Madame Bovary
In every society there is a middle class. They don't have the luxuries that the elite few have, but they are far from living on the streets. They are stuck in the middle. Now, maybe it's a case of Jan Brady syndrome, but very often, the middle class would like to be at the top. You get to have an exciting, romantic life, much like that of ... well ... Marcia. There has to be some sort of influence that makes the middle class people think that way. One such influence was the period of Romanticism. It gave ordinary Jans a glimpse into exciting life. But the only way they could realize this kind of life was through a dream. Some people tried to make this dream a reality, and they wound up worse than they started. Such was the case of Emma, in Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. However, her results were tragic as she could not achieve that lifestyle she was looking for. In the 19th century, bourgeois women in France wanted to live a romantic life, as characterized by the influence of society. Emma Bovary had a dream of living in the high society. This dream came from her love of novels, especially romance novels. During the nineteenth century, Romanticism was alive in literature and art. It displayed exciting and em
"Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every one's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion , laughter, or thought. However, the only way she could do this was to put herself into a dream world, filled with chivalry, excitement, and romance. She abused her daughter, and hardly showed love for this "object. Emma read books by authors like Sir Walter Scott, and she identified with the girl in the castle who watched from a window as her lover came galloping on a horse. The German poet Friedrich Schlegel defined Romanticism as "literature depicting emotional matter in an imaginative form. Women of her time must have been just as tired of the every day routine. "They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, 'gentlemen' brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. " Because of Emma's need for excitement, she turned to romantic novels. "Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills?" (24) This just shows a little of her annoyance with her husband, Charles. Romantic thinkers put an emphasis on emotion, love, and imagination, as well as the idealization of simpler and nobler times. A German Romantic author of this time, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, expressed this idea in one of his books, The Sorrows of Young Werther. "Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Romanticism developed as a rejection to the ideas of the Enlightenment. " (22) It is at the convent where Emma starts to believe that she can be one of them, and escape her monotonous routine.
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Acceptance Essays
