Gender Roles In Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary

“Emma could not resist. Ah! Ma’am but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me- but you will be limited as to number- only three at once”; Emma insults Miss Bates, who is a dear friend, in order to quench her desire for social credit. When Mr Martin’s proposal arrives for Harriet, Emma shakes her head with disdain. Emma has the highest social status, apart from Knightley, and uses this to diminish those of lower class. Chapone asks us to “Observe her manner to servants and inferiors” and whether she treats “them always with affability”, but we know, Emma does not. Emma thinks Mr Martin is a “very inferior creature” and when Harriet asks for advice Emma says “the letter had much better be all your own” but sneaks in “You need not to be prompted to write the appearance of sorrow for his disappointment”. Harriet refuses Martin, and Emma proclaims that Harriet, if she accepted, would have been “confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar” and “could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin” since she deems the lower class as unsophisticated primitives. Emma would have lost her latest amusement and her chance to prove her intelligence. Emma’s subtle manipulations illustrates the absence of inner morality, and is thus, an ill-qualified mentor.

During Flaubert’s lifetime, the Revolution of 1789 and the autocratic reign of Napoleon were recent memories. With the revolution came the end of the feudal system and a rise to a new group: the bourgeoisie. This group was made up of merchants, capitalists, and other professionals who did not inherit their fortune and were not born into the nobility. Emma and her husband belonged to this group. Her disappointments in life stemmed from her dissatisfaction with the lifestyle of the French bourgeoisie. She aspires to be a part of the aristocratic lifestyle of the nobility; a lifestyle more sophisticated, refined and glamorous than her own. The bourgeoisie craved the same treatment as the nobility, and were constantly attempting to exhibit their wealth creating tastes that were often characterized as gaudy. As a member of the educated elite with inherited money, Flaubert despised the moral conservatism, rough manners, and unsophisticated taste of this new class. Frustrated by the mediocracy of rising middle class, Flaubert uses Emma’s disgust with her lifestyle to convey his own dislike for the bourgeoisie. Emma felt the full suffering of the middle class as "the appetites of the flesh, the craving for money, the melancholy of passion, all blended together in one general misery” just like France’s

Written by Gustave Flaubert and published in 1856, Madame Bovary tells a story about the life and death of Emma Bovary, a middle class woman living in mid-nineteenth century France. This novel is known as one of the best examples of literary realism ever written, and for good reason. Through his writing and attention to detail, Flaubert does an excellent job of giving the reader an idea of just how mundane everyday life was like in France during the mid-nineteenth century. Through the various characters in the novel, Flaubert is also able to portray many positive and negative characteristics he saw in the people living during this time. Of the many different characteristics and ideas that Flaubert uses to describe characters throughout the novel, I think that the many aspects he saw in the bourgeoisie class and materialism are uniquely important. I believe that the ways Flaubert uses the ideas and issues of materialism and similar principles he saw in the bourgeoisie to tell the story of Madame Bovary, to criticize the bourgeoisie, as well as show how harmful and destructive he believed these issues could be to a society.

In his novel Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert connects the social, political, and historical period that he writes in, as seen through the archetypal, sociological, and psychological critical lenses, to leave a lasting impact on society today. He masterfully works his life and the circumstances he endured into the novel and takes the reader on a journey through this character that he has claimed is very similar to him. Many aspects of the novel allow the reader to make the connection between the social, political, and historical period that he writes in.

Though at first glance, Emma appears to be a generic romantic novel about virtue and ladyhood, Austen actually challenges what the meaning of “ladyhood” is to the reader. We view Emma’s follies, trials, and triumphs through the eyes of the omnipotent narrator who first describes Emma as a stereotypical, wealthy young lady who is “handsome, clever…with…a happy disposition” (1). Through the use of irony, Austen employs a series of situations in which Emma, a “lady” of high standing within her community, challenges conventional thinking of what it means to be a young woman in the early nineteenth century, particularly her ideas concerning marriage and

“This contradiction between imagined autonomy and legal negation is the contradiction that romantic love denies and the marriage plot suspends. And even though it does not appear in this precise form in Emma, I want to argue that this paradox – and the contradiction it foreshadows – constitutes the ideological tension the novel is trying to manage and the terms in which plot complications are engendered and resolved. Let me explain a little more fully what I mean” (401).

In Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, it is difficult to know what to think of Monsieur Binet and his lathe. His constant devotion to such an unrewarding pursuit would seem to act as the bourgeois backdrop to Emma Bovary’s quest for eternal passion and excitement, a polar opposite with which Emma can stand in sharp contrast. However, it turns out that Binet and his lathe have more in common with Emma and her rampant desires than what would first appear obvious. Binet’s lathe still serves as a background with which to compare Emma’s quest for love and riches, but instead of acting as a complete antithesis to everything she does, the lathe is meant to be subtly different

Set in the Victorian era of the 1800’s Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert exemplifies society’s views on the established gender roles of this time. Flaubert utilizes Emma Bovary’s masculinity to accentuate Emma’s desire for control. Her desire for control extends from the social pressure of the period, revealing her envy towards men. Flaubert undoubtedly depicts Emma’s characteristics to have a masculine undertone and throughout the novel her femininity deviates as her priority shifts. Emma’s lack of femininity translates to her relationships by maneuvering an interchanging role of a girlfriend or boyfriend.

