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Madame Bovary

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Madame Bovary book cover
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Madame Bovary book cover

For the film, see Madame Bovary (film)
Madame Bovary is a novel by Gustave Flaubert that was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialised in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, resulting in a trial in January 1857 that made it notorious. After the acquittal on 7 February, it was became a bestseller in book form in April 1857, and is now seen as one of the first modern realistic novels.

The novel focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was notoriously perfectionistic about his writing and claimed to always be searching for le mot juste (the right word).

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Contents

Summary

Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen in Normandy. A doctor, Charles Bovary, marries a beautiful farm girl, Emma Rouault. She is filled with a desire for luxury and romance, which she gets from reading popular novels. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy. Emma believes that the birth of a baby boy will "cure" their marriage. After Emma gets pregnant and eventually gives birth to a daughter, she believes her life is virtually over.

Charles decides that Emma needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes (now Tôtes) into an equally stultifying village, Yonville (traditionally based on the town Ry). Emma flirts with one of the first people she meets, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life." When he leaves to study in Paris, Emma begins an affair with a rich landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger. Swept away by romantic fantasy, she makes a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, does not love her, and breaks off the plan the evening before it was to take place, with a letter at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that she falls deathly ill, and for a time turns to religion.

Emma and Charles attend the opera in Rouen one night, and Emma reencounters Léon. They begin an affair: Emma travels to the city each week to meet him, while Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons. Meanwhile, Emma is spending exorbitant amounts of money. When Emma's debts begin to pile up and people begin to suspect her adultery, she sees suicide as her only means of escape. She swallows arsenic and dies, painfully and slowly. The loyal Charles is distraught, even more so after finding the letters that Rodolphe wrote to her. Soon after, he dies, leaving their daughter an orphan.

Chapter-by-chapter

Part One

  1. Charles Bovary's childhood, student days and first marriage
  2. Charles meets Rouault and daughter Emma; Charles's first wife dies
  3. Charles proposes to Emma
  4. The wedding
  5. The new household at Tostes
  6. An account of Emma's childhood and secret fantasy world
  7. Emma becomes bored; invitation to a ball by the Marquis d'Andervilliers
  8. The ball at the château La Vaubyessard
  9. Emma follows fashions; her boredom concerns Charles, and they decide to move

Part Two

  1. Description of Yonville-l'Abbaye: Homais, Lestiboudois, Binet, Bournisien, Lheureux
  2. Emma meets Léon Dupuis, the lawyer's clerk
  3. Emma gives birth to Berthe, visits her at the nurse's house with Léon
  4. A card game; Emma's friendship with Léon grows
  5. Trip to see flax mill; Lheureux's pitch; Emma is resigned to her life
  6. Emma visits the priest Bournisien; Berthe is injured; Léon leaves for Paris
  7. Charles's mother bans novels; the blood-letting of Rodolphe's farmhand; Rodolphe meets Emma
  8. The comice agricole (agricultural show); Rodolphe woos Emma
  9. Six weeks later Rodolphe returns and they go out riding; he seduces her and the affair begins
  10. Emma crosses paths with Binet; Rodolphe gets nervous; a letter from her father makes Emma repent
  11. Operation on Hippolyte's clubfoot; M. Canivet has to amputate; Emma returns to Rodolphe
  12. Emma's extravagant presents; quarrel with mother-in-law; plans to elope
  13. Rodolphe runs away; Emma falls gravely ill
  14. Charles is beset by bills; Emma turns to religion; Homais and Bournisien argue
  15. Emma meets Léon at performance of Lucie de Lammermoor

Part Three

  1. Emma and Léon converse; tour of Rouen Cathedral; censored cab-ride
  2. Emma goes to Homais; the arsenic; Bovary senior has died; Lheureux's bill
  3. She visits Léon in Rouen
  4. She resumes "piano lessons" on Thursdays
  5. Visits to Léon; the singing tramp; Emma starts to fiddle the accounts
  6. Emma becomes noticeably anxious; debts spiral out of control
  7. Emma begs for money from several people
  8. Rodolphe cannot help; she swallows arsenic; her death
  9. Emma lies in state
  10. The funeral
  11. Charles finds letters; his death

Characters in Madame Bovary

Emma Bovary

Emma is the novel's protagonist and the source of its title. She has a highly romanticized view of the world and craves beauty, wealth, passion and high society. It is the disparity between these romantic ideals and the realities of her country life that drive most of the novel, most notably leading her into two extra-marital love affairs as well as causing her to rack up an insurmountable amount of debt that eventually leads to her suicide. Flaubert’s treatment of his protagonist is ambivalent. He ridicules Emma’s romantic tendencies and lambasts them as not only impractical, but ultimately harmful. At the same time however, Flaubert never seems to put any blame on Emma herself. Instead he seems to indicate that Emma is incapable of freeing herself from these traits. Indeed, Emma herself questions, and seems perplexed by, why she is unable to be happy with her life. Also, despite his critical view of Emma, Flaubert is equally critical in his depictions of the country bourgeois who surround and foil Emma.

