Analysis of the Boat Scene in Gustave Flauberts Madame Bovary Essay

An Analysis of the Boat Scene in Gustave Flauberts Madame BovaryAs Gustave Flaubert wrote the novel Madame Bovary, he took special care to examine the relationship amongst literature and the effect on its readers. His heroine Emma absorbs poetry and novels as though they were book of instructions for her emotional behavior. When her mother dies, she looks to poetry to decide what degree of mourning is competent when she becomes adulterous she thinks immediately how she is like the women in literature that she has read about. In one scene, Emma is with her second lover, Leon, rowing in a boat, and she begins to sing some(prenominal) lines from the poem Le Lac by the romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine. The poem is about deuce lovers rowing on a lake as well, which is undoubtedly why Emma chooses this special(a) verse to sing. However, Lamartines piece expresses much more than the serenity of love, a learning that Emma fails to see. By having Emma naively invoke the words o f Lamartine, Flaubert brings the heaviness of the poem to a scene of otherwise lighthearted beauty. This poetic reference not notwithstanding suggests a greater depth to the scene, but also serves, through the afford of Flaubert, to allude to the death of Emma. Flaubert refers to Lamartine at the beginning of the novel when Emmas mother dies. Emma allow herself meander along with Lamartine, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of leaves, the saturated virgins ascending into heaven (28). Emma uses this poetry as a way of inducement herself into sadness she reads his poetry as a way of finding the adept mood for her mourning. However, imitation of grief is the only thing that she achieves her readings afford her no great insights other ... ...he irony of her words. Ultimately, the scene between Emma and Leon is just as fleeting as with Lemartine and M. Charles their happy moments fade into something darker. Just as Emma cannot v isualise the importance of the words she sings, she does not understand the gravity of the moment she is in. only(prenominal) the reader is aware of this depth, a depth achieved through the careful maneuvering of Flaubert. whole shebang Cited and Consulted Berg, William J. and Laurey K. Martin. Gustave Flaubert. refreshful York Twayne Publishers, 1997. Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Trans. Geoffrey Wall. London Penguin Books 1992.Maraini, Dacia. Searching for Emma Gustave Flaubert and Madame Bovary. Translated by Vincent J. Bertolini. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1998. Steegmuller, Francis. Flaubert and Madame Bovary. New York Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968.