In Favour of Adultery: The Role of the Tragic Heroine in Flaubert's Madame Bovary

The role of women in the nineteenth-century has been a topic of great debate and discussion is Western art and literature. In his novel titled Madame Bovary, Flaubert takes up this topic of discussion and presents it in the context of adultery in middle-class class French society. The fact that the novel is called Madame Bovary and not Emma Bovary, is significant of the effacement of individual female identity in favor of the role that this female is forced to adopt as mother and wife. Women in the novel are presented to us almost entirely in their relation to men. Those who are exempt from these roles or choose to forgo them are ostracized from bourgeois society and exist on the peripheries of society. They are actresses, whores and mistresses but never wives and mothers. In the great conflict on classes during the nineteenth-century, women find themselves exempt from the struggle for empowerment. Using this as the basis for my argument, I hope to illustrate over the course of this paper how Emma Bovary is a true tragic heroine in Flaubert's novel because of her struggle to recreate her identity independent of her relationship to her husband Charles Bovary.

The novel depicts three different women with the name Madame Bovary. There's Madame Bovary senior, Charles' mother; Madame Bovary junior, who is Charles' first wife and finally, Emma Bovary, the protagonist of the novel. All three women are closely related to Charles. Madame Bovary senior "centered on [Charles'] head all her shattered, broken little vanities", investing her own failed ambitions and listless dreams in her son's future prospects (Madame Bovary, Part I ch 1, 8). Charles' first wife, Heloise, also referred to as the widow Madame Dubuc, is a woman of jealous temperament, plagued by disease and illness, who terrorizes her husband, while desperately trying to garner his affection. Charles "had to say this and not say that in company, to fast every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients who did not pay. She opened his letters, watched his comings and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his surgery" (Part I Ch 1, 13). Emma, meanwhile, is a woman with little inheritance, an only child who must marry into her fortune and force herself to love a man whom she considers to be loathsome. These women have more in common with each other than their obvious relationship to Charles. Each one of them is dependent upon Charles in more than one way. Whether it be emotionally, as in the case of Madame Bovary senior and junior or economically, as in the case of Emma. Each one defines her individual role and its relation to society through Charles. These women are no longer women but mothers, wives and daughters. They endure child birth, cook and manage the household, dress themselves for the sake of social appearances and live in the fragile glass-case of femininity without even the slightest hope of engaging and thus altering the world in which they live. Madame Bovary senior vicariously lives through Charles' success and failure, manipulating her son's ambitions and emotions, hiding behind the veil of her motherly love the disappointments that life has brought to her by her marriage to the lecherous, old Monsieur Bovary. Madame Bovary junior, Charles' first wife, is domineering and imposes herself upon the weak-willed and submissive Charles. Yet she is nevertheless just as vulnerable as other women are when it comes to her husband. When she suspects that Charles is love with the daughter of old Rouault, she resigns herself to her fate by "asking him for a new tonic and a little more love" (Part I Ch 1, 14). This shows that she is a lot more dependent on him than she appears to be, giving herself airs and dominating her husband, only because she is insecure about losing him. Madame Bovary junior may have a tyrannical and overbearing personality, just like Madame Bovary senior, but when it comes to her role as wife, she ultimately yields to her husband.

