Flaubert believed the emerging middle class in nineteenth century Europe to be unrefined, pompous know-it-alls, and fundamentally stupid. This may help to explain some of Leon's lack of intelligence despite his success -- he has emerged from the mid Continue Reading...
It seems to her, says Flaubert, that her being, rising toward God, is going to be annihilated in love like burning incense that dissipates in vapor. But her response during this phenomenon remains curiously erotic... The waving of the green palm lea Continue Reading...
Denied marriage, the only other societal option is suicide. Society is the agent of her demise, not Lilly: "her life is not unpleasant until a chain of events destroys her with the thoroughness and indifference of a meat grinder." Goetz, Thomas H. Continue Reading...
Madam Bovary For good or for bad, as people get older they learn that real life is not a romantic movie plot. How often is it that boy meets girl, girl and boy fall in love and walk into the sunset for the rest of their lives? The boy and girl may m Continue Reading...
Madame Bovary's entire experience is by way of approaching her own obscurity, and indeed her own demise, and her death as an individual. The essay by Elisabeth Fronfen is, for the most part, very perceptive and the analysis she offers is razor sharp Continue Reading...
When Edith Wharton tells us that "it was the background that she [Lily] required," we understand that both Emma Bovary and Lily have a very important thing in common. They are first of all women in the nineteenth century society, fettered by social Continue Reading...
Madame Bovary and Woman in White Generalizations and Comparisons of the Two Novels When looking at these two works in the sense of comparison, one first must say that they are both delicately, brilliantly crafted, and they both have received at le Continue Reading...
Danger With Serving the Self in Anna Karenina and Madam Bovary It is a classic human trait to make life more difficult than it needs to be. We live in a me-centered society and those with their focus turned inward usually generate enough drama in th Continue Reading...
Emma likes the type of pulp, romantic and sentimental fiction condemned by Nabokov, the 19th century version of Harlequin Romances. Emma is not an artist of prose like her creator, she is a consumer of written culture in a very literal as well as a Continue Reading...
