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

Finally, Evans questions the beggar’s relation to Flaubert’s linguistic style. Overall, Flaubert’s attention to detail and his reliance on description to tell his story have led to the labeling of his style as realistic, or giving an objective impression of real life. He creates this effect by using a great number of accurate details as building blocks and by carefully selecting and arranging them into a new reality. These references emphasize Flaubert’s realistic, unflinching description of the world, and also act as physical manifestations of Emma’s moral decay. For example, according to Evans, Flaubert uses liquid imagery to convey a sense of boredom and despair. From Hippolyte’s infected leg came detailed descriptions of blood gushing, from Rodolphe’s lips sentimental lies flowed, and from the beggar’s eyes mucus oozed: “In the first place, the mucus becomes the perfect figure for love, cynically reduced to the tumescence and detumesence of coitus. Both mucus also becomes Faubert’s most eloquent metaphor for language, conceived as the ludicrous result of pathological swelling, and putrid seepage, destined to congeal in the repulsive form of lieu commun”(6).

a unique perspective on Flaubert’s writing style, and stances on the various political, social, and religious values of France during the 19th century.

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 begg

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