Emmas Masculinity in Madame Bovary Essay - 1257 Words

Set in the Victorian era of the 1800’s Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert exemplifies society’s views on the established gender roles of this time. Flaubert utilizes Emma Bovary’s masculinity to accentuate Emma’s desire for control. Her desire for control extends from the social pressure of the period, revealing her envy towards men. Flaubert undoubtedly depicts Emma’s characteristics to have a masculine undertone and throughout the novel her femininity deviates as her priority shifts. Emma’s lack of femininity translates to her relationships by maneuvering an interchanging role of a girlfriend or boyfriend. In Madame Bovary, Emma creates conspicuous goals based off romantic novels she reads. In reaching her goals, she requires a level of†¦show more content†¦Emma compares her opportunities and position in society to those of Leon. While Society encourages him to become cultured, educated, and expand his horizons on the contrary women hinders in that desire may only be just that, but a hopeful wish to be granted by their spouse. Her sadness, not only derives from Leon’s departure, but of her realization of a woman’s bound role under the law and status. Flaubert depicts Emma as having subtle masculine characteristics emphasizing her masculinity not only mentally but physically as well. In some cases, Flaubert uses irony to characterize Emma’s masculine features. â€Å"Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines† (Flaubert 28) the narrator describes Emma as lacking the soft subtle femininity that high-class women have. The contrast of her beauty lessens her femininity in this case making her appear more tusk and masculine. Emma’s femininity gets challenged on the pivotal day of the Victorian women’s life. When the narrator describes her on her wedding day, â€Å"Emmas dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledown† (Flaubert 18-19). On her weddi ng day, Emma’s description walking down the aisle diffidently wearing a dirty unfitted dress metaphorically portrays EmmaShow MoreRelatedMadame Bovary Essay1427 Words   |  6 PagesMadame Bovary is a novel by author Gustave Flaubert in which one woman’s provincial bourgeois life becomes an expansive commentary on class, gender, and social roles in nineteenth-century France. Emma Bovary is the novel’s eponymous antiheroine who uses deviant behavior and willful acts of indiscretion to reject a lifestyle imposed upon her by an oppressive patriarchal society. Madame Bovary’s struggle to circumvent and overthrow social roles reflects both a cultural and an existential critique ofRead MoreTransgressive Women In Madame Bovary1562 Words   |  7 PagesIn Gustave Flaubert’s, Madame Bovary (1857), the narrator illustrates the apparent sexism that Emma Bovary, the protagonist and antihero of the novel, endures. Although Emma was at many times a victim of h er time similar to many other women in Madame Bovary, such as the elder Madame Bovary and Madame Homais, Emma possesses a quality unlike the other female characters in the novel. Emma Bovary acts as transgressive woman, in that she chooses to defeat the social boundaries that repeatedly constrictedRead More Silence as Power in The House of the Spirits and Madame Bovary1440 Words   |  6 Pagessymbolizes power. Silence showcases the ability of restraint and often times angers those who participate in the other end of an argument and do not have the ability to restrain themselves from bursting. Similarly, In The House of the Spirits and Madame Bovary, Isabel Allende and Gustave Flaubert emphasize the symbol of silence in order to emphasize the lack of power from which Esteban and Charles suffer within their families, within society, and within their marriages. Allende distances Esteban from