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[In the following essay, Williams discusses Flaubert's belief in
the influence of cultural conditioning as a determinant of gender
roles, pointing to motifs in Madame Bovarythat illustrate the
restricted and highly artificial role of women in a patriarchal
society.]
Madame Bovary was put on trial when it was first published
largely on account of its intense critical interrogation of the
assumptions that collectively make up the common-sense
outlook on life in ninteenth-century France. The subversive force
of the novel is directed most obviously against that cornerstone
of bourgeois society, marriage.1 This subversion of the
conventional view of marriage is, however, connected with a
more fundamental attack upon another received idea, what, in a
different context, has been described as the “ideological image,
repeated and naturalised a thousand times in the fiction of the
period, of the very reality of 'woman' as the passive, inert
creature of the domestic world of the nineteenth-century
family”.2 Although the objection against Flaubert's novel was not
formulated in these terms, it is against the conventional view of
woman as essentially passive and inert that the novel offended
most deeply. At an earlier point in the writing of the novel, Emma
appears dressed in a waistcoat and Charles's mother is shocked
by “ce bouleversement des sexes et de toutes les
convenances”.3 It is the implications of this and other examples
of overturning of conventional gender distinctions which this
article will explore.
In many respects it is surprising that Flaubert should have
mounted one of the most ferocious and sustained attacks upon
conventional gender distinctions. In his letters he often sounds
like a typical nineteenth-century misogynist, slipping into what
sounds like mindless denigration of the opposite sex.4 The
negative views expressed in the letters are, however, directed
not so much against something innate in women as against a
pattern of behaviour which has been induced by social
conditioning. Flaubert has a strong awareness that women are
not born but made: “La femme est un produit de l'homme. Dieu
acréé la femelle et l'homme a fait la femme; elle est le résultat
de la civilisation, une ouvre factice.”5 Flaubert's view coincides
with that of his contemporary, Stuart Mill, who in The Subjection
of Women asserted that “what is now called the nature of
woman is an eminently artificial thing—the result of forced
repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others”.
Flaubert clearly recognises that what are commonly regarded as
the principal characteristics of the opposite sex are in fact the
result of a process of cultural conditioning. Central to this
process of cultural conditioning is the conventional education to
which girls are submitted:
On apprend aux femmes à mentir d'une façon infâme. L'apprentissage dure
toute leur vie. [ ... ] Le puritanisme, la bégueulerie, le système du renfermé, de
l'étroit, dénature et perd dans sa fleur les plus charmantes créations du bon
Dieu. [ ... ] J'ai peur du corset moral, voilà tout. Les premières impressions ne
s'effacent pas, tu le sais.6
Like Stendhal, Flaubert believes that the cultural conditioning of
women entails the radical loss of half of humanity which
becomes alienated from an original femaleness.7 Flaubert's
strategic distinction between “la femelle” and “la femme” is close
to the now familiar distinction between sex and gender. Although
sex and gender have frequently been confused in the past, “the
threadbare tactic of justifying social and temperamental
differences by biological ones” is now largely discredited. As
Angela Carter insists, although sexual differentiation of a
biological nature is an unarguable fact, “separate from it, and
only partially derived from it, are the behavioural modes of
masculine and feminine, which are culturally defined variables
translated in the language of common usage to the status of
universals”.8 Flaubert, arguably, shows a similar awareness of
the relativity of gender stereotypes.
The fictional world of Madame Bovary is marked by the overdifferentiation of the sexes which characterises patriarchal
society. Despite his considerable limitations, Charles receives
an education as a health officer which equips him for a useful
role in society whilst Emma, despite her greater intelligence and
ability, receives an education in the Rouen convent-school
which provides her with skills which have little practical
relevance to her subsequent life. The marriage between Charles
and Emma is arranged initially between Charles and Emma's
father; Charles is legally the head of the household and special
powers of attorney have to be granted to Emma in order to allow
her to settle his financial affairs after the death of his father.
