When it comes to France,we think of all these romantic phrases"l'amour","je t'aime"and the Avenue des Champs-Elysee,where passionate love is filling in the air.Gustave Flaubert who seemed to grow tired of void ramance wrote a realistic fiction Madame Bovary unfolding a journey of self-destruction.Reading the book is like looking at the mirror and also through a window because Madame Bovary provides us with different perspective to know humanity as well as ourself.Madame Bovary is the protagonist in the book,also named Emma who by no means should be forgiven because of all the sins she has committed.However,there is a certain sense that we should understand her as a human being and a woman as well.
If Emma was thought of as a romantic figure,then her husband,Charles Bovary could be a realistic man who earns the bread to support the family.
Emma grew up in a farm with her widowed father.Since a little girl,Emma has been longing for a kind of love that is heroic,passionate and never dies away,like the one depicted in those novels she has ever read.Young and innocent as she was,she married Monsieur Bovary who was a mediocre doctor with not much knowledge of what romance is.However,when feeling hopless in the platitude of her marriage,Emma sought after the spark of love by having affair with Rodolphe Boulanger,and then with a clerk Leon.Emma can be blamed for her adultry or praised by her courage to break away from her cage of marriage.Deep inside Emma lived a wealthy handsome gentleman Marquis d'Andervilliers who once invited her to his ball.Since then,she has been longing for a upper-class life full of elegence and luxury while the circumstances have forced her to live a middle-class life.No matter her affair with Roldolphe and Leon,Emma is alway seeking for something that doesn't belong to her class so it's easy for her to become depressed and hopless.Once your hear is always looking for something greener,how can the heart be peaceful at where it is.
It's not entirely true that Charles Bovary knew nothing of romance.While he knew that Emma has got into a heavy debt,Charles was still willing to cover the debt by lying to his mother as Charles was known as a honest fella.After Emma was abandoned by her lover,Charles was even sobataging himself for the other's illness and unhappiness.When Monsieur Bovary's father passed away,Emma didn't show the consolation or even say a few comforting words because she was too occupied in her own affair.Bovary did not blame Emma.Instead,he just shook off his misery and accustom himself to Emma's indifference.When Emma poisoned herself with arsenic,Charles cried his heart out.He sold everything to pay off the heavy debt left by Emma's squandering but only Emma's bedroom remained intact.
Emma was so self aborbed in her pusuit of excitement that she was ignorant of her social responsibilities as a wife,a mother and a duaghter.When her little daughter wanted to close to her,Emma just pushed little Berthe away becuase the playful presence of her daughter disturbed her thinking about her dreams.The author,Flaubert,used realism to narrate the story with an objective method of presenting reality.Flaubert did not show criticism in the novel but through the narrative we can conclude the corruption of the society that one's self-destructive behavior had caused the destrcution of another.Emma's desire had driven her to death.After her death,all of furnitures were taken by the neighbours,and Emma's fancy cltohing was taken by her maid.When Charles knew the truth of Emma's adultry,he fell into desperation and died at last.What happened to their little girl,Berthe,she was sent to an aunt who was too poor to take care of her so Berthe was then sent to a cotton factory to make a living.
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