From Infelicity to Infidelity

The Female Adultery in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the novel Madame Bovary by the French writer Gustave Flaubert, considered the pioneer of the Realism. Based on an intrinsic vision, that is, on an Interpretation Oriented Toward the Text (IOTE), we will see the facts that would explain the reasons why the protagonist Emma, raised surrounded by romantic books in a convent, even after getting married to a good and honest man, became an adulterer, and besides, why she wanted to have a higher living standard and got deep in debt. Now in an Interpretation Oriented Toward the Writer (IOPE), that is, in an extrinsic vision of the text, we will verify the motives that demonstrate, despite the disdain Flaubert felt for his bourgeois characters, the deep connection between the writer and his creations, especially Emma Bovary. It will also present concisely the subject of the adultery in the world literature, from the antiquity to the 19th century, also known as “the century of the adultery”.