Tell us how you really feel Flaubert

A solid portion of our class disucssion has been centered around Gustave Flaubert's us of Madame Bovary as social commentary.  It seems to be generally accepted that Flaubert's main objective was to comment on the desparity between the lack of opportunity for the middle class to move upward, and their insatiable need/attempt to.  We've also spent time disucussing the 'like-ability' of the characters, and struggling to define what approach we are to take in regards to interpreting the characters actions and motives through Flaubert's eyes.  And, after finishing the novel I truly believe that Flaubert meant to put a majority of the characters in as poor a light as possible. 

Emma spends nearly the entire novel in and out of various affairs, continually misleading her husband, and neglecting her dedication to marriage and parenthood.  At times, the novel almost lures you into fealing sorry for Emma by presenting her as this terribly tragic character, who's simply the unfortunate product of the wrong time period.  But, in the end Flaubert puts that to rest, and has Emma poisin herself.  Charels on the other hand is painted as a loser from the start.  He honestly and graciously trudges down his sad, pathetic path the entire novel, and you cannot help but feel sorry for him.  Regardless, in the end Flaubert has him meet a similarly sad ending - dying of grief, discuss, and betrayel after uncovering all of his wife's adulteries.

I feel like when we read a work like Madame Bovary - with such realistically grim plot - we as sensible human beings, search for redeeming characteristics within the characters and stories.  But the truth is, when you read this novel cover to cover - at least to me - it comes off as Flaubert just trashing the middle class.  I think he truly believes everyone outside his tax bracket is somehow less significant.  Every character that did not possess some kind of great wealth, knowledge, or prestige suffered an equally dreary and disappointing fate.   

Emma = Self-Destruction

I've essentially trashed Emma Bovary as a character every chance I've gotten since we've started reading Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, and I'm not going to pass this chance up either.  In fact, I'd like to continue Wednesday's class discussion.  Now, I realize that Emma is a prisoner to a chauvinistically saturated time, and I do not agree with the the policies of the time in regards to women, and I am by NO means a sexist.  Having said that, Emma - in my eyes - the manifestation of all that encompasses weakness and irresponsibility.  Regardless of the fact that, to this point, Emma has not acted physically on any of her thoughts, and that we get the story from her perspective - allowing for a much more personal view into Emma's thoughts and urges - she still manages to garner my disdain.  My father always taught me that being tough wasn't necessarily about your outward appearance or the stories you could tell, but about your ability to control your own fear and destructive thoughts inside your mind.  Emma continually undermines everything she tries so desperately hold together by allowing her thoughts to consume her.  She makes the conscious decision to invest beyond her means in the desires that come to dismantle her life, piece by piece.  And I wholeheartedly believe that if Emma's character existed in any later time in history she would still be as empty, cold, and confused as she is now, because that is who she is at her core, and that is how she has come to understand herself.