Flaubert’s Madame Bovary marks the creation of a new form of novel that rejects the bourgeois conventions of the 18th century novel of manners. As a realist novel, the plot hovers above the hope of escape for the best one can do is rise above the horror through the beauty of art. Emma’s demons are spawned from society, not herself. The hypocritical, crude, opportunism of bourgeois civilization seeps through the pages as if emanating from the very aura of the merchant who ends up a wealthy man and the chemist who uses science and vulgar rationalism to get ahead.

A woman, cast in this society with no rights or status independent of her husband, Emma tries, much like Charles’ mother tried, to force the man closest to her into becoming something great to fulfill the emptiness of her life. Her attempts at escape are the only options available to her. What Emma holds as true notions are naught but the various myths of society and happiness within it that she finds in the novels of her youth. She is therefore, crushed at every attempt to escape the delusion of bourgeois society. A society embodied perfectly in the morally devoid, conniving merchant who trapped her into debt getting her to escape into the commoditization of her soul’s happiness and ending in tragedy.

Madame Bovary is written in the tradition of combining a realistic portrayal of society with a formalistic desire to create a new way of life in much the same way Degas and Manet attempted to paint the mediocrity of modern life without becoming vulgar themselves. Flaubert had to break the convention of the novel of manners in an attempt to mirror reality. While the novel

Some topics in this essay:
Madame Bovary, Degas Manet, Emma Bovary, Bovary Emma, Eugene Delemare, , Emma Charles, France” Flaubert, Louise Colet, Madame Bovary”, madame bovary, emma bovary, middle class, novel manners, critical realist, emma tries, portrayed emma, charles died, flaubert’s style, happiness novels,