her voice would be clear, shrill, or, suddenly sinking into languor, linger in modulations which ended almost in a whisper, as if she were speaking to herself?-now joyfully, with wide-open, innocent eyes, now with lids half-closed, and a look of boredom, as her thoughts wandered aimlessly. (Flaubert 39) When Emma comments on the need to observe the laws of society, Rodolphe points out ways of getting around that: Yes, but one must observe the laws of society more or less, and obey its moral code
Without any temptation to identify himself with the characters, with no vision of beauty to unleash his troublesome propensity for purple passages of lyric prose, he felt that his direct approach to the problem of style was unimpeded by personal or confessional obstruction. (Giraud 144) Emma herself might be seen as also lacking a cetai connection to her life in this particular community, and she turns to sentimental novels, "with their dashing heroes, in an attempt to imaginatively live the passionate life she desires
Caldwell finds that when critics have addressed this fact at all, they have given it only cursory treatment. He cites Michael Riffaterre that it is a bitter laugh coming from a sudden knowledge of her fall, while Stephen Heath sees it expressing "the atrocious farce of existence" (Heath 84-85)
. The obscure and distant nature of God, it seems, is really a way to handle problems of narrative situation, authority, and determinacy" (Lee 203)
isolation. It occurs in young adulthood when people are expected to be ready for true intimacy and when they must develop cooperative social and occupational relationships with others and select a mate (Liebert and Spiegler 88-92)
Mary Nieland finds that the description of the administration of the last rites by Flaubert is an effort to define Emma's life in terms of the Seven Deadly Sins. She also stats that he does not limit the influence of the Seven Deadly Sins to Emma alone, for he "also associates imaes of the Devil's entourage with Lheureux" (Nieland 168)
She becomes avid, insatiable, ruthless, and reckless. Always adept at self-deception, she learns to deceive others, becoming involved in the most tangled web of duplicity (Pace 120)
Her suicide itself is not ascribable to the usual sense of guilt for her sin, for instance, though a casual reader might think this is the case: Characters in fiction would tend to experience terrible and swift punishment for their sins, but Jacqueline Merrow Paskow notes how the story of Emma Bovary is different: Unlike most nineteenth-century novels of female adultery in which the heroine's unhappy end is a function of her having broken social taboos, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary presents us with a heroine whose suicide, contrary to the reader's expectation, cannot be explained in terms of any social or personal havoc caused by her adulteries. (Paskow 323) Paskow likens the novel to "other canonical, male-authored realist novels of female adultery of the nineteenth century" (323), and she again finds differences: Unlike them, it is not a cautionary tale warning women of the painful consequences of domestic infidelity
" As a result, Emma could only wonder "just what was meant, in real life, by the words felicity, passion and intoxication, which had seemed so beautiful to her in books." (Perkins para
His atonement with God is signaled at the conclusion by the radiant apparition of Christ's face in the sun. (Porter 322) This novel is La Tentation de saint Antoine, and Porter notes how Flaubert uses the fact that traditional theology identifies two master forms of temptation, which are in essence the same experience seen from two different perspectives and representing two possible outcomes
He yells out the name of Riboudet and explains to Emma that this is not really the child's name. (Rogers para
All of this brings us back to the morbid relationship that binds the couple not only to each other but also to Emma's lovers. (Speziale-Bagliacca 22) Emma had these ideas even before she married Charles
We, too, are betrayed by reality at every turn. (Stallman para
Each of the crisis stages is described by Erikson in terms of its positive outcome or strength "versus" its negative outcome or weakness, and the relative degree to which the resolution of each crisis can be considered favorable or unfavorable serves as one factor determining the outcome of later stages. Each stage thus relates to every other stage (Whitbourne and Weinstock 13)
Even her close friend Adele fails as a possible escape, even if only temporary and even if only in conversation. Indeed, when Edna abandons her initial instinct to say nothing of her inner turmoil, Adele betrays her confidence by dismissal, claiming that it is "too hot to think…" (Chopin 16)
Her inner being, like Edna's, is unable to reconcile itself with the requirements of social appearance. In addition to the caged bird symbolism, Flaubert also uses the symbols denoting womanhood of the time; in particular needlework (Champagne 103)
The physical form of the dress related to the destruction of spiritual oppression throughout the novel. Another multi-dimensional symbol of oppression in Flaubert's novel is the garden (Dauner 3)
Elizabeth Elz addresses the imagery of the bird in Kate Chopin's novel as expressing Edna's development during the course of the narrative. Edna Pontellier's cage is well-kept and gilded (Elz 2), and all the more oppressive for the lie of comfort and fulfillment it perpetuates
In the initial stages of the book her existence is characterized by social orders and how she conforms to it; she is unaware of her spiritual self. But as Flaubert works towards the transcendence, he instills in Emma the gradual awareness of the spiritual world and consequently she rediscovers herself in the spirituality of God (Lee 2001)
Although she is considered to be charming, witty and a socialite but she is at the same time proud, banal and materialistic. Like Emma she is enamored by the social trappings so that she becomes lost in the materialistic side of society (Norseng, 1999)