Charles Bovary

Emma’s husband, Charles Bovary, is a very simple and common man. He is a country doctor by profession, but is, as in everything else, not very good at it. He is in fact not qualified enough to be termed a doctor, but is instead an “officier de santé”. Charles adores his wife and finds her faultless, despite obvious evidence to the contrary. He never suspects her affairs and gives her complete control over his finances, thereby securing his own ruin. Despite Charles' complete devotion to Emma, she despises him as he is the epitome of all that is dull and common. When Charles discovers Emma’s deceptions after her death he is completely devastated and dies soon after.

Monsieur Homais

Monsieur Homais is the town apothecary. He is materialistic and self-centered. Though a common man, he thinks highly of himself and seeks personal attention and recognition, often by writing pompous and banal commentaries on town events. Flaubert uses Monsieur Homais as a figure head with which to mock the shallowness of bourgeois society.

Leon

First befriending Emma when she moves to Yonville, Leon seems a perfect match for her. He shares her romantic ideals as well as her disdain for common life. He worships Emma from afar before leaving to study law in Paris. A chance encounter brings the two together several years later and this time they begin an affair. Though happy at first, after a time they are unable to continue to live up to each others romantic expectations. Emma and Leon’s relationship is one more cynical commentary on romantic ideals.

Rodolphe Boulanger

Rodolphe is a wealthy local man who seduces Emma as one more addition to a long string of mistresses. Though occasionally charmed by Emma, Rodolphe feels little true emotion towards her. Certainly nothing like the deep passion and hope she pins on him. As Emma becomes more and more desperate, Rodolphe loses interest and worries about her lack of caution. He eventually ends their relationship.

Monsieur Lheureux

A manipulative and sly merchant who continually convinces Emma to buy things on credit and borrow money from him. Lheureux plays Emma masterfully and eventually leads her so far into debt as to cause her financial ruin and subsequent suicide.
Spoilers end here.

Setting

The setting of Madame Bovary is crucial to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flaubert’s realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to protagonist Emma.

It has been calculated that the novel begins in October, 1827 and ends in August, 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the “July Monarchy”, or the rule of King Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class. Flaubert detested the bourgeois. Much of the time and effort, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interepreted as social criticism.

Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city of Rouen in Normandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in looking at the style of the novel. It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as “Realism”.

Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to contrast with his protagonist. Emma’s romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more capricious and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in comparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in the bourgeois class.

Style

The book, loosely based on the life story of a schoolfriend who had become a doctor, was written at the urging of friends, who were trying (unsuccessfully) to "cure" Flaubert of his deep-dyed Romanticism by assigning him the dreariest subject they could think of, and challenging him to make it interesting without allowing anything out-of-the-way to occur. Although Flaubert had little liking for the styles of Balzac or Zola, the novel is now seen as a prime example of Realism, a fact which contributed to the trial for obscenity (which was a politically-motivated attack by the government on the liberal newspaper in which it was being serialised, La Revue de Paris). Flaubert, as the author of the story, does not comment directly on the moral character of Emma Bovary and abstains from explicitly condemning her adultery. Due to this decision some accused Flaubert of glorifying adultery, creating a scandal (a rather groundless charge considering Emma's perpetual disappointment and grim fate).

Realism aims for verisimilitude through a focus on character development. The movement was a reaction to the idealism of Romanticism, a mode of thought which rules Emma's actions. She becomes increasingly dissatisfied since her larger than life fantasies are, by definition, not able to be realized. However, the notion that Flaubert is criticizing Romanticism through the persecution of Emma is complicated by his remark, "Emma Bovary, c'est moi" ("I am Emma Bovary").

Madame Bovary, on the whole, is a commentary on the entire culture of Flaubert's time period, this being clearly illustrated by the focus on the absurdity of the scientific "rational" figures, the uselessness of the church rites, and the self-serving bourgeois Lheureux (who tricks Emma into buying off credit from him).

Theme

Madame Bovary deals essentially with humanity's failings. One aspect of this is its dealings with romanticism and the futility and senselessness of romantic ideals in actual life. The story of Emma Bovary’s muddled, unhappy life and ultimate death is tragic in its preventability. Her life could have been a happy one had she been able to see past her romanticism enough to be content with it. In contrast to Emma, however, the novel presents the common and often hypocritical local populace. Unlike Emma, whose ambitions bring about her downfall, the cauchois people she is surrounded with are remarkable in their utter lack of higher vision. These people are blatantly self-centered, vulgar, base, and completely unaware of any hope for greater beauty or achievement. This spectrum of humanity seems very dim indeed. Either one is so blinded by fancy as to be unable to live in the world of reality, or one is so immersed in the common as to make life a truly ugly thing, devoid of higher inspiration. This contrast of attitudes can be seen to represent the social and literary attitudes of Flaubert’s time period. France was coming off of the Romantic period and was beginning to be over run by bourgeois sensibilities. Flaubert seems to indicate that neither is a very good option. He does, however, hold out some hope in the form of the doctor who attempts to help Emma, but comes too late. The doctor is the one character in the novel who not only is sensible, but carries a sense of duty. Perhaps, Flaubert seems to indicate, there is some hope for finding a reasonable and honorable middle ground. The chance seems small, however, and late in coming.

Trivia

See also

External links

 

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