Reading provides an escape for people from theordinariness of everyday life. Madame Bovary and AnnaKarenina, dissatisfied with their lives pursued their dreamsof ecstasy and love through reading. At the beginning of bothnovels Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary made active decisionsabout their future although these decisions were not alwaysrational. As their lives started to disintegrate Emma andAnna sought to live out their dreams and fantasies throughreading. Reading served as morphine allowing them to escapethe pain of everyday life, but reading like morphine closedthem off from the rest of the world preventing them frommaking rational decisions. It was Anna and Emma’s loss ofreasoning and isolation that propelled them toward theirdownfall.
Emma at the beginning of the novel was someone who madeactive decisions about what she wanted. She saw herself asthe master of her destiny. Her affair with Rudolphe was madeafter her decision to live out her fantasies and escape theordinariness of her life and her marriage to Charles. Emma’sactive decisions though were based increasingly as the novelprogresses on her fantasies. The lechery to which she fallsvictim is a product of the debilitating adventures her mindtakes. These adventures are feed by the novels that shereads.
They were filled with love affairs, lovers, mistresses,persecuted ladies fainting in lonely country houses,postriders killed at every relay, horses ridden to death onevery page, dark forests, palpitating hearts, vows, sobs,tears and kisses, skiffs in the moonlight, nightingales inthickets, and gentlemen brave as lions gentle as lambs,virtuous as none really is, and always ready to shed floodsof tears.(Flaubert 31.)Footnote1 Emma’s already impaired reasoning and disappointingmarriage to Charles caused Emma to withdraw into readingbooks, she fashioning herself a life based not in reality butin fantasy. Anna Karenina at the begging of Tolstoy’s novel was abright and energetic women. When Tolstoy first introduces usto Anna she appears as the paragon of virtue, a women incharge of her own destiny. He felt that he had to have another look at her- notbecause she was very beautiful not because of her eleganceand unassuming grace which was evident in her whole figurebut because their was something specially sweet and tender inthe expression of her lovely face as she passed him. (Tolstoy76.)Footnote2 In the next chapter Anna seems to fulfill expectationsTolstoy has aroused in the reader when she mends Dolly andOblonskys marriage. But Anna like Emma has a defect in herreasoning, she has an inability to remain content with theordinariness of her life: her marriage to Karenin, the socialfestivities, and housekeeping. Anna longs to live out thesame kind of romantic vision of life that Emma also read andfantasized about.
The Essay on Madame Bovary Destiny Emma Life One
Madame Bovary: Destiny Destiny: the seemingly inevitable succession of events. 1 Is this definition true, or do we, as people in real life or characters in novels, control our own destiny? Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary exemplifies how we hold destiny in our own hands, molding it with the actions we take and the choices we make. Flaubert uses Emma Bovary, the main character of his novel, to ...
Anna read and understood everything, but she found nopleasure in reading, that is to say in following thereflection in other people’s lives. She was to eager to liveherself. When she read how a heroine of a novel nursed a sickman, she wanted to move about the sick room with noiselesssteps herself. When she read how Lady Mary rode to hounds andteased her sister-in-law, astonishing everyone by her daring,she would have liked to do the same. (Tolstoy 114.) Anna Karenina was a romantic who tried to make herfantasies a reality. It was for this reason she had an affairwith Vronsky. Like Emma her decisions were driven byimpulsiveness and when the consequences caught up with herlatter in the novel she secluded herself from her friends,Vronsky, and even her children. Anna and Emma both hadcharacter flaws that made them view the world as fantasy sothat when their fantasy crumbled they resorted to creating anew fantasy by living their lives through the books theyread. Books allowed Emma Bovary to withdraw from herdeteriorating life.
The Essay on Anna Karenina Foreshadowing Dolly Kitty Vronsky
Anna Karenina: Foreshadowing Throughout life there are situations which arise that seem to have been hinted earlier. You might not have noticed the hint when it first appeared, but suddenly at one point it finally dawns on you. The same goes for the literary aspect of foreshadowing. The novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy has many instances where the situations are similar to the one described ...