Adultery, like marriage, is organised more according to the
man's convenience and this is perhaps one of the reasons why,
in Flaubert's memorable comment, Emma “retrouvait dans
l'adultère toutes les platitudes du mariage” (p. 296).9 Rodolphe's
early display of chivalry gives way to brutality—“Il la traita sans
façon” (p. 196)— and it soon becomes clear, as Tony Tanner
puts it, that adultery has no manners.10 This rigid division
according to sex is underpinned by gender stereotypes which
command wide assent. Emma has an exalted conception of line
opposite sex: “Un homme, au contraire, ne devait-il pas tout
connaître, exceller en des activitiés multiples, vous initier aux
énergies de la passion, aux raffinements de la vie, à tous les
mystères?” (p. 42). Her view of women is correspondingly low;
she complains to Rodolphe that women are deprived of the right
to roam the world and to Léon that they live useless lives. When
she is angry with Léon she thinks of him as being “plus mou
qu'une femme” (p. 288). Significantly Emma wishes to have a
boy child:
Un homme, au moins est libre; il peut parcourir les passions et les pays,
traverser les obstacles, mordre aux bonheurs les plus lointains. Mais une
femme est empêchée continuellement. lnerte et flexible à la fois, elle a contre
elle les mollesses de la chair avec les dépendances de la loi. Sa volonté,
comme le voile de son chapeau retenu par un cordon, palpite à tous les
vents. (p. 91)
This naive view of the differences between the sexes gave rise
in an early version to the following significant comment:
Chaque sexe [ ... ] par ignorance de l'autre, lui suppose des qualités qu'il n'a
pas, comme les siècles supposent aux siècles précédents des énergies que
la distance seule leur donne. (Nouvelle version, p. 265)
Given the exalted notion of what it is to be man, it is hardly
surprising that Emma repeatedly wishes she were a man: “Que
n'était-elle un homme! Comme elle aurait fait siffier au vent la
méche de sa cravache! Comme elle aurait couru dans le
monde!” (Nouvelle version, p. 226). Likewise Charles also
experiences envy of the opposite sex: “Que n'était-il pas la
mère, lui! comme il aurait du plaisir à se telever la nuit et à
allaiter la petite fille, en lui parlant doucement!” (Nouvelle
version, p. 269). In this kind of instance, gender stereotypes
provide the focus for a kind of existential dissatisfaction. Neither
Charles nor Emma is entirety happy with the masculine or
feminine role accorded to their sex.
Gender distinctions may be completely fallacious, but they die
hard. If Emma is unable to shake off an idealised image of the
opposite sex, which has the unfortunate effect of making the
actual men she knows seem totally defective, it is largely on
account of the cultural conditioning which has taken place in the
convent-school. MadameBovary is attentive to the construction
of gender stereotypes in the sentimental novel. The world of the
sentimental novel and the keepsake projects an image of man
as strong and active and of the woman as weak and passive.
Whilst the gentlemen are strikingly mobile, riding horses to
death or galloping out of the distant countryside on a black
charger, the ladies are shown lolling in carriages or reclining on
sofas (p. 39). It is the “literature of patriarchy” which leads
Emma to believe that fulfilment can be found only through a
man.11 Despite all the evidence to the contrary, she thinks
marriage to Charles will allow her to possess “cette passion
merveilleuse qui jusqu'alors s'était tenue comme un grand
oiseau au plumage rose planant dans la splendeur des ciels
poétiques”, only to find that the quietness of married life is far
removed from “le bonheur qu'elle avait rêvé” (p. 41).
Subsequently she continues to believe that she needs simply to
“placer sa vie sur quelque cour solide” in order to be happy, only
to discover that neither of her lovers is able to sustain his
devotion. Emma's behaviour is highly contradictory: she strives
with an energy and forcefulness unrivalled by any of the male
characters to put herself in a position of complete dependence
upon a man who she hopes will sweep her off her feet. The
masculine counterpart of this process of self-mutilation involves
Charles being conditioned into believing that a man should be
strong as a medical student in Rouen, he finds work in the
hospital difficult to stomach but “se raidit de son mieux dans
l'idée qu'il était un homme, et qu'il fallait faire bonne mine et qu'il
faut qu'un homme soit énergique” (Nouvelle version, p. 143).
Flaubert shows, particularly in earlier drafts, how both Emma
and Charles try to live up to highly questionable gender
stereotypes and are led into patterns of behaviour which run
counter to their natural inclinations.
The validity of the conventional view of the sexes is on occasion
challenged directly in narratorial comments. Rodolphe, we are
told, has avoided Emma “par suite de cette lâcheté naturelle qui
caractérise le sexe fort” (p. 3:16). Flaubert prefers, however, to
allow the behaviour of his characters to speak for itself. If one
takes a global view, Emma, in particular, shows more audacity,
resolution and courage than all the male characters, though the
goals to which these qualities are directed may seem misplaced.
