Exam Two Essay Three

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Recommended: theme of love and romance in madame bovary

Madame Bovary's use of, for it's time, graphic vocabulary to describe the scenes housed within the book is common knowledge to all who have read it, but there are those who claim that the work was horrifyingly graphic for the sake of being graphic. Others, such as Flaubert himself, have claimed it is simply the attempt to make the perfect novel. While Flaubert has the final words on his intentions of his work, there were those who still disagreed with him. His defense attorney during his trial for overstepping the moral boundaries stated that he wrote Madame Bovary with the intention of “incitement to virtue through horror of vice” (Sarat, 110). As a reader, I agree with this statement more so than any other I have read, as Madame Bovary provides a grim reminder of the consequence of vice.
Madame Bovary was not written from the imagination without a cause behind it, as Flaubert used much of his life and many of his grievances to fuel this work. At one point, Flaubert claimed “Madame Bovary, c'est moi” as if to claim that he and the character were one in the same (Fraser). While it is fairly obvious that Flaubert and Madame Bovary are not the same person, or even the same gender, there are many parallels that may be drawn between the two people's lives: both idealized romance, were in poor health most if not all of their lives, and both sank to a form of depression when they discovered their desires would never be realized. This background, however, simply sets the stage for the rest of Flaubert's personal influences into his story.
Flaubert lived during the end of Napoleon's reign, which brought with it a massive upheaval in society in France. Among these changes was the introduction of the bourgeoisie, the new middle class. Thi...

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...rity of readers of his era were appalled to read this, and the same can be true of modern readers, his work carries a message, and is not simply an exercise in proper writing etiquette.

Works Cited

Flaubert, Gustave, and Edouard Maynial. Madame Bovary: Moeurs De Province. Paris: Éditions Garnier, 1961. Print.
Fraser, Nick. "Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert – Review."The Observer. Guardian News and Media, 28 Nov. 2010. Web. 02 May 2014. .
Sarat, Austin, and Thomas R. Kearns. History, Memory, and the Law. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan, 1999. Print.
Truman, Charlotte. "Greed and Satisfaction - the Driving Forces in Madame Bovary." Yahoo Contributor Network. N.p., 20 Feb. 2007. Web. 02 May 2014. .

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