Cynthia Lin COMP 200: Advanced Composition The Rhetoric of Scandal Dr. Luz Ramirez SUNY College at Oneonta May 10, 2001 Final Essay: Madame Bovary: Fantasy vs. Reality The characters Charles and Emma of Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary, escape from the drudgery and monotony of their life through fantasy. For Emma, it is a direct manipulation of her world, while for Charles it is disillusionment with the world. Each of these characters lives in complete ignorance of the true personality of the other. Emma ignores Charles's simple love and devotion while Charles is oblivious of Emma's affairs. Even before she meets her husband, Charles Bovary, Emma escapes from her dull and monotonous country life by reading stacks of books and magazines, as well as occupying herself with the conventions of religion. She becomes engrossed in the romanticism of religion – the radiant candles, the cool holy water, blue bordered religious pictures – even going so far as to make up sins for confession. By the time Charles Bovary enters the drama that is Emma’s life, she has all but convinced herself that she has no more to experience. This is, again, an over dramatization of her life. Charles Bovary, a kind but unremarkable country doctor, is married to the overbearing and shrewish Heloise when he meets Emma for the first time. He is struck by Emma’s beauty and dismisses the signs of potential disaster: her quick changes of mood from guileless joy to profound boredom and her wandering thoughts. Charles is "never able to imagine her any differently from the way she had been the first time he saw her" (Flaubert 30), a thought that carries through the novel even when Emma is at her worst. On their wedding day, Emma comments that she "would have preferred to be married at midnight, by torchlight..." (Flaubert 22), a sentiment that illustrates the depth of her impractical and romantic nature. A lady of high expectations and ideals, marriage to Charles does not hold up to her fanciful ideas of what marriage is like. To her, their marriage is dull and uninteresting. Victor Brombert writes, "As early as her disappointing honeymoon (which, she feels, ought to have led to ‘those lands with sonourous names’), she knows that Charles did not, and could not live up to her ideal of man as initiator to remote mysteries" (qtd. in Flaubert 389). She immerses herself in her books every day, fantasizing of a more exciting life and husband. Charles, meanwhile, is too preoccupied with admiring Emma to notice that she was not the ideal wife. Charles continually congratulates himself on having such a wonderful wife, but never stops to consider that maybe he has married a woman who is not fit for marriage; she has little to no domestic skills. During the ball at the mansion of the Marquis d’Andervillers, Emma spends much of the evening dancing with the Viscount, but Charles does not intervene. Instead, he sits back and watches his beautiful wife. Emma spends weeks dreaming of the ball, and when dreaming is no longer enough, Emma beings having affairs, first with Leon and then with Rodolphe. Showing the slightest bit of remorse for her actions, Emma wishes that Charles would beat her, so that she could at least feel justified in hating him. Charles, for his part, does not acknowledge or see Emma’s extramarital activities. Charles, in his ignorant bliss, actually aids Emma’s adultery on several occasions. Charles persuades his wife to ride the horse Rodolphe Boulanger wants to loan her; it is during this ride that Rodolphe professes his love for Emma. Later on, Charles believes he is paying for Emma’s piano lessons in Rouen while in reality she is using them as an excuse to continue her affair with Leon. When at last her affairs cannot give her the fantasy life that she desires, Emma surrounds herself with material possessions to the point where she can no longer afford them – a debt collector surprises Emma and the sheriff serves her legal notice. A court order follows later, demanding a payment of 8,000 francs. Her initial desire to become a cosmopolitan aristocrat leads her on escapades with seedy men and to the verge of poverty. No longer able to handle the drudgery of her life, Emma takes the most drastic route possible – she poisons herself. It is ironic that it is not until she is in the throws of death that Emma finally realizes what real love is and that is found in her husband, Charles. After her death, Charles discovers letters from Emma's lovers in the attic. Even faced with such concrete evidence, Charles refuses to believe that his wife was unfaithful. "Maybe they loved each other platonically. ...Certainly every man who saw her had desired her" (Flaubert 296), Charles reasons after reading a letter from Rodolphe. This allows him to continue the fantasy that Emma was a perfect, beautiful wife. He soon adopts Emma's mannerisms and ideas, still trying to please her as if she is still alive. Emma’s life of fantasy and romanticism eventually leads to the financial ruin of the Bovarys as well as Emma’s death. Charles is so blinded by his first impression of Emma that he fails to see her faults even when they are so obviously evident. Both Emma and Charles are too wrapped up in their own delusions to realize that their lives are falling apart. Emma’s death, however, only serves to deepen his skewed perception of her: The sweetness of her touch brought his grief to a climax; he felt his whole being collapse in despair at the thought of having to lose her just when she was confessing more love for him than ever before. (Flaubert 275) In the end, it is Emma who finally realizes that Charles loves her and that her affairs were perhaps unjustified, while Charles spends the remainder of his days carrying false memories of his beloved wife, Emma. Works Cited Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. 11th printing. Trans. Lowell Bair. New York: Bantam Books, 1989. Brombert, Victor. In Madame Bovary. 11th printing. Trans. Lowell Bair. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.