Madame Bovary

Laced in scandal at the time of its publication, Madame Bovary set the foreground for the realm of literature that would become known as literary realism. A simple tale in execution, Madame Bovary never relents. As Emma progresses from farmer’s daughter to marriage to adultery and infidelity, we never truly lose a sense of who Emma is. Rather than simply admonish her for her affairs, Flaubert presents in Emma a duality which the reader can relate with. We feel pain at her all-too-recognizable faults and the triviality of her life in northern provincial France – albeit richly described – becomes painfully transparent. The men she courts mimic the commonplace setting. Promises are made consistently early on by all with bright futures appearing in glimmers of hope only to crushingly vanish when they cannot live up to mere words. We are told that Emma read romance when she was young. Flaubert presents the dilemma simply: how do the books we read influence the life and choices we make? At what point is literature enjoyment and at what point does it become instruction?