Confinement vs. Escape in Madame Bovary :: Madame Bovary Essays

Confinement vs. send in Madame Bovary A theme throughout Flauberts Madame Bovary is escape versus confinement. In the tonic Emma Bovary attempts again and again to escape the ordinariness of her life by reading novels, having affairs, day dreaming, moving from town to town, and buying luxuries items. It is Emmas early development describe for an entire chapter by Flaubert that awakens in Emma a struggle against what she perceives as confinement. Emmas education at the convent is perhaps the most significant development of the dichotomy in the novel between confinement and escape. The convent is Emmas earliest confinement, and it is the few solicitations from the outside introduction that intrigue Emma, the books smuggled in to the convent or the sound of a furthermost away cab rolling along boulevards. The chapter mirrors the structure of the book it starts as we see a satisfied women content with her confinement and conformity at the convent. At first far from being boredom the convent, she enjoyed the company of the nuns, who, to lark her, would take her into the chapel by way of a long corridor leading(p) from the dining hall. She played very little during the recreation period and knew her catechism well. (Flaubert 30.)Footnote1 The chapter is in like manner filled with images of girls living with in the protective walls of the convent, the girls sing happily together, install to study, and pray. But as the chapter progresses images of escape start to dominate. But these are entirely visual images and even these images are either religious in personality or of similarly confined people. She wished she could have lived in some antiquated manor house, like those chatelaines in low wasted gowns who spent their long time with their elbows on the stone sill of a gothic window surmounted by trefoil, chin in hand watching a white topknotted rider on a black horse galloping them from far across the country. (Flaubert 32 .) As the chapter progresses and Emma continues dreaming while in the convent the images she conjures up are of exotic and foreign lands. No longer are the images of precise people or event but instead they become more fuzzy and