In the analytical essay “A Pox on Love: Diagnosing Madame Bovary’s Blind Beggar,” author Mary Donaldson-Evans explores the relationship between Gustave Flaubert’s “preoccupation with language and penchant for the medical metaphor”(3). In particular, she investigates Fluebert’s most perplexing allegorical character, the blind beggar. Within her essay Evans proposes to substantiate the beggar’s role by “pinpoint[ing] the beggar’s position [with]in the complex network of relationships connecting the characters”(4).

Evans’ review of the beggar’s emblematic significance to the story’s characters and themes gives a more in-depth revelation of Emma’s tragedy. Through her analysis of the biographical and historical data of France during the 18th century, diagnosis of the beggar’s illness, and illumination of his relation to Flaubert’s linguistic project, Evans presents

Medically this is a complex picture, and the blindness appears to be no more than one symptom among many….Generations of literary critics have mocked Homais’ attempts to cure the beggar with a diet and ointments, but no one, to my knowledge, has reflected on the fact that for the pharamacist, the diagnosis is not amaurosis, but scrofula. In the 19th century, this term was an all-purpose designation for the skin pathologies of uncertain origins…(3).

Evans implies that Madame Bovary is a novel about the dangers of reading romantic novels since Emma’s image of romance developed from the books she read at the convent school. These books reflected the more exuberant aspects of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement that focused on the expression of the emotional and imaginative life of the individual. Emma gorged herself on fixed ideas about ideal romance, but since fantasy is rarely reality, she created chaos all around her when she imposed those dreams on her daily life. She actually becomes ill after romantic episodes in her life. It is at this point that Romanticism, according to Evans’ investigation of Flaubert’s personal convictions, might be considered a disease.

In general the essay vindicates Flaubert’s persistent application of symbolism and metaphors within Madame Bovary. Evans contends with Flaubert’s intentional correlation between Emma’s fantasies and provocative nature and the symbolic characteristics of the diseased blind beggar. He represents the various phases and transitions within Emma, the story’s central characters, and Flaubert’s view of the social, religious, and po

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