Gustave Flaubert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gustave Flaubert

Born
12 December 1821
Rouen, France
Died
8 May 1880 (aged 58)
Croisset, Rouen,
France
Occupation Novelist, playwright
Nationality French
Genre Fictional prose
Literary
movement
Realism, Romanticism
Gustave Flaubert (French: [ystav flob]; 12 December 1821 8 May
1880) was an influential French writer widely considered one of the
greatest novelists in Western literature. He is known especially for his
first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence,
and for his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated
short story writer Maupassant was a protg of Flaubert.
Contents
Life
Early life and education
Flaubert was born on 12 December 1821, in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime
department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. He was the second
son of Anne Justine Caroline (ne Fleuriot; 17931872) and Achille-
Clophas Flaubert (17841846), director and senior surgeon of the major
hospital in Rouen.
[1]
He began writing at an early age, as early as eight
according to some sources.
[2]

He was educated at the Lyce Pierre Corneille in Rouen,
[3]
and did not
leave until 1840, when he went to Paris to study law. In Paris, he was an
indifferent student and found the city distasteful. He made a few
acquaintances, including Victor Hugo. Toward the end of 1840, he
traveled in the Pyrenees and Corsica. In 1846, after an attack of epilepsy,
he left Paris and abandoned the study of law.
Madame Bovary
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For related uses, see Madame Bovary (disambiguation).

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Madame Bovary

Title page of the original French edition,
1857
Author Gustave Flaubert
Country France
Language French
Genre Realist novel
Publisher
Revue de Paris (in serial) &
Michel Lvy Frres (in book
form, 2 Vols)
Publication
date
1856 (in serial) & April
1857 (in book form)
Madame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut
novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has
adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the
banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather
simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden
patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be
searching for le mot juste ("the precise word").
When it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856
and 15 December 1856, the novel was attacked for obscenity by public
prosecutors. The resulting trial, held in January 1857, made the story
notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary
became a bestseller when it was published as a single volume in April
1857. Flaubert's masterpiece is now considered a seminal work of realism
and one of the most influential novels ever written. In fact, the notable
British-American critic James Wood writes in How Fiction Works:
"Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as
modern realist narration, and his influence is almost too familiar to be
visible".
[1]

