Madame Bovary reflection: - Essay Example

MADAME BOVARY REFLECTION Gustave Flaubert has splashed this sensational yet realistic novel with the touch of poetic melodrama igniting interest and drama in the reader. This thematic novel was also adapted into a film in 1949, directed by Vincente Minnelli and produced by Pandro S. Berman. It was a further advancement to the screenplay written by Robert Ardrey. The novel starts with the introduction of a new student, in a school, who is Charles Bovery.

The story moves forward as he struggles through his life. His character is shown to be weak, timid and somewhat dull. Throughout the novel he remains witless, clueless and unwise yet honest and trusting. In contrast the film opens on Flaubert himself (starring James Mason) standing in the court where he is being convicted of writing an unethical and immoral novel. In response to these accusations Flaubert tells his peers a story of a naïve, innocent girl named Emma (starring Jennifer Jones) who spends her days reading romantic novels and fantasizing her own life in a similar pattern.

This great difference between the opening acts of the novel and the film was an unexpected yet an interesting change. The film was actually based on a partial true story as Flaubert was in reality convicted by the French judiciary for writing something that insulted France and disgraced womanhood. Ironically Flaubert has criticized his own profession in his writing as he mocks novelists “I have dissected myself to the quick.” (Salon 2013) During the course of the story Emma is exposed as a dreamy, unrealistic and impractical woman.

As we discover her life, she takes some ill-fated decisions, of how she gradually comes around to committing adultery and later suicide. All these consequences can be depicted as a moral lesson i.e. differentiating between fantasy and reality. The novel gives us a short brief preview of Emma’s former life as it is written from Charles Bovary’s point of view however the film provides us with a detailed description of her childhood as the film is being told from Emma’s perspective.

Flaubert dichotomized Emma’s character in two – dividing her between her fantasies and the harsh realities of life i.e. Rodophe Boulanger’s betrayal, Lheureux’s scheming e.t.c. Her character is a beautiful depiction of today’s women and Flaubert’s foresightedness is impressive. “In ‘Madame Bovary we see the first signs of alienation that a century later will take hold of men and women in industrial societies, consumption as an outlet for anxiety, the attempt to people with objects the emptiness that modern life has made a permanent feature of the existence of the individual.

Emma’s drama is the gap between illusion and reality, the distance between desire and its fulfillment. On two occasions she is persuaded that adultery can give her the splendid life that her imagination strains toward, and both times she is left feeling ‘bitterly disappointed.” (Vargas 1986). The novel ends tragically as Emma turns herself to despair and hopelessness hence committing suicide by swallowing arsenic. After her death when Charles finds out about her torrid affairs, he tries to forgive her, but ends up dead with sadness and grief.

However the movie ends a bit differently as the story finishes with the death of Emma but the movie continues with the trial of Flaubert where he is acquitted after his heart wrenching and moving story. The movie, timed so perfectly along with the facts, brought a significant change in the popularity of the novel along with the fame of the film. ReferencesSalon. (n.d.). Saloncom RSS. Retrieve December 6, 2013, from http://www.salon.com/1997/09/15/bovary/ Vargas, L. M. (1986).

The perpetual orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.