MADAME BOVARY: What Happens When The Ideal And The Real Collide

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!  IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO KNOW THE ENDING YET, DO NOT PROCEED FURTHER!

Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's famous novel about a young woman who believes that life is like a romance novel and lands herself in so much trouble because of it.  When the novel first cam out, Flaubert was put on trial for offending public morality.  I guess it became a classic simply because of the juxtaposition of the heroine's romantic expectations and the reality of how the things actually work out.  And she pays quite a hefty price in the end--literally.  

The story takes place in Normandy in Northern France.  Emma is the daughter of a well-off farmer who spend her time reading romantic novels.  She is courted by and then marries Charles Bovary, a kindly-but-stupid country doctor based in what is now known as Tôtes.  Considering married provincial life dull, boring, and beyond lame, Emma soon grows tired of her husband's company.  After they attend a ball hosted by a Marquis, Emma's yearning for the romantic and luxurious life really begins to take off.  She starts becoming morose and irritable, leading Charles to believe she needs a change of scenery.  They move to the town of Yonville, which Emma also finds dull.  Some time later she gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, and decides that motherhood is also boring.
            Emma later meets a young student named Léon, who shares her love for "the finer things in life".  They start courting in secret until Léon has to leave for Paris to go into legal studies.  Then Rodolphe, a rakish landowner lays his eyes on Emma and decides to woo her himself, and Emma throws herself into the affair, body and soul.  Meanwhile she starts buying a lot of expensive clothes, jewelry, and whatnot on credit.  
            After four years of illicit love, Emma asks Rodolphe to elope with her.  But Rodolphe is worries about Emma's increasing recklessness and willingness to compromise herself.  He writes her a self-excusing letter, ending their relationship.  Emma is devastated and falls gravely ill and turns briefly to religion. When she is nearly recovered, Charles takes her to the opera where she again encounters Léon.  The two start their affair in earnest this time, with Emma lying to her husband regarding her whereabouts.  The affair is passionate, but Léon soon becomes bored with the matter and Emma becomes ambivalent about him.  Meanwhile, Emma continues to be a spendthrift.  
     When the time comes to collect the payment, Emma has racked up 8,000 francs worth of debt.  Panicked at the news, she tries asking for money from various people, including Rodolphe and Léon, only to be turned down.  In despair, she swallows arsenic hoping it would a quick death; even the romance of suicide fails her and she dies in appalling agony.  Poor Charles, being as stupid as he was, never even suspected that Emma was unfaithful to him until some time after she's dead when he finds her letters to Rodolphe and Léon.  He becomes reclusive and dies, leaving little Berthe in the care of elderly relatives, and eventually being sent to work in a cotton mill.  

The main theme focuses on Emma's selfishness and refusal to accept reality.  She stopped maturing mentally and emotionally as a teenager at the convent.  She has not cultivated discernment, so she doesn't even bother to think about whether Charles is a good match or not before she gets married.  She has inbibed so much from the novels she reads that she doesn't think to see life any other way.  In fact, she would rather live in a book than in the real world.  The problem is simply that fact that it's impossible to live in a book where everything is all written out and people get what they want or have coming.  And Emma refuses to see this.  
       She longs for the illusion, the emotion, the luxurious.  To her, happiness and love come in a bejeweled case lined with silk.  An ideal location is a luxurious boudoir on a soft feather bed with satin sheets, or a moonlit balcony on a summer night.  An ideal mate is an aristocrat with money practically growing in his backyard.  None of these ideas match her provincial surroundings, nor does it resemble anything she would likely have.  And Emma refuses to accept this.  
          Emma's desire for the rich and romantic is further fueled when she and Charles attend the Marquis's ball.  She sees all the splendor that she dreams of; the music, the clothes, the jewels, handsome rich men, everything she wants is there.  But it is unavailable to her, and she stills tries to attain it.  She does it by taking advantage of Charles's low IQ and lack of jealousy by lying to him.  She spends his money like a proud baroness, and tries to postpone her debts, only to find that her spendthrift ways have put her and those around her in jeopardy. 
          Her two adulterous affairs revolve around her trying to find the romantic ideal man she yearns for.  She first tries and affair with Léon, a young student.  He to likes romantic tales of love and passion just as much she does.  But he soon has to leave.  Emma then falls in love the wealthy Rodolphe, who seems to have everything she longs for.  Their love lasts for four years.  But he's not as into her as she is into him.  Rodolphe sees her as just another in a long line of mistresses; Emma sees him as the perfect ideal lover she has always dreamed of.  Although he is a Casanova, Rodolphe knows that Emma is married and has a little daughter.  He ends the relationship because he is afraid he will ruin her.  This devastates Emma who wants to get out of her reality and escape into fantasy.  There is also the fact that Emma thinks she's found a duke, count, or some other nobleman.  Rodolph is a country landowner, not that high up the social ladder.
        Emma's romantic ideas are repeatedly smashed throughout the story, and her refusal to be content with what she's got culminate in her committing suicide.  Hoping to die a romantic death, she swallows arsenic and expects the end to take come quickly.  Unfortunately, arsenic does not kill that quickly, and Emma suffers from horrible illness before finally succumbing.  In short, all the romantic ideas that Emma had fail her even in death.  

Madame Bovary is a must-read not only because of such a well-constructed ideal-collides-with-the-real storyline, but also because of Gustave Flaubert's style of writing.  His is a prime example of purple prose done right.  Why do I say that?  Because Flaubert knew how to make it work.  He understood how to use it to convey emotion or describe a scene.  Most importantly, he knew when to use it.  And knowing when to use purple prose is very important when writing a good dramatic story.  

Get this book at your library, or buy your own copy.  Either way, you'll enjoy it.