Contents
Madame Bovary explores the possibility that the written word fails to
capture even a small part of the depth of a human life. Flaubert uses a
variety of techniques to show how language is often an inadequate
medium for expressing emotions and ideas. The characters frequent
inability to communicate with each other is emblematic of the fact that
words do not perfectly describe what they signify. In the first chapter, for
example, Charless teacher thinks he says his name is Charbovari. He
fails to make his own name understood. This inadequacy of speech is
something Emma will encounter again and again as she tries to make her
distress known to the priest or to express her love to Rodolphe. It is also
present when Charles reads the letter from Rodolphe and misinterprets it
as a note of platonic affection.
The lies that fill Madame Bovary contribute to the sense of languages
inadequacy in the novel, and to the notion that words may be more
effective for the purposes of obscuring the truth or conveying its
opposite, than for representing the truth itself. Emmas life is described
as a tissue of lies. She invents story after story to prevent her husband
from discovering her affairs. Similarly, Rodolphe tells so many lies about
his love for Emma that he assumes her words are also insincere. Flaubert
points out that by lying the lovers make it impossible for words ever to
touch at the truth in things.
The strong sense of the inadequacy of language is in part a reaction
against the school of realism. Although Flaubert was in some senses a
realist, he also believed it was wrong to claim that realism provided a
more accurate picture of life than romanticism. He deploys ironic
romantic descriptions to establish a tension between various characters
experience of events and the real aspects of life. By combining ironic
romanticism and literal realistic narration, Flaubert captures his
characters and their struggles mormore fully than a strictly literal or a
wholesale romantic style would allow.
The Powerlessness of Women
Emma Bovarys hope that her baby will be a man because a woman is
always hampered is just one of the many instances in the novel in which
Flaubert demonstrates an intimate understanding of the plight of women
in his time. We see throughout Madame Bovary how Emmas male
companions possess the power to change her life for better or worsea
power that she herself lacks. Even Charles contributes to Emmas
powerlessness. His laziness prevents him from becoming a good doctor,
and his incompetence prevents him from advancing into a higher social
stratum that might satisfy Emmas yearnings. As a result, Emma is stuck in
a country town without much money. Rodolphe, who possesses the
financial power to whisk Emma away from her life, abandons her, and, as
a woman, she is incapable of fleeing on her own. Leon at first seems
similar to Emma. Both are discontented with country life, and both dream
of bigger and better things. But because Leon is a man, he has the power
to actually fulfill his dream of moving to the city, whereas Emma must
stay in Yonville, shackled to a husband and child.
Ultimately, however, the novels moral structure requires that Emma
assume responsibility for her own actions. She cant blame everything on
the men around her. She freely chooses to be unfaithful to Charles, and
her infidelities wound him fatally in the end. On the other hand, in
Emmas situation, the only two choices she has are to take lovers or to
remain faithful in a dull marriage. Once she has married Charles, the
choice to commit adultery is Emmas only means of exercising power over
her own destiny. While men have access to wealth and property, the only
currency Emma possesses to influence others is her body, a form of
capital she can trade only in secret with the price of shame and the added
expense of deception. When she pleads desperately for money to pay her
debts, men offer the money in return for sexual favors. Eventually, she
tries to win back Rodolphe as a lover if he will pay her debts. Even her
final act of suicide is made possible by a transaction funded with her
physical charms, which are dispensed toward Justin, who allows Emma
access to the cupboard where the arsenic is kept. Even to take her own
life, she must resort to sexual power, using Justins love for her to
convince him to do what she wants.
The Failures of the Bourgeoisie
Emmas disappointments stem in great part from her dissatisfaction with
the world of the French bourgeoisie. She aspires to have taste that is
more refined and sophisticated than that of her class. This frustration
reflects a rising social and historical trend of the last half of the
nineteenth century. At the time Flaubert was writing, the word
bourgeois referred to the middle class: people who lacked the
independent wealth and ancestry of the nobility, but whose professions
did not require them to perform physical labor to earn their living. Their
tastes were characterized as gaudily materialistic. They indulged
themselves as their means allowed, but without discrimination. The
mediocrity of the bourgeoisie was frustrating to -Flaubert, and he used
Emma Bovarys disgust with her class as a way of conveying his own
hatred for the middle class. Madame Bovary shows how ridiculous,
stifling, and potentially harmful the attitudes and trappings of the
bourgeoisie can be. In the pharmacist Homaiss long-winded, know-it-all
speeches, Flaubert mocks the bourgeois classs pretensions to knowledge
and learning and its faith in the power of technologies that it doesnt
completely understand. But Homais is not just funny; he is also
dangerous. When he urges Charles to try a new medical procedure on
Hippolyte, the patient acquires gangrene and then loses his leg. Homais
does even greater damage when he attempts to treat Emma for her
poisoning. He tries to show off by analyzing the poison and coming up
with an antidote. Later, a doctor will tell him that he should have simply
stuck a finger down Emmas throat to save her life.

