Female Identity Crisis in Gustave Flaubert'sMadame Bovary

Abstract

In Madame Bovary, Flaubert's female character (protagonist) undergoes unexplicable chain of events questioning her identity. Flaubert's prime time 1857 and onwards marks the Victorian society when females were briddled by the rein of patriarchy. Flaubert being stirred by the pang and excruciating impulse of females, delienated how the women were made the scapegoats of patriarchal norms and values with deceptive simplicity. His female character's (Emma) fiasco is not the result of the fatal flaw which was predestined but due to the norms and etiquettes imposed upon her by the patriarchal society. Flaubert, in his Madame Bovary, leaves no stone unturned to project the identity crisis of Emma. She is utterly betrayed and spurned by characters such as Charles, Rodolphe, Leon, Lheureux and Monsieur Guillaumin and others who are the representative of that society. Emma's failure emanates and ends as she cannot stand the most unsympathetic treatment by the scape-graces menfolk. The novel also demystifies the male-female relationship sustaining under the duress.