The most important use of Fate is acknowledged by the narrator in the novel. It is when Charles says that Fate is to blame for it had willed it this way. "[Charles] even made a phrase, the only one he'd ever made: 'Fate willed it this way'" (Flaubert 255). Flaubert's emphasis on the use of fate makes our assertion about role of fate even more certain. Fate acts as the force that brings Falubert's characters to their roots and doesn't let them break free. Thibaudet discusses the use of fate in the novel:
The development of the action, in Madame Bovary, does not occur by a simple succession of events but by the concentric expansion of a theme [...] the process reflects the very motion of fate. We call 'fated' a development that was already contained in a previous situation but without being apparent. We have a feeling of fatality when we feel that life was not worth living, because we have come back to exactly the same point from which we started, and discovered that the road which was to be one of discovery turns out to be the circular path of our prison walls (De Man 375).
The circle in which the characters travel is also indicative of the heavy influence of fate in the lives of people. Emma can never go where she wants; her life begins and ends with Charles even though she tries very hard to break free. It is indeed the circularity which makes you notice the role of fate. Why doesn't Emma end up with one of her lovers instead of the boring Charles? The fate must have had something...
The fatefulness of the incidents is clear in the way Emma is always thrown back to her dull and dreary life and then the only way she can break free is by killing herself and ridding herself of the fated circularity of fate. Her need for breaking free of the circle is often very pronounced in the novel. For example at one point during her illness, she looks for signs of hope from heavens above:
Emma felt some power pass over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling [...] it seemed to her that her being, mounting towards God, would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into vapor [...] Amid the illusions of her hope, she saw a state of purity floating above the earth, mingling with heaven (Flaubert 154).
But this euphoria is short lived and she soon realized that no such escape was available to her and that fate had wanted her to stay imprisoned in the circularity of her existence. "She was searching for faith; but no delights descended from the heavens, and she arose with aching limbs and the vague feeling that she was being cheated" (Flaubert 155)
Works Cited
Thibaudet, Albert. "Madame Bovary." Trans. Paul de Man. Madame Bovary Backgrounds and Sources Essays in Criticism. Ed. Paul de Man. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1965. 371-383.
Madame Bovary Backgrounds and Sources Essays in Criticism. Ed. Paul de Man. New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1965.