She is also a good deal more self-centred, strong-willed, forceful
and domineering than both Charles and Léon. In contrast,
Charles is more “feminine”—he is placid, undemanding,
submissive, the passive partner in the marriage. Whilst Emma
dreams of escaping to some exotic never-never land, Charles
directs all his desire and energy to the domestic sphere.
Flaubert's presentation of the development of
Emma Bovary points to a malleability' as she draws upon a
repertoire of both “masculine” and “feminine” roles. Emma's socalled “masculine” qualities are not immediately apparent; they
gradually emerge in the course of the novel, leading to a slow
dismantling of the conventional view of woman. Emma seeks to
get the upper hand in all of her relationships with men. Once she
has made the rather belated discovery that Charles does not
conform to the image of the perfect man she has derived from
her reading of the sentimental novel, Emma takes the initiative,
reading him romantic poems by moonlight in the hope that he
might be elevated to a higher plane. Charles cannot be prodded
into the kind of artificial response she requires and Emma treats
him in an increasingly scornful and imperious manner.
Compared to other literary husbands, Charles is strikingly
decent and devoted, but, for Emma, he becomes “l'obstacle à
toute félicité, la cause de toute misère, et comme l'ardillon
pointu de cette courroie complexe qui la bouclait de tous côtés”
(p. 111). In the course of the novel, he is divested of all the
trappings of patriarchal power as Emma adds to the sexual
supremacy gained on the first night of their marriage emotional,
intellectual and financial control. In contrast, Rodolphe conforms
to the traditional image of the strong male and Emma is sexually
subjugated by him: “Ce n'était pas de l'attachement, c'était
comme une séduction permanente. Il la subjugait. Elle en avait
presque peur” (p. 175). Even with Rodolphe, however, Emma
gains a kind of supremacy, forcing him to act out the charade of
the romantic lover and showering him with humiliating gifts:
“Cependant ces cadeaux l'humiliaient. Il en refiusa plusieurs;
elle insista, et Rodolphe finit par obéir, la trouvant tyrannique et
trop envahissante” (p. 195). There is something profoundly
contradictory about Emma's behaviour as, with an authority
Rodolphe finds difficult to resist, she urges him to play the part
of the masterful lover and carry her away. His final failure to do
this points both to the falsity of the image of the romantic lover
and the limits of the woman's power in adultery. It is with Léon,
in the third part of the novel, that Emma achieves a kind of
apotheosis. Léon, we are told. “devenait sa maîtresse plutôt
qu'elle n'était la sienne” (p. 283). Emma uses him in the same
way as Rodolphe has used her—as a convenience. Léon is
powerless to resist Emma's total domination: “Il en voulait à
Emma de cette victoire permanente. Il s'efforçait même à ne pas
la chérir; puis, au craquement de ses bottines, il se sentait
lâche, comme les ivrognes à la vue des liqueurs fortes” (pp.
288-9). Once again, however, the limits of Emma's control are
exposed; Léon does not extricate her from her financial crisis,
just as Rodolphe has resisted running away with her. At the end
of the novel, Emma experiences a generalised anger against the
opposite sex. After Guillaumin has attempted to take advantage
of her position, “Elle aurait voulu battre les hommes, leur
cracher au visage, les broyer tous” (p. 310). She cannot bear
the thought of Charles pardoning her (“Cette idée de la
supériorité de Bovary sur elle l' exaspérait”, p. 311) and when
Rodolphe refuses to lend her money, she flings his cufflinks
against the wall (p. 318). The heroism she has failed to elicit
from men finally wells up in Emma herself: 'Puis, dans un
transport d'héroïsme qui la rendait presque joyeuse, elle
descendit la côte en courant [ ... ] et arriva devant la boutique du
pharmacien” (p. 320). There is, however, one final symbolic
confrontation to come. As Emma is about to die she hears the
Blind Man's coarsely sexist ditty and responds with despairing
laughter: “Et Emma se mit à rire, d'un rire atroce, frénétique,
désespéré, croyant voir la face hideuse du misérable qui se
dressait dans les ténèbres éternelles comme un
épouvantement” (pp. 332-3). One crucial feature of this horrific
figure, as of “Dieu le Père tout éclatant de majesté” of her
earlier, contrasting, “vision splendide” (p. 219), is its sex:
whether she is to be saved or damned, Emma's cultural
conditioning puts her at the mercy of an embodiment of ultimate
power and authority who is male.
