A psychological assessment: the romantic illusions of Emma in Flauberts Madame Bovary - Essay Example

RUNNING PSYCHOLOGY OF EMMA'S ROMANTIC ILLUSIONS A Psychological Assessment: the Romantic Illusions of Emma in Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." Name: Date: Affiliation: A Psychological Assessment: the Romantic Illusions of Emma in Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." Emma is the beautiful and young wife of Charles Bovary, a small town country doctor. The story of Madame Bovary takes the reader through the life, affairs and tragic death of the heroine. To bring excitement to her monotonous married life, Emma tries a series of romantic escapades leading her to social disgrace, financial ruins and suicide. It is assessed, through the story, whether the psychology behind her romantic illusions is her inability to accept real than the imaginary and whether her hysteric narcissism is simply an adaptation to overcome her boredom. In the beginning, Emma tries to experience love with Charles but it is according to the theories she has formed from her romantic readings. She recites poems and sings to him by moonlight . But neither feels loss of calm in her or moves Charles to be more ardent or amorous. Emma is unable to experience passion as it comes spontaneously. She was merely looking for conventional romanticism of her novels; otherwise Charles was quite romantic and passionate towards her. Only if she could have recognized that (referred by Paris, 1997, p199-202): Seen thus closely her eyes looked to him enlarged , especially when, on waking up , she opened and closed her eyed rapidly many times and it goes on to.. his own eyes were lost themselves in those depths and he could see himself mirrored in miniature. He often reproaches himself for not loving her enough and so runs upstairs touches her comb, rings and gives her "great sounding kisses" or "little kisses in a row" But Emma suffered from ennui and imagined what love would be with a lover like she reads in her novels and magazines. For her the materialistic life is of prime importance and she longed to be the central attraction of that world of high society. She wanted to be famous while the mediocre existence and Charles' and his contentment with it often enraged her. The situation made her even more desperate for excitement and fame. In such a situation when she meets Rodolphe, a calculating womanizer who thinks "how to get rid of her afterwards" even before beginning an affair (Paris, 203). He understands Emma well and lures her by playing a melancholy lover, pretending sadness at world's narrow minded views about true love that she adores. She is flattered when he tells her that she is the hope of life for him. Emma does raise a question that should not there be morality to some extent. But Randolph brushes it away saying that the morality of small men is only a hindrance to cherish the beauty and feeling the great. Her moral questions answered thus Emma plunges in the affair with pride and without a tinge of shame. She glorifies in being dependent on him like a servant or even as a prostitute. All is fine till she suggest him that they should elope. But such a thought is unbearable to a detached person like Randolph. It becomes predictable the more fiercely Emma clings to him and more likely he would abandon her (Paris, 209). And it happens soon. After Rodolphe abandons her ,Emma becomes hysteric and even contemplates suicide. Her hysteria is so strong that even the safety and affection of a family could not take her out of her broken romantic illusion. After the end of her affair with Rodolphe, Charles, who is unaware of the true reason of her depression and hysteria tries to bring her out of it as: "Speak to us , said Charles; "collect yourself"; it is your Charles who loves you. Do you know me See here is your little girl ! oh kiss her."Emma said , in a broken voice " no no! no one!" (Flaubert, 2006, 278) Bronfen (1998) states that hysteria is a psychosomatic disturbance as those affected by hysteria move internally, in accordance with their experiences and externally, in accordance with their public appearances in position where they feel themselves equal part of the other. They are projected other than what they are in the eyes of those around them. For a female, the language of hysteria is expression of feminine dissatisfaction with culture, the code of discontent and boredom, melancholy, world weariness, daydreaming, narcissism, self obsession and also self destruction. It is the reaction of many young women confined in bourgeois family settings. The explanation fits Emma well in the light of above incidents. Emma, desperate as she is, turns to various solutions such as romantic love, devotion and duty, reading one after the other. She always plays a dutiful wife to Charles and good friends to her acquaintances. She also turns to god also as her savior and feels happy for time being after her illness. But when nothing works and the future looks bleak to her, she becomes inconsistent in behavior, cynical and psychosomatic (Paris, 1997). She meets Leon once again, in the opera. Their meetings began with a detached dialogues about worldly matters. But soon the course becomes as expected and Emma feels " No man has ever seemed to her so beautiful" and to Leon " she is mistress of all novels and queen of all drama". Soon after the idyllic period the disillusionment sets in. When Leon is delayed by Homais, the chemist and Charles' friend, he seems to Emma " In capable of