Independent Women: Woolf\'s Lily Briscoe

Independent Women: Woolf's Lily Briscoe

and Flaubert's Emma Bovary

While women in today's world seem to have a myriad of choices and opportunities, this has not always been the case. Over the centuries, women have struggled to find their place in the world without bowing the constraints of social customs. While being a wife and a mother are roles that should be admired, they are not the fate of every woman. Two women that demonstrate this point are Lily Briscoe in Virginia Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse and Emma Bovary in Gustave Flaubert's novel, Madame Bovary. Both of thee women are strong because they refuse to be shaped by societal norms. They follow their instinct that there might be something more to life than getting married and having babies. While Lily certainly experiences a different and more positive outcome with her experience, both women demonstrate that all women do not necessarily fall under the definition of wife and mother and that this is not a bad thing. These women are examples of the type of strength it took to be independent in a day and age that frowned upon women seeking their individuality.

In To the Lighthouse, Lily serves as a symbol of the budding, independent woman. She is plagued by Charles' assertion that women cannot write or paint. This conflict early in the novel positions Lily for some soul searching as she wrestles with her own inclinations and what she sees others doing. Mrs. Ramsey is a strong woman but she knows allows herself to be shaped by her role in a male world. She attempts to force this upon Lily, who is repulsed by the notion of simply being a wife. She thinks of him as the "most uncharming human being" (Woolf 130) she had ever known. Lily is torn between what the world expects her do what she wants to do. She does not feel compelled to marry and live the life of being a wife and a mother and she resents what society is pressuring her to do with its "code of behaviour" (137) for women. Lily hates the thought of feigning her true sentiments and the notion that she must abandon her identity in order to relate to any man. Woolf proves her point that women can be so much more than what her society thinks by allowing Lily to grow from an insecure artist into one that discovers her vision and captures it in an artistic form.

In Madame Bovary, Emma is a symbol of the unhappily married woman. She is not satisfied and cannot bear to think of living the rest of her days without the type of satisfaction she needs. She is operating on the basis of very basic human needs and desires because she is unhappy. Her affairs with Rodolphe and Leon bring her the type of intimacy she longs for even though they cause her much pain. Emma saw her affair with Rodolphe as vengeful because so much of her life felt like it was void of love. We are that she was "becoming a part of her own imaginings, finding the long dream of her youth come true as she surveyed herself in that amorous role she coveted" (Flaubert 175). She did not feel guilt; in fact, she "savored" (175) her relationship with Rodolphe and was without "remorse, disquiet or distress" (175). Emma is overwhelmed with emotions when it comes to Rodolphe and she did not know if she "regretted yielding to him, or whether she didn't rather to aspire to love him more . . . It was not an attachment but a continual excitement" (183). Here we see that she is not concerned with the trappings of a long-term relationship; she just wants to feel that kind of passion she does not have with her husband. With Leon, she is foolish to the point of ruining herself. Her circumstance represents the type of restrictions that women experienced in her day.