Why Madame Bovary Is Not a Feminist Icon
As well read as I have been over the years, including many of the classics of Western literature, I have just gotten around to reading Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
How to account for this gaping hole in a bibliographic odyssey that has included a thousand or so books over four or so decades? I dunno. Maybe I thought this particular classic was a Doctor Zhivago without the snow.
Boy was I wrong.
Emma Bovary is in some respects the prototypical “Desperate Housewife,� a manic depressive spendthrift with eating and panic disorders who makes her life into a novel to escape the emptiness of her existence in rural France.
But like many great books, the message that I took from Madame Bovary resonates even more powerfully today than when Flaubert introduced it in the mid-19th century to a public alternately titillated and shocked by its sexual innuendo.
For me, that message is that there is no lonelier a woman than one who demeans her sex but uses it to get special favors.
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10 Responses to “Why Madame Bovary Is Not a Feminist Icon”
I read Madame Bovary more than 40 years ago so my recollections are rather dimmed with time.
I didn’t care for the book. I found Emma Bovary tedious, a character that existed solely to fulfill the literary intentions of the author—a critique of the literary and dramatic conventions of his day. Perhaps a shallow reading but there you have it.
And my favorite character in Anna Karenina was Levin, too.
BTW, Doktor Zhivago isn’t Doctor Zhivago. If you haven’t read the book, it’s well worth it.
I read the book so long ago that probably a rereading is due.
I’ve never thought that feminism, per se, was the central theme. All the characters, not just Emma, are flawed and cought in a web of pretentions. I believe
a central theme was the bourgeois class, and how they knew enough to aspire to something higher but didn’t know enough to fulfill their aspirations.
The feminist angle could be in Emma’s rejection of her daughter, as a son would have had a better chance to escape the trap of rural bourbeois life. Remember that sex was the only currency available to Emma.
Domajot:
You are quite right that sex was, in effect, Emma’s ticket out of the ghetto.
My motivation for blogging on the book was two-fold: A break from using the words Bush and Iraq and an opportunity to examine whether the deep thinkers who believe that Emma for a feminist harbinger were right. As I note, if that is so she’s a lousy role model.
Shaun-
I’ve never heard Emma being proposed as a role model. I have no idea what feminists say, but if they characterize her at all, I’d guess it would be as a victim, not a role model.
In depictions of social classes, personal responsibility as an idea seldom plays a large role. The characters are usually portrayed as symptoms more than individuals.
This is totally off the cuff, and I’m vulnerable to being proved wrong by a more scholarly examination.
Domajot:
Scholar schmolar. As alluded to in my previous comment, my post was in part an excercise in myth debunking. Scholarly myth debunking. I’ll take off the cuff over scholarship any day when it comes to stuff like this.
Don’t forget Karenina, either. Magnificent. Very sad, and the fella’s not so noble.
Fabulous book and an astute post, Shaun. I think a larger conclusion to be drawn is that great works of literature by and large don’t lend themselves to reductive, ideologically-driven readings, which must surely frustrate ideologues both left and right. I can’t imagine exactly what Flaubert would say about attempts to appropriate Emma as a feminist icon (either as heroine or victim), but I doubt that it would be very respectful.
Flaubert is a big favorite of mine and I would also recommend “The Sentimental Education” (which I like even better than MB) and his novella “A Simple Heart” . The latter is one of the most tender and compassionate stories you’ll read, perhaps surprisingly so given how often Flaubert is characterized as “cold”.
Fabulous book and an astute post, Shaun. I think a larger conclusion to be drawn is that great works of literature by and large don’t lend themselves to reductive, ideologically-driven readings, which must surely frustrate ideologues both left and right. I can’t imagine exactly what Flaubert would say about attempts to appropriate Emma as a feminist icon (either as heroine or victim), but I doubt that it would be very respectful.
Flaubert is a big favorite of mine and I would also recommend “The Sentimental Education” (which I like even better than MB) and his novella “A Simple Heart” . The latter is one of the most tender and compassionate stories you’ll read, perhaps surprisingly so given how often Flaubert is characterized as “cold”.
Yes Emma may not be a feminist as to what “feminism” is traditionally defined, but she is the reason why feminism has given birth.
Though she has her flaws and psychological conflict but because she was not given a chance in her childhood to experience what a real woman is and what a real woman must do, she learned it from the romantic novels she read – which is so idealistic.
That is the root of her downfall I think – since women are not carefully educated of their major function in the society even their training is directed towards becoming a mother and wife, but strange that they are not well informed of how competitive they would have been in being a “wife” or in being a “woman” in area of sex. It is a taboo if women speak about sex – they would be branded as filthy and indecent.
Isn't that an idea to be pondered on?