Filth. Smut, And Vast Amounts Of Love? Essay, Research Paper

“Filth, Smut and Vast Amounts of Love?”- A Short Essay on Madame Bovary A theme throughout Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is escape. Emma Bovary (the main character) attempts to escape the ordinariness of her life by reading novels, which at the same time influence her perception of a romantic relationship. It is Emma’s early education that Flaubert describes for an entire chapter that awakens in Emma a struggle against what she perceives as confinement brought upon by the restrictiveness of the convent. Emma’s education at the convent is perhaps the most significant development of this theme between confinement and escape. The convent is Emma’s earliest confinement. It restricts her ability to expand her mind and because of this it is the few trashy novels that she receives from the outside world that intrigue her. The Books she receives are nothing more than (trashy romance novels), which portray the most positive parts of romantic relationships and are smuggled into the convent. On the other hand, these (trashy romance novels) are somewhat taken to heart with Emma. Emma truly believes that she can be like one of the heroines in her books. She longs for this perfect, sensual, romance that she reads about. This longing of escape from the convent prepares her ultimately for the rest of the book and for what is to happen to her in her lifetime. By reading these books further she securely develops this ideal picture in her mind of how she wants her life to be played out. She feels that life played out as in the manner of her stories is ideally the best way for her to find out happiness. The entire1st chapter mirrors the structure of the book. As it starts we see a satisfied women content with her confinement and conformity at the convent. “far from the constant boredom of the convent, she enjoyed the company of the nuns, who, to amuse her, would take her into the chapel by way of a long corridor leading from the dining hall. She played very little during the recreation period and knew her catechism well.” (Flaubert 30). By reading this small passage, Flaubert expresses to the reader the uneventful life that Emma has in the confinement of the convents walls. The chapter is also filled with images of girls living within the protective walls of the convent, the girls sing happily together, assemble to study, and pray. But as the chapter progresses images of escape start to dominate her every thought. These are merely visual images and even these images are either religious in nature or of similarly confined people. “She wished she could have lived in some old manor house, like those chatelaines in low waisted gowns who spent their days with their elbows on the stone sill of

a gothic window surmounted by trefoil, chin in hand watching a white plumed rider on a black horse galloping them from far across the country.” (Flaubert 32.) As the chapter progresses and Emma continues dreaming while in the convent the images she conjures up are of exotic and foreign lands. No longer are the images of precise people or events but instead they become more fuzzy and chaotic. The escape technique that she used to conjure up containing images of heroines in castles seems to lead inevitably to chaos and her downfall. “And there were sultans with long pipes swooning on the arbors on the arms of dancing girls; there were Giaours, Turkish sabers and fezzes; and above all there were wanland scapes of fantastic countries: palm trees and pines were often combined in one picture with tigers on the right a lion on the left.” (Flaubert 33.) Emma’s dreams by this point are chaotic with both “palms and pines mixed together with lions and tigers.”(Flaubert 33) These dreams continue and change themselves into a death wish as swans transform themselves into dying swans, and singing into funeral music. But Emma although bored with her fantasy refuses to admit it and she starts to revolt against the confines of the convent until the Mother Superior was glad to see her go. The chapter about Emma Bovary’s education at the convent is significant not only because it provides the basis for Emma’s character, but also because the progression of images in this chapter is indicative of the entirety of the novel. The images progress from confinement to escape to chaos and disintegration. In Madame Bovary, Emma changes from a women contentwith her marriage (as with Charles), to a women who escapes from the ordinariness of her everyday life through affairs and novels, to a women whose life is so disorderly that she finally kills herself. Emma Bovary found interest in the things around her which prevent her boredom which helped her escape reality. In her early education it was the novels she read, “They were filled with love affairs, lovers, mistresses, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely country houses. She also found interest in the sea but only because it was stormy.”(Flaubert 32), stating she only found intersest in things that brought upon some romantic uncertainty which excited her. All the things that Emma found interest in she soon became bored of including Charles and Leon. This cycle of boredom and the progression of images of confinement, escape, and chaos, parallel both in the Chapter on Emma’s education and the novel as a whole. Emma’s journey from boredom in reality to self-destruction in fantasy provides for this entire backbone of the novel.