasies and living in
a world of surrealist dreams to escape the banality of her middle
class life. Emma¶s sensuality becomes apparent to the reader at
the very point of her initial encoun ter with Charles. As he
watches her saw, she pricks her fingers on the needle and
immediately raises them up to her mouth and sucks them. Later,
when they were drinking liquor, she drains her glass and licks
the final drops of the drink with the tip of her tongue. For an
informed observer of these behavioural patterns of Emma, her
innate sensuality becomes obvious. This passionate nature could
have been bestowed with full expression in her marital life thus
producing an agreeable relationship between Charle s and Emma and
a contended life for both of them had Charles been receptive to
her spirited nature:

³Despite everything, she tried, according to theories

she considered sound, to make herself in love. By
moon light in the garden, she used to recite him al l
the love poetry, she knew or to sing with a sigh slow
melancholy songs. It left her as unmoved as before,
neither did it appear to make Charles more loving or
more emotional.´ (p. 56)

Emma tries her best to ignite a passion for Charles with which
she fails miserably and Charles¶s passionate embraces do not move
her since they seem to follow fixed patterns which is compared to
a familiar dessert after the monotony of diner. It is this
µplacid dullness¶ of Charles that quickly dampens her passion .
She expects him to initiate her into to the µforces of passion¶
but ³this one had nothing to teach; knew nothing, wanted nothing´
leaving Emma to only wonder what was meant, in real life ³ by the
words µbliss¶, µpassion¶, µecstasy¶ which had looked so beautifu l
in books´. Emma turns to sentimental novels with dashing heroes
in an attempt to imaginatively live the passionate life she

À
desires. It is this imagination that recreates her romantic
fantasies about fictional heroes in two men she encounters with
whom she tries to discover her denied raptures and ecstasies.

Emma¶s infatuation with Lé on Depuis grows to be a tempestuous

love one afternoon as she gazes at him simultaneously conjuring
an image of Charles as she has se en him so many times in the pa st
and when the juxtapositi on of the images of these two men causes
her to compare them, Léon emerges as the superior. Afterwards,
Léon becomes the nucleus of her marital boredom as he reappears
in her imagination ³taller, more handsome, more po lished and more
indistinct´ than he is in reality. Thus, by the time the two are
reunited, Emma is primed to fulfil her romantic dream of a
passionate relationship with him. Unfortunately however, Emma
mistakes Leon¶s superficiality for profundity and fails to notice
that both of them are entangled in the same romantic perversions
expressed in platitudes and clichés found in the sentimental
literary works where both of them finds solace.

Léon¶s departure from Yonville results in the first significant

emotional breakdow n of Emma aggravating the sense of something
missing in her and once denied of the emotional security and the
sense of fulfilment that she found in Léon, she becomes an easy
prey of Rodolphe.

As she sees Léon again at the theatre, her imaginative vision of

the opera singer becomes the utmost determining force that
propels her into a romantic relationship with Léon. The voice of
the opera¶s heroine ³seemed simply the echo of her own
consciousness and all this fascinating make -believe a part of her
own life´ (II. xv. p. 235) She transfers her feelings for the
singer to him making their union therefore inevitable.

Emma¶s affair with Rodolphe is sparked by her evening at r 

  
 where she experiences the intoxicating world of the

upper classes for the first time; a world she desperately wants
to belong to. That evening is capped by her waltz with a
viscount, which embodies for her the luxurious life which she is

å
soon compelled to abandon. Later, as Rodolphe tries to convince
her to give into her desires, she recollects the images of
Viscount and Léon. The juxtaposition of these images with the
presence of Rodolphe and his amorous words causes an imaginative
fusion for Emma who is n ow ready to allow herself to be seduced.
Rodolphe¶s deceitful appearance and his daringly passionate
exclamations of love fuddles Em ma to the extent that she feels
experiencing passion and elemental forces of love fulfilling her
dreams so that for the fir st time he begins to feel that her life
has now received all the µpassion, ecstasy and delirium of the
romances which she had read¶.

With Rodolphe, Emma experiences the thrill of pure physical

union yet she longs for more. Her innate nature of being hung ry
for constant change and excitement does not allow her to be in
the same situation with him for long. She then tri es to incite
Rodolphe into eloping with her in the night. For the average
reader, Emma¶s desire may be frivolous yet it is grounded in her
acute need for security which she lacks inwardly as a result of
weak foundation on which her relationship with Charles is built
upon. The great misfortune of Emma is that her mission to regain
her lost security in Rodolphe too crumbles ironically like all
other sources that she depends upon for emotional sustenance.

Rodolphe¶s desertion makes Emma more reckless than ever; she once
again turns to Leon and gives herself rather readily in her quest
for a much nobler passion. Yet, Leon grows a sense of resentm ent
towards Emma as a result of her attempt to dominate him and his
antipathy towards him is triggered at her indecent suggestion
that he steals from his Employer to pay off the debts incurred by
Emma. Following Leon¶s breakaway, Emma attempts to renew her
relationship with Rodolphe in order to be able to find money and
this point, Emma, totally driven out of her sober consciousness,
is prostituting herself.

