Flaubert's Criticism of the Bourgeois in Madame Bovary

When Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary was first published in 1857, the author was brought to trial on charges that his novel had offended "public and religious morality" (LaCapra 726). The story is concerned with the character of Emma Bovary, a country doctor's wife who has passionate desires for both romance and material things. These desires cause her to commit adultery and lead her into a hopeless state of debt. In the end, when she is rejected for the second time by one of her lovers, she commits suicide by eating a handful of arsenic. In this tragic tale, Flaubert did not seek to simply create a blatant characterization of immorality. Rather, he used Emma's character as a means of expressing his own views on society. In particular, Flaubert was making a commentary on the excesses of the middle class.

Flaubert was critical of the superficial and mundane values of the "bourgeois" middle class. As noted by Russell, the author had great contempt for the mannerisms of this social group. In fact, "the bourgeois that dull, graceless animal, petty, materialistic, clicheridden could make him feel physically ill" (Russell 6). Ironically, Flaubert himself came from a middle class background. Because of this, it is apparent that he was making a highly personal statement in his condemnation of the characters in Madame Bovary. Flaubert once claimed: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" ("that's me"). Thus, the author was expressing a recognition of his own middle class de

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serves the whiteness of her fingernails, the shape of her hands, and the beauty of her eyes (Flaubert 28). Later, over dinner, he notices her lips, neck, hair, ears and cheeks. In this way, Charles apparently falls in love with the various parts of Emma's body rather than with her personality as a whole. This establishes the idea that Emma is merely an object in the eyes of the men she loves. Ironically, even the books that inspired her notions about romance were all written by men. In the words of Ginsburg: "The heroines in the novels Emma read are the images of perfect femininity as conceived by men, in response to their desires. When Emma dreams of becoming like one of those heroines, she desires to become the ideal object of a man's desire" (133134). Emma herself seems to be aware of this fact. Thus, in a conversation with Leon, she mentions the feeling of experiencing "a hundred and one things that have a claim on you." When Leon says that he understands this feeling, Emma replies: "I doubt if you can. You're not a woman" (Flaubert 243). Because she sees herself as an object of male desire, Emma's suicide is triggered by Rodolphe's refusal to help her in time of need. As Levi notes, Emma does not commit sui

Category: Literature - F