Femme Fatale or Victim
Femme Fatale or Victim
Emma Bovary is a complex and intriguing character as the protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary. Throughout the novel, Flaubert’s use of elaborate details and explicit dialogue lead to the question of whether Emma plays the role of a fierce femme fatale who caused the destruction of her husband and daughter, or that of the vulnerable victim, trapped by societal expectations and depression. Critics may claim that the novel supports the idea that Emma Bovary is only one of the two portrayals, but Flaubert’s highly wrought details leave ambiguous clues that suggest she was both femme fatale and victim. Emma Bovary’s materialistic qualities, vain desires and her lack of a maternal instinct could classify her as a femme fatale while her search for a spiritual anchor, the 19th-century societal expectations she was supposed to live by and the view that powerful dominating men seduced her are key factors in the perspective of her as a victim.
As one flips the pages of the novel, Flaubert’s ornate details characterize Emma as a beautiful woman with obvious materialistic and vain desires that seem to convey her as a femme fatale rather than a victim. Emma marries Charles Bovary not because she is madly in love with him, but because it might allow her to escape, or even improve her reality, from which she is always running away. She has unrealistic and fairytale-like expectations of how life should be after marriage, which leads to her own disappointment. “In a post-chaise, with blue silk blinds, slowly you climb the steep roads, and the postilion’s song is echoing across the mountains with the sound of goat-bells and the murmuring waterfall. As the sun is going down, on the shore of the bay you breathe the scent of lemon-trees; that night… you gaze at the stars and you talk of the future” (Flaubert 38). Emma dreams of the perfect honeymoon influenced by the endless books of romance that she spent much of her childhood reading. Even
Emma Bovary is a complex and intriguing character as the protagonist of Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary. Throughout the novel, Flaubert’s use of elaborate details and explicit dialogue lead to the question of whether Emma plays the role of a fierce femme fatale who caused the destruction of her husband and daughter, or that of the vulnerable victim, trapped by societal expectations and depression. Critics may claim that the novel supports the idea that Emma Bovary is only one of the two portrayals, but Flaubert’s highly wrought details leave ambiguous clues that suggest she was both femme fatale and victim. Emma Bovary’s materialistic qualities, vain desires and her lack of a maternal instinct could classify her as a femme fatale while her search for a spiritual anchor, the 19th-century societal expectations she was supposed to live by and the view that powerful dominating men seduced her are key factors in the perspective of her as a victim.
As one flips the pages of the novel, Flaubert’s ornate details characterize Emma as a beautiful woman with obvious materialistic and vain desires that seem to convey her as a femme fatale rather than a victim. Emma marries Charles Bovary not because she is madly in love with him, but because it might allow her to escape, or even improve her reality, from which she is always running away. She has unrealistic and fairytale-like expectations of how life should be after marriage, which leads to her own disappointment. “In a post-chaise, with blue silk blinds, slowly you climb the steep roads, and the postilion’s song is echoing across the mountains with the sound of goat-bells and the murmuring waterfall. As the sun is going down, on the shore of the bay you breathe the scent of lemon-trees; that night… you gaze at the stars and you talk of the future” (Flaubert 38). Emma dreams of the perfect honeymoon influenced by the endless books of romance that she spent much of her childhood reading. Even