Madame Bovary Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 68 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Madame Bovary.

Madame Bovary Themes

This Study Guide consists of approximately 68 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Madame Bovary.
This section contains 397 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Madame Bovary Study Guide

Search for Self

When Emma first marries Charles, she does not have a clear sense of identity. However, she knows that she does not want to be stuck on the farm for the rest of her life. Initially, she assumes that what she feels for Charles will develop into love and that she will become content to be a doctor's wife. Soon, though, when her feelings for Charles fail to materialize, she enters into a severe depression, feeling herself to be displaced and unable to endure the monotony of her life and marriage.

Passion

In an effort to alleviate her depression, she turns to sentimental novels, imagining herself as the heroine who falls passionately in love with a dashing man who rescues her from a life of poverty and desperation. Her imagination re-creates these fictional figures into two men, with whom she enters into passionate affairs. Her sexual relations...

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This section contains 397 words
(approx. 1 page at 400 words per page)
Buy the Madame Bovary Study Guide
Copyrights
Gale
Madame Bovary from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.