Gender distinctions are explored in a more oblique and
suggestive way through the novel's extraordinarily rich web of
symbolic suggestion. A number of motifs can be related to the
position of the woman in society. The motif of bending, for
instance, according to Tanner's reading, suggests not simply the
sexual dominance of the male but more generally the inevitable
female submission to the matrix of the male world around her:
“She must and can only 'bend' trader it to the shapes, postures,
and positions that it offers, imposes, or dictates.”12 This
interpretation is supported by the implications of the words of the
Blind Man's song.13 Emma's bending, however, has an energetic
quality which belies the notion of submission. When Charles's
whip slips behind some wheat-sacks, Emma bends over to
retrieve it:
Et il se mit à fureter sur le lit, derrière les portes, sous les chaises; elle [the
whip] était tombée à terre, entre les sacs et la murallie. Mademoiselle Emma
l'aperçut; elle se pencha sur les sacs de blé. Charles, par galanterie, se
précipita et, comme il allongeait son bras dans le même mouvement, il sentit
sa poitrine effleurer le dos de la jeune fille, courbée sous lui. Elle se redressa
toute rouge et le regarda par-dessus l'épaule, en lui tendant son nerf de bouf.
(p. 17)
A similar incident can be found in George Eliot's Middlemarch,
where it serves to confirm rather than undermine traditional
gender distinctions. At one point Rosamond is portrayed going
towards her whip, which lies at a distance:
Lydgate was quick in anticipating her. He reached the whip before she did,
and turned to present it to her. She bowed and looked at him: he of course
was looking at her, and their eyes met with that peculiar meeting which is
never arrived at by effort, but seems like a sudden divine clearance of haze. I
think that Lydgate turned a little paler than usual, but Rosamond blushed
deeply and felt a certain astonishment.14
There is no bending in Rosamond's case but there is no implied
symbolic exchange of power either since the whip in question is
her own and Lydgate gets to it first. The power relations
between the sexes remain undisturbed, whereas
in Madame BovaryEmma counteracts the notion of submission
implicit in her bending by reaching the whip first and handing it
over to Charles. In another highly charged episode, Emma is
shown bending over to remove the bowl of blood which has
caused Justin to faint:
Madame Bovary prit la cuvette. Pour la mettre sous la table, dans le
mouvement qu'elle fit en s'inclinant, sa robe (c'était une robe d'été à quatre
volants, de couleur jaune, longue de taille, large de jupe), sa robe s'évasa
autour d'elle sur les carreaux de la salle;—et, comme Emma, baissée
chancelait un peu en écartant les bras, le gonflement de l'étoffe se crevait de
place en place, selon les inflexions de son corsage. (p. 132)
Once again Emma is handling something with strong masculine
associations and this, combined with the energetic connotations
of the description of her dress, partially offsets the humiliating
implications of her action.
A second motif which defines the domestic imperative governing
the woman's role is sewing. Emma either sews incompetently or
endows sewing with an autoerotic quality. The one time her
heart is in her work is when she is undoing the lining of a dress,
just as in adultery she has unravelled the very fabric of married
life (p. 258). Appropriately, it is Charles who performs the
classically restorative function of sewing properly, sewing up his
daughter's dolls when they split open (p. 350). A third motif
which points to the essential nature of the woman's lot is
constriction. On numerous occasions Emma is depicted within
an enclosed space, and she perceives her existence in terms of
cold rooms, narrow houses, belts that hem her in. Her natural
inclination, however, is to try to break out of narrow confines in
order to soar in the vast open spaces of the romantic dream. In
contrast, Charles takes fright at open spaces and longs for
enclosed domesticity. Once again, therefore, what emerges
from a traditional motif associated with the woman's position is a
powerful resistance on Emma's part, suggesting that she is not
at ease within the conventional role accorded to her.
