Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary

The main character of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary, Emma Bovary, interacts with several men in the course of her story. Emma has a belief in high ideals and a romantic and adventurous life, and she is always seeking something other than what she has. Her high-mindedness could be a source of ambition and a spur to greater effort to achieve the ideal, but in this novel it makes Emma dissatisfied, hyper-critical of her surroundings and the people she knows, always ready to move from one person to another, and ultimately foolish. The affairs she has are with men she believes to be as noble and grand as the character of fiction, but here again she is bound to be disappointed in the reality and is betrayed again and again as a consequence. Rodolphe betrays her openly by disappearing, while Leon betrays her with the reality of his personality so that she becomes bored once more and drops him. In truth, Emma's affairs could not be seen as noble or grand in the romantic tradition except that she is so bored with her life with Charles. After all, Rodolphe is a farmer, not a knight, and the affair with him is tawdry one rather then the romantic seduction of novels. Leon is a lot like Emma, always looking for something more romantic. He finds that--and a good deal more confidence--in Paris, but he is pretending to a degree of sophistication he never possesses. He can impress Emma for a time, but neither of these people really understands the world to which they aspire.

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ectic between literature and sensation; the movement between the two crests a rhythm less immediately obvious but more profound that the alternation between exalted fantasies and flat realities (Bersani 24). Leon Dupuis is a very different sort of person, a member of the middle class, a clerk in a notary's office, and a man with high ideals of his own that come crashing down in his affair with Emma. He is a more imposing figure than Charles and appeals to Emma's romantic illusions. he also has a mind that appeals to her more, and the two are drawn together by their common interests in the arts, in music, and in the fashions of the times. His attraction to Emma is more than physical, and he falls in love with her. He is not using her as did Rodolphe, and in fact it is more that he is being used by her as she has now taken on some of the characteristics of Rodolphe, altered to fit her romantic and female persona. Emma does not want an affair in a physical sense in any case, and she and Leon have an intellectual affair when they are first together. This becomes the framework for their later relationship, which begins some three years later. By that time, Leon is more experienced with women, but he once again succumbs to Emma

Category: Literature - F