| Term Paper Title | Madame Bovary: Destiny |
| # of Words | 997 |
| # of Pages (250 words per page double spaced) | 3.99 |
Madame Bovary: Destiny
Destiny: the seemingly inevitable succession of events.1
Is this definition true, or do we, as people in real life or characters
in novels, control our own destiny? Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary exemplifies
how we hold destiny in our own hands, molding it with the actions we take and
the choices we make. Flaubert uses Emma Bovary, the main character of his novel,
to demonstrate this. Throughout her life, Emma makes many decisions, each one
of them affecting her fate and by analyzing these decisions one could see from
the beginning that Emma is destined to suffer. However, one can also pinpoint
such decisions making events as her marriage, her daughter's birth, her
adulterous relationship with Leon and her taking the poison, as times when, if
she had made a different decision, her life would not have ended as tragically.
When we first meet Emma, the future Madame Bovary, we perceive her as
being a woman who is refined perhaps a bit more than the average peasant girl
living on a farm. We conclude this because she attended a boarding school where
she was taught “dancing, geography, needlework and piano.” (p.15) Charles, on
the other hand, gives her more credit than she deserves. He regards her as well
very educated, sophisticated, sensitive and loving, with the last characteristic
being the one she lacks most. Soon after Emma marries Charles we see her
unhappiness, and we are faced with a dilemma, why did she marry him? There are
numerous possible answers to this, but the end conclusion is the same: if she
had not married him it would have been better for both of them. Emma would not
have been so miserable and depressed throughout her life and Charles would have
found someone who would return his love and who would appreciate him. Throughout
the novel Emma never expresses her appreciation for her husband. On the
contrary, she often expresses her loathing for him - “Charles never seemed so
disagreeable to her, his fingers never seemed so blunt, his mind so dull of his
manners so crude--.” (p.161)
However, Emma and Charles were married. An uneventful year passed and
Emma reached yet another fork in the road of life - should she have a baby now,
or wait until later? She reasoned that it would bring excitement to her life so
she decided to go ahead and have the baby. She wished for a boy because he
would have the freedom to “explore the whole range of the passions, go wherever
he likes, overcome obstacles and savor the most exotic pleasures.” (p.76) The
baby was a girl. Emma “turned her head away and fainted” (p. 77) upon hearing
this news. She felt let down by the world, as she saw her hopes and dreams
shatter before her eyes. Yet again we are faced with a dilemma: why did she
chose to have a baby? Was it only for selfish reasons? And yes, there are many
answers, but the conclusion remains the same, if she had not had this baby girl,
her destiny a...Read entire document
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