Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Emma looks for oranges on apple trees - analyse her character in light of this statement.
...e had blown her only chance to pursue the life she felt she deserved. “Pourquoi, mon Dieu! me suis-je mariée?” Emma feels so strongly that life would be better had she been born male, that when she is pregnant she hopes for a boy. “Cette idée d’avoir pour enfant un mâle était comme la revanche en espoir de toutes ses impuissances passées. Un homme, au moins, est libre.” Her reaction to Charles’ gleeful announcement of a young girl is indicative of the strength of her disappointment. “Elle accoucha un dimanche, vers six heures, au soleil levant. ‘C’est une fille!’ dit Charles. Elle tourna la tête et s’évanouit.” Emma is often depressed and confused throughout the novel. She snaps at Charles over nothing, for example at the ball at Vaubyessard, she complains that he is creasing her dress when he bends down to kiss her cheek. She repeatedly pushes her innocent daughter away, and goes for long periods without even bothering to dress or interact with other people. Her profligate spending is in many ways an attempt to stifle this depression with beautiful objects, such as the trinkets she buys simply because the ladies in Rouen have bought them. This spending continues to worsen, with Emma borrowing larger sums at higher interest rates from M. Lhereux as the novel goes on. Emma’s various methods of coping with her stifled existence have been widely viewed as immoral and selfish, as indeed they are. They are not, however, consciously evil. The main motivating factor behind Emma’s adultery, profligate spending and self-obsession is her desire to lead the life she dreams of. She does not intend to hurt Charles or Berthe, as can be seen by her spasmodic yet genuine attempts to become a good mother and loving wife. She simply cannot shake the deep conviction that she deserves a life of mystery, romance and excitement like those she reads and dreams of so often. During Part Three, however, Emma becomes more and more of an accomplished liar and causes huge pain and suffering through her actions. Emma is a prolific reader of romance novels, à la Mills and Boon, such as Paul et Virginie. This reading, and the dreaming that follows, is the underlying reason behind her every action. In trying to get everything, Emma ends up with nothing. She is so determined to fill an empty space inside her that she neglects to see the beauty that exists all around her. An example of this is Emma’s constant lamenting of Charles’ lack of genius and clumsiness, which turns to outright disgust after the dismal failure of the clubfoot operation. “Elle fixait sur Charles la pointe ardente de ses prunelles, comme deux flèches de feu prêtes à partir.” In all of this complaining, she fails to ever notice Charles’ good points, such as the way he unfailingly adores her, his generosity with money and the freedom he permits her, of a far greater extent than most housewives of the period. Emma expects men to measure up to her impossibly high standards, not dissimilar to her standards for every other aspect in her life, to such an extent that there has been a psychological condition named after her. “Le bovarysme” is defined by Le Petit Larousse as “insatisfaction romanesque consistant à vouloir s’évader de sa condition en se créant une personnalité idéalisée” – a sort of “concentrated repressed romanticism that has no wings to soar and ends up more often than not in utter nihilism." Each of the men she pursues extra-marital relationships with appear to her, at different times to be everything she hoped for: Rodolphe because he is rich, entertaining, cultured, and articulate; and Léon because he is educated, well read and, to begin with at least, a pushover. Emma believes both men can offer her a better life than the one she shares with Charles, but in both cases she discovers they are not the perfect men she believed. Rodolphe never loved her, and ditches her, while Léon simply cannot satisfy her completely, despite being almost her equal in his romanticism. Even if they cannot fulfil her ultimate desires, these relationships are important to Emma, as she is extremely sensual. Even at the convent, during Mass, she had replaced the real God in her heart with the God she felt through her senses and imagination and she derives such extreme pleasure from sensual contact that it equates to some form of a religious ecstasy. In this regard, both Ro...