Further suggestions are made through the close descriptions of
Emma's physical appearance. Her frequently bulky garments
can point to something burdensome in her condition as a
woman—whether married or adulterous—but her dress can also
have an expansive grace which evokes a triumphant
femininity.15 Throughout the novel, however, Flaubert describes
various items and appendages which have strong masculine
associations in order to measure, as it were, an increasing
quotient of “masculinity”. The tortoiseshell eyeglasses, attached,
in masculine fashion, to two buttonholes of her bodice, and
introduced in the first description of Emma (p. 17), represent a
key component, a deliberately dissonant note in an otherwise
traditionally orchestrated feminine appearance. Subsequently,
she will wear a blue silk tie on arriving in Yonville, and a man's
hat and riding costume for the ride with Rodolphe; and she will
step out of the coach “la taille serrée dans un gilet, à la façon
d'un homme” (p. 197) and dress in masculine attire for the
masked ball (p. 297). These masculine elements have been
regarded negatively. Diana Festa-McCormick, for instance,
claims that “no longer a gesture of daring, the male costume
stands in reality for an act of surrender, confirming Emma's
defeat in the dominion of the woman”;16but this is to subscribe to
a highly questionable view of woman's role. Emma is also made
to manipulate a wide range of patently phallic substitutes. Emma
not only retrieves Charles's whip, she also makes Rodolphe a
present of a handsome riding-whip. Emma may be shown
“regrettant de n'être pas un homme pour sauter sur un poignard”
(Nouvelle version, p. 586), but she can “look daggers” at
Charles.17 The main male characters all have knives which they
use in symbolically appropriate fashion, but Emma too has a
knife which she uses disconsolately to make lines on the waxed
table cloth: “[elle] s'amusait, avec la pointe de son couteau, à
faire des raies sur la toile cirée” (p. 67). A particularly ambiguous
appendage is the sunshade, whose fragility is often associated
with femininity. On the occasion when for the first time her
thoughts about her marriage become clear, Emma is shown
poking the ground with its tip: “Puis ses idées peu à peu se
fixaient, et, assise sur le gazon, qu'elle fouillait à petits coups
avec le bout de son ombrelle, Emma se répétait: 'Pourquoi, mon
Dieu! me suis-je mariée?'” (p. 46). She also usurps what at the
time was a specifically male prerogative, smoking in public
“comme pour narguer le monde” (p. 197), as well as playfully
putting Rodolphe's big pipe into her mouth (p. 169).
The significance of Emma's adoption of masculine modes of
dress and manipulation of phallic substitutes requires careful
consideration. The first point to be made is that they do not
displace feminine modes, and that Emma continues to exhibit
many of the traditional features of femininity against which
Flaubert railed in his correspondence—role-playing,
sentimentality, lack of frankness, the pursuit of an impossible
ideal. It is clearly inappropriate, therefore, to speak of Emma's
masculinisation since masculine modes do not take the place of
feminine modes. She also possesses what Baudelaire reffered
to as a “charmant corps féminin”,18 a delicately realised physical
presence. One interpretation might be that the adoption of
masculine modes is yet another example of role-playing, which
is no more privileged than her adoption of feminine modes the
rest of the time. There does, however, seem to be more at stake
than such a view implies. The broader context in which some
office developments discussed take place is one of symbolic
exchange.19 Male characters undergo a symbolic
emasculation—Emma's father breaks his leg, Hippolyte has his
amputated. A large number of objects associated with the power
and influence of men are broken, or given to men by Emma.
Flaubert has created a fictional world where the masculinity of
men is, symbolically, in retreat and males in various ways shown
to be defective. In this context, Emma's assumption of
masculine modes suggests a takeover or exchange and has as
its counterpart Charles's assumption of feminine modes. What
Flaubert has engineered in the elaboration of a number of
symbolic patterns is a full-scale realignment of the sexes in
relation to gender stereotypes. René Girard has stressed the
way in which, as Flaubert develops, there is a tendency for
oppositions to be subverted and polarities to collapse with the
end result that what are traditionally viewed as contraries are
shown to share a good deal, if not to be identical.20 This seems
to be what happens to the opposition between the sexes. By
endowing Emma with marked masculine traits and Charles with
feminine traits, Flaubert problematises, or perhaps even
collapses, the conventional opposition between male and
female. In order to subvert such an opposition, however,
Flaubert relies on well-defined gender stereotypes. A hard-andfast distinction between the sexes is nullified by the way in which
Emma displays “masculine” traits and Charles “feminine” traits.
Flaubert's creation of a heroine with masculine traits has often
been viewed as a failure to create a completely convincing
character. From Baudelaire to Sartre, critics have argued that a
man's blood—Flaubert's own—flows through Emma's veins.