Thus, we can conclude that women in the novel function not only as characters with distinct personalities but also as manifestations of the roles which are ascribed to them by a patriarchal society. All the women except Emma inevitably reach to the conclusion that their happiness is inextricably linked to their role as defined by their relationship to Charles. Madame Bovary senior adopts her role as mother and desperately tries to find some sort of consolation by subjugating her son to her own will. Similarly, Madame Bovary junior, accepts her role as wife and convinces herself that she must love her husband in order for any sort of happiness to exist in her life. These women have imposed upon themselves the roles which society has decided for them. It has become the basis for their identity, the medium by which they seek to find purpose, meaning and happiness in their lives. The roles no longer exist for these women because they have become those roles and find the thought of being alienated from them as an attack on the very nature of their being. When Charles begins to make frequent visits to Bertaux, Madame Bovary junior "solaces herself by allusions that Charles did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he [Charles] knew not what to answer" (Part I Ch. 2, 21). The very thought of Emma as the object of Charles' affection and interest jeopardizes Madame Bovary junior's role as wife. She finally makes Charles take an oath by swearing "on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love" (Part I Ch. 2, 21). Even though there is no proof of infidelity, and indeed Charles is faithful to his wife till the very end, Madame Bovary junior is suspicious, jealous and insecure about her position. Emma becomes a threat to her role as Charles' wife. Similarly, Madame Bovary senior is mindful and feels jilted when Emma begins to contend for Charles' affection. Earlier on, she had hand-picked Heloise for Charles, seeking to procure a match which would prove financially beneficial for him. "She found him...the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs" (Part I Ch. 1, 13). On the surface, Madame Bovary senior appears to have acted in the best interest of Charles, having found him a wife and a suitable fortune. However, her motives are far more complicated than they appear to be. Why couldn't she have decided upon a younger more beautiful girl with a fortune to match? Madame Dubuc, soon to be Madame Bovary junior, is described as being "ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds..." (Part I Ch. 1, 13). Perhaps her decision to choose the old widow as a suitable wife for Charles had the ulterior motive of preserving her son's affection for herself. This would make sense seeing as how Madame Bovary senior has vested interests in her son's life, living vicariously through his experiences, placing upon him all her broken dreams and idle fantasies. In wanting a wife for her son, Madame Bovary senior hopes to assure his happiness and thereby her own, though this happiness can mean an encroachment upon her own role as mother if her son's affection for his new wife supersedes his attention for his old mother. When Charles does get married and starts his life with a new Madame Bovary, his mother and his wife play out their stereotyped roles by vying for his attention. Charles's mother "[comes] to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law [puts] her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they sacrifice [Charles] with their reflections and observations" (Part I Ch. 2, 22). Both Madame Bovary senior and junior become manifestations of their roles and in doing so they establish the basis of their identity upon that role. As a result, they become victims the patriarchy which has established those roles for them. Charles also manifests himself through his role as husband and son. However, unlike Madame Bovary junior and senior, he is also defined by his role as a doctor. His professional pursuits enable him to access a place in society that is not available to women who belong to nineteenth century middle-class society. Unlike Félicité, Madame Bovary senior, junior and Emma cannot earn a living because that would contravene the deep-set social mores as dictated by the patriarchal values of the time. As distinguished scholar and critic L. Czyba notes, women were "tied by indissoluble marriage, deprived of autonomy, condemned to repeat centuries-old behavior, women invariably appear as victims"'Les Femmes dans les romans de Flaubert (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1983), p. 51 . Mothers are subjugated by their roles and to their roles, just as wives are by the suffocating burden of their domestic lives. These women, who are the victims of their situation, oppressed by society, in turn seek to victimize not only themselves, by reducing their identities to their roles, but also look to victimize and oppress other women as well.

Emma, however, is the only 'Madame Bovary' who seeks to find happiness outside the binding constraints of marriage and domesticity. She alienates herself from the role of wife and mother to redefine herself as lover and adulteress. Charles comes to represent the caricature of that very peculiar nineteenth-century middle-class sentiment of self-satisfied, complacence. A doctor, lacking any ambition in life and in professional pursuits, with a wife and daughter, living in a small town, earning a meager pittance. He finds happiness in the mindless repetitive functions of everyday life (la vie quotidienne), in his role as husband, son, father and provider. He refuses to see outside of his two-dimensional world of mundane domesticity. By not accepting the confinements and oppression of this predominantly male, bourgeois society, Emma opposes the conventional notions of institutionalized morality. In strong opposition to the mundane existence of the everyday caricatured in the character of Charles, Monsieur Homais and the other town folk, Emma seeks to carve out a separate, distinct place for herself within man's world. She is not a passive figure, unlike the other permutations of "Madame Bovary" in the novel. Where Madame Bovary senior and junior define themselves by their relationship to Charles as mother and wife respectively, thereby effacing their identity as individual women, Emma seeks to create a new, more complex identity for herself, independent of her husband and daughter. In doing so, she not only questions the standard archetype of morality imposed upon her, but also moves beyond to actively pursue her ideal of happiness.

