Madame Bovary

Reading fiction can be a dangerous thing. Discuss these dangers as exemplified in Madame Bovary.

Women occupy a large presence in the novel. How is their limited social status examined by Flaubert? Do they possess any power to forge their own destinies?

Some features of Flaubert’s style have been explored in the translator’s introduction and above. Discuss these features and others-imagery, diction, metaphor, etc.-which you noticed in your reading. How do they provide aesthetic enjoyment?

One of the most famous set pieces in the novel is the seduction scene during the agriculture fair (part II, chapter 8). Discuss the reasons for its success, especially the author’s use of dialogue.

Perhaps the most famous line in the entire novel occurs when the narrator likens human speech to a “cracked kettle” (p. 167). The inadequacies of language is another theme that runs throughout the novel. How does this contribute to the work as a whole?

Charles Bovary is certainly guilty of being a bore and a dupe but does he elicit your sympathy? Is he less worthy of satire than other characters in the novel?

Emma is certainly guilty of capriciousness, avarice, and licentiousness. Is she, in these faults, any different from the other characters in the novel? Does she rise to the level of tragic heroine?

Part of the Western literary tradition has portrayed capriciousness, avarice, and licentiousness as stereotypically feminine faults. Does Flaubert challenge these stereotypes in any way in his portrayal of Emma?

Emma has been whimsically referred to as the ”original desperate housewife.” A gulf of time and social change separates Emma’s world and twenty-first-century America but are their similarities in Emma’s fate and the fate of contemporary married women?

Among other things, the novel is a brilliant satire of French middle-class mores. Homais is a favorite target of the author’s. Who else does Flaubert target?

The curé and the pharmacist debate the value of religion repeatedly. Emma is twice tempted by the calls for a life of religious devotion. Religion, specifically Catholicism, figures largely in the novel but how is it shown to be an inadequate guide for living?

Is Emma’s tragic demise the result of her circumstances, her own failures, or something else?