Financial devastation a nd betrayal by her lovers leave Emma with

the only option of death. Throughout, she had lived for pleasure

A
and once confirmed that she will never have it, Emma sees no
reason to continue living. Her choice of suicide is typical of
her romantic short-sightedness and out of her romantic fantasies,
she naively assumes that death will come to her in sleep and will
put an end to all her misfortune yet this too goes wrong making
the last few hours of her, lying in the deathbed, an extremely
painful experience for both herself and Charles.

From the beginning of the novel, it becomes apparent to the

reader that Emma lacks an ideal female role model whom she could
emulate in her life. As a child, she is not blessed to be a part
of a protective family. To make matters worse, her mother, who
would have otherwise g uided Emma to become a mature woman ready
and a mother, dies untimely. The nuns at the convent are not
influential enough as role models. Th is absence creates a large
vacuum in Emma¶s growth as a woman that is difficult to be filled
in and she turns into various other models through which her
personality is shaped. As a teenager, she seeks to emulate the
romantic novels she reads while at the convent and after the
ball, she seeks to emulate the nobility and the wealthy
fabricating a new roman tic ideal based on a man she met at the
ball. After her exposure to poetry, she adopts a romantic martyr -
like facade and the melodramatic opera "Lucia de Lammermoor"
drives Emma to adopt the insane fictional character Lucy Ashton
as her role model and beco mes convinced that the correct way to
respond to adversity is to lose her mind and commit suicide,
which she eventually does.

Emma¶s shattered hopes about a male child also seem to heighten

her disillusionment with life in general. Originally excited by
her pregnancy, she is eager to become a m other and even
fantasizes the experience of motherhood. She badly wants a son
and is sure that she will have one for she believes only a man
can have the freedom to overcome the constraints that have always
frustrated her:

 
 ³She wanted a son. He should be dark and strong, and
she would call him Georges. The thought of having a
male child afforded her a kind of anticipatory
revenge for all her past helplessness. A man, at any
rate, is free. He can explore the passions and the
continents, can surmount obstacles, reach out to the
most distant joys.´ (p. 101)

Her desire for a male child stems from her own deprivation as a
woman. From a psychoanalytic perspective, she needs a son as a
penis substitute as compensation for the subjugation of her as a
woman. She does not feel free as a woman and is thwarted by her
physical weakness and legal subjugation. The bitter truth that
her child is a girl makes her unconscious and she is only
interested in naming the baby: she impulsiv ely chooses a name
that reminds of the ball at La Vanbyessard that depicts her
initial unhappiness of belonging to the world where she comes
from.

Emma¶s tragic fate is not only determined by her innate

sensuality and vivid imagination. These biological conditions are
combined with certain external facts that propel Emma to her
tragic end. The novel draws largely on three main currents of
thought: the sentimentalism prevalent in the eighteenth century,
which leads into the Romanticism of the 1820s to 1840s; the
analytical explorations of love that develop, in part, from other
eighteenth-century writers; and the pragmatism of bourgeois
thought, which h ad grown increasingly dominant since the 1830
revolution." Ê
   is often described as a satire of the
ineffectual lives of the provincial bourgeoisie of 19 th century
France, Looking at the novel from a historicist perspective,
Rosemary Lloyd obser ves that ³ (f)rom the opening pages, with
their depiction of the way in which both children and teachers
impose on individuals patterns of behaviour they are obliged to
copy slavishly, to the concluding lines, which record Homais's
reward for conforming to the image of the successful man, Ê


·
  reveals the mechanisms of middle -class society, the way in
which it creates a form of fatality.´ (Lloyd, 1989)

Flaubert observes the social reality of the world of the rich

that Emma longs to enter so desperately as the narrator describes
the gentlemen seated at the dinner table at La Vaubyeerard: ³(t )
heir nonchalant glances reflected the quietude of passions daily
gratified´ and under the shades of their gentle manners, their
³brutality´ emerges in fairly trivial matters ³such as exercise
strength and flatter vanity ² the handling of thoroughbreds and
the pursuit of wantons.´ (p. 64) Rodolphe perceives Emma as a
wanton mentioned above, an abandoned woman. He unsympathetically
manipulates her as he perfectly understands Emma¶s preoccupation
as an unsatisfied wife ³(g)asping for love as a carp on a kitchen
table for water´ (p. 143) Therefore, he knows that she can be
easily seduced with words of love and some attention. Emma¶s
relationship with Rodolphe initially appears to be a success
since it physically and emotionally touches her and gives her
what was lacking in her life with Charles. However, Rodolphe soon
wants to get rid of her and decides that ³Emma was like any other
mistress; and the charm of novelty, gradually slipping away like
a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion...´ He
effortlessly abandons her leaving her more despondent that she
had been before the affair.