Death and Illness

There are many disturbing references to death and illness in Madame
Bovary, and the novel can seem very morbid.
These references emphasize Flauberts realistic, unflinching description of
the world, and also act as physical manifestations of Emmas moral decay.
For example, Lestiboudois grows potatoes in the graveyard because the
decomposing bodies help them grow, and Homais keeps fetuses in jars.
Similarly, Hippolyte loses his leg to gangrene, the blind beggar with
festering skin follows the carriage to and from Rouen, and, when Emma
faints in Part Two, Chapter XIII, Homais wakes her up with smelling salts,
saying, this thing would resuscitate a corpse! Such excessive corruption
is a comment on the physical state of the world. Flaubert constantly
reminds us that death and decay lurk beneath the surface of everyday
life, and that innocence is often coupled very closely with corruption. This
focus on the negative aspects of life is part of Flauberts realism.
Windows
Windows are frequently associated with Emma. We often see her looking
out of them, or we glimpse her through them from the street as she
waves goodbye to Charles or Leon. For Emma, these windows represent
the possibility of escape. A shutter bangs open to announce her
engagement, and she contemplates jumping out the attic window to
commit suicide. But Emma never manages to really escape. She stays
inside the window, looking out at the world and imagining a freedom that
she never can obtain. Windows also serve to take Emma back to the past.
At the ball, when the servant breaks the window and Emma sees the
peasants outside, she is suddenly reminded of her simple childhood. Such
a retreat to childhood also could be a kind of escape for Emma, who
would surely be much happier if she stopped striving to escape that
simple life. But, again, she ignores the possibility of escape, trapping
herself within her own desires for romantic ideals of wealth she cant
obtain.
Eating
The quantity of food consumed in Madame Bovary could feed an army
for a week. From Emmas wedding feast to the Bovarys daily dinner,
Flauberts characters are frequently eating, and the way they eat reveals
important character traits. Charless atrocious table manners, magnified
through Emmas disgust, reveal him to be boorish and lacking in
sophistication. When Emma is shown sucking her fingers or licking out the
bottom of a glass, we see a base animal sensuality and a lust for physical
satisfaction in her that all her pretensions to refinement cannot conceal.
Finally, when Emma goes to the ball, the exquisite table manners of the
nobles and the fine foods they consume signify the refinement and
sophistication of their class. In each of these cases, what one eats or how
one eats is an indicator of social class.
The Blind Beggar
A picture of physical decay, the blind beggar who follows the carriage in
which Emma rides to meet Leon also symbolizes Emmas moral
corruption. He sings songs about birds and sunshine and green leaves in
a voice like an inarticulate lament of some vague despair. This coupling
of innocence with disease relates to the combination of beauty and
corruption that Emma herself has become. While her words, appearance,
and fantasies are those of an innocent and beautiful wife, her spirit
becomes foul and corrupt as she indulges herself in adulterous
temptations and the deceptions required to maintain her illicit affairs.
Later, when Emma dies, the blind man gets to the end of his song about a
young girl dreaming. We then discover that what we thought was a song
about an innocent woman is actually a bawdy, sexual song. This
progression from innocence to sexual degradation mirrors the path of
Emmas life.
Dried Flowers
When Emma comes home with Charles, she notices his dead wifes
wedding bouquet in the bedroom and wonders what will happen to her
own bouquet when she dies. Later, when they move to Yonville, she
burns her own bouquet as a gesture of defiance against her unhappy
marriage. The dried bouquet stands for disappointed hopes, and for the
new promise of a wedding day turned sour and old. In another sense,
Emmas burning of her bouquet foreshadows the way her desires will
consume her youth and, eventually, her life.
The Lathe
Binets habit of making useless napkin rings on his lathe is a symbol with
several meanings. First, it represents the useless, nonproductive,
ornamental character of bourgeois tastes. Second, it represents
something more ominousthe monotony of the life that traps Emma. In
the scene in which she contemplates throwing herself out the window,
Emma hears the sound of the lathe calling her to suicide. Finally, the lathe
represents the craftsman repeatedly making a simple, uniform work of
art. Flaubert once compared himself as a writer to a craftsman working
on a lathe.
Destiny: the seemingly inevitable succession of events