This image and atmosphere of mundane imperfection is a far cry from what Emma expects after reading the romantic novels she smuggled in at the convent. From those foppish texts she gathers the impression that ladies such as she should be “lolling on carriages” or “dreaming on sofas,” or perhaps embracing some dashing “young man in a short cloak” (Flaubert 32). Yet such is not the reality in which she lives.

    Often in literature, a character is found that is quite memorable. Never was this more true than in Flaubert's Madame Bovary. To some, Emma Bovary's action at the end of the novel was drastic and unnecessary; others believed her death to be the end of the natural progression of the story. However, Emma's decision to commit suicide was relatively simple, yet came as a last resort. She had exhausted all the other options she felt were available, and in the end made her plan based on finances, lost love, and the sheer boredom of her life.

The food served was not as grand as the dishes that would be present at a high-class banquet; however, it was still sophisticated enough that the food was relatively unavailable for the lower class to be able to afford. This allows for the Bovary’s to have an air of aristocracy that masked their middle class reality. Moreover, although living comfortably, the actions of those in the middle class are still considered very basic; many of the bourgeoisie had lackluster table manners. Frustrated with Charles’ eating habits, Emma describes him “to be getting coarser in his ways;... after meals, he used to suck his teeth; eating his soup, he made a gurgling noise with every mouthful” (58). Such behaviour would be unheard of in the higher class, but to Emma, this was her unfavourable reality. Through this portrayal, she reveals her dissatisfaction with the behaviour of her own middle-class lifestyle. Furthermore, Emma’s constant sophisticated desires are incomprehensible by the rest of the middle class as the elder Madame Bovary “found her style too grand for her situation” (40). Emma views herself more as an aristocrat than a bourgeoisie, hence attempting to boast her seemingly more refined characteristics. Hoping to escape the mundane middle class, the bourgeoisie pine after the luxurious life of an aristocrat.

In eighteenth century which feminist in social status was not popular by that time, author can only through literature to express her thought and discontented about society. Jane Austen’s Emma advocates a concept about the equality of men and women. Also satirizes women would depend on marriage in exchange to make a living or money in that era. By the effect of society bourgeois, Emma has little self-arrogant. She is a middle class that everyone could admire, “Young, pretty, rich and clever”, she has whatever she needs. She disdains to have friends with lower levels. However, she is soon reach satisfaction with matchmaking for her friend. Story characterizes a distorted society images and the superiority of higher class status. It

The Victorian society in which this novel takes place sets us idealized versions of the woman that Edna Pontellier should be. (Madame Ratignolle, Ms. Reisz, the lovers, the woman in black.)

Being female meant being dependent on a man (father or husband) and doing the usual womanly duties. There would be no grand escapades that Emma dreams of or a lavish cultural life. What is expected of her is to raise a family and take care of her husband. Only Emma’s mind has been corrupted by romantic novels that spoke of passion, bliss and adventure. She marries Charles, but soon begins to question herself: “Before she married, she had believed herself to be in love; but since the happiness that should have resulted from this love had no arrived, she thought she must have been mistaken”(1.6.1238). While she has a doting, loving husband, she can only see his flaws. He isn’t the well-rounded man she wants him to be. His clothing was plain, talk was stale, he doesn’t want to go anywhere exciting or do anything different, which makes Emma distance herself. She is a dreamer caught up in an ordinary life that most would be happy to have. But Emma’s corruption begins its slippery slope down when she and Charles are invited to the Marquis’s ball. There Emma experiences the lavish lifestyle she has read about and craved: “Her trip to La Vaubyessard had created a kind of hole in her life, like one of those great crevasses that a storm can sometimes carve out in the mountains in a single night” (1.8.1252). You can feel Emma’s great need for something more than she has and the vast boredom in her everyday life that threatens to consume her. Flaubert has made Emma to be a character

Flaubert use of “they” and “them,” further separates Emma from the festivities of the upper class. Additionally, as Emma is preparing for the ball, she is striving to appear as “extravagant” as possible. She “did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress” (Flaubert, 42-44) Thus, Flaubert emphasizes that Emma’s is unable to prepare for the ball without “directions” implying that she is not able to be a part of the upper-class events without guidance. Therefore, her only connection to the upper class at the ball are her clothes. Also, Flaubert further separates Emma and Charles from the rest of the guest, by having them arrive in a “dog-cart” (Flaubert, 41). Hence, Flaubert advocates that no matter how much the middle class aspires to be a part of the upper-class—through material items—they will never have the means to do so. Flaubert further emphasizes the separation between Emma and the rest of the guests when he writes: “Emma was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand” (Flaubert, 45). Flaubert is highlighting how out of place Emma is, yet how aloof Emma remains. She is still “listening” even though she doesn’t understand what they are saying. Overall, Flaubert utilizes perspective in order to highlight Emma’s aspirations to be a part of the upper class, through her appearance and material items. Ultimately, Flaubert is critiquing the French middle-class in that