Madame Bovary; the Awakening Much

Madame Bovary; The Awakening

Much has been written about the oppressive situation respectively faced by the protagonist of Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Chopin's The Awakening. Both novels occur at a time in history when women were viewed as little more than objects of adoration, breeding, and housekeeping within society, by both the male and female gender. Indeed, the principle of excellence in the role of wife and mother is perpetuated from mother to daughter, as well as by social institutions such as education and religion. The authors provide various symbolic references to demonstrate the oppression suffered by Flaubert's Emma and Chopin's Edna. Most notable of these is the motif of the caged bird. Furthermore, social constructs such as religion and slavery are also used to reinforce the concept of oppression as experience by these women. Ultimately, neither Edna nor Emma believe that they have any recourse to freedom and self-expression other than death. Although both novels are set in the 19th century, when oppression was suffered much more concretely by women and minority racial groups than today, in the 21st century, it will be argued that the symbolism and social constructs indicted by both novels are as relevant today as they were at the time of writing.

Elizabeth Elz addresses the imagery of the bird in Kate Chopin's novel as expressing Edna's development during the course of the narrative. Edna Pontellier's cage is well-kept and gilded (Elz 2), and all the more oppressive for the lie of comfort and fulfillment it perpetuates. The types of birds the author uses are also important in terms of symbolism. The parrot and the mocking bird at the beginning for example serve as the juxtaposition of the appearance of opulence with the reality of oppression, while the recurring white bird of Edna's dream symbolize her final escape.

Edna's entrapment is all the more poignant because of her awareness of it. While she understands both French and English, she is unfamiliar with what Elz (3) refers to as the "language of social customs." She enters Creole society by marriage. She does not understand it, because she did not grow up in it or was educated in it. For her social education, she is dependent upon her husband. In this way, both education, social norms, and marriage serve as traps for the free spirit that was Edna.

Edna therefore suffers disempowerment on various levels, including social symbolism and the ability to communicate her dilemma. Even her close friend Adele fails as a possible escape, even if only temporary and even if only in conversation. Indeed, when Edna abandons her initial instinct to say nothing of her inner turmoil, Adele betrays her confidence by dismissal, claiming that it is "too hot to think…" (Chopin 16). Indeed, Edna surrenders to the inability to communicate by observing that "nothing" is the standard response to questions regarding one's thoughts, especially if one is a woman, and expected to think only of how to make the lives of husband's and children more comfortable.

Another interesting breakdown in conversation occurs later in the novel, when Adele and Edna find themselves arguing about the merit's of a woman sacrificing her life for her children. Edna maintains that she does not see the merit in such sacrifice, while Adele holds that there is no more worthy sacrifice. Adele uses religion in order to substantiate her views; another social construct that Edna finds difficult to either understand or submit to. According to both the religious and social construct, the woman is to sacrifice herself to the household, and even give her life in this endeavor, should it be necessary. Edna is unable to make sense of this in terms of her concept of self. In the end, she is able to sacrifice herself, not for her children, her family or her home, but only for the sake of her own freedom from these entrapments.

In this, Elz (5) notes that Adele is able to subscribe to the oppression of social and religious norms only because she has no concept of her own inner being. Her being is entirely enveloped in the social expectations of herself as a woman. This has eroded her own identity to such an extent that she has deceived herself into believing in the fulfillment that these expectations bring.

In terms of friendship, Edna is however not limited to a singular worldview in the form of Adele Ratignolle. Mademoiselle Reisz provides her with an alternative to the oppressive regime suggested by Edna's friend and society as a whole. Whereas Adele advocates the merits of the True Woman, Mademoiselle Reisz proposes the New Woman (Elz 6). Edna's turmoil is based upon the conflict created by the juxtaposition of her inner and her outer self. Although she is not a woman who idolizes her husband and children to the point of worship, she nonetheless has all the elements that might be expected of such a woman: a husband, children and household responsibilities. Mademoiselle Reisz is the only one who recognizes the agony of this juxtaposition within Edna.

