Madame Bovary

We can first see Emma’s love for novels when Charles and Leon are talking. Charles makes note that he encourages Emma to get out and exercise but she rather sit in her room and read. Then Emma and Leon are talking about the types of literature that they like to read. Leon says “I especially like to read poetry” and Emma responds “stories that keep you in suspense all the way through, and frighten you. I hate commonplace heroes and lukewarm emotions, the kind you find in real life”. Further on in the book we can see a strong relationship to the Character of Emma and characters from books she read. The strong connection that is revealed by Flaubert is they all commit adultery. He states “It was as though she herself were becoming part of that imaginary world, as though she were making the long dream of her youth come true by placing herself in the category of those amorous women she envied so much”.

Emma has a strong relationship with the novels she reads. The first thing that we pick up on is the adultery. We see Emma cheat on Charles with Leon and Rodolphe. I think that a main reason she took part in these affairs was because of the characters in the novels she read. She thought that by cheating she found true love while it only led her to get into more debt and tell even more lies. These books caused Emma to live a screwed up life and in the end the results are not as good for Emma as maybe some of the endings from the books she read.

We see the notion of Science pick up at the beginning of Chapter Two. They arrive at a small town called Yonville. They give us in-depth descriptions of what they see. “The most eye-catching sight of all is across the street from the Lion d’Or Inn: Monsieur Homais’ Pharmacy. To me this is surprising because they compared this to a church, highway, and other important places. I can say that if I was walking in an unfamiliar place and saw a church on one side and a pharmacy on the other, the church would catch my eye without a doubt. This leads to a big event in the book. Hippolyte has clubfoot, so Monsieur Homais wants Charles to try a new treatment for the clubfoot. Charles decides that he will perform this treatment on Hippolyte after heavy pressure from Monsieur Homais. Charles does the treatment there was little blood and no sign of pain, from what everyone thought this was a success and a big step in science. Now everybody is high in spirits and was praising the men of science. “Hail to those tireless spirits of mankind” and “Hail to our magnanimous men of science”.

However five days later everything