Sign Up Now
Get instant access to over 1 million+ study documents
OR
Already registered? click here to login
By creating your account, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and student honor code.
Hedda Gabler and Madame Bovary
Nineteenth century literature from Europe is lined with exploration of the nature of human existence and one area of particular interest to literalists had been the female gender. It had been a period of the beginning of the feminist movement and the society's appreciation of women's existence. For this reason authors such as Flaubert, Ibsen and Henry James make up female characters to express their concerns about the many dimensions of female existence that have remained obscured from the society. In the works Madame Bovary by Flaubert and Hedda Gabler by Ibsen they portrayed the spiritual side of the female characters in such a manner that has never been explored before.
Discussion
In Madame Bovary, Flaubert attempts to portray the scientific aspect of the reason why Emma, his central character act the way she does. First he introduces the non-spiritual environment and continues to set Emma in a society that is unconscious and unaware of human needs. Flaubert tries to present the message that it is the society which creates good and bad people, the moral and unmoral, and the aware and unaware. Emma remains unconscious of her surrounding because society treats people like her as...
In the initial stages of the book her existence is characterized by social orders and how she conforms to it; she is unaware of her spiritual self. But as Flaubert works towards the transcendence, he instills in Emma the gradual awareness of the spiritual world and consequently she rediscovers herself in the spirituality of God (Lee 2001). Ibsen's Hedda is similar in the sense that she too is privy to the social trappings of brutalizing human existence and the dehumanizing process that the Tesman's society exert on her. Although she is considered to be charming, witty and a socialite but she is at the same time proud, banal and materialistic. Like Emma she is enamored by the social trappings so that she becomes lost in the materialistic side of society (Norseng, 1999).
Another issue that has come forward when considering the work of Flaubert is Emma's inclination towards God and religion. It seems that Flaubert in the midst of the 19th century chaos finds it important to create objectivity among the people by addressing the importance of spiritual pursuit especially among women. Emma for example in the novel is attracted to the house of God when she feels disembodied from…
References
The Norton Anthology of World Literature Second Edition.
Lee, Susanna. Flaubert's Blague Superieure: The Secular World Of Madame Bovary.(Gustave Flaubert) Symposium; 2001.
Norseng, Mary Kay. Suicide and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Scandinavian Studies, 1999.
Madame Bovary The male who conquers and protects his territory, the representative a whole social class: the bourgeoisie, the predator and the opportunist, this is how the pharmacist of Yonville, Homais, one of the most despicable characters in Flaubert's novel, Mme Bovary, can be described in short. As the best suited character for a battle between classes, Homais triumphs over everything. With Homais, Flaubert succeeded to create the essence of what his
In service to this "religion," she is expected to offer her entire self. Ultimately, although unintentionally, she quite literally gives her life in this servitude. In The Awakening, religion also plays an important role in the female self-concept. Adele for example specifically refers to the Bible when attempting to convince Edna of the merits of self-sacrifice for husband and children. However, it is also true that Adele has no concept
Denied marriage, the only other societal option is suicide. Society is the agent of her demise, not Lilly: "her life is not unpleasant until a chain of events destroys her with the thoroughness and indifference of a meat grinder." Goetz, Thomas H. "Flaubert, Gustave." World Book Online Reference Center. 2006. [1 Oct 2006] http://www.aolsvc.worldbook.aol.com/wb/Article?id=ar200180. Biographical overview, provides insight into Flaubert's role as a uniquely realistic writer, thus stressing Emma's economic and moral
"(Flaubert, 235) Her spleen seems to spring from an almost metaphysic lassitude with life. Emma is never satisfied, and for her, as Flaubert puts it, no pleasure was good enough, there was always something missing. If Emma cannot kiss her lovers without wishing for a greater delight, it is obvious that she cannot cling to anything real, but only to the ideal dreams. She desperately tries to find a responsible for
The whole of the sequence leads one to believe that Charles is so daft that he would put his own life, not only his reputation on the line if Emma believed that it should be so. Charles from this point forward in the work becomes a piteous example of a spineless fool, and Emma likes him even less for it and therefore becomes even more distant. When Emma begins her
There is a feminine side to his masculinity, that is, and this passage shows that Emma has an equal share in this dichotomy. Hours after she is back at home, after Charles has left her alone in the house to attend to something, Emma shuts herself in her room to contemplate her experience and her joy. It is here that the realization of her own feminine power, and the active