Flaubert's Madame Bovary: themes and literary analysis

Flaubert Madame Bovary

Realism came as a counter balance for romanticism. It came up "against all formalized and aestheticized images of things" ((Nineteenth-century literary realism: through the looking-glass, p.3). With the hindsight one has today, realism appears as a highly formalized art, but at the time it developed it fit the criteria for a movement that did not fit the canons previously imposed by the art of writing. The French literature in the nineteenth century was the first to make way for a new movement, a reaction and also a natural sequence to romanticism. Katherine Kearns admits that realist fiction is an oxymoron, but she points out that although objectivity is the main concern of the writer who chooses realism for his work, there are no identical two accounts on reality since it depends on each accountant's point-of-view. Historically and geographically, realism can be traced as having originated in France, in the mid-nineteenth century (Villanueva, Theories of literary realism, p.1), but the concept of realism is far more reaching than the historical and geographical context.

Katherine Kearns points out that "the realist author articulates multiple obligations: a duty to faithful representation, a duty to the truthful treatment of material, a duty to the everyday and the ordinary, and so on" (Nineteenth-century literary realism: through the looking-glass, p.3). So, the essence of realism resides in its focus on the ordinary in the contemporary society, on the features that demystify and are true to human existence in its most common aspects and in the objectivity the writer is expected to show when treating the subjects.

The French revolution and industrialization were two factors that competed to the birth of a new approach in art. The revolution was perhaps better suited for the romantic movement in literature, that created and promoted heroes instead and gave reality a twist of legend, but French society experienced its followings that were But pragmatism, social restlessness, the new class of the bourgeoisie that was rising on the wave of capitalism, the need for recognition for the working classes that were the backbone of the capitalist society, all these led to the need for a different type of approach in literature. Gustave Flaubert, educated at the bosom of romanticism, started his writing career as a romantic writer, but soon discovered that he could find in reality subjects far more interesting and challenging for the contemporary public than the exulted mystical stories from the Middle Eve.

For Mme Bovary, Flaubert chose his subject from real life. He used the real stories of two women and their marriages in order to create Mme Bovary's story and used models of real villages for the setting of his novel. Emma and Charles are presented by the author as objectively as possible, sometimes even almost in a cruel light that does not allow the reader to feel sympathy for them, but only pity. The novel begins with Charles Bovary's childhood as if intended to ruin any attempt to hope for a heroic attitude in this character. His mother is already anticipating the model of a woman living in small town, where nothing happens, nourishing dreams of grandeur on behalf of her husbands' achievements and getting only disappointment out of it. Flaubert is very careful to keep his characters away from anything that could make them rise beside the commonality of all things. He even does to great lengths to show them completely responsible for their own fate. Their attempts to overcome their own condition is never convincing and even Charles mother who is struggling to give her sun a good education is blind to her son's predispositions and his capacities. "Flaubert's "de-euphemizing" metaphors and similes reflect the inevitable, fateful progression from good or neutral to bad or worse that forms the tightly constructed, pessimistic, realist plot" (Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary: a reference guide, p. 107). Realism refers to the presentation of ordinary every-day life objects, characters and events, but it is debatable if Emma Bovary was a common, every-day person. It is a matter of discussing if she could be apprehended as the norm. Her main conflict came from her dreams of grandeur and adventure. She was living a provincial quit life and wished for a life that had nothing to do with reality. She became alienated to the point of no return. Her thirst for romantic novels and her inability to delineate herself form the heroes and heroines of those stories that had little to do with reality made her an essentially realist character in a realist setting. Her life story became credible, even if she was a fictional character. The art of the realist novel is the art of making out of something ordinary, mundane, something extraordinary precisely through its power of convincing the public that the characters involved could live nearby. The reader could even find traces of Emma and Charles in him or herself. Emma's suicide is out of the ordinary, it belongs to sensational, but her development in the frame of a bourgeois life style is perfectly predictable. The attempts of the characters in Mme Bovary to acquire grandeur and surpass their bourgeois existence are not matched by their efforts and actions and thus they are always pitiful and never worth of admiring or produce feelings of compassion. They are limited by their own impossibility to react their poor performances socially and professionally are the result of their aspirations that lack the natural sequence of their acts. Unable to rich any of their goals, the best they can do is to mimic the life style they wish for thus becoming ridiculous. Emma is the perfect representation for the following saying: "in order to do something you must first do something."