In her pursuits, Emma invokes her sexuality, that which is covered, repressed, muted, effaced and destroyed by the conventions of the patriarchal society in which she lives. A woman's sexuality is smothered under the oppressive and superficial values imposed upon it by the roles that the women in the novel adopt as mothers, wives and daughters. Actresses, whores and mistresses are the only women in the novel who are portrayed as having any kind of sexuality. They are seen as immoral creatures, baseless and dishonorable and shunned by polite and civilized society. When Rodolphe meets Emma for the first time, he muses about possessing her, luring her away from her husband and winning her like a trophy. He also mentions Virginie, the actress he keeps in Rouen "who is decidedly [growing] fat... is finicky about her pleasures; and...has a mania for prawns" (Part II Ch. 7, 147). A woman's sexuality is demonized in bourgeois society, but a man's sexuality is interpreted to be a measure of his pride and virility. Indeed, neither Rodolphe, Leon, nor old Monsieur Bovary suffer as Emma does. She is the only woman from her class of society in the novel who is not cut-off from her inner-self nor from her body. Her decision to alienate herself from her role as wife and mother proves to be an attack on the bourgeois idyll and a poignant critique of the conventional morality of her class.

While Madame Bovary senior and junior were victims of the roles prescribed to them, Emma Bovary, in leaving behind the role designated to her by a patriarchal society, redefines herself and her identity through her sexuality. Madame Bovary junior, having lied about her fortune, is met with disdain and malice. "In his exasperation, Monsieur Bovary senior, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide" (Part I Ch. 2, 22). The metaphor used for Heloise Bovary here is that of horse, whose only worth is in the value she adds to the family's fortune. Having lied about her position, Madame Bovary junior is dishonored and rebuked by her in-laws and tries to console herself by turning to her husband, who was never too keen about her in the first place. Soon after suffering these insults, she dies suddenly, leaving Charles a widower without any money. Her death comes as a dark foreshadowing of Emma's own plight towards the end of the novel, when she too finds herself isolated and desperate. However, unlike Madame Bovary junior, Emma's sexuality is real and tangible. She has the same malaise as the other women: a terrible loneliness, a life filled with longings for betterment, failed dreams and painful disillusionment. Though she, Emma Bovary, does not seek to find the cure for this condition in Charles' love or family-life, unlike the other two women, who cling desperately to their roles as wives and mothers. Instead, Emma defines herself through her adultery, her infidelity, the only other recourse available to middle-class women, who can neither occupy themselves with work, like Charles, nor leave for Paris on a whim for an adventure, like Leon. Emma eventually falls prey to her insecurities like the other women and takes her own life. However, in casting off her role as wife and mother, in resorting to her sexuality to find meaning and definition, her self-victimization and disillusionment, her dilemma and eventual tragedy, become epic in proportion. She moves beyond the ordinary wife and mother to become the tragic heroine of Flaubert's novel.

Author and critic Rosemary Lloyd observes that "no one in the novel is more sharply aware of the limitations on women than Emma herself" (Llyod 40). However grand may be her struggle to find her identity, "it would be false to suggest that [Flaubert] treats [women] with any less irony than the men in the novel" (Llyod 40). Indeed Emma's pursuits, her idealization of love and romance, her self-deceptions about the men she comes to admire, are all exquisitely described by Flaubert in the great precision his lyrical prose. When Emma is depressed, she is not simply sad or wearisome, instead her "sorrow [is] engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles", her memory of Leon "burns more brightly than the fire travellers have left on the snow of a Russian steppe" (Part II Ch. 7, 139). Flaubert's realism achieves the beauty Emma so desires during the course of the novel. But her own life, like the life of the other Bovary women, remains unfulfilled and empty. Only the vibrant and poetic prose fills the void in this novel with the beauty of precision, while all else remains empty and meaningless. Flaubert antithetically juxtaposes Emma's search for romance and passion to the suffocating oppression of middle-class morality. Ironically enough, Emma becomes a character in the novels she comes to admire so much. Flaubert's stylistic triumph comes at the great expense of subjugating his heroine to his own mastery of prose, which becomes a new form of oppression for Emma, one which she can never hope to escape.


Bibliography

Flaubert, Gustav. Madame Bovary. New York: Random House, 1957.

Lloyd, Rosemary. Madame Bovary. London: Unwin Hyman Ltd, 1990.