Elz (6) further addresses the bird motif by noting the concept of wings. Edna is spreading her wings, although the nature of these wings is an issue of some contention between Adele and Mlle Reisz. The wings of the what Elz terms the True Woman, for example, function to hover her around her various duties to serve those closest to her. The New Woman, on the other hand, have wings to carry her to the freedom of a new journey. Ultimately, Edna's wings however fail her, and the only new journey she can complete is the one to her death. In terms of life, the conflict between the needs of her inner being and the way in which her world was manifest failed her, and she failed in response.

This conflict is also evident in Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The main character, Emma, fails in manifesting her assigned role as wife from the beginning. Her inner being, like Edna's, is unable to reconcile itself with the requirements of social appearance. In addition to the caged bird symbolism, Flaubert also uses the symbols denoting womanhood of the time; in particular needlework (Champagne 103). The juxtaposition is firstly denoted by the title of the novel and the name of the main character. Before being married, the main character is known as Emma Rouault. The title of the novel is symbolic of the cultural requirement of marriage, which binds her to a role that is in fact only external, and fails to serve her inner being or needs.

According to Champagne (104), the author uses needlework to externally symbolize the internal strain that Emma suffers as Madame Bovary. Her ineptitude at common housewifely tasks such as needlework indicates Emma's aptitude at other ways of being. She is not meant to be trapped in living as a bourgeois housewife. Like Chopin's Edna, she orchestrates her own freedom by death.

On her journey towards this, Emma manifests her incompetence into her cultural role by means of needlework, as noted above. Even during her education as a girl, she frequently pricks her finger, showing that she has little talent in the art of womanhood, as expected of her. Although somewhat trivial when compared to Edna's inability to envision herself as sacrificing her life for husband or children, it is nonetheless equally symbolic of Emma's inner need for something more fulfilling than a life of servitude to family.

Although Emma has indeed been educated in the society she is expected to serve as a True Woman, in contrast to Edna, this further highlights her inner need to be more than what is expected of her. She longs to spread her wings and externalize her desire to free herself from her life of servitude.

Like Edna, she attempts to do this with a choice of partners other than her husband. Society however cannot allow her to do this, and the ultimate outcome is her own death. Even in this final triumph, however, Emma is oppressed by the society that causes her death. Significantly, she is buried in her wedding dress; the ultimate symbol of her oppression and the inability of escape. Whereas Edna was able to leave society behind her in meeting her death at sea, Emma is not even provided this small triumph. Instead, her life and death are both unsuccessful in freeing her from oppression. This makes her story somewhat more tragic than that of Edna.

Symbolically, religion, education, and clothing play an important role in both novels. In terms of religion, it is significant that Emma received a convent education. In this, education and religion are closely related in perpetuating the mores of an oppressive society. The convent itself is a reference to the oppression of female desire and passion. The woman is not allowed to realize herself in any form other than servitude to her family. In this way, Emma becomes a type of nun with her husband and family as her religion. 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 of the inner self and therefore experiences no sense of sacrifice when denying her own desires in favor of those her family may have.

In this way, the religious force, and particularly Christianity, serves as an oppressive power, in contrast to the force of freedom it claims to be. Religion can also be seen from a wider point-of-view when considered in terms of the authors' intention in both respective cases. Jason Hartford (435) for example consider religion in terms of Flaubert's views on Christianity. While he notes that critics have tended to use Madam Bovary as indicative of Flaubert's derision of organized Christianity at the time, Hartford also indicates that the novel was far more than simply a denial of the Christian God in favor of the author as deity. Instead, the author holds that Flaubert addresses the realities of life for women, as imposed by the social constructs of family and religion or church as representative of faith. For women of the time, faith represented the ultimate oppressive construct. The authority behind religion was not something that could be overthrown, which could be seen as one of the reasons why death was seen as the ultimate escape from the oppression that Edna and Emma respectively suffered.