They allowed her to pursue her dreams oflove, affairs, and knights; from the wreckage of her marriagewith Charles. Emma’s, experience at La Vaubyessard became asource of absurd fantasy for Emma, and ingrained in her mindthat the world that the novel’s she read depicted was with inher reach. She devoured without skipping a word, every articleabout first nights in the theater, horse races and soirees;she was interested in the debut of every new sing, theopening of every new shop. She new the dress of the latestfashions and the addresses of every new tailor, the days whenone went to the Bois or the Opera. (Flaubert 55.) This passage shows the absolute absurdity of Emma’sobsession with reading. Emma while living in her remoteFrench village in her mind was living out the life of aParisian.
As Emma decisions continued to sink her furtherinto debt and deceit she began to live more and more throughthe novels she read. Her affair with Leon was undertakenpartially to fulfill the fantasies of the novels she read.The room she rented for her rendezvous with Leon shedecorated in the opulence that her novels bespoke, and shespent vast sums of money to continue the fantasy the novelsshe read described. Emma’s continued detachment with realitymade her unable to make rational decisions or even allow herto deal with her problems. The fantasy in which she livedmade her unable to take action for herself. She blamed Leon for her disappointed hopes, as though hehad betrayed her; and she even wished for a catastrophe thatwould bring about their separation, since she did not havethe courage to take any action herself. (Flaubert 251.) Finally, Emma lost all control over her life as shebecame instead of the active character in the novel merelythe observer of the consequences of her actions. And like theheroines of the novels she read she saw her only salvationwould be through a dramatic suicide.
Emma’s obsession withreading lead her to make decisions that escalated herunhappiness and further paralyzed her from dealing withreality. Anna Karenina like Emma Bovary turned to novels toprovide an escape from her unhappy life. Anna wracked withguilt over abandoning Seryozha and shunned by society turnedto morphine and reading to provide a fantasy life when herown life was crumbling around her. When Anna and Vronsky’srelationship further disintegrated in the novel Anna turnedmore inward. She ventured with Vronsky to Italy to try torepair their relationship and then to a country estate. Thecountry estate was lavish but for Anna it was a lonelyplace. Anna devoted as much time to her appearance, even whenthey had no visitors, and she read a great deal, both novelsand serious books that happened to be in fashion. She orderedall the books that received good notices in the foreignpapers and periodicals they subscribed to and read them withthe attention that is only possible in seclusion. (Tolstoy640.) Anna’s relationship with Vronsky continued to crumble.But both Anna and Vronsky were unable to take action to doanything either to save their relationship or deal with herdivorce with Karenin.
The Essay on Madame Bovary Emma Charles Life
"Madame Bovary" Love, considered the most divine of all emotions. There has been no greater driving force in the coarse of human history. It has made man strive for excellence, kill in jealousy, and real in a trance of madness. With how influential this force is, its no wonder why throughout history love and romance has been a major topic in literature. Romanticism is the art of romantic story ...
Anna like Emma became so trapped in herfantasy world she was unable to deal with reality. Anna inthe last parts of the novels watches as her lifedisintegrates but she continues to take no action as shedelves into the morphine and novels that provide a palliativefor reality. It is critical to realize that both Anna andEmma are aware that they are living in fantasy, and isprecisely because they are aware of reality that they despairand kill themselves when they see that they have in theirminds no escape from their troubles. Both Anna and Emma alsoattempt to use reason to escape from their problems,”Yes I am very troubled and reason was given to us toescape from our troubles,” says Anna Karenina. But bothAnna and Emma’s reason is so distorted by the fantasy inwhich they live that they see little escape from life butthrough death. Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary live out their dreams andfantasies through reading novels which serve as palliativesfor their painful lives.
Reading novels is not the primarytheme in their lives nor is it the primary reason they killthemselves. But their use of reading as an escape fromreality is critical to Anna and Emma’s characters. It is Annaand Emma’s reading of novels which allows them to abandontheir husbands and pursue their fantasies both in life and intheir minds. It is reading which prevents them from usingreason to correct their troubles. It is reading whichdistorts their reality and forces them to become dissatisfiedand bored with the ordinary pleasures of life. AnnaKarenina and Madame Bovary are books ironicallyabout the dangers of reading.
The Essay on Anna And Emma And The Arts
The arts, in many different forms, played a major role in the events and outcomes of both Emma's and Anna's life. The arts impacted major decisions in both of the characters lives. Whether it was an initial spark or a driving force, art played many roles. Even though they initially met at the train station, the met once again at a ball they both attend. While they were at the ball they fell into ...
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