Analysis of the Novel Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert - Essay Example

The novel Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, is the story of a woman who does everything she can possibly think of to make her way into the bourgeois, but it becomes clear that she does not belong after some time. Because of this, Emma Bovary commits suicide by drinking arsenic. At the time, she was very much in debt, due to her constant borrowing of money in order to live a life of high society, and she had also turned to a life of prostitution. Madame Bovary’s death is a somewhat violent one as she purposely swallows arsenic in order to commit suicide. Flaubert makes in clear in this scene, through the introduction of new characters from various classes, that even though Madame Bovary wished to join the upper class, that she would always be a middle class woman and she died as such. Madame Bovary’s death was symbolic of her dependence on men and the dependence that woman everywhere had on men during that particular time period. She is a helpless individual who has ambition, but is unable to achieve what she desires because of her own moral ineptitude and the constraints that have been placed on her by society. In this novel, Madame Bovary is depicted as a sympathetic character who simply does not have the ability to succeed on her own, which is highly symbolic of how women during this time period were forced to live, due to the oppression that they faced on a daily basis from the male dominated society of this time period. Madame Bovary is significant because of how it calls into question the notion of aristocratic society. It is very critical of the seemingly widespread theory amongst the bourgeois that material goods and high social standing are the most important things in life. Madame Bovary ends up dying because of problems that are caused by her obsessions with the elitist lifestyle, but not before she commits other atrocities against individuals who care about her. She does not care who she hurts in order to achieve her goals and spouses and children are of little consequence for her, just as long as she achieves her desired lifestyles. She cheats on husbands and goes behind peoples’ backs in order to fake her way into the upper echelon of society. She has a life that is marred by her undying quest to become something that she is not. She does not belong in aristocratic society but she for one reason or another, wishes to enter it. The results, however, are not what she had been hoping for. At the same time, conversely, her death raises different questions and provide different answers. While he reader can sympathize with Bovary because she simply wanted a more exciting life than the boring and dull marriage she found herself trapped in, she herself does not learn anything in the end, making her development anticlimactic. Through the detailed accounts provided by Flaubert, the reader is given a clear view of exactly what Bovary was going through and also the hidden messages involved with the scene of her death. The end result is that she died because she decided to live her life in a destructive fashion. The idea that materialism can lead to corruption and immorality is not a new one, but this text explores it in a very dramatic manner. Through the death of Madame Bovary, the reader is able to pick out a common theme: Relying on a high standing in society cannot bring you complete happiness. It could also be said that money does not necessarily bring you happiness, as money is an obvious byproduct of living a purely materialistic life. The significance of this commentary is that it allows the reader to follow the character down the path of destruction until her ultimate demise. The path that Bovary takes could also be viewed as a mental illness because she is seemingly unaware of what is occurred and lives in a delusional state. She lacks the ability to decipher that her actions are immoral, as she is able to justify everything she does because she believes it will help to her attain her end goal. By adding elements of realism into this text, the author brings the reader closer to the subject manner, which is a method of making the message hit the reader a little harder. Despite her shortcomings, due to the helpless way in which Madame Bovary acts in this novel, she is presented as a sympathetic character. She is a portrayed as a beautiful woman who is corrupted by her desire to have a life different than her own. Her goal was to attain a seemingly perfect life, filled with ideal forms of love, wealth, and the subsequent happiness that came from those things. Unfortunately for Madame Bovary, she created more problems for herself while trying to obtain these things. Her debt led to her becoming a prostitute and, eventually, to her own death. At the time of her death, Bovary is still portrayed very sympathetically because she is symbolic of women during this time period. There was no sense of independence for women at this point in history, and Madame Bovary represents this in the way that she relies on men for everything in her life. This even continues on to her death, as she relies on Justin to obtain the arsenic that she uses to take her own life. Flaubert’s goal here was to make people think about how helpless women were during this time period. The fact that Madame Bovary did not even have the resources to kill herself without the help of a man highlights this fact. All of this is an example of the realism that Flaubert incorporated into many of his novels. Madame Bovary’s actual death is another example of her own helplessness because she must rely on the help of a man to save her life. The man, however, fails to do so and she dies. The theme of powerlessness and sacrifice in women is common in this story as well, as Madame Bovary relishes this role because it allows for her to move up in society, but is much too helpless to fix her life once she loses her wealth. Her helplessness is not a role that she is placed into, but is rather something that she does not believe she can overcome. She, therefore, becomes much more helpless as the story progresses. Bovary believes that if she is able to attain her own selfish goals, that her life will be a happy one. When this does not come to fruition, however, Bovary is unable to handle the disappointment and kills herself. Madame Bovary does not belong in aristocratic society but she wants to become a part of it because she believes that it will make her happy. She is clearly depressed about the life she was living at the beginning of this novel and wants to find a way to escape the boredom. The results, however, are not she had been hoping for. While the reader can sympathize with Bovary because she simply wanted more out of life, which is something that is very common in society, it is very difficult to accept that she wanted to die because of her failure to fit in with a different class of people. Madame Bovary is a tragic character because she does not have the cognitive capacity to realize that she can be happy without being a part of the bourgeois and she takes her own life when her aspirations do not go as planned. Read More