Essay comparing the minds of Madame Bovary and Medea(From "Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert and "Mede" by Euripides)
...es into this inner shell, offering an extensive mental map of the characters, particularly of Emma. This map may not always be clear and easy to understand, yet it portrays the overall feelings and emotions. Flaubert objectively describes in a neutral way her moments of shock, paralysis and despair. He then abandons his neutral point of view, switches into her mind to explore her thoughts so as to predict what things she will do next. This switching of view points gives the reader a very balanced and reasonably unbiased view of Emma’s inner thoughts. This technique is very effective to better convey mental images and thought processes to the reader, who can independently evaluate the situation based on the various sources given and can thus add his own subjective opinion and form his personal view of the situation or incident. Unlike Euripides’ play, it is not obvious in the beginning of the story that Emma will be a character of great importance in the future. Flaubert Looking at the two stories from an overall perspective, one could say that Flaubert creates a more complicated psychological structure of the main character than Euripides. In Medea, it is very soon known what events might or could come up and the main character clearly states her aims and how these will be achieved. Her actions work in tandem with her aims and only sometimes is she misled by other factors affecting her plan. Emma, has a more erratic and unpredictable mind, making it harder for the reader to predict possible events in the future. We can now closely look at some more detailed aspects of these characters comparing them in terms of their responses and reasoning to certain events as well as studying their ways of thinking in greater depth. A fact that is of major importance to keep in mind, is Emma’s erratic and volatile state of mind as it is precisely that, what establishes her history. One can notice some sudden distinct switches in her way of thinking and how these clearly affect her daily routine and ambitions. As examples we can cite Emma’s sudden mind change after she met Charles for the first time, the visit to La Vaubyessard where she dances with the Viscount. Her mind is filled with alien ideas about how she imagines a woman should be treated like, and questions about Charles being her true love, start to arise. Her inner thoughts, feelings and emotions are constantly changing in close accordance with evolving events in her relationships and thus are dependent on positive incidents to ensure happiness and satisfaction. However, as not all events turn out to be positive in the story, the reader clearly becomes aware of her sudden changes in mood and downward spiralling emotions that are directly proportional to negative events that take place. Flaubert links this volatile mind with romantic relationships that are bound to break sooner or later, thus creating an effect, where the reader is capable of foreshadowing possible events that will take place in the future, yet never making it clear of what will happen. He achieves this by gradually unlocking Emma’s puzzling mind as the story progresses. In some chapters Flaubert writes little about Emma’s inner life; however, the few things he does write are very sharp and concise, describing clearly what she believes. It is more her behaviour and her actions that reveal to the reader what she feels about Charles. Other examples can be illustrative, the most important ones being the endings of her relationships with Rodolphe and Leon. Flaubert does indeed painstakingly try to describe these incidents, as they cause Emma’s mind to drastically change making her unpredictable and intriguing. The author often devotes the beginning of a chapter to the present state of Emma’s emotions. One obtains a picture her state and then are gradually immersed into the depth of her soul. This is followed by an abrupt alteration of plans and ideas in her head. She immediately begins new activities and fully dedicates herself to each of them. A sequence of steps is employed to show Emma’s processing of certain negative events. At first she is frozen and shocked, followed closely by frantic thinking of what could be done to recover happiness in some way. In Medea, Euripides similarly goes into some lengths explaining Medea’s transitory state of mind and what she believes of a given situation. The reader, however, is given very few elements that could build a full and detailed portrait of Medea except for the chorus and at times for other characters who do offer some hints. This means, the reader has to base his opinion about the feelings and emotions of Medea on the rationale of some of her actions, her beliefs and her credo. One important piece of information that aids the reader is that Euripides includes some rather neutral texts which do help to evaluate certain situations in a relatively unbiased way. These situations may have to do with love, or may revolve about cities such as Athens. Thus we receive some background information that helps us understand in what environment Medea lived in. Looking closely into Medea’s way of thinking, one could say that ...