Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary, the debut novel by French author Gustave Flaubert. The novel tells
the story of Emma Bovary, a young woman who marries a country doctor and becomes
disillusioned with her provincial life. Seeking passion and luxury, Emma engages in
extramarital affairs, accumulating debt and disillusionment.

The Powerlessness of Women

Emma Bovary’s hope that her baby will be a man because “a woman is always
hampered” is just one of the many instances in the novel in which Flaubert
demonstrates an intimate understanding of the plight of women in his time. We see
throughout Madame Bovary how Emma’s male companions possess the power to
change her life for better or worse—a power that she herself lacks. Even Charles
contributes to Emma’s powerlessness. His laziness prevents him from becoming a good
doctor, and his incompetence prevents him from advancing into a higher social stratum
that might satisfy Emma’s yearnings. As a result, Emma is stuck in a country town
without much money. Rodolphe, who possesses the financial power to whisk Emma
away from her life, abandons her, and, as a woman, she is incapable of fleeing on her
own. Leon at first seems similar to Emma. Both are discontented with country life, and
both dream of bigger and better things. But because Leon is a man, he has the power to
actually fulfill his dream of moving to the city, whereas Emma must stay in Yonville,
shackled to a husband and child.

however, the novel’s moral structure requires that Emma assume responsibility for her
own actions. She can’t blame everything on the men around her. She freely chooses to
be unfaithful to Charles, and her infidelities wound him fatally in the end. On the other
hand, in Emma’s situation, the only two choices she has are to take lovers or to remain
faithful in a dull marriage. Once she has married Charles, the choice to commit adultery
is Emma’s only means of exercising power over her own destiny. While men have
access to wealth and property, the only currency Emma possesses to influence others
is her body, a form of capital she can trade only in secret with the price of shame and
the added expense of deception. When she pleads desperately for money to pay her
debts, men offer the money in return for sexual favors. Eventually, she tries to win back
Rodolphe as a lover if he will pay her debts. Even her final act of suicide is made
possible by a transaction funded with her physical charms, which are dispensed toward
Justin

The Failures of the Bourgeoisie

Emma’s disappointments stem in great part from her dissatisfaction with the world of the
French bourgeoisie. She aspires to have taste that is more refined and sophisticated
than that of her class. This frustration reflects a rising social and historical trend of the
last half of the nineteenth century. At the time Flaubert was writing, the word “bourgeois”
referred to the middle class: people who lacked the independent wealth and ancestry of
the nobility, but whose professions did not require them to perform physical labor to
earn their living. They indulged themselves as their means allowed, but without
discrimination. The mediocrity of the bourgeoisie was frustrating to -Flaubert, and he
used Emma Bovary’s disgust with her class as a way of conveying his own hatred for
the middle class. Madame Bovary shows how ridiculous, stifling, and potentially harmful
the attitudes and trappings of the bourgeoisie can be.

Character analysis
Emma bovary
Emma embarks directly down a path to moral and financial ruin over the course of the
novel. She is very beautiful, as we can tell by the way several men fall in love with her,
but she is morally corrupt and unable to accept and appreciate the realities of her life.
Since her girlhood in a convent, she has read romantic novels that feed her discontent
with her ordinary life. She dreams of the purest, most impossible forms of love and
wealth, ignoring whatever beauty is present in the world around her. Flaubert once said,
“Madame Bovary is me,” and many scholars believe that he was referring to a
weakness he shared with his character for romance, and melancholy.

A country girl educated in a convent and married to Charles Bovary at a young age. She
has a daughter, Berthe, but lacks maternal instincts and is often annoyed with the child.
Occasionally, guilt or a memory of her simple childhood causes her to repent, and she
becomes devoutly religious and dedicates herself to her husband and child. Such fits of
conscience are short-lived. Emma’s desire for passion and pleasure leads her into
extramarital affairs with Rodolphe and Leon. In addition, she runs up enormous debts
against her husband’s property and commits suicide when she realizes she will be
unable to repay them.

Charles Bovary
A country doctor, kind, but simple, dull, and unremarkable. Charles is a terrible doctor
who manages simple cases decently but is incapable of performing difficult operations.
For example, when he tries to operate on Hippolyte’s leg, it develops gangrene and has
to be removed. Charles dotes on his wife, Emma, who can do no wrong in his eyes.

Despite his deep love for Emma, he doesn’t understand her. Her looks and dress
captivate him, but he remains oblivious to her personality. His adoration of her often
leads him to act with baffling innocence. He fails to detect her extramarital affairs with
Rodolphe and Leon, which are so poorly concealed that they become the subjects of
town gossip. When Emma begins to run up debts, he grants her power of attorney over
all his property, an act that leads to his financial ruin. After Emma’s suicide, he learns of
her infidelities and, soon after, dies a broken man.

Leon
Emma’s friend in Yonville, who later becomes her lover. When Leon is a law clerk in
Yonville, he shares many of Emma’s romantic preconceptions and her love for
sentimental novels. He falls in love with her but moves away to Paris to study law, partly
because he considers their love impossible as long as she remains married. When
Emma meets him later in Rouen, his time in the city has made him more sure of himself.
He now perceives Emma to be unsophisticated and thinks he can win her love.
Although Emma believes him to be cosmopolitan, Flaubert presents him as awkward
and full of himself. Drawn to his newfound urban sophistication, Emma begins an affair
with him. At first, they succeed in living up to one another’s romantic ideals. However,
as the affair progresses, Emma and Leon grow increasingly bored and disgusted with
one another. He cannot help her when she is in monetary distress and makes excuses
for failing to help her financially. Leon marries shortly after Emma’s death.

Rodolphe Boulanger
Emma’s first lover, a wealthy landowner with an estate near Yonville. Rodolphe is

shrewd, selfish, and manipulative. He has had scores of lovers and believes Emma to

be no more sincere than any of them. He plots his seduction of Emma with strategic

precision, begins an affair with her, and then abandons her when he becomes bored of

her romantic fancies and emotional demands.