Holder-Salmon and Chopin (138) offer a further possibility for religion in terms of Edna's development in The Awakening. The authors note that both organized religion and the social construct of family was based on the patriarchal paradigm. Hence, for a woman to escape these constructs was to develop not only personally, but also spiritually. For Edna, this was symbolized as descent from her material well-being to live in a cottage rather than her husband's lavish home. Here, she had the sense of spiritual development even as she obtained some freedom from the oppression of her class.

This dual oppression of class and religion is also symbolized by the construct of slavery; en element that was by exclusion part of high-class living. According to Holder-Salmon and Chopin (138), the domestic work provided by nursemaids, cooks, launderers and other servants were the basis of life in the Creole landscape, of which Edna could never quite be part. The servant women then symbolize not only the oppression of the internal self, but also of the external self in terms of racial oppression. In subtle terms, Chopin then uses racism as symbolic of the invisible female self. This self is as important to Edna as racial servitude was to the Creole lifestyle; the need to oppress it led inevitably to the destruction of the physical self in the interest of a moment of freedom prior to physical death.

Clothing is also particularly symbolic of the oppression of the female self during the time of the respective novels. Emma's wedding gown has been mentioned above as the final irony of her oppression. Even in death, she suffered the oppression of clothing and the symbolism attached to it. The wedding gown was symbolic of premarital virginity and marital devotion to family and children. Emma was unable to escape this, despite the attempts throughout her life, and at the end of it.

The Awakening includes very detailed descriptions of the restrictive clothing of the time. According to Holder-Salmon and Chopin (139), the clothing were closely connected to the idea of the cage as restricting the female spirit, even as the clothing restricts the female body. Indeed, according to the authors, the clothing was not only uncomfortable, making natural movement difficult, but could also result in severe health problems such as childbirth complications and lung disease. This relates to the symbolism of the wedding gown in Madame Bovary. The physical form of the dress related to the destruction of spiritual oppression throughout the novel.

Another multi-dimensional symbol of oppression in Flaubert's novel is the garden (Dauner 3). As Madame Bovary, tending the garden was one of the duties expected of Emma, but for which she also had no passion. Like the slave women in The Awakening, the garden serves as symbolic in the oppression of living entities. The garden served to manipulate nature for the service of upper-class life. Like Edna's use of servants to help her with her household chores, Emma tended the garden only because it was expected of her by society.

According to Dauner (4), the image of the garden in Flaubert's novel is constructed in terms of the Indo-European meaning -- an enclosure to cultivate useful plants. It is both fertile and productive, as a marriage is meant to be, but entirely without the freedom to grow as it pleases. It is not allowed the freedom to express the limits of its being; and is entirely subject to the requirements of those who tend it. In the same way, Madame Bovary is cultivated, since childhood, to conform to the requirements of her society. All this careful cultivation however results in her departure from the norm and her ultimate death. It is only in death that society is able to accept her back into its conformity once more.

The naturalistic image of the garden in this novel can then also be contrasted with the image of the ocean in The Awakening. The ocean is unrestricted, free, and unconforming. In terms of symbolism, Edna could hardly choose a more appropriate death for herself. She enters the ultimate freedom in the form of the ocean, and constructs for herself, at least for a while, a life that is completely unrestricted from either physical or spiritual oppression. In this way, a physical removal from the restrictions of society and life provides for Edna the ultimate freedom of her soul. Although Emma never achieves this level of freedom, she does escape the torments of her life in death.

The imagery of the garden is further highlighted in terms of its religious connotation. Dauner (4) for example notes that there are two religious connotations with the garden; the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane. The former symbolizes both innocence and the human fall from this innocence, while the latter symbolizes betrayal. Emma experiences her marriage as a fall from innocence. The romance of marriage is betrayed by Emma's unfaithfulness and her final act of suicide. The fresh beginning of marriage denotes not more than the decay of ultimate betrayal.

Emma herself has also experienced her entire life as a betrayal, as symbolized by Gethsemane. Society betrays her by expecting her to fulfill a role that she is not created for. She betrays herself by attempting to fulfill this role. She also betrays her marriage first by unfaithfulness and then by her own death.