FRENCH WOMAN, UNFAITHFUL AND NARCISSISTIC

What I think about Gustave Flaubert’s work Madame Bovary is a kind of weird. It is not one of my favorite books. In fact, it is one of the books I have needed too much time to read because, for me, it is very blue and boring. This makes such book convoluted, the reason why I don’t like it. And that was what I wanted to highlight from this work: it is tough to read because the author wants it to be! Flaubert wants the reader to have a feeling that the story reflects the lifestyle of the XIX century in France, that the time passes very slowly and that the evolution which Emma Bovary suffers comes little by little. In my opinion, this is much more difficult than achieving to write an enjoyable work.

At this point, I think I must explain to you all what the plot of the book is.

It has three parts: in the first one, Emma Rouault knows Charles Bovary, a doctor, and marries him. At the beginning, she is more or less happy, although the married lifestyle she wanted is not the one she has.And at the end of this part, Messieurs Bovary go to a nobility party and Emma starts to wish that kind of life for herself. Then, Messieurs Bovary move to other town, called Yonville-l'Abbaye, where Monsieur Bovary has been offered a new and better-remunerated job as such town’s doctor. Then starts the second part, where Emma got pregnant and has a girl, called Berthe, but she does not play as the mother of the child because she lives in her own fantasy, reading romantic books and wishing to have that kind of life. Here, Emma knows Rodolphe, a womanizer nobleman, and falls completely in love with him because of himself and because he can offer she the lifestyle she wants. They have a fling and finally decide to run away from Yonville together. But Rodolphe runs away without Emma because he really did not love her. Then, Emma falls ill because her hopes are frustrated and does not recovers until she goes to the opera and finds Leon, a young man that loved her when she was with Rodolphe. And, in the third part, Emma has a fling with Leon, but now she does not look for a man who can give to her the nobility lifestyle she wants because she gave up with that. Emma wants a man who loves her, because she is so rotten inside that nobody really loves her but Charles, her husband, and Emma hate him because she thinks he cannot give to her the life Emma thinks she needs to be happy. In the end, Emma wants to run away with Leon, but he leaves Emma because he has realized she had just used him to escape from a lifestyle she did not like. Then Emma is so sad that commits suicide and leaves Charles (who dies too) and her daughter alone, the only ones who could had made she happy if she would had cared of what really matters in life.

So there are two things I like from this work: On the one hand, as I said at the beginning, is the capability of the author to transmit the idea of sadness, because the story is sad as Emma cannot rate what she wants and makes unhappy the lives of the ones who love her; and convolution, so that the story is so long and the Emma’s evolution is quite slow, what I think is very hard to show in a work and the reason why I really like this book.

On the other hand, I have always wished to have things like money, a very good house, a more than good car and all that stuff because I thought that this was what will made me happy. But, as I grew up and, later, read this book (which is very realistic), I have realized that this really does not matter. Focusing on Madame Bovary, I could see how a too-strong idea can lead a person to the most miserable life and, finally, to suicide. Of course, I do not want that happen to me. And then, another idea came chained with the former: the richness is not an idea that you should make too strong because it is the one that can make you the saddest person in the world, so that it is empty and makes you to forget everything else. It makes you to forget what really matters in life: the little things. And among those things, the ones that you cannot buy with money. Of course again, there is the love of all the people who feels you are essential at their lives…those who think without you their world would not be the same…as the love of a husband and a daughter, dear Emma, for whom the world was not interesting without you on it. But alas you were too far to bring you close to realize of that…French woman, unfaithful and narcissistic.