Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas
explored in a literary work.
The Inadequacy of Language
Madame Bovary explores the possibility
that the written word fails to capture even a small part of the
depth of a human life. Flaubert uses a variety of techniques to
show how language is often an inadequate medium for expressing emotions
and ideas. The characters’ frequent inability to communicate with
each other is emblematic of the fact that words do not perfectly
describe what they signify. In the first chapter, for example, Charles’s
teacher thinks he says his name is “Charbovari.” He fails to make
his own name understood. This inadequacy of speech is something
Emma will encounter again and again as she tries to make her distress
known to the priest or to express her love to Rodolphe. It is also
present when Charles reads the letter from Rodolphe and misinterprets
it as a note of platonic affection.
The lies that fill Madame Bovary contribute
to the sense of language’s inadequacy in the novel, and to the notion
that words may be more effective for the purposes of obscuring the
truth or conveying its opposite, than for representing the truth
itself. Emma’s life is described as “a tissue of lies.” She invents
story after story to prevent her husband from discovering her affairs.
Similarly, Rodolphe tells so many lies about his love for Emma that
he assumes her words are also insincere. Flaubert points out that
by lying the lovers make it impossible for words ever to touch at
the truth in things.
The strong sense of the inadequacy of language is in
part a reaction against the school of realism. Although Flaubert
was in some senses a realist, he also believed it was wrong to claim
that realism provided a more accurate picture of life than romanticism.
He deploys ironic romantic descriptions to establish a tension between various
characters’ experience of events and the real aspects of life. By
combining ironic romanticism and literal realistic narration, Flaubert
captures his characters and their struggles mormore fully than a
strictly literal or a wholesale romantic style would allow.
The Powerlessness of Women
Emma Bovary’s hope that her baby will be a man because
“a woman is always hampered” is just one of the many instances in
the novel in which Flaubert demonstrates an intimate understanding
of the plight of women in his time. We see throughout Madame
Bovary how Emma’s male companions possess the power to
change her life for better or worse—a power that she herself lacks.
Even Charles contributes to Emma’s powerlessness. His laziness prevents
him from becoming a good doctor, and his incompetence prevents him from
advancing into a higher social stratum that might satisfy Emma’s
yearnings. As a result, Emma is stuck in a country town without
much money. Rodolphe, who possesses the financial power to whisk
Emma away from her life, abandons her, and, as a woman, she is incapable
of fleeing on her own. Leon at first seems similar to Emma. Both
are discontented with country life, and both dream of bigger and
better things. But because Leon is a man, he has the power to actually
fulfill his dream of moving to the city, whereas Emma must stay
in Yonville, shackled to a husband and child.
Ultimately, however, the novel’s moral structure requires
that Emma assume responsibility for her own actions. She can’t blame everything
on the men around her. She freely chooses to be unfaithful to Charles,
and her infidelities wound him fatally in the end. On the other
hand, in Emma’s situation, the only two choices she has are to take
lovers or to remain faithful in a dull marriage. Once she has married
Charles, the choice to commit adultery is Emma’s only means of exercising
power over her own destiny. While men have access to wealth and
property, the only currency Emma possesses to influence others is
her body, a form of capital she can trade only in secret with the
price of shame and the added expense of deception. When she pleads
desperately for money to pay her debts, men offer the money in return
for sexual favors. Eventually, she tries to win back Rodolphe as
a lover if he will pay her debts. Even her final act of suicide
is made possible by a transaction funded with her physical charms,
which are dispensed toward Justin, who allows Emma access to the
cupboard where the arsenic is kept. Even to take her own life, she
must resort to sexual power, using Justin’s love for her to convince
him to do what she wants.
The Failures of the Bourgeoisie
Emma’s disappointments stem in great part from her dissatisfaction with
the world of the French bourgeoisie. She aspires to have taste that
is more refined and sophisticated than that of her class. This frustration
reflects a rising social and historical trend of the last half of
the nineteenth century. At the time Flaubert was writing, the word
“bourgeois” referred to the middle class: people who lacked the
independent wealth and ancestry of the nobility, but whose professions
did not require them to perform physical labor to earn their living.
Their tastes were characterized as gaudily materialistic. They indulged
themselves as their means allowed, but without discrimination. The
mediocrity of the bourgeoisie was frustrating to -Flaubert, and
he used Emma Bovary’s disgust with her class as a way of conveying
his own hatred for the middle class. Madame Bovary shows
how ridiculous, stifling, and potentially harmful the attitudes and
trappings of the bourgeoisie can be. In the pharmacist Homais’s long-winded,
know-it-all speeches, Flaubert mocks the bourgeois class’s pretensions
to knowledge and learning and its faith in the power of technologies
that it doesn’t completely understand. But Homais is not just funny;
he is also dangerous. When he urges Charles to try a new medical
procedure on Hippolyte, the patient acquires gangrene and then loses
his leg. Homais does even greater damage when he attempts to treat
Emma for her poisoning. He tries to show off by analyzing the poison
and coming up with an antidote. Later, a doctor will tell him that
he should have simply stuck a finger down Emma’s throat to save
her life.
