Gustave Flaubert Essays

Madame Bovary

As Gustave Flaubert wrote the novel Madame Bovary, he took special care to examine the relationship between literature and the effect on its readers. His heroine Emma absorbs poetry and novels as though they were instructions for her emotional...

Madame Bovary

In Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert attacks all sorts of vice and virtue; his targets include adultery, romance, religion, science, and politics. The characters are almost universally detestable; those who are not are merely pathetic. But the...

Madame Bovary

The Spiritual Doldrums of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary

The narrative of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary cannot be completely separated from the commentary on religion and spiritual deficiency in the novel. Segments of Flaubert’s masterpiece are clearly...

College

Madame Bovary

Victim of Greed

Flaubert, a novelist with a seething disdain for the Bourgeois lifestyle, uses his works to illustrate the flaws he sees in society, and more specifically the flaws he sees in this new, materialistic middle class. In his novel, ...

12th Grade

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, published in 1857, expresses his dislike of the French bourgeoisie. He mocks anyone not upper class declaring that they have no firm morals and survive solely on Romanticism. Flaubert uses literary techniques such...

12th Grade

Madame Bovary

Published in 1856, the novel Madame Bovary is one of the first to explore the issue of women’s disempowerment in a pointedly modern fashion. As a woman, the protagonist Emma experiences a number of obstacles that prevent her from reaching what she...

12th Grade

Madame Bovary

A literary canon is a list of the most esteemed books in a country; books that have attained a high status and considered to be of high aesthetic quality. Canons are works that are approved by cultural and academic institutions. Overall, the books...

College

Madame Bovary

Many authors have identified the self-absorbed behavior of Emma Bovary as the key character quality that leads to her downfall, and modern analyses point to lack of social and educational opportunities as the root cause of the decline and death of...

College

Madame Bovary

The epistolary novel structure, first produced by accident in The Persian Letters by Charles Secondat de Montesquieu, is a series of fictional letters or other forms of communication. The structure allows a writer to present different people’s...

College

Madame Bovary

Flaubert utilizes the character of the blind beggar to mirror Emma’s descent into corruption. Typical of Flaubert’s realist style, the beggar is described in detail as a needy, terrifyingly ugly man, which reflects Emma’s inner state. Emma has...

A Sentimental Education

Nineteenth century novelists used physical descriptions in their narratives to impose a thematic integrity onto their characters. Flaubert, it could be argued, likewise followed the traditions of realism and moderated Frédéric's inclinations...