The most important use of Fate is acknowledged by the narrator in the novel. It is when Charles says that Fate is to blame for it had willed it this way. "[Charles] even made a phrase, the only one he'd ever made: 'Fate willed it this way'" (Flaubert 255). Flaubert's emphasis on the use of fate makes our assertion about role of fate even more certain. Fate acts as the force that brings Falubert's characters to their roots and doesn't let them break free. Thibaudet discusses the use of fate in the novel:
The development of the action, in Madame Bovary, does not occur by a simple succession of events but by the concentric expansion of a theme [...] the process reflects the very motion of fate. We call 'fated' a development that was already contained in a previous situation but without being apparent. We have a feeling of fatality when we feel that life was not worth living, because we have come back to exactly the same point from which we started, and discovered that the road which was to be one of discovery turns out to be the circular path of our prison walls (De Man 375).
The circle in which the characters travel is also indicative of the heavy influence of fate in the lives of people. Emma can never go where she wants; her life begins and ends with Charles even though she tries very hard to break free. It is indeed the circularity which makes you notice the role of fate. Why doesn't Emma end up with one of her lovers instead of the boring Charles? The fate must have had something...
Denied marriage, the only other societal option is suicide. Society is the agent of her demise, not Lilly: "her life is not unpleasant until a chain of events destroys her with the thoroughness and indifference of a meat grinder." Goetz, Thomas H. "Flaubert, Gustave." World Book Online Reference Center. 2006. [1 Oct 2006] http://www.aolsvc.worldbook.aol.com/wb/Article?id=ar200180. Biographical overview, provides insight into Flaubert's role as a uniquely realistic writer, thus stressing Emma's economic and moral
There is a feminine side to his masculinity, that is, and this passage shows that Emma has an equal share in this dichotomy. Hours after she is back at home, after Charles has left her alone in the house to attend to something, Emma shuts herself in her room to contemplate her experience and her joy. It is here that the realization of her own feminine power, and the active
At last! My darling is recovered, and she seems almost back to her old, dear self, with an increased passion for her religion, I notice. Tuesday - My darling, I cannot believe you have left me. Devastated and alone, I fear that your creditors will be the death of me, as well. You would not know your home, Emma, as I have had to sell almost everything in order to
It seems to her, says Flaubert, that her being, rising toward God, is going to be annihilated in love like burning incense that dissipates in vapor. But her response during this phenomenon remains curiously erotic... The waving of the green palm leaves relates this scene to the previous scenes of sexual seduction. (Duncan para, 5) At times, the green in the novel moves from springtime to the idea of the
Charles' mother is a kind of reverse image of Emma -- she believes that all fantasy is wrong, but even though Flaubert cannot sympathize with her ideas entirely, there is truth to the idea that Emma needs some sort of work and occupation. Emma is kept like an ornament, and as she is bored, she has time to fantasize and feel frustrated with the pointlessness and limits of her
Flaubert Madame Bovary Realism came as a counter balance for romanticism. It came up "against all formalized and aestheticized images of things" ((Nineteenth-century literary realism: through the looking-glass, p.3). With the hindsight one has today, realism appears as a highly formalized art, but at the time it developed it fit the criteria for a movement that did not fit the canons previously imposed by the art of writing. The French literature
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