Is this definition true, or do we, as people in real life or characters in
novels, control our own destiny? Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
exemplifies how we hold destiny in our own hands, molding it with the
actions we take and the choices we make. Flaubert uses Emma Bovary,
the main character of his novel, to demonstrate this. Throughout her life,
Emma makes many decisions, each one of them affecting her fate and by
analyzing these decisions one could see from the beginning that Emma is
destined to suffer. However, one can also pinpoint such decisions making
events as her marriage, her daughter's birth, her adulterous relationship
with Leon and her taking the poison, as times when, if she had made a
different decision, her life would not have ended as tragically.
When we first meet Emma, the future Madame Bovary, we perceive her
as being a woman who is refined perhaps a bit more than the average
peasant girl living on a farm. We conclude this because she attended a
boarding school whereshe was taught "dancing, geography, needlework
and piano." (p.15) Charles, onthe other hand, gives her more credit than
she deserves. He regards her as wellvery educated, sophisticated,
sensitive and loving, with the last characteristicbeing the one she lacks
most. Soon after Emma marries Charles we see her
unhappiness, and we are faced with a dilemma, why did she marry him?
There arenumerous possible answers to this, but the end conclusion is
the same: if shehad not married him it would have been better for both
of them. Emma would nothave been so miserable and depressed
throughout her life and Charles would havefound someone who would
return his love and who would appreciate him. Throughoutthe novel
Emma never expresses her appreciation for her husband. On thecontrary,
she often expresses her loathing for him - "Charles never seemed so
disagreeable to her, his fingers never seemed so blunt, his mind so dull
ofhismanners so crude--." (p.161)However, Emma and Charles were
married. An uneventful year passed andEmma reached yet another fork
in the road of life - should she have a baby now,or wait until later? She
reasoned that it would bring excitement to her life soshe decided to go
ahead and have the baby. She wished for a boy because he
would have the freedom to "explore the whole range of the passions,
gowhereverhe likes, overcome obstacles and savor the most
exoticpleasures." (p.76) Thebaby was a girl. Emma "turned her head away
and fainted" (p. 77) uponhearingthis news. She felt let down by theworld,
as she saw her hopes and dreamsshatter before her eyes. Yet again we
are faced with a dilemma: why didshechose to have a baby? Was it
onlyfor selfish reasons? And yes, there are manyanswers, but the
conclusion remains the same, if she had not had thisbaby girl,her destiny
and that of her husband and her daughter would have been
greatlyaltered. Emma would not have had the chance to cause so
muchsuffering to little girl through her thoughtless actions.
Why did Emma choose to have to commit adultery and sleep with Leon
whenshe had already experienced first hand the consequences ? This
question leadsto the third major event in her life, one that could have
easily changed theoutcome of her life if it had been
approacheddifferently. Emma had had andaffair previously that had
devastated pain and the emptiness she felt at the end of this affair, only
to begin thecycle again with Leon. If she had taken only a few minutes of
her time toanalyze the situation she would have realized that an affair
only bringshappiness for a time and then it only brings misery. Her affair
with Leon isthe cause of many of her later problems, such as her debt,
her sickness, herdepression and her eventual death.Death. This brings us
to the final fork in the road of Emma's life. Shechooses to take the Arsenic
as shefeels overwhelmed and sees this as thebestsolution for all her
problems. Why does she take the Arsenic when she is stillyoung and still
has her entire life ahead of her? One could argue that she sawno way out
and she saw death as the only answer. But is this notselfish whenthere is
a little girl that she must raise and nurture and ahusband who needsher?
Emma tries to hid away from her husband andmake herself think that he
doesnot love her, only to realize how deep hislove really is when it is too
late -And in his eyes she saw a love such as she had never seen before."
(p.274)Considering the aforementioned reasons, one can only
concludethat Emmacontrolled her destiny, as we all do to a great extent.
There is no guidinghand that told Emma to go ahead and marry
Charles,have his baby, cheat on himwith Leon and then kill herself. She
did all this for selfish reasons, tofulfill her own fantasies and needs. She
never once stopped to think about heractions and how they would
impact others. It is true, we all think aboutourselves, but only to an
extent. People usually stop to thinkabout what theywill do, and they are
aware of the impact their actions will have. Emma,on theother hand, not
only does she not consider the consequences of her actions, butshe does
not learn from her mistakes either. She is an idealist who lives in theworld
of novels and fantasies and tries to compensate for the monotonyof
herlife by making "of the wall' decisions that only hurt her in the end.
Throughoutthe novel Emma is faced with moments where her decision is
needed, and rarelydoes she make the right one.