Who Runs the World in 19th Century France? Men.

A large theme in "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert is that women don't have any power. It clearly demonstrates the contrasts between the lives of men and women and who really held the power in society at that time.
The first time I caught onto it was when Madame Bovary gave birth to her daughter Berthe, and when she found out it was a girl, she fainted. "But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, help by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains," (Flaubert 86). It talks of the weakness a woman faces in society and how she cares so much for her unborn child, and wants the best for it, and the only way to guarantee that is if she had a son.
Another part that stuck out to me was when Madame Bovary senior came to visit, she instantly began critiquing the way Charles ran his home. "Madame Bovary senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalized of women-folk. Many other things displeased her. First, Charles had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the 'ways of the house' annoyed her, she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite," (Flaubert 178). Novels help to broaden the mind and educate people when they read. Madame Bovary senior noticed Emma's changed attitude and ways she acted around the house and thought that it was related to her reading of novels. And by forbidding the novels, Emma would be blind to the world around her and her personal rights. Basically to keep her powerless in society.
What also appeared to symbol Emma's powerlessness in society was her affairs with other men. She ultimately has to acknowledge that the affairs are not her husbands fault or her loves "tempting her" to commit adultery, because at the end of the day, that was her choice to make. It is still her body, and she can still control what goes in it. But then again, if she leaves her husband, she has nothing. She will not get any money, which will be difficult for her after living a luxurious life, she certainly won't get custody of her child, nor will she have a home to go back to. But then that also means the only way she could possibly make any money is by using her body. Which again relates back to how women don't have any power, because she is using her body for the pleasure of men. Which is probably not exactly her profession of choice, because its her allowing men to have power over her, that allows her to make some money.
My reading during this book has changed a lot since I read "Atonement" or "How to Read Literature Like a Professor". What I started doing was noticing intertextuality, like I mentioned in my first blog post. Obviously when I read other books I picked up on things and thought, "Oh! This sounds familiar!" But then with that I was also able to connect different themes and specific quotes that were featured in other books. Which before I was never able to do and I find it so cool now that I can find these different pathways that didn't seem even possible at first. I also started to always have the dictionary app open on my phone whenever I read the book. I definitely was influenced a lot by Nabakov as well because when I first started picking up on intertextuality I went back to "How to Read Literature Like a Professor" to read the chapter on intertextuality. And then in some of the heavily detailed scenes I had to reread it a lot to grapple with all the information that was presented and attempt to arrive at some sort of conclusion from it. Because a lot of these scenes are hard to process all the information and actually understand what the narrator wants you to take from it, so I had to reread a lot.
Honestly, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to expand their vocabulary. Every page there was some word I didn't know. And then I started to write down the definitions in the book itself to try and help understand them better. Also, the main reason why I chose this book is because when I first read the description it reminded me of "The Great Gatsby". So if you liked "The Great Gatsby" but want even more details and even more complicated twists and turns than that book, I would read "Madame Bovary". If you like books that mock the wealthy class, this book is really good at doing that. It truly is a good read though. For me, the details were a lot, because I get distracted really easily so while I read I felt my mind wander, while when I read "The Things They Carried" kept me engaged the whole time. That was my only issue was the amount of detail put in it, which made it a beautiful text to read, it just made me get distracted really easily and quickly too.

Cowardly Love

By the time I have reached page 186 in the book, I can already tell, this book is about to get crazy. So far, Emma is having this very steamy affair with Rodolphe and she loves him more than her own husband. And she for awhile has been almost begging Rodolphe to run away with her so the two of them can be together and show their love for one another to the world with no worries of anyone finding out.
 Meanwhile Charles is having a really bad experience within his career. He attempted to repair Hippolyte's club foot by cutting into the muscle. Which then backfired to where Hippolyte's wound got infected and Charles had to call in a separate doctor to assess the situation, and now Charles is getting sued. So his life is in a lot of trouble right now. While Emma's is about to go really terrible.
The day before Rodolphe and Emma were supposed to run away together he has this thought, "After a few moments Rodolphe stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall. 'What an imbecile I am!' he said with a fearful oath. 'No matter! She was a pretty mistress!' And immediately Emma's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her. 'For after all,' he exclaimed, gesticulating, 'I can't exile myself-have a child on my hands.' He was saying these things to give himself firmness. 'And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no! a thousand times no! It would have been too stupid,'" (Flaubert 185).
When I read this I gasped. Because this was the complete opposite to what was going on between Emma and Rodolphe earlier that night! "'Ah! I understand. I have nothing in the world! You are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!' 'How sweet you are!' he said, seizing her in his arms. 'Really!' she said with a voluptuous laugh. 'Do you love me? Swear it then!' 'Do I love you-love you? I adore you, my love!'" (Flaubert 183).
So after reading this, I had a prediction as to what was going to happen after this. She will spend the next day happy as anything packing for her get away with Rodolphe and then the day will come for the two of them running away, but Rodolphe won't show up after what I read on page 185. And for a while she will go back to her times of depression where she feels like she lives for nothing, and will continue to be cold to Charles like she was on page 172 when, "'Oh kiss me, my own!' 'Leave me!' she said, red with anger. 'What is the matter?' he asked stupefied." So she will continue to resent Charles and blame him for Rodolphe not coming in the morning because the risk is too big, so then she'll decide to go back to Leon, who was her first love during her marriage. Maybe she'll go on a day trip to Paris to see him, but not come back.

