Bovaryism and Ennui in Flaubert's Madame Bovary

Bovaryism: Defining the Term

What does the term bovaryism mean? A few years after the publication of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, the term was adopted into the French language. The nineteenth-century novel's heroine defines herself through common clichés that the world still recognizes today: the bored housewife syndrome, romantic fantasy delusions, and adultery are just a few of them. Bovaryism came to mean a dream that is as self-serving as the reality it aims to replace, and as a result the face of reality becomes diminished.

Ennui and the Disappointment of Marriage

The concept of ennui — in short, boredom — comes into play immediately in the novel, defining Emma's character and driving her actions from the outset. It is seen most clearly in her marriage. Emma marries a man named Charles, believing he will bring her the excitement, love, and adventure she craves. Instead, she receives the complete opposite: a dull life in the country that leaves her feeling perpetually restless.

The novel itself captures this disillusionment vividly: "Before her marriage she had thought she had love within her grasp; but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words 'bliss,' 'passion,' and 'rapture' — words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books." (Flaubert, 2006, p. 1056)

This disappointment is the seed from which all of Emma's subsequent choices grow. What happens as a result of this boredom with marriage?

Adultery, Escape, and a Constrained Independence

Emma's ennui leads her into a series of adulterous relationships. She initially finds romantic companionship in a man named Léon, who shares her dissatisfaction with country life. Before she actually commits to an affair, however, she withdraws, and Léon departs for Paris. She then falls into the arms of Rodolphe, with whom she does have an affair. The more her husband behaves as an ineffectual man, the more Emma's desperation for excitement and escape from a boring existence intensifies.

Rodolphe eventually leaves her as well, and she later reunites with Léon, with whom she now officially begins an affair. One passage perhaps best captures the emotional distance between Emma and Charles, and the full weight of ennui upon their marriage: "Still, if Charles had made the slightest effort, if he had had the slightest inkling, if his glance had a single time divined her thought, it seems to her that her heart would have been relieved of its fullness as quickly and easily as a tree drops its ripe fruit at the touch of a hand. But even as they were brought closer together by the details of daily life, she was separated from him by a growing sense of inward development." (Flaubert, 2006, p. 1060)

Yet this boredom also allows Emma to develop a degree of independence rarely seen in women of the period, precisely because her husband fails to assert any dominance. The novel illustrates this in a telling passage: "Emma knew how to run her house. She let Charles's patients know how much they owed him, writing them nicely phrased letters that didn't look like bills. When a neighbor came to Sunday dinner she always managed to think up some attractive dish. She would arrange greengages in a pyramid on a bed of vine leaves, she served her jellies not in their jars but neatly turned on the plate; she spoke of buying finger bowls for dessert. All of this redounded greatly to Bovary's credit." (Flaubert, 2006, p. 1061)

Could one argue, then, that without this excess boredom Emma would never have developed her independence? What kind of character would she have been if she were completely content? Would she have been reduced to the type of passive, domestic woman considered normal for the time — one who neither ran the household with initiative nor risked the adventure of adultery?

Conclusion: The Fatal Circle of Boredom

So was Madame Bovary a simple adulteress who could only find excitement through money and the high life? Or was she a woman suffering from severe depression who could find happiness nowhere? The depression that led her down a spiral of lies, deceit, and adultery ultimately led to death — all driven by the idea of boredom. Ennui came full circle in this work.

The question that remains is how bovaryism applies in the world today. What does the "bored housewife" life look like in the modern era? Who is the contemporary Madame Bovary? That is a question worth asking — and one that Flaubert's novel, written over a century and a half ago, still compels us to confront.

Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 8th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Print.