Madame Bovary Themes

Madame Bovary Themes

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 with these men give...
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