¶ … Madame Bovary's entire experience is by way of approaching her own obscurity, and indeed her own demise, and her death as an individual. The essay by Elisabeth Fronfen is, for the most part, very perceptive and the analysis she offers is razor sharp; when she asserts (411) that Madame Bovary's reading "consumes the life of the reader, who reads instead of living," she hits the literary mark with thorough accuracy. Further, when Fronfen writes that "From the very beginning Emma's imagination connects unfulfilled romantic desires with death," she is cutting to the heart of the sadness and pathos that surrounds Emma.
In short, in my essay, I will show that the depiction of Madame Emma Bovary's adulterous behavior - beyond the racy fascination readers dipped into as Emma's desire for "self-obliteration" was carried out - was totally unacceptable for the 19th Century, and along with her other foibles, indicates a serious dance with transgressions. But transgression is also applied to the novel itself, as Flaubert was put on trial in 1857; what he attempted, through his novel, was in reality a smooth transformation from the fact of very little literature about adultery to a realistic approach to those romantic twists and turns in life.
As for The Awakening, this also is a novel which was considered a transgression by the reading public and by critics. Kate Chopin's career was all but ruined, ironically, because of the literary transgression she was accused of, notwithstanding the brilliance of her work. I will show - tapping into Bert Bender's lively essay - that Chopin used Darwin's work, and the Walt Whitman poem, Song of Myself, to help her characters come to life. And beyond Darwin, my essay will approach the idea that the Edna character certainly transforms the image of the stereotypical female of the 19th Century from a modest, obedient wife and mother into a woman having an affair and breaking all the rules.
Definitions of Transformation and Transgression
Transformation: according to Merriam-Webster Online, Transform is "to change in composition or structure"; "to change the outward form or appearance"; "to change in character or condition...transform implies a major change in form, nature, or function..."
Transgression: Merriam-Webster Online defines Transgress as "to step beyond or across...to go beyond limits set or prescribed by..."
Kate Chopin's The Awakening - Viewpoints and Critical Positions
Bert Bender's essay ("The Awakening and The Descent of Man") in the Stephen Regan book asserts that Chopin read Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man "much more closely than her many interpreters have realized" (486). And furthermore, she was, Bender writes, enamored with Darwin's theory of "sexual selection" - since it offered "a profoundly liberating sense of animal innocence in the realm of human courtship, especially for the Victorian woman," Bender explains.
The "liberating sense of animal innocence" is a transformation from what was expected in 19th Century society, to what was possible, from a literary point-of-view. The woman in Chopin's book could step out of the stereotype of a "good mother" and "loyal wife" and explore her sexual feelings through transgression ("stepping beyond or across...limits") of her marriage vows.
Darwin is quoted by Bender (487): "The sexual struggle is of two kinds...one between the individuals of...generally the male sex, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm...generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners."]
It is interesting, and puts some of the pieces of Chopin's puzzle together, to take Bender's point-of-view and initially reach an understanding that Chopin "...resisted [Darwin's] corollaries concerning the female's passive and modest role in sexual relations and the male's physical and mental superiority to the female."
With that as a premise, readers see Chopin's rebellion against Darwin (and, through 19th Century society's morals and values) through Chopin's character, Edna Pontellier. Indeed, Edna selects love on her own terms, based on her own sexual needs and desires, rather than for the reasons put forward by Darwin (which was because "civilized women" are "largely influenced...
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