heroism, weak, banal". (Flaubert 340- 381). Leon, who is soon to be promoted resents Emma's domination and feels to get out of the relationship committed "in the flush of his youth". She does not discontinue her affair with Leon, though and keeps on meeting him in expensive hotels and going deeper into the financial debts. Though Leon suggests her to choose less expensive one but material refinement is too dear to her so she refuses. The men have taken advantage of frivolity and fancy of Emma and called their affairs with her as superior than ordinary mortals'. Emma lacks inner and outer resources to understand what ails her and where is it leading her. She could engage others only through her lenses of fantasy. Her efforts to achieve happiness are doomed by the fleshliness of her ideals. With her affair with Leon, however she learns to differentiate between desire and reality. It shows that mentally she has capacity to distinguish between these two but the overpowering imagination fails her. Both she and Leon are unable to part despite being weary of each other. Leon is a habit for her, her imagination. For him she thought of as a phantom composed of her most beautiful memories, of her strongest lusts rather than real as he was (Goodstein, 2005,). She pictures Leon as some else just to fulfill her romantic illusions. Flaubert (2006) again shows flashes of understanding in Emma as the insufficiency of relationship makes her unhappy and she desires "somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of refinement and exaltation , a poet's heart in an angel form" (384). Unfortunately it does not make her recognize that affair has gone stale and is incurring high cost without giving anything back. Betrayal of Charles' trust and insult to his adoration makes her look like a psychologically disturbed individual. No wonder the path ahead led her to moral degradation and Self abnegation Why Emma continued doing what no longer excited her. Was it just out of habit or was it a classical example of boredom Goodstein, (2005) explains that boredom is on one hand result of fatigue, depletion and decay and on the other a urge of freedom, renewal and innovation. So boredom may be result of an attachment to amorphous and melancholic past or rejection of unpleasant present. In case of Emma it seems both. She lost her mother early in life while present marriage was a monotonous and unexciting living for her. Thus she looked for new sources of diversion in the form of her affairs. Goodstein, (2005) further posits that ennui is a form of emptiness that has many interpretations which may be contradictor. Boredom in Emma's meaningless life leads her to fake and vicious palliatives. She represents a modern subject whose melancholy is at once important and superficial and stands as a symbol for all that is lacking in modern life. She however is both an object and a subject of boredom. As disastrous protagonist and pitiable victim crumbling under the burden of bourgeois existence (Goodstein, 2005). Clulow (1993) analyses that she puts real world as hateful and frustrated giving her love a manic and desperate quality. Even when her lover's true character is revealing she refuses to believe it : "The grand passion in to which she had plunged seemed to be dwindling around her like a river sinking into its bed; she saw the slime at the bottom . She refused to believe it. She redoubled her efforts at tenderness". (Flaubert 2006, p227) As evident, the man (Rodolphe) abandons her. She begins her next affair with man seemed more suitable and with whom she could have been happily married, if opportunity provided, but it too meets the same fate. The romantic illusions for Emma are a denial of reality. She craves for these even without any real relationship. Her narcissism is psychopathological (Clulow, p90). However, it is only adaptation to fulfill her romantic illusions and it is not her basic character. The men she has dated had diverted her to do what they wanted from her and made her misinterpret it as true love. Besides the chronic boredom and related hysteria, Emma's behavior is also a reflection of oppression of women at that time. But it is the oppression by her lovers who had used her and then left her to suffer. There is no indication of oppression by her husband. Her illnesses and finally suicide by consuming arsenic (Flaubert 2006) is the result of these oppressive attitudes. In the end, the psychology behind Emma's romantic illusions may be interpreted as her reaction to chronic boredom of her present life. Her romantic views are strictly confined to her readings without any flexibility. As a result she ignores the pure and spontaneous love of her husband and is used and abandoned by her many lovers. It is not that Emma never discriminates truth from imagination; it is only that she refuses to accept the reality. When the truth comes out strongly she becomes hysteric. As a result there is never a rational downing upon her giving her chances not to learn from her mistakes. . . References Bronfen, Elisabeth (1998). The knotted subject: hysteria and its discontents. Princeton University Press Clulow, C. F. (1993). Rethinking marriage: Public and private perspective. Karnac Books Flaubert, G. (2006). Madame Bovary: Easyread Edition. ReadHowYouWant.com. Goodstein, Elizabeth S. (2005). Experience without qualities: boredom and modernity. Stanford University Press. Paris, Bernard J. (1997). Imagined human beings: a psychological approach to character and conflict in literature. NYU Press. Read More