An Education In Escape: Madame Bovary And Reading

Term Paper Title	An Education In Escape: Madame Bovary And Reading
# of Words	712
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.85

An Education in Escape: Madame Bovary and Reading

         A theme throughout Flaubert's Madame Bovary is escape versus
confinement. In the novel Emma Bovary attempts again and again to escape the
ordinariness of her life by reading novels, having affairs, day dreaming, moving
from town to town, and buying luxuries items. It is Emma's early education
described for an entire chapter by Flaubert that awakens in Emma a struggle
against what she perceives as confinement. Emma's education at the convent is
perhaps the most significant development of the dichotomy in the novel between
confinement and escape. The convent is Emma's earliest confinement, and it is
the few solicitations from the outside world that intrigue Emma, the books
smuggled in to the convent or the sound of a far away cab rolling along
boulevards.
         The chapter mirrors the structure of the book it starts as we see a
satisfied women content with her confinement and conformity at the convent.
         At first far from being boredom the convent, she enjoyed the company of
the nuns, who, to amuse her, would take her into the chapel by way of a long
corridor leading from the dining hall. She played very little during the
recreation period and knew her catechism well. (Flaubert 30.)Footnote1
         The chapter is also filled with images of girls living with in the
protective walls of the convent, the girls sing happily together, assemble to
study, and pray. But as the chapter progresses images of escape start to
dominate. But these are merely visual images and even these images are either
religious in nature or of similarly confined people.
         She wished she could have lived in some old manor house, like those
chatelaines in low wasted gowns who spent their days with their elbows on the
stone sill of a gothic window surmounted by trefoil, chin in hand watching a
white plumed rider on a black horse galloping them from far across the country.
(Flaubert 32.)
         As the chapter progresses and Emma continues dreaming while in the
convent the images she conjures up are of exotic and foreign lands. No longer
are the images of precise people or event but instead they become more fuzzy and
chaotic. The escape technique that she used to conjure up images of her...

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