In the beginning, I felt uncomfortable with the subtle criticism of women in the book. Surprisingly, along the way, I can get along with the story and I love it.
Charles Bovary has a dull personality, insensitive, lack of confidence and no excitement. He was the opposite character of Emma. He assumed that Emma is happy. Knowing not that Emma was unsatisfied with her life being married to him.
Based on what I have read, Emma's predicament came from her own self-inflicted and also caused by her natural desire for love. She was influenced so much into fictionalizing romance in novels which sounded very promising towards love, relationship and more about happily ever after stories. She let her fictionalized world controlled her mind. She was not exposed to the real definition of marriage. She thought Charles could be her perfect true love character as in the book. Those factors have inflicted her to rush for love and wanting to know more about love and be loved. She didn't marry Charles because of love and she looks at Charles as an escape to the whole new world, out from poverty and loneliness. She thought of marrying Charles, she could get her true love as written in the books. Not only that, she even seeks for more happiness, not from Charles but from others to fill the emptiness and desires. She at one point being desperate, traded her love and sex for money. I believe she didn't know the value of love and dignity. Not surprising that this does happen in the world of today.
The overall narrative of the book that I could think of is - One, critics in the middle-class world as Emma's major disappointment whereas she yearns for a more sophisticated and refined taste of living. This middle class known as "bourgeois" were described as gaudily materialistic. You would agree with me when you read how excited Emma was when she started spending so much money on redecorating the house and shopping for her dresses. Two, Women are weak. There are so many struggles and challenges that Emma was battling in this novel. So much situation, portraying that men are leading everywhere. Flaubert was trying to portray women as the subject of powerlessness, not able to think clearly, and always desire for attention and affections.
Emma had this day-dream which I believe that it was written metaphorically that she desired for more love and affection, wanting to leave her present life and to live in another much happier with someone else. All she could do at that time was only fantasizing the other happiness that she could not get.
When I did more research about Gustave Flaubert, I found that he once remarked that “Madame Bovary is me” but not everything is the same. He has a few opposite lifestyles than Emma. The points that I get much interested in was his romanticism which had to lead him to depression and loneliness.
Flaubert was obsessed with an idealized vision of romantic love, just as how he described Emma. Flaubert became fixated at a young age upon an older woman named Elisa Schlessinger, with whom he fantasized about having a romantic relationship for many years. He could never attain what he most wanted. He remained lonely and bitter throughout his life as a writer.
Emma endures an unhappy marriage and seeks out lovers. I assumed that he wanted readers to learn his frustration about his relationship through Emma. Or, he became misogynist by demonstrating Emma as a medium of torturing Elisa for breaking his heart. That's just my two sense of analysis. It's like giving an act of revenge to another woman indirectly for breaking his heart.
Reading this tortured the life of Emma, I felt sad and sorry for her. No one to be blamed at, but herself. I found that her character was annoying, ungrateful and full of sorrow. Emma had and unrealistic definition of love, passion, romance and marriage since she was already obsessed with a fictional life in the novels that she had read.
Charles Bovary has a dull personality, insensitive, lack of confidence and no excitement. He was the opposite character of Emma. He assumed that Emma is happy. Knowing not that Emma was unsatisfied with her life being married to him.
Based on what I have read, Emma's predicament came from her own self-inflicted and also caused by her natural desire for love. She was influenced so much into fictionalizing romance in novels which sounded very promising towards love, relationship and more about happily ever after stories. She let her fictionalized world controlled her mind. She was not exposed to the real definition of marriage. She thought Charles could be her perfect true love character as in the book. Those factors have inflicted her to rush for love and wanting to know more about love and be loved. She didn't marry Charles because of love and she looks at Charles as an escape to the whole new world, out from poverty and loneliness. She thought of marrying Charles, she could get her true love as written in the books. Not only that, she even seeks for more happiness, not from Charles but from others to fill the emptiness and desires. She at one point being desperate, traded her love and sex for money. I believe she didn't know the value of love and dignity. Not surprising that this does happen in the world of today.
The overall narrative of the book that I could think of is - One, critics in the middle-class world as Emma's major disappointment whereas she yearns for a more sophisticated and refined taste of living. This middle class known as "bourgeois" were described as gaudily materialistic. You would agree with me when you read how excited Emma was when she started spending so much money on redecorating the house and shopping for her dresses. Two, Women are weak. There are so many struggles and challenges that Emma was battling in this novel. So much situation, portraying that men are leading everywhere. Flaubert was trying to portray women as the subject of powerlessness, not able to think clearly, and always desire for attention and affections.
Emma had this day-dream which I believe that it was written metaphorically that she desired for more love and affection, wanting to leave her present life and to live in another much happier with someone else. All she could do at that time was only fantasizing the other happiness that she could not get.
When I did more research about Gustave Flaubert, I found that he once remarked that “Madame Bovary is me” but not everything is the same. He has a few opposite lifestyles than Emma. The points that I get much interested in was his romanticism which had to lead him to depression and loneliness.
Flaubert was obsessed with an idealized vision of romantic love, just as how he described Emma. Flaubert became fixated at a young age upon an older woman named Elisa Schlessinger, with whom he fantasized about having a romantic relationship for many years. He could never attain what he most wanted. He remained lonely and bitter throughout his life as a writer.
Emma endures an unhappy marriage and seeks out lovers. I assumed that he wanted readers to learn his frustration about his relationship through Emma. Or, he became misogynist by demonstrating Emma as a medium of torturing Elisa for breaking his heart. That's just my two sense of analysis. It's like giving an act of revenge to another woman indirectly for breaking his heart.
Reading this tortured the life of Emma, I felt sad and sorry for her. No one to be blamed at, but herself. I found that her character was annoying, ungrateful and full of sorrow. Emma had and unrealistic definition of love, passion, romance and marriage since she was already obsessed with a fictional life in the novels that she had read.
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