Madame Bovary: A Woman Who Thesis

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Charles' mother is a kind of reverse image of Emma -- she believes that all fantasy is wrong, but even though Flaubert cannot sympathize with her ideas entirely, there is truth to the idea that Emma needs some sort of work and occupation. Emma is kept like an ornament, and as she is bored, she has time to fantasize and feel frustrated with the pointlessness and limits of her life -- which is why she exclaims: "what does it all matter?" Madame Bovary senior's advice for Emma to work also could be rather proto-feministic, rather than just anti-romantic, and unlike Emma's spending, Flaubert does not present this part of her advice as ironically as Emma's spending and lounging around in fake 'Oriental' clothing.

Flaubert, even though he often presents Charles humorously, also shows sympathy for him in this passage. Charles is a doctor and believes that physically treating people's illnesses can help them. But Emma's 'vapors' are clearly psychosomatic, because she is unhappy and bored, and she even tries to bring illness upon herself, drinking huge amounts of alcohol on a dare that also prefigures her later self-induced death from poison.

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The idea of self-induced misery and poison run through Emma's life, but while the source of Emma's misery is mostly internal, the result of her character, Emma and Charles look to external solutions for her internal problems.

And this is where Charles' mother is wrong, and where Flaubert does present Madame Bovary, senior in an ironic way, like all of the characters in the passage -- Emma has a religion, in fact, had one at the convent when she thought of becoming a nun. Now Emma's religion is romance and fantasy, and her desire to have a lover. Emma's solution is not religion, but too much of a religion of false idols.

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