Climax Remix By Gustave Flaubert

After Madame Bovary and Monsieur Bovary get settled into the life at Yonville they meet the majority of the townspeople, especially ones of similar economic class as them. Such as Rodolphe, Monsieur Lheurex, Madame Lefrancois, Homais, and many others. The pivotal moment of this story was when Madame Bovary met Leon. She meets Leon shortly after giving birth to her daughter Berthe. She meets him while she's walking to her nurses' home to see her daughter when, "At this moment Monsieur Leon came out from a neighboring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of Lheureux's shop under the projecting grey awning," (Flaubert 89). After the two of them meeting, they become extremely close, almost a little too close. "Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices...and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know...In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. Charles had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and Leon did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that almost seemed impossible," (Flaubert 92-93).
 For Madame Bovary, I really don't think she was even all that attracted to Charles when she married him, she saw him as the escape goat out of her boring, country lifestyle. And even after having his child, she still couldn't find a way to be in love with him. Leon I think she was actually attracted to and found ways to connect with him that she didn't have with Charles. I think as well she was raised to be a good wife and mother, but on the inside she had a very free spirit, and Leon was someone that was different and excited her. "But the more Emma recognized her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Leon to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this. What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also...Then the lusts of flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it," (Flaubert 104). When she met Leon her life changed. Leon was someone she desperately wanted but couldn't have, which drove her insane and made her all the more upset. And when we discover her lust for another, and Charles' oblivion to her feelings for other men, it sets us up for Emma's future actions.

Bovary vs. Buchanan

The book that I am reading currently is "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert. The book is about a doctors wife, Emma, or Madame Bovary, who weds Monsieur Bovary, a young doctor at the time. When she first marries him after Monsieur Bovary becoming a widower, she is extremely happy to be wed and have an opportunity to escape her country life.
As we continue on in the book, we learn that Madame Bovary begins to feel depressed, and the life of being a mother and housewife is not satisfying her the way she thought that it would, so she begins to get sidetracked with other men.
When I first started reading this book, it reminded me of "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I saw similar forms of mockery between the two books on how Emma Bovary and Daisy Buchanan both appear to have the ideal life, but have love problems that to the outside reader seem very minute problems compared to their own. Emma is a country girl who marries a doctor, and Daisy Buchanan marries Tom Buchanan, who comes from an extremely wealthy family. Both Emma and Daisy have daughters and recognize that being a woman is a disadvantage. "But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, help by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains," (Flaubert 86). "I'm glad its a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool," (Fitzgerald 118). In Emma's thoughts she knew that she wanted a son because men have so much more access and freedom than girls do, and even though Daisy says that she is happy to have a girl, she knows that being a girl in this world is difficult and unfair compared to the lives of men. Then the two of them embark on affairs. Even though Daisy was with Jay Gatsby, her past lover, while Emma was with two men who filled the emptiness in her marriage where Charles couldn't.
What I also found was that both books mocked the lives of the rich. And how they appeared to have everything anyone could ever hope for in life, when to an outsider had such miniscule problems in their life. Emma even mocks a fellow man of her own class complaining of his depression, "'Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! If I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found some one! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!' 'Yet it seems to me,' said Emma, 'that you are not to be pitied.' 'Ah! you think so?' said Rodolphe. 'For, after all,' she went on, 'you are free----' she hesitated, 'rich---' 'Do not mock me,' he replied." (Flaubert 131).  She even notices in other people when their complaints seem ridiculous, when she has similar feelings of depression but she sees nothing wrong with them. The comparison between the two books, for me, has been hard to ignore and pass over.