Madame Bovary
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| Madame Bovary book cover | |
| Author | Gustave Flaubert |
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| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | La Revue de Paris (in serial) & Michel Levy Freres (in book form, 2 Vols) |
| Released | 1856 (in serial) & April 1857 (in book form) |
| Media Type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
- For the film, see Madame Bovary (1949 film)
Madame Bovary is a novel by Gustave Flaubert that was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialised in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made it notorious. After the acquittal on 7 February, it became a bestseller in book form in April 1857, and is now seen as one of the first modern realistic novels.
The novel focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was notoriously perfectionistic about his writing and claimed to always be searching for le mot juste (the right word).
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[edit] Plot summary
Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. A doctor, Charles Bovary, marries a beautiful farm girl, Emma Rouault. She is filled with a desire for luxury and romance, which she gets from reading popular novels. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy. Emma believes that the birth of a baby boy will "cure" their marriage. After Emma gets pregnant and eventually gives birth to a daughter, she believes her life is virtually over.
Charles decides that Emma needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes (now Tôtes) into an equally stultifying village, Yonville (traditionally based on the town of Ry). Emma flirts with one of the first people she meets, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life." When he leaves to study in Paris, Emma begins an affair with a rich landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger. Swept away by romantic fantasy, she makes a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, does not love her, and breaks off the plan the evening before it was to take place, with a letter at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that she falls deathly ill, and for a time turns to religion.
Emma and Charles attend the opera in Rouen one night, and Emma reencounters Léon. They begin an affair: Emma travels to the city each week to meet him, while Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons. Meanwhile, Emma is spending exorbitant amounts of money. When Emma's debts begin to pile up and people begin to suspect her adultery, she sees suicide as her only means of escape. She swallows arsenic and dies, painfully and slowly. The loyal Charles is distraught, even more so after finding the letters that Rodolphe wrote to her. Soon after, he dies, leaving their daughter an orphan.
[edit] Chapter-by-chapter
[edit] Part One
- Charles Bovary's childhood, student days and first marriage
- Charles meets Rouault and daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
- Charles proposes to Emma
- The wedding
- The new household at Tostes
- An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
- Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
- The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
- Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move; they find out she is pregnant
[edit] Part Two
- Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
- Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
- Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
- A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
- Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
- Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
- Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
- The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
- Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
- Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
- Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
- Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
- Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
- Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
- Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucia di Lammermoor
[edit] Part Three
- Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; censored cab-ride
- Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior has died; Lheureux's bill
- She visits Léon in Rouen
- She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
- Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
- Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
- Emma begs for money from several people
- Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
- Emma lies in state
- The funeral
- Charles finds letters; his death
[edit] Characters
[edit] Emma Bovary
Emma is the novel's protagonist and is the main source of the novel's title (although Charles's mother is also referred to as Madame Bovary). She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into two extra-marital love affairs as well as causing her to accrue an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide.
Flaubert’s treatment of his protagonist is ambivalent. He ridicules Emma’s romantic tendencies and lambasts them as not only impractical, but ultimately harmful. At the same time, however, Flaubert never seems to put any blame on Emma herself. Instead he seems to indicate that Emma is incapable of freeing herself from these traits. Indeed, Emma herself questions, and seems perplexed by, why she is unable to be happy with her life. Also, despite his critical view of Emma, Flaubert is equally critical in his depictions of the country bourgeois who surround and foil Emma.
[edit] Charles Bovary
Emma’s husband, Charles Bovary, is a very simple and common man. He is a country doctor by profession, but is, as in everything else, not very good at it. He is in fact not qualified enough to be termed a doctor, but is instead an officier de santé, or "health officer". When he is persuaded by others to attempt a difficult operation on a patient's clubfoot, the effort is an enormous failure, and his patient's leg must be amputated by a better doctor.
Charles adores his wife and finds her faultless, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He never suspects her affairs and gives her complete control over his finances, thereby securing his own ruin. Despite Charles's complete devotion to Emma, she despises him as he is the epitome of all that is dull and common. When Charles discovers Emma's deceptions after her death he is completely devastated and dies soon after.
[edit] Monsieur Homais
Monsieur Homais is the town pharmasis. He is materialistic and self-centered. Though a common man, he thinks highly of himself and seeks personal attention and recognition, often by writing pompous and banal commentaries on town events. Flaubert uses Monsieur Homais as a figure head with which to mock the shallowness of bourgeois society.
[edit] Léon Dupuis
First befriending Emma when she moves to Yonville, Léon seems a perfect match for her. He shares her romantic ideals as well as her disdain for common life. He worships Emma from afar before leaving to study law in Paris. A chance encounter brings the two together several years later and this time they begin an affair. Though happy at first, after a time they are unable to continue to live up to each others romantic expectations. Emma and Léon’s relationship is one more cynical commentary on romantic ideals.
[edit] Rodolphe Boulanger
Rodolphe is a wealthy local man who seduces Emma as one more addition to a long string of mistresses. Though occasionally charmed by Emma, Rodolphe feels little true emotion towards her. Certainly nothing like the deep passion and hope she pins on him. As Emma becomes more and more desperate, Rodolphe loses interest and worries about her lack of caution. He eventually ends their relationship.
[edit] Monsieur Lheureux
A manipulative and sly merchant who continually convinces Emma to buy things on credit and borrow money from him. Lheureux plays Emma masterfully and eventually leads her so far into debt as to cause her financial ruin and subsequent suicide.
