Madame Bovary Essay

Question: Flaubert’s Madame Bovary provides a very early and incredibly prescient critique of the effects of mass media in an individualistic age. Do you agree?

To a certain extent, I would agree with the above statement. On a basic level, Madame Bovary functions as a criticism of romance novels. At the time, romance novels were one of the few forms of popular, mass entertainment. In Madame Bovary, Flaubert implies that these novels make us dissatisfied with our everyday lives by giving us unrealistic expectations of love and by making us lust after wealth and excitement. Emma, “[qui] se graissa...les mains à cette poussière des vieux cabinets de lecture” wanted her life to be like a great romance novel. When her impossible dreams are shattered, she commits suicide. Flaubert's criticism seems clear enough. But is Flaubert in a position to criticise? Madame Bovary is problematic in that it is a novel which is trying to criticise other novels. Isn't it hypocritical to blame Emma for getting all her ideas about how to live from books when he himself is trying to tell his reader how to live (or how not to live)?

Flaubert deals with this problem by admitting that yes, if you read this book and go along with what it says, then you are indeed behaving like Emma. He illustrates this to us through his style of narration. Flaubert writes in the 3rd person but colours the narration with the views and language of the subject of the narration (style indirect libre). Thus the narrative has qualities of both a 1st person and a 3rd person narration. A reader automatically identifies with the narrator, therefore in a objective 3rd person narration we tend to judge the characters, whereas in a 1st person narration, we are more likely to sympathise with whoever the narrator is. In Madame Bovary, with its unusual narrative style, we have enough distance to judge the characters but we are also forced to see things through their eyes. We can condemn Emma for her naï vety in believing all that she reads in books, but if we are forced to see her point of view, to identify with her, maybe recognise some of ourselves in her, then we too become guilty.

He also tries to avoid hypocrisy and comparisons with other romantic novels by refusing to glamourise Emma and her demise. He shows us the unpleasantness of her death, in all its gruesome detail. After all, the last thing he wants is to turn her into some sort of romantic heroine in the mould of Romeo and Juliet.

So was Flaubert really criticising mass media in an individualistic age? To be sure, Emma's dissatisfaction sprung in part from a feeling that she was superior to her surroundings, that she was an especially sensitive being, that she alone was exceptional. (This way of thinking came to be known as "bovarysme".) Perhaps the novels she read were the equivalent of ads today, or programmes on TV which show us the lives of the rich and famous. Emma was made to believe that she needed to have a more stylish house and clothes in order to be happy, that she deserved it. In the novel she would lose her temper at Charles for not being able to provide for her. But although they were poor, they had all the necessities. As for the novels' idealised depictions of love, not only are they unrealistic, in a way, they are also unromantic. Love in her romantic novels only seems to happen to exotic counts and rich Parisians. Emma is thus made to believe that love can only occur in certain settings:

"Elle confondait, dans son désir, les sensualités du luxe avec les joies du cœur, l‘elegance des habitudes et les délicatesses du sentiment...les soupirs au clair de lune, les longues étreintes...ne se séperaient donc pas du balcon des grands châteaux qui sont plein de loisirs..."

Consequently she falls for wealthy Rudolphe's empty words and Leon's clichés, but doesn't appreciate Charles real love for her. The novels blind her to what she has. On top of this, Emma's individualism is shown to be to the detriment of others. She is too self-absorbed to feel much pity for Charles, or her daughter Berthe.

Is Flaubert therefore telling us not to behave like Emma? Not to be a romantic dreamer longing for things you don't have? Should Emma be more realistic, for example, like Charles? This is unlikely as Charles is not seen in the most favourable light either. Although he is kind and generous, and Flaubert is keen to stress this, he is dull, dispassionate and a failure in his profession. Due to the style of narration I mentioned earlier, it could be argued that this is merely Emma's opinion of him. But even from the very start of the book, which is narrated by a schoolboy in his class, Charles is depicted as clumsy and ridiculous.

On the other hand, although she is a bit dreamy, Emma is intelligent. For a woman at the time, she was well educated from her convent days. Several of the townspeople comment on her cleverness and she spends a lot of her spare time reading. She efficiently writes polite reminder notices to Charles' patients to settle their bills, and in the early days of her marriage, when she was still bothered to look after the house and its finances, she did it well. She also manages to keep Charles in the dark about her affairs, however whether this is down to cleverness on her part, or stupidity on his, it is hard to say. As well as that, the fact that so many men end up falling for Emma must mean that she is not without her charm.

“...si douce à la fois et si réservée, que l‘on se sentait prés d’elle pris par un charme glacial...”