A feminist critique of the novel would focus on the portrayal of

Emma, either consciously or unconsciously by Flaubert, as a
victim of patriarchy and male domination: her existential malaise
and obsession with fantasy may be viewed as consequences of her
limited role in bourgeois society. Tony Tanner argues that
³[Emma's] sickness must be connected to the vagueness of her
position in society: after being a daughter (and thus entirely
defined by the father . . .), she exists on the threshold in a
sort of pronominal limbo.´ (Tanner, 1979)

The two men, on whom she places a great deal of trust, deserts
her and the man who should be giving her the security that she

-
was looking for and should fulfil her psycho - physical and
emotional needs is not sensitive enough towards her. T he novel
depicts the limited range of activities that were available to
women in 19 th century society and it is this limited range of
activities available to Emma that makes her feel a sense of
missing something in her life. The limited access of the middle
class woman to the professional world is an obvious cause of
Emma¶s tragedy through relatively little critical attention is
given to this as a cause of her fall given the heavy emphasis
placed on her romantic imagination alone.

Emma tries to break the monotony of her life by altering among

various pastimes: from redecorating the house to reading,
subscribing to ÿarisian magazines, charity work, knitting,
painting, playing the piano etc and she is portrayed as a woman
of extremely high creative potential thanks to her imagination.
On her first evening in Yonville, Emma involves herself in a
discussion on aesthetics with Léon whose banalities radiate
insights for Emma since she has found someone who can respond to
the vicarious pleasures of reading. Yet, it becomes obvious to
the reader that Emma is a more passionate and engaged reader that
the clerk and for her, books are life itself. In that case, if
looked at her from the eyes of Virginia Woolf, Emma Bovary
becomes a slightly more romanticized version of µthe wonderfully
gifted sister of William Shakespeare¶ (Woolf, 1929) who is denied
of a room of her own. Therefore the restrictions upon Emma¶s
romantic fantasies become a restriction of the fe male creative
genius. Like Woolf who insists upon the privacy and independence
of the womankind, Emma notices that the woman is constantly
µthwarted¶ by physical weakness and µlegal subordination¶
ÿerhaps, a little far -fetched though, we are inclined to b elieve
that Emma Bovary had the potential to become a renowned
litterateur like Woolf had her romantic imagination been given a
chance to flourish in a positive manner.

From a Marxian point of view, it is possible to attribute Emma¶s

tragedy to the prevailing materialist conditions and to the

´
vicious spirit of capitalism which seems to lie at the centre of
Emma¶s financial devastation. Her financial situation aggravates
her prolonged depression and she borrows excessively in order to
be able to spend extravagantly enabling herself to afford
luxuries that would otherwise have been a practical unreality.
Emma¶s vision of herself enjoying the delicacies of the upper
classes prompts herself to be surrounded with artifacts from that
world.

Once it is confirmed that no benevolent force comes to help her,

she feels, worse than ever before, a sense of abandonment and
when she tries to talk to the local priest but cannot make him
understand her situation. Her efforts to explain her unfulfilled
needs to him are wasted and having misunderstood the nature and
gravity of Emma¶s problem insists that all one needs is to be
warm and well-fed. Her attempts at reconciliation with God in
search of spiritual solace, once again mislead by her romantic
notion of religion, is not answered by the divine forces in the
way she was anticipating it; no sensation of rapture comes down
to her from the divine and she is left with a ³ vague
consciousness of having been cheated. God¶s a bsence/indifference
is therefore, as emphasised by Susana Lee, is a ³foundational
event in Ê
   , the explicit reason for Emma¶s
contaminated existence´. (Lee, 2001) However, Emma too does not
have a Christian essence in her making; it is true enough that
she is passionately kissing the crucifix yet this speaks for
nothing more than the dominant sensualist in Emma obsessed with a
romantic version of Christianity.

In my analysis, I have tried to locate Flaubert¶s Ê
   

 
the popular notion that it is a tale of unrealised dreams
and meaningless passion. On the contrary, the picture offered by
this tragic novel of adultery and remorse is a more complex one:
a woman¶s tragedy of circumstances² individual, social, physical,
psychological, internal, external and so on and so forth. Many of
such circumstances are indeed beyond the control of Emma Bovary
though she is the one and only culprit for all her miseries in

0
the way her novel is commonly understood. Flaubert¶s compelling
portrayal of this desperately unfulfilled w oman places his novel
firmly at the pinnacle of the naturalistic tradition as it
engages the informed reader in a tragic study of free will and
determinism.

 9

Flaubert, G. (1857) Madame Bovary. London: ÿenguin ÿopular

Classics

Lee, S. (2001). Flaubert's Blague Supérieure: The Secular World

of ³Madame Bovary´. Symposium Vol.54.4, 203 -218.

Lloyd, R. (1989). Flaubert: ' Madame Bovary '. London: Unwin

Hyman.

Mardner, E. (1997). Trauma, Addiction, and Temporal Bulimia in

³Madame Bovary" . Diacritics, 49-61.

Tanner, T. (1979). ³Flaubert's Ê
  ´. In Adultery in the

Novel: Contract and Transgression . Maryland: The John Hopkins
University ÿress.

Woolf, V. (1929). A Room of One's Own . New Delhi: UBSÿD.

c