This literature essays discusses the various ways in which desire manifests itself in Flaubert’s classic novel Desire in Madame Bovary
IIntroduction
It is particularly fitting to discuss desire with regard to Flaubert’s novel, because Madame Bovary is a cautionary tale of what can happen when desire is unchecked. There are many kinds of desire in the story: the desire of women for men and men for women; the desire for position; the desire for a life modeled on fairy tales.
This paper examines the ways in which desire is presented in the novel.
IIDiscussion
As I said, there are many different kinds of desire portrayed in the novel. There is the desire of Charles Bovary for the beautiful girl who will become his wife; and there is Emma’s initial desire for Charles. There is her desire for Raoul and for Leon, and theirs for her. There is Lheureux’s desire for power, and above all there is Emma’s desire for a romantic existence such as she read about in books. This is perhaps the most important example of all, because it informs the entire novel. Everything that happens can be seen as a direct result of Emma Bovary’s need for fantasy.
Early in the novel, we learn that Emma was educated in a convent, and spent hours there reading the great romance novels of the time. She adored Sir Walter Scott, and she “got enthusiastic about historical things, forever dreaming of coffers, guardrooms and minstrels. She would have loved to dwell in some old manor, like those chatelaines with the long bodices who, beneath the trefoil window with its Gothic arch, spent their days with their elbow on the parapet and their chin in their hand, gazing far away into the distance for the coming of a cavalier with a white plume in his hat, galloping on a black charger.” (Flaubert, PG).
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... apparent why. Flaubert's work of realistic contains many characters. The main one is Emma Bovary, better known as Madame Bovary from the ... faster. Emma's lifelong desire to escape the confines of the material world is thus completely destroyed by her death. Flaubert's realistic ... match that of the ones she idolizes through novels. Emma's desire for passion and her reflection of marriage lead her ...
Indeed, this is how she sees herself, as a woman of leisure waiting for her knight to save her from a life of mediocrity. It’s very important to realize that Emma, to a large extent, lives in a completely unreal world; her fantasies and desires are more important to her than anything else, and when the real world finally does come crashing in on her, she cannot bear it. This element of the fantastic is the keynote of her character: her greatest desire is to live the life of one of the heroines of a romantic novel.
To that end, she marries Charles Bovary, because he is a doctor and she thinks he will make something of himself. She has dreams of him becoming a great surgeon and she, as the “great surgeon’s” wife, would be a woman of importance, living in Paris, enjoying the best of everything.
Unfortunately, she misjudged Charles completely. She saw him through the prism of her fantasies, and projected onto him the qualities she expected to find in a skilled physician. Charles, however, doesn’t have those qualities; he is in reality a stolid, unimaginative, and clumsy man who (fortunately) knows he’s not a very good doctor. He thus avoids complicated cases and makes a modest living by doing what he knows how to do. Emma soon realizes that she’s married to a clod who will never get anywhere, far less will he provide her with the luxurious life she dreams about.
Charles, for his part, is consumed with desire for Emma. He falls in love with her while he’s still married to his first wife, and after she dies, he marries Emma. He is besotted with her, and remains blissfully ignorant of her love affairs with Raoul and Leon–though the whole village is aware of her indiscretions. He is a pathetic figure though he does have one redeeming feature: he knows his limitations and doesn’t try to exceed them. The one time he lets Emma talk him into performing a procedure he’s unqualified to attempt, it’s disastrous. Even so, his faith in her is unshaken.
The Term Paper on Madame Bovary Emma Life Relationship
Madame Bovary The Tragedy Of Emma Bovary's Relationships With Herself And Others Madame Bovary: The Tragedy of Emma Bovary's Relationships with Herself and Others Madame Bovary is a narrative which compels the reader to keep turning the pages once he has begun reading. There are no screaming car chases, no resourceful detectives, no horrifying surprises, and no terrifying secrets to capture the ...
Emma’s desire for Raoul and Leon comes, once again, from her romantic notions of the way the world works. Raoul is a nobleman, and she sees him as the embodiment of all the heroes of the books she read when she was younger. He’s handsome, apparently wealthy, and sophisticated, and she deludes herself into believing that he is as she sees him. But in reality he is, according to Flaubert, “heard-hearted but shrewd.” (PG).
Raoul Boulanger is an extremely experienced man, and he sees that Emma is dissatisfied with her marriage within a few minutes of meeting her. He decides he wants to make love to her, the only problem being “shunting her afterwards”—getting rid of her once he’s tired of the affair. In other words, he has the entire thing planned from the beginning: how to entice her, make love to her, and then abandon her, which he does, in one of the cruelest scenes in all literature. Emma desires him as a release from her boring and unhappy life; his desire is purely physical.
When their affair ends, she becomes involved with Leon. A student when they first met, he is several years older now, and they become involved. But again, she begins the affair to alleviate the effects of her stultifying marriage, while he, like Raoul, only wants sex. And in the end, when she desperately needs money, both these men turn her down.
Desire manifests itself in another way, in the person of M. Lheureux, a cloth merchant. He revels in having power over others, and when Emma runs up a substantial debt, he enjoys having her in his power. It is in fact her economic problems, not her romantic ones that lead her to take her own life.
IIIConclusion
There is a great deal of desire in Madame Bovary: desire for power, desire for wealth, desire for position, desire for a life as described in romantic novels, and sexual desire. Perhaps these unhappy characters would have been better off with less desire and more love.
IVReference
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. [On-line]. Litrix Reading Room [Web site]. 2001. Accessed: 3 May 2003. http://www.litrix.com/madameb/madam001.htm
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