Summary Of Flaubert's Madame Bovary

The theme of confinement of females under severe 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 protagonist cunning husband, and a villainous Count. This assignment will consider the methods the authors used to depict confinement within both narratives, including structure, setting, narrative

In his novel Memisis, the critic Erich Auerbach states that ‘Flaubert is the first who directly captures the chronic character of this psychological situation. Nothing happens, but nothing has become a heavy oppressive something’ (Memisis.p.488). Moreover, Flaubert took a risk by portraying Emma as a bored wife and mother who turned to adultery in an attempt to fulfil a void in her life, and while some critics considered his writing ‘overly descriptive’(James in Identities, p.108). Hence, Flaubert effectively depicts the restrictive roles of women in the mid-nineteenth century and, as a result, criticized the bourgeois society in general. However, his great achievement is pinpointing human desires through the character of Emma and presenting them in a realistic setting without an authoritative perspective to condemn or condone them. Consequently, Emma’s character was consider shocking and immoral.

Victorian society expected women to know their place, be complacent, and be the ‘Angel of the house’ () .Emma Bovary is none of those her deep-rooted ennui (Identities, p.) manifests itself from an early age. Flaubert uses the technique of foreshadowing to show the reader exactly what the young Emma Rouault will become. The convent is Emma’s earliest confinement and is one of the few places that intrigue

Collins incorporates traits of the gothic into his narrative and isolates his heroine on the estate of her husband Sir Percival Glyde who is an abusive man plotting to steal Laura’s inheritance. Identity is the main issue in The Woman in White, and the Fairlies uncle and guardian Frederick Fairlie selfishly shuts himself away with his art treasures, a fastidious hypochondriac he is introduced ‘as an ‘ invalid, and keeps bachelor state in his own apartments’ (p.33). Collins uses Fairlie to undermine the representation of home within the Victorian society, and to foreshadow Limmeridge House as a claustrophobic retreat representing an image of a private asylum where Frederick’s niece will eventually find herself confined in because of her husband and the devious Count Fosco’s