Miscommunication and Inadequacy of Language in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary - Essay Example

? Miscommunication and Inadequacy of Language in Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" Through The Establishments of Family and Religion Subject Professor’s Name Date Introduction Women’s struggle for their rights in family, society and politics inspired many writers and are widely discussed in a great number of literary works. Thus literature itself plays a very important role in this struggle. Literary works written and read by people helped and help us understand the problems women face in the society and find the ways to solve them. The work Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert written in 1856 is one of the writings where the topic of feminism is a very important aspect for critic. The novel is about a woman who is unfaithful to her husband. As the novel was created in 1856 the topic was brutally criticized and the author was persecuted. However, then the story gained a great popularity very quickly and played a very essential role in women’s struggle for their rights. The given paper will discuss the main topics of the novel and their significance for the history and society development. There is an interesting fact stating that Madame Bovary (1856) was the first, but outstanding work of Gustave Flaubert. The writing tells us about Emma Bovary, the wife of a doctor who wants to escape from the life she has looking for something special, not so primitive as the province she lives in can offer. The novel by Flaubert has rather simple plot but a hidden sense that is very interesting to analyze in different perspectives. There is no need to say that taking into account that the novel was created in the nineteenth century, it is easy to understand why it was not accepted by the government at first. Religious prejudices also played an important role. After six-month prosecutions, the novel at last gained respect with readers. Now it represents one of the most important ever created works of Realism. According to James Wood, "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" (Wood 39). The problems of the novel were caused by the propaganda of infidelity and the language used. The attitude towards men shown in the novel was also new for that time: they were treated as sexual entertainment that was not allowed by religion. Only women felt such attitude before. Madame Bovary presented the opposite picture. Men were presented as abused and disrespected in Madam Bovary. It was not natural that Emma or Madam Bovary considered her marriage to be ordinary and uninteresting. She was seeking an interesting and bright life full of different men and different events. The position of a woman was not ordinary: her happiness and desires were presented as more important than happiness and desires of men. It is interesting that the novel Madam Bovary was also called by people A History of the Adulteries of a Provincial Wife. "Emma was finding in adultery all the banalities of marriage" (Madame 272). Even nowadays such attitude of a woman towards her marriage is strange as women usually do their best to save their marriage. Moreover, that time men had much stronger positions than women as females were not even allowed to vote (Geary 470). Madame Bovary is often considered as a mockery of problem-free life of middle-class people in French province of the nineteenth century. The main character is Emma Bovary, a tired of marital life, unsatisfied housewife enthused by widely read novels of that time. The woman tried to make her fantasy come true by means of adultery with different men and buying different not very cheap things. Finally such behavior led to her suicide as she was unable to pay the debts. The nature of Emma’s husband Charles is the direct opposite of Emma’s. He is happy with the provincial life and does not feel that his abilities are limited. Moreover, his feeling of happiness is grown throughout the novel that irritates his unsatisfied wife (Geary, P, Kishlansky M and O'Brien P, 2007). Although friendly and devoted, Charles is represented as a simple-minded man, who even does not guess about his wife’s unfaithfulness. Even when he finds out everything about adultery and financial debts, he does not change his attitude towards his wife, he still adores her. He suffers after her suicide and dies soon after that. Emma had a power over her husband, but she tried to express this power only at home so that nobody could judge her: the wife could not control her husband in that time society. Charles knew that "his wife was master" but did not tell anybody about that (Madame 18). Emma manipulated her husband and he could not change his position in the family anyhow and maybe he even did not want to do that. He trusted his wife and this trust even did not allow him to open his eyes and notice the adultery. He did not suspect anything even when he found the letter from Rodolphe. The novel Madam Bovary is usually seen through the prism of the conformism and ordinariness of the middle class bourgeoisie in France. Rosemary Lloyd wrote: "From the opening pages, with their depiction of the way in which both children and teachers impose on individuals patterns of behavior they are obliged to copy slavishly, to the concluding lines, which record Homais's reward for conforming to the image of the successful man, Madame Bovary reveals the mechanisms of middle-class society, the way in which it creates a form of fatality." (Lloyed sited in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). The novel was the first writing in which the attention was paid to women’s feeling. The inner world of a woman was analyzed and it was revealed that Emma like probably many other women is unsatisfied with her way of life. "The fictional world of Madame Bovary is marked by the over-differentiation of the sexes which characterizes patriarchal society" (Williams cited in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). The novel is also interesting to be analyzed in terms of contrast between illusions and reality. Nathaniel Wing stated that: "The division between language and experience is a major concern of the novel" (Wing cited in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). Emma Bovary tried to find passion she read about in her favorite novels in the real life. However, the final of this search was tragic, the real life appeared to be different and much more complicated than it was described in the novels. Actually, according to many critics, the novel Madam Bovary can be viewed as a skeptical interpretation of the entertaining romanticism expressed in the literature of that period, focusing on Flaubert's explanation of romantic conceptions. Some scholars propose another interpretation: they offer to consider Emma Bovary as a victim of the bourgeois society and her manipulability. Rosemary Lloyd wrote "the novel draws largely on three main currents of thought: the sentimentalism prevalent in the eighteenth century, which leads into the Romanticism of the 1820s to 1840s; the analytical explorations of love that develop, in part, from other eighteenth-century writers; and the pragmatism of bourgeois thought, which had grown increasingly dominant since the 1830 revolution" (Lloyd cited in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). Certainly, the novel Madam Bovary should be analyzed in terms of feminism as feminist topic is one of the most important in it. Many critics considered a position of a woman in a patriarchal society, explaining Emma’s illusions as products of her position in the society where men had privileges and women were abused. According to Tony Tanner, "[Emma's] sickness must be connected to the vagueness of her position in society: after being a daughter (and thus entirely defined by the father), she exists on the threshold in a sort of pronominal limbo" (Tanner cited in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). Some critics even argue that Emma’s suicide was caused by this difference between men’s and women’s position. Analyzing the contrast of illusion and the real life, Lawrence Thornton talks about Emma Bovary's personal reaction to "two equally counterfeit versions of reality": the wonderful life described in the novels and strict and dull settings of bourgeois society (Thornton cited in Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism). Conclusion The topics raised by Gustave Flaubert in his novel Madame Bovary are very essential if to consider them from the feministic perspective. The writer was one of the first to pay attention to women’s inner world and to remind that women also have feelings and preferences. They can be happy and unhappy, satisfied and unsatisfied and their feelings should be paid attention to and taken into account. For many years only men has a right to satisfy their needs and make their fantasies come true and women solved as just tools for their needs satisfaction. Unfortunately, we can’t but recognize that these topics are still relevant today. Notwithstanding that Gustave Flaubert lived in the nineteenth century and we live in the twenty-first, women still face the same problems, especially those who live in the developing countries. Women still suffer there, they do not have rights, they are frequently abused and are not properly defended by the laws. The religious prejudices of these countries prevent women from normal life. Much work is still needed to improve women’s position as problems still exist. Let’s hope that due to the feminists’ efforts the situation will be improved in the nearest future. References Wood, J 2008, How Fiction Works, New York: Picador, 39. Geary, P, Kishlansky M and O'Brien P 2007, A Brief History of Western Civilization: The Unfinished Legacy. Boston, MA. Madame Bovary 1957, Trans. Steegmuller Francis New York: Random House Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism 1998, Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright, Read More