...Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary tells the story of a woman’s quest to make her life into a novel. Emma Bovary attempts again and again to escape the ordinariness of her life by reading novels, daydreaming, moving from town to town, having affairs, and buying luxurious items. One of the most penetrating debates in this novel is whether Flaubert takes on a romantic and realistic view. Is he a realist, naturalist, traditionalist, a romantic, or neither of these in this novel? According to B. F. Bart, Flaubert “was deeply irritated by those who set up little schools of the Beautiful -- romantic, realistic, or classical for that matter: there was for him only one Beautiful, with varying aspects...” (206) Although, Henry James has no doubt that Flaubert combines his techniques and his own style in order to transform his novel into a work that clearly exhibits romanticism and a realistic view, despite Bart’s arguments. Through the characters actions, especially of Emma Bovary’s, and of imagery the novel shows how Flaubert is a romantic realist. Flaubert gives Emma, his central character, an essence of helpless romanticism so that it would express the truth throughout the novel. It is Emma’s early education, described for an entire chapter by Flaubert, that awakens in her a struggle against what she perceives as confinement. Her education at the convent is the most significant development in the novel between confinement and escape. Vince Brombert explains “that the convent is...
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...Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary are two novels written in two different languages, around the same time period (late 1800s). Though they belong to two separate countries and are separated in history by a margin of about twenty five years, their socio political setting, and situational complexities are quite similar. ‘Madam Bovary’ takes us on a journey through the life of the extremely complex character of Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Raised in a convent, a lover of sensuality, desirous of an expensive urban lifestyle yet not very smart about money, it is this dichotomy of traits that keeps Emma careening from one radically different situation to the next: first falling hard for her father's roving rural doctor Charles Bovary, thinking that their marriage will finally bring her the sophisticated Paris life full of passion and grandeur she's always dreamed of; but instead getting stuck in a provincial town where nothing ever happens and trying and failing at a domestic life. This leads to a hot-and-cold emotional affair with a young law student named Leon, followed by a much more serious affair with a major womanizer named Rodolphe. An unceremonial dumping by Rodolphe after she offers to leave her husband for him and bring her daughter along leads to a short period again in her life as a pious born-again Christian. A reacquaintance with Leon, the now successful young urban...
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...JOAN OF ARC | Joan of Arc has been a Roman Catholic figure analysed and studied for hundreds of years. Her short life is discussed in numerous religious and political texts not only because of her involvement and guidance of the French troops in the Hundred Years’ War but because of the spiritual guidance to lead the troops that she claimed to receive in her visions. Whether Joan is considered a hero, a saint or a visionary woman, her life continues to be of controversy among scholars who still immortalize her with their studies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the various perceptions that attempt to portray Joan of Arc as a venerated and outstanding figure. Part of the analysis will focus on her role as an inspirational woman, the iconography and symbols and the role within religion and political involvement that Joan of Arc continues to influence. Her life and death According to Kevin J. Harty’s article “Joan of Arc’s life may well be the most-documented of anyone who lived before the twentieth-century but as Professor Heimann’s ground-breaking and fascinating study suggests there is still much to be learned about the Maid of Orléans” (Harty 104). Her very short life (1412-31) had a series of events that would be remembered for hundreds of years to follow. At the age of 12, she started seeing visions of saints who would guide her way leading the French troops to end the siege of Orléans. Her visions can be contrasted with the annunciation experienced by the...
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...A day of a common doctor, Charles Bovary, is described in Gustave Flaubert’s passage from Madame Bovary. The author uses great detail to show the reader the typical house call in 1902. Due to this detail, the author establishes the tones of calmness and intensity. Throughout the passage from Madame Bovary, the tones established through detail, imagery and figurative language reveal the character of Charles to the reader. The detail in the beginning of the passage allows the reader to feel a serene and calm tone. The woman with the “blue dress with three flounces” welcomes Charles into her home with a “big open fire”, just as the “first rays of sun” peaks through the windows. This allows the reader to feel the serenity of a typical home. The descriptions of the girl and the fire provides warmth, which has archetypical meaning. Gustave uses such details, involving time of day, to establish the serenity found in morning, and throughout the home. As Charles visits the patient, he determines the patient’s fracture is “clean” and “without complications of any kind”. Charles also mentions that there was nothing “simpler” to treating the broken bone. The use of the word “clean” shows that the injury is not dangerous and nothing to worry about, therefore adding to the calmness. When Charles says there was nothing “simpler”, he also adds to the serene feeling by establishing that the patient’s fracture will be cured without much fuss. The tone of calmness is also demonstrated when Charles...
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...few aspirations in life. As a child, it is his mother’s influence that pushes him towards education, and as depicted in the first few pages of the novel, it is made evident that he is the type of person who exists in permanent mediocrity. In these introductory paragraphs he is described by a classmate as awkward and foolish “His hair was cut straight across the forehead, like a village choir boy’s, his manner sensible and very ill at ease.” (3) Charles relies on his mother to advocate for him in regards to his education, as Charles himself is seemingly unable to apply himself without her pressure. While studying under the town Curé, his “lessons were so brief and so irregular that they could not be of much use.” (7), and as a student in Rouen Charles is only as successful as is considered acceptable “By dint of applying himself, he stayed somewhere in the middle of his class.” Similarly, as a University student Charles enters as a diligent student with zero comprehension or interest in what he is learning. In the classroom Charles is only able to listen and repeat, without any personal insight. “He understood none of it; though he listened, he did not grasp it…he accomplished his little daily task like a mill horse, which walks in circles with its eyes covered, not knowing what it is grinding” (9). This dedication without inspiration easily slips because of his own penchant for apathy, and “Quite naturally out of indifference, in time he released himself from all the resolutions...
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