Marx and Madame Bovary: Literary and ideological perspectives

¶ … Madame Bovary's character

Analysis of Emma's character in the context of the Marx and Engels' "Communist Manifesto"

Madame Bovary," Gustave Flaubert's novel, which depicted the loss of morality of the protagonist Emma, in the midst of her aspiration to improve her social status in life, illustrates life as it was in the mid-19th century. This period is crucial for human society during the time, for it was the time when revolutionary and radical ideologies have been created, giving birth to what would become known as the critical theory of the modern capitalist society, as introduced by the political sociologists Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

In their political treatise, "The Communist Manifesto," both Marx and Engels provided their model of the bourgeois class or the elite class of the society. In it, they categorized, "[t]he bourgeoisie, by the rapid movement of all instruments of production...draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization...It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves..."

Given this model of the elite class, it becomes apparent that Emma's desire to belong to the wealthy and elite class of the society is but one manifestation that indeed, a proletarian like her is slowly becoming enthralled by the promises of capitalism and economic prosperity that the bourgeois class shows. In the novel, Flaubert demonstrates Emma's desire to be a part of the 'new civilization' -- the bourgeois class: "She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, she almost doubted having lived it." From this passage, Emma's transition and realization of what she wanted her life to be took shape and developed into a great ambition that engulfed her through the years.

In the same manner that the bourgeois class had 'imprisoned' the proletariat by letting them aspire to achieve the same wealth and social status that they had, came the looseness of morality required from the proletariat. This is what happened to Emma, whose internal conflict -- that is, whether or not to thoroughly embrace a rich and comfortable life despite her increasing commitment to immorality -- failed to give her the aspirations she had created from the time she had been exposed to the modern, yet sometimes vulgar, life of the rich and elite class.