[edit] Setting
The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert’s realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma.
It has been calculated that the novel begins in October, 1827 and ends in August, 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interepreted as social criticism.
Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “Realism”.
Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma’s romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.
[edit] Style
The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialised, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. This decision caused some to accuse Flaubert of glorifying adultery and creating a scandal (a rather groundless charge considering Emma's perpetual disappointment and grim fate).
Realism aims for verisimilitude through a focus on character development. The movement was a reaction to the idealism of Romanticism, a mode of thought which rules Emma's actions. She becomes increasingly dissatisfied since her larger-than-life fantasies are, by definition, not able to be realized. Flaubert declared that much of what is in the novel is in his own life by saying, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("I am Madame Bovary"). He was referring to the novel as a whole and not just the character of Emma.
Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire culture of Flaubert's time period, this being clearly illustrated by the focus on the absurdity of the scientific "rational" figures, the uselessness of the church rites, and the self-serving bourgeois Lheureux (who tricks Emma into buying off credit from him).
[edit] Theme
The Inadequacy of Language
Madame Bovary explores the possibility that the written word fails to capture even a small part of the depth of a human life. Flaubert uses a variety of techniques to show how language is often an inadequate medium for expressing emotions and ideas. The characters’ frequent inability to communicate with each other is emblematic of the fact that words do not perfectly describe what they signify. In the first chapter, for example, Charles’s teacher thinks he says his name is “Charbovari.” He fails to make his own name understood. This inadequacy of speech is something Emma will encounter again and again as she tries to make her distress known to the priest or to express her love to Rodolphe. It is also present when Charles reads the letter from Rodolphe and misinterprets it as a note of platonic affection. The lies that fill Madame Bovary contribute to the sense of language’s inadequacy in the novel, and to the notion that words may be more effective for the purposes of obscuring the truth or conveying its opposite, than for representing the truth itself. Emma’s life is described as “a tissue of lies.” She invents story after story to prevent her husband from discovering her affairs. Similarly, Rodolphe tells so many lies about his love for Emma that he assumes her words are also insincere. Flaubert points out that by lying the lovers make it impossible for words ever to touch at the truth in things. The strong sense of the inadequacy of language is in part a reaction against the school of realism. Although Flaubert was in some senses a realist, he also believed it was wrong to claim that realism provided a more accurate picture of life than romanticism. He deploys ironic romantic descriptions to establish a tension between various characters’ experience of events and the real aspects of life. By combining ironic romanticism and literal realistic narration, Flaubert captures his characters and their struggles more fully than a strictly literal or a wholesale romantic style would allow.
" . . . and human language is like a cracked kettledrum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity."
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. Ultimately, 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, who allows Emma access to the cupboard where the arsenic is kept. Even to take her own life, she must resort to sexual power, using Justin’s love for her to convince him to do what she wants.
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. Their tastes were characterized as gaudily materialistic. 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. In the pharmacist Homais’s long-winded, know-it-all speeches, Flaubert mocks the bourgeois class’s pretensions to knowledge and learning and its faith in the power of technologies that it doesn’t completely understand. But Homais is not just funny; he is also dangerous. When he urges Charles to try a new medical procedure on Hippolyte, the patient acquires gangrene and then loses his leg.
[edit] Adaptations
Madame Bovary has been made into several films, beginning with Jean Renoir's 1933 version. It has also been the subject of multiple television miniseries and made-for-TV movies. The most notable of these adaptations was the 1949 film produced by MGM. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, it starred Jennifer Jones in the title role, co-starring James Mason, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, and Gene Lockhart. There was also a TV adaptation in 2000 for Masterpiece Theatre, starring Frances O'Connor and Hugh Bonneville.
[edit] Trivia
- In Chapter 1.2, Emma's eyes are described thus: "although they were brown, they would appear black"; in Chapter 1.5, they are described thus: "They were black when she was in shadow and dark blue in full daylight"; once they are described as having "layer upon layer of colours"; and numerously they are described as black. This discrepancy, and the issue of its importance, is explored in a chapter of British novelist Julian Barnes' novel Flaubert's Parrot entitled "Emma Bovary's Eyes". The narrator argues that this should in no way be viewed as a continuity error, as one overzealous critic intended, but merely a stylistic affectation.
- In the ninth-to-last paragraph of the book, the insects Flaubert mentions (cantharides) are Soldier beetles or "leatherwings", not Spanish flies (which take no interest in pollen). This common translation mistake arises because Spanish flies (leaf-eating beetles once harvested to make medicines and aphrodisiacs) are called cantharides in French but are not members of the family Cantharidae.
[edit] See also
- Madame Bovary (1949 film)
- Perpetual Orgy
- Senso
- Anna Karenina
- Don Quixote
- Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District
- Molly Bloom's Soliloquy
[edit] External links
- Madame Bovary, available freely at Project Gutenberg
- Searchable online version of text
- Madame Bovary, the 1933 film version directed by Jean Renoir, with Valentine Tessier. at IMDb
- Film of 1949. By Vincente Minnelli and actress Jennifer Jones as Madame Bovary.
- Madame Bovary, the 1991 film adaptation by Claude Chabrol at IMDb
- Dr.Fajardo-Acosta's World Literature Website
- Commentary on Madame Bovary by A. S. Byatt
- Commentary on Madame Bovary by Erica Jong
- List of Madame Bovary films
- Madame Bovary: A Study Guide
