Both Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White depict female characters who are under emotional and physical distress, albeit for entirely different reasons. Emma Bovary’s confinement is self-induced, she is slowly dying from unfulfilled aspirations due to her own fundamental and eventual fatal error, in that she mistakes literature for life. Subsequently, Emma is confined in a world she finds tedious and monotonous. Ultimately, her ennui (Identities, p.20) becomes
confinement of females under mental and physical distress is the central theme in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White. Flaubert’s Emma Bovary is a narcissist whose self-induced obsession with literature restricts her from having a happy fulfilling life, as nothing compares to the excitement and adventures she reads in her novels. While the plot of Wilkie Collins The Woman in White depicts two women incarcerated against their will in a private mental institution. These private
mental and physical distress is a central theme in both Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and Wilkie Collins The Woman in White. Flaubert’s Emma Bovary is a narcissist, whose self-induced obsession with literature restricts her from having a happy fulfilling life, as nothing matches the excitement, romance, or adventure of the heroes in the novels she reads. While in comparison, the females in Wilkie Collins The Woman in White, have their identity stolen, and are imprisoned against their will, by the