Essay about Madame Bovary vs. the Awakening - 1791 Words

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert and The Awakening by Kate Chopin both show the life of a woman in a half-dreamy stupor, overzealously running around looking for something but not knowing what it is they are looking for. They feel immensely dissatisfied with the lives they are stuck with and find suicide to be the only alternative. The two books, Madame Bovary, written in 1857 and The Awakening, written in 1899, both have the theme of confinement and free-will, yet differ vastly with respect to the yearnings of the main characters. In addition, Edna and Emma, the protagonists of Madame Bovary and The Awakening respectively, are faced with a conflict between external oppression and their own free will, which eventually leads them to take†¦show more content†¦The model she tries to emulate, of which her inability to do so also leads to her suicide, is one filled with exuberant romanticism. Her inveterate romanticisms can be traced back to her childhood. Emma was put in a conv ent when she was a little girl. Inside the convent, she began to embrace romance novels, which filled her mind with thoughts of sophistication, sensuality, passion, love, lust, and other romantic thoughts. For example, she read The Genius of Christianity in the convent. How intently she listened, the first few times, to the sonorous lamentations of that romantic melancholy expressing itself again and again in all the echoes of this world and the next! (Flaubert 31). The reason for this love of novels can be associated with her yearning to leave the convent. Romanticism was her escape from the cold walls of the convent. Instead of following mass, she look at the blue-bordered religious pictures in her book; she loved the sick sheep, the Sacred Heart pierced by sharp arrows, and poor Jesus stumbling and falling beneath his cross. (Flaubret 30). Religious services are a major part in a convent; yet, Emma did not follow mass like she was supposed to. She instead daydreamed and, in a sen se, mentally left the convent. Her daydreaming was an attempt to leave the restrictions of the convent. Nearly the same thing occurred in the marriageShow MoreRelatedMetz Film Language a Semiotics of the Cinema PDF100902 Words   |  316 Pagesone expects to meet in the street the hero of some scrupulously realistic contemporary novel. Realism affects the organization of the 22 PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO FILM contents, not narration as a status. On one level of perception, Emma Bovary is no less imaginary than Cinderella s fairy godmother. We must, however, go one step further, for, along with realistic stories (which nobody believes have really occurred), there are also real stories: accounts of historical occurrences (the assassination