Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary was a work that depicted the banal life of Emma Bovary after her marriage to Charles. When the novel was released, it received both positive and negative criticism. The critics who attacked the novel did so mostly for the element and amount of realism in the novel, and most of these critics considered the novel as a whole to be a work that was politically subversive in an attempt to promote democracy (De Man 2005). The novel was eventually taken to trial, and Flaubert was found innocent of charges of “outrage to public morals” (Culler 685). Debates over the amount of realism and the deeper meaning of the story are still debated today.
Debates regarding the context of the novel continue today. The two most recent perspectives for criticism stem from historical and feminist points of view. The feminist perspectives focus on Emma’s confinement and restriction to the bourgeoisie class and patriarchal society. We can conclude from the language used and the situations described that the narrator is a man.
Even before Charles met Emma, she was beginning to lose touch with real life. Emma was taken by the romantic stories of the outcast woman in the convent. Her actions and behaviors, being constantly distracted by fantasies of love and romance, caused her expulsion from the convent, a life she longed for after her marriage. The narrator explains, “Before marriage [Emma] thought herself in love; but since the happiness that should have followed failed to come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words bliss, passion, ecstasy, that had seemed so beautiful in her books” (Flaubert 30).
The story is framed by Charles’s life. The reader is introduced to Charles at the age of twelve, when he first attends grammar school. He has a difficult time speaking and is made fun of by his peers. His father is gruff and abusive while his mother is passive and puts up with the philandering and lack of love he expresses toward his child and wife. The trials Charles endures with medical school and his first wife only add insult to Emma’s behavior in public, especially with other men, when the narrator expresses Charles’ ultimate devotion and happiness with his wife. He only wants to make her happy.
From these traits and evidence, we can conclude the text is partially satirical in nature. Flaubert mocks the idleness of the bourgeoisie class and warns that people must remain cautious; people should pay attention to their own lives and actions and not the actions of others. In doing so, Emma compares herself to those economically superior to her with the disastrous effect of becoming even more depressed and dissatisfied with her life, her husband, and her new role as mother.
Many critics today still claim the realistic validity of Madame Bovary. In a recent edition of MLN, Jonathan Culler defends the novel’s realistic validity, but he utterly ignores the satirical elements of the text. Culler focuses his essay on drawing connections which may or may not correlate with real life events. Culler explains that events and characters in the novel are realistic. Because it can be believed that people can resemble Emma Bovary, some people in villages became local celebrities after killing themselves with arsenic, and financial ruin befell many people, the novel is the utmost epitome of realistic fiction (Culler 685).
The trial of the novel is the basis of evidence for of Culler’s argument. He raises the valid point to consider when reading the novel; Culler asks if the real story told in the novel is the depiction of the real world at its worst or the autotelic- self-contained and having the purpose for its existence in its being- structure with an absent structure. Culler goes on to rely on the trial result for his answer. Culler states, “Prosecution interpreted the book as a realistic representation of our world, in which certain statements about marriage, adultery, and Marie Antoinette should be censured, and the representations blamed for offering no positive images of reality, i.e. a too direct or not idealized representation” (686-687). From this, Culler draws the conclusion that realism is the opposite of idealism, which was the foundation of the prosecution’s case.
Barbara Vinken, in the same 2007 issue of MLN, said that the story Gustave Flaubert wrote was not an example of realism at all. Instead, the novel represents a complex allegory for spiritual nourishment. Vinken explains that the indulgences Emma Bovary and others engage in are poor substitutes for the lack of spiritual nourishment in each individual’s life. Vinken explains that the text should be seen as aesthetic rather than realistic, and her thesis is:
“Aesthetic offers no compensation for the loss of the promise of salvation, and is
therefore not to be understood as a phenomenon of salvation. Aesthethetics is rather the
outcome of an insatiable desire for god, misdirected towards the world, finding expression in fetish and in drugs. In the end, this longing for transcended salvation is not compensated by aesthetics, but rather destructively betrayed (760).
She further argues that the realism of the novel is not revealing lust to the audience, but the realism of the novel is only the “result of the desire for god gone astray” and that Emma’s “carnal devotion to the world” and final poisoning are only more evidence for the lack of spiritual fulfillment in Emma’s life (765).
While Vinken does make strong connections about Emma’s desire to use things and her desperate need to feel the way aesthetic and indulgent objects of passion express, and spirituality is an important component to realistic happiness, the direct link to god is a bit forced. Emma displays a strong need to fill a void, but that void is internal happiness and a sense of purpose in her life. In the third chapter of Book Two, the narrator describes her feelings toward the life of women in the nineteenth century. The narrator explains, “A man, at least, is free; he can explore all passions and all countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most distant pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. Being inert as well as pliable, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and the inequity of the law” (Flaubert 74).
Emma, like many people Vinken’s essay ignores by linking directly to faith in god, just wants to be able to live a big life of adventure that she can choose on her own. She desires freedom to get to know herself and what will make her happy; in the trials she would have been able to overcome if she were a man, Emma may have been able to develop her own spiritual connection or at least fill the void in her life caused by romance and wonder.
Work Cited
Culler, Jonathan. “The Realism of Madame Bovary.” MLN 122 (2007): 683–696.
De Man, Paul. “Contemporary Critical Reception of Madame Bovary.” Ed. Paul De Man.
Madame Bovary New York: Norton 2005. 391.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. New York: Norton 2005.
Vinken, Barbara. “Loving, Reading, and Eating: The Passion of Madame Bovary.” MLN 122
(2007): 759–778.
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