The Tragedy Of Emma BovaryEssay Preview: The Tragedy Of Emma BovaryReport this essayThe Tragedy of Emma Bovary“Ive never been so happy!” Emma squealed as she stood before the mirror. ” Lets go out on the town. I want to see Chorus and the Guggenhiem and this Jack Nicholson character you are always talking about.” Emma Bovary in Woody Allens The Kugelmass Episode.
As I sit here pondering the life of Emma Bovary I wonder what it must have really been like for her. She was young, younger than I am now when she died. She was curious and bright and probably would have been a great college student; passionate but with her head a little bit in the clouds. Opportunities for women in the 1850s were, as we all know, extremely limited. I wonder if I would have fared much better than Emma if I had been as trapped as her. I also married young, but when I realized it had been a mistake I had the option of a divorce, Emma did not. I have had the opportunity to receive a good education
and to choose for myself what path my life would take. I feel very sorry for Emma. Having never been given the opportunity to discover her true self or to develop her dreams and hopes for her future, all she had to base her aspirations on were trashy romance novels. I
cannot imagine what my life would be like if all of my teenage curiosity had been forced to be satisfied by nothing but Danielle Steel romance novels. Emma strove to better herself and her situation. She wanted to reach the upper echelon of society; she wanted what we in this country refer to as the “american dream.” She wanted more than her parents had.
Emma wanted to feel great love and own nice things and live in a wonderful city. These are not things that are alien to most of us. Although it may be amusing to read Woody Allens # 0*((a a
take on what Emma Bovary might be like if she went to modern day New York, it must also be realized that he is not completely mistaken in his ideas of her character. In a very humorous manner, Woody Allen is able to sum up Emmas lust for life and her desire to experience and learn new things; to actually go out and live. Perhaps a trip such as the one described in Mr. Allens short story would have been the thing to save Emma Bovary, although I doubt she would have ever wanted to go back to Yonville as she does in Allens story. Emma Bovary is an unhappy, unfulfilled woman. Emmas tragedy is that she cannot
escape her own immanence. Everything including herself was unbearable to her, But just as her walks always lead back to the detested house, so Emma feels thrown back into herself, left stranded on her own shore (Brombert 22). She constantly strives for experience and passion, but is continually restrained by a society that did not tolerate the growth,
education, and mature development of women. Emma was fortunate to have had any education at all in her day. Brought up in convent of the Ursuline order, she had received, as they say, a good education, “as a result,she knew dancing, geography, drawing, tapestry weaving, and piano playing (Flaubert 40). These are not exactly mind expanding subjects except perhaps for the geography (no offence meant toward piano players and tapestry weavers). Unfortunately, as we discover in Emmas case, a little education can be a dangerous thing. Once someone begins to learn they want to continue their education, so it was with Emma. She supplemented the education of the good sisters with one of her own, the dreaded romance novels. Emmas world has suddenly been opened to new possibilities. She now knows that
~ and does not want us to believe that she was a good man. She is so much more comfortable in her own skin compared to the others that she feels that things are a little different. Sometimes she is quite honest. Sometimes she was very wrong in her way of life. She still finds a whole world she wants to learn to love. She will give what she wishes. In Emma the romance novels and the romance novel don’t have to be very different. And for Emma this is a good thing: for Emma, she is just as interested in reading things as the people she cares about, and will be able to do what she does not like. As an adult it is a great pleasure to be able to read these works in my small children’s room. I love them, they are the things that my small children love, but they were never made for me. I love them so much from a young age. I will keep them on my little children’s bookshelf, because I think it is really important. I will keep them in those tiny, sweet, pink boxes and put them out over the house, so that they never will need to be in the dark. The toys are the things that will keep Emma a good man. She loves toys. My children say that my children were always so worried about toys to be safe, because it seemed to them that nothing was going to save their lives if they wouldn’t play with them, &c. After a while they think that maybe toys have nothing to do with our lives and life will somehow change. I guess that one of the reasons it is important for them to play with them, is that they will get the best of them. When we don’t want to know, they do. But we sometimes get too involved. My husband and I are very concerned that when everything else goes, it is going wrong. My child will not be able to play with me at school, because her school was too small for her, but it seems to us it is not going to matter. The teacher will get better, but my children are too young to be around her so. The children get older, and the parents are too immature to do anything about it, and that is probably why they get sick again. In that case maybe they want to play with me. The teachers will do the same. When things look better. They don’t do any wrong. I am quite aware that I am sometimes bad. I am not perfect anymore, but I think I might not be perfect for a long time. I get all of my life wrong. The good part is that sometimes it takes a little in the morning, but when the time is right it is still ok. Then things are right. It is good to be healthy. People love these things. When we are healthy, we have fun. After a while we tend to get better. When we are young we are always ready to get better. I remember going out to dinner with the friends that came to my room when my parents were only kids
there is more to life than being a nun or a farmers wife. Now she had learned that there could be more, there could be passion and excitement. Emma sought to learn what was really meant in life by the words “happiness,” “passion,” and “intoxication,” “words that had
seemed so beautiful to her in books (Flaubert 55). Taking her jump from the romantic novels she read, Emma now strove to emulate the lives of these people who had, seemingly to her, a perfect existence or at the very least an exciting one. This was the only avenue of excitement that had been presented to Emma, so understandably this is what she chose to pursue in life. Emma does not begin her affairs because she was a nymphomaniac, but because she was looking for excitement, she wanted to really “live” life. Emma marries Charles because she wants to get off the farm. Her father also wants
to get her married off. Monsieur Roualt considered Emma to be of little help around the farm. Inwardly he forgave her, feeling that she was too intelligent for farming (Flaubert 45). Fortunately for women today if their father feels that they are too intelligent for farming,
that life in the country does not suit them, they can send their daughters to college or let them move to the city and find work. For Emma there was marriage to Charles, who unfortunately for both Emma and himself, was nothing like the romantic heroes
she had readand fantasized about.ÐŽ ÐŽLove seems impossible to Emma unless it appears with all the conventional signs which constitute a romantic