And maybe her haughty superiority towards everyone else in the town is simply because she is superior. This novel is full of anti-bourgeoisie sentiments and Flaubert can barely conceal his contempt at times for their petty snobberies, their rustic ways, and their useless occupations (Monsieur Binet and the napkin rings he made on his lathe, its constant, pointless hum providing a backdrop to all events in Yonville (Bloom 124)). Many of the townspeople are either dull or irritating, or both if they're Homais, so wasn't Emma right to dream of escape? After all, being a dreamer isn't necessarily a bad thing. It means that Emma was imaginative, and being a dreamer goes hand in hand with an artistic temperament. Perhaps then Flaubert modelled Madame Bovary to a certain extent on himself?

Flaubert is famously quoted as saying "Madame Bovary, c'est moi, d'aprés moi." Although Madame Bovary is clearly not a biography of Flaubert's life, certain elements of this statement ring true. Like Emma, Flaubert too suffered from nervous fits, which at the time, would have been considered a feminine illness. Also, Emma's behaviour in the novel would have been considered quite masculine. On her wedding night, we are subtly told that she was the more sexually aggressive partner:

“C’était lui plutôt que l’on eût pris pour la vierge de la veille, tandis que la mariée ne laissait rien découvrir...”

She can be very aggressive as well in the way she tells Charles what to do, and her various affairs indicate that she had a high libido. In a way then, Flaubert and Emma are both somewhat androgynous (Porter 7) Despite the gender difference, it is plausible that they had similar personalities. If Flaubert had such a psychological affinity with her, then criticising her would be like criticising himself. Nobody likes to criticise themselves, so perhaps the message of Madame Bovary is not that Emma was wrong to be a dreamer. Instead, maybe he is trying to say that Emma's problems stemmed not from the fact that she was a dreamer but from the fact that she didn't have the power to do anything about her dreams because she was a woman.

As a woman, she had very little power or control over her own destiny. Emma can't make any serious money on her own terms so she is forced to lend from unscrupulous types. She obsesses over things probably because she is a capable woman who is bored with no job to occupy her. She can't move away from a town which she hates like Leon because if she were to leave her husband, she would have no means of supporting herself (except if she was with another man, like Rodolphe). It could be argued that she doesn't really love either Leon or Rudolphe, rather they are a way of escaping the torment of her own life with Charles by providing a distraction. Furthermore, her affairs are the only way that allow her to rebel. The rest of the time, she has to keep a porcelain face and be a perfect housewife. Emma can really hate Charles sometimes, in the strongest sense of the word. At dinnertime, she often sits across the table from him quietly simmering with rage, his every knife scrape antagonising her still further. That is why now and then, she simply cracks under the strain. And so she breaks down in fits of weeping, or else takes to bed, which everyone else attributes to her mysterious “nervous” disorder. As the novel says:

“...elle était pleine de convoitises, de rage, de haine. Cette robe aux plis droits cachait un cœur bouleversé, et ces lèvres si pudiques n‘en racontaient pas la tourmenté.”

When Emma is pregnant she wants to have a son because “Un homme, au moins, est libre”
Perhaps then Madame Bovary is less a criticism of romantic novels and the way they give people notions and aspirations above their station, but more an indictment of how women were treated in the 19th Century. However if we say that then we are completely ignoring the fact that in spite of her sympathetic treatment in the novel, Emma Bovary is still a complete misogynistic stereotype- A clingy, neurotic woman who shops herself to financial ruin. When she is given some degree of power, as in when she takes control over the house's finances, she messes it up. This novel seems to be sympathetic yet scathing towards her in equal measure.

Consequently, it is difficult to say whether or not Madame Bovary is a critique of the effects of romance novels i.e. mass media or whether it is a critique of the treatment of women in 19th century society. I believe that it would be a disservice to the complexity of this novel to try and decide definitively which one it is. There is a case for and against each argument. In this way, although Madame Bovary forces the reader to question, it does not provide all the answers....






Bibliography:
1. "Madame Bovary" Author: Gustave Flaubert. Publisher: Garnier-Flammarion. Place of Publication: Paris. Publication Year: 1966.
2. "Gustave Flaubert." Editor: Harold Bloom. Publisher: Chelsea House. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1989
3. "A Gustave Flaubert Encyclopedia." Editor: Laurence M. Porter. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2001
4. Article Title: Laurence M. Porter and Eugene F. Gray: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary A Reference Guide. Author: Timothy Raser. Journal Title: International Fiction Review. Volume: 32. Issue: 1-2. Publication Year: 2005
5. "Women in Literature: Reading through the Lens of Gender." Editors: Jerilyn Fisher, Ellen S. Silber. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 2003.