Analyse the marriage of Charles and Emma in Madame Bovary - Essay Example

The Marriage of Charles and Emma in Madame Bovary The character of Emma Bovary is innately sensual and she possesses a romantic imagination that hasbeen boosted by the tales of love, romance and adventure that she has read while growing up as a student in a convent. Possibly, her passionate nature could have been fully expressed in a satisfying marriage, however, the “placid dullness” of her husband is not conducive to passion. Emma finds Dr. Charles Bovary heroic at first, but his stature starts to diminish even before the wedding when he does not appear to match up to her fantasies of an assertive Bryonic hero (Bogg, 2002). Fresh from the love and romance of her books and her fantasies while she is in the convent, Emma expects her husband Charles to “initiate [her] into the forces of passion…… but he taught nothing….knew nothing, desired nothing.” As a result, the reality that Emma confronts in her marriage and the interminable dullness set her into a pattern where she becomes ripe for adultery , as she wonders “just what was meant in real life, by the words felicity, passion and intoxication, which had seemed so beautiful to her in books.” (Flaubert Part I: Ch 5). Her marriage thus becomes a vague, ever present dullness from which she yearns to escape and it makes her a ripe candidate for adultery. Charles’ name “Bovary” itself appears to suggest the bovine nature of the man. He is dull and unimaginative, while Emma’s maiden name “Rouault” contains the French word for wheels and thereby suggests Emma’s passionate, exotic nature. What Emma expects from her marriage is a receptivity to her spirited nature so that “a sudden overflow would have poured from her heart as the ripe fruit falls from a tree when one lays hand to it.” What she finds however, is a dull man who has no imagination at all; although he means well, he is boring and clumsy. The ball given by the Marquis d’Aquevilliers is even more depression for Emma, as she watches the utter inadequacy of her husband to fit in with the nobility that Emma so much desires to be a part of, his smugness and ignorance dampen her ardor considerably. Charles decides to take his pretty young wife to the larger town of Yonville and hands over financial control to her, all in the hope that she will be pleased. Gustave Flaubert uses words skillfully to depict reality in a manner that suggests the contrasts between Charles and Emma right from the time they get married. He shows the difference between the soulful Emma Bovary and the dull witted Charles when the newly weds are returning from their wedding and must cross a farmer’s field: "Emmas dress was rather long and the hem trailed a bit; from time to time she would stop and lift it up, then, with gloved fingers, delicately remove the wild grasses and tiny thistle burrs, while Charles stood empty-handed, waiting for her to finish." The town of Yonville itself suggests restrictions and limitations and a hedged-in existence, which Flaubert emphasizes through judicious use of words. (Flaubert, Part II: Ch 1). For example, Flaubert writes that as soon as one enters the small market town, “the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together and the fences disappear….” There is a feeling of sameness and Flaubert comments ironically that even the villagers and the peasants present an appearance of uniformity and appear the same. Flaubert communicates Emma Bovary’s sense of frustration at the monotony of her surroundings – the landscape is “flat” the meadow “stretches” and despite Emma anxiously scanning the horizon, nothing appears to relieve the monotony. Through the physical description of her surroundings, Flaubert expresses the feeling of monotony and suffocation which Emma Bovary feels in the marriage. The sitting room, in which Emma spends hours sitting in her armchair near the window, has a particularly “low ceiling” and the window represents a symbol of freedom. Whenever Emma suffers from an attack of nerves, she locks herself up in her room and then throws open the window because the room is “stifling” – “she went to the open window…..and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.” She sits at the window and “at the bottom of her heart…..she was waiting for something to happen.” Her eternal position is at the window and this image itself appears to suggest a form of imprisonment from which she longs to be liberated. There is no growth for either Charles or Emma in the marriage because the constant excitement that Emma craves is something Charles cannot furnish. The manner in which Flaubert structures Emma’s adultery further serves to emphasize the failure of her marriage with Charles and her feelings of resentment and suffocation. Early on in the story, Leon becomes her lover before Rodolphe. He shares her interest in the finer things of life and they animatedly discuss However, Emma makes an effort to be truthful to her marriage, she represses her love for Leon because she is a married woman and wants to remain true to Charles. She hides her love for him and plays the role of devoted wife and mother despite her inner contempt for Charles. Finally, despairing of ever winning her affection, Leon moves away to another town. But her successful defense against Leon is not a source of happiness for Emma, rather her so-called sacrifice only induces greater resentment of her husband and makes her ripe for seduction later by Rodolphe. According to Frances (2002) being married to such an inert character as Charles would make a modern marriage almost unbearable. Charles’ dullness is further emphasized by Flaubert as he fails to see the dangers in his wife going riding with Rodolphe and actually applauds the move, declaring that health comes first and assuring Rodolphe that “his wife was at his disposal.” Charles’ stupidity may therefore be viewed as further contributing to the breakdown of the marriage. “Never had Charles seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with Rodolphe.” (Flaubert: Part II: chapter 12) Flaubert highlights Charles’ dullness further in a scene where Emma, who constantly yearns for the dramatic, questions her lover Rodolphe and breathlessly asks him whether he has his pistols ready, in case her husband catches them. Emma enlightens him that he might need to defend himself against her husband, but Rodolphe’s reply is “You mean against your husband? Ah the poor fellow!” (Flaubert Part II:Ch 10) This further demonstrates Charles’ ignorance and placidity. Flaubert does not seek to whitewash or romanticize Emma’s passion, preferring to present her as a woman who was too unrealistic and dreamy in her visions, rendering them almost impossible to fulfil. His descriptions of the physical sexuality between Emma and her lovers, the scenes where he describes her white naked body with her glorious brown hair against a purple bedspread and the passion that is evoked in both are not romanticized. He describes her body throbbing with passion while he provides a splash of realism in describing her love with a pipe between his lips, working on a horse’s bridle (Flaubert, Part II: ch 9). As the marriage moves on through years of boredom, Emma’s desire for the rich life, luxuries, travel and fine things – all of which are outside her purview as a common doctor’s wife, only serve to heighten the restlessness fermenting within her and pull her further and further away from Clarles, who remains blissfully ignorant of his wife’s lack of fidelity. Her passionate affair with Rodolphe is motivated by her visions of running away with Rodolphe to a life of glamour and excitement, far removed from the dull drudgery of her daily existence with her husband and his unimaginative stupidity. But her increasing demands begin to tire Rodolphe, who recognized Emma right from the first as a woman “gaping for love like a carp on the kitchen table for water” yet in his self serving way, had plotted from that time “how to get rid of her afterwards.” Her vehement expressions of love and intensity only serve to push him away, because he hears in them only the hackneyed protestations of love of his former mistresses, which strips Emma of all novelty. He believes that such exaggerated feelings should be disowned because they imply commonplace emotions beneath. Our deepest emotions are often difficult to express, " . . . and human language is like a cracked kettledrum on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when what we long to do is make music that will move the stars to pity." (Flaubert, Part II: Ch 12) Emma is devastated and falls ill when Rodolphe leaves her at the last minute after promising to run away with her. She is left back in the rut with her husband Charles, who is still too stupid to suspect the reasons for his wife’s illness. Emma feels like an empty vessel that has been drained of all feeling, because she has spent it all in her passionate affair with Rudolphe. Charles takes her to an opera after she has recovered in an effort to shake off her apathy, but this only opens the way for her to meet Leon and fall into an affair with him instead. But this affair is also doomed to fail, because: "They knew one another too well to experience that wonderment of mutual possession that increases its joy a hundredfold. She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Emma was discovering, in adultery, all the banality of marriage." (Flaubert Part III:ch 6) Throughout the marriage, Charles also remains ignorant of the manner in which Emma plunges the family into debt. When she is unable to repay her debts, she swallows arsenic and dies. Charles is heartbroken, but preserves her room like a shrine. Despite coming across Rodolphe’s letters one day, he still tries to forgive his wife, whom he had loved in his dull, apathetic way all along, ever since the day he saw her as a young girl at a local farm. “Perhaps they loved each other platonically” he thinks to himself, his jealously swallowed up in the enormity of his grief.(Flaubert: Part III, Ch 11) Emma Bovary is the main character in Flaubert’s novel. However in his portrayal of the character, he has also shown through his adherence to a realistic narration, the basic incompatibility of Emma and her husband Charles. The differences in their temperaments was one reason for the breakdown of their marriage, while another was Emma’s constant dissatisfaction with her own life and the desire for a glamorous lifestyle that was beyond her husband’s means. Flaubert shows with brutal realism, the ennui that afflicts most marriages and leads to adultery. Reference: * Bogg, RA, 2002. “Bryonic heroes in American popular culture: might they adversely affect mate choices?” Deviant Behavior, 23(3): 203-233 * Ferguson, Frances, 2002. “Emma, or Happiness (or Sex Work)” Critical Enquiry, 28: 749-779 * Flaubert, Gustave. “Madame Bovary” e-text. [online] available at: etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/f/flaubert/gustave/f58m Read More