Such comments are based, however, on precisely those
categories that the novel queries and make us aware just how
radical Flaubert's critique of traditional gender stereotypes
was.21 It would, however, be wrong to think of Flaubert as a
champion of the androgynous ideal which attracted many
nineteenth-century writers. This is largely because so-called
feminine and masculine traits are not brought into a state of
harmony. Indeed it could be argued that Emma is destroyed by
her failure to resolve the contradiction between her “masculine”
and “feminine” tendencies.22 Although Flaubert subverts the rigid
opposition between male and female which characterises
patriarchal society; although, in his prirate life, Flaubert declared
that he wanted Louise Colet to become an “hermaphrodite
sublime”; and although in his own person he detected “les detux
sexes”,23
Madame Bovary suggests that a free, non-problematic choice
of gender roles—the androgynous ideal—is a long way off.
Emma's adoption of masculine modes does not, after all, do her
much good and it is profoundly ironic that her most forceful act is
to commit suicide. Nor is Charles's gravitation to the feminine
pole a recipe for survival. Like Emma, he too comes to an
untimely end, dying pathetically of a broken heart. It is partly a
question of the kind of society in which cross-gender behaviour
takes place but, whilst he clearly rejects the conventional view of
sexual difference, Flaubert does not offer the reader any new,
heady, gender cocktail.
Notes
1. Louis Bouilhet's comment on Flaubert's use of the
generalising definite article (dumariage) in the famous sentence
“Emma retrouvait dans l'adultère toutes les platitudes du
mariage” is significant: “tu attaques la société par true de ses
bases” (Quoted in C. Gothot-Mersch's edition of the novel,
(Paris: 1971), p. 463). D. LaCapra has argued that Flaubert's
novel was put on trial because “the ideological image of the
modern family as the holy family is called into question”
(“Madame Bovary” on Trial, (Cornell: 1982), p. 9).
2. C. Prendergast, Balzac: Fiction and Melodrama, (London:
1977), p. 139.
3. Madame Bovary: Nouvelle version, ed. J. Pommier and G.
Leleu, (Paris: 1949), p. 424. All references to earlier versions of
the novel will be to this edition.
4. Flaubert's complex and contradictory attitude to women has
been discussed most fully by L. Czyba in Mythes et idéologie de
la femme dans les romans de Flaubert, (Lyon: 1983).
5. Correspondance, ed. J. Bruneau, (Paris: 1980), ii, 284.
6. Correspondance, ed. J. Bruneau, (Paris: 1973), i, 711.
6. Flaubert does not, however, acknowledge the difficulty of
determining the characteristics of this original female nature. Cf.
John Stuart Mill: “I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the
nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in
their present relations to one another” (quoted in M. Midgley and
J. Hughes,Women's Choices. Philosophical Problems facing
Feminism, (London: 1983), p. 207).
8. The Sadeian Woman, (London: 1979), p. 6.
9. Pages references are to the Gothot-Mersch edition (Paris:
1971).
10. Adultery in the Novel, (Princeton: 1979), p. 367.
11. See R. W. Greene, “Clichés, moral censure and heroism in
Flaubert's MadameBovary”, Symposium, 32 (1978), pp. 289302.
12. Adultery in the Novel, p. 354.
13. The words of the Blind Man's song, relayed fully at the
moment of Emma's death (p. 332) are: “Pour amasser
diligemment / Les épis que la faux moissonne, / Ma Nanette va
s'inclinant / Vers le sillon qui nous les donne.” The complex
relationship between Emma's bending and that of Nanette is
discussed in my “Quotation inMadame Bovary”, Romance
Studies, 12 (1988), pp. 29-43.
14. Middlemarch, Part I, xii, (Harmondsworth: 1965), p. 145. I
am grateful to my colleague, David Roe of Leeds University, for
drawing my attention to the similarity between the two passages.
15. See, in addition to the passage on p. 132 already quoted,
the description on p. 101: “Son vêtement, ensuite, retombait des
deux côtés sur le siège, en bouffant, plein de plis, et s'étalait
jusqu'à terre.”
16. “Emma Bovary's masculinisation. Convention of clothes and
morality of conventions”, in Gender and Literary Voice, ed. J.
Todd, (New York, 1980) (Women and Literature. I, 1980), p.
234.
17. See p. 190: “elle fixait sur Charles la pointe ardente de ses
prunelles, comme deux flèches de feu prêtes à partir.”
18. See “Madame Bovary” in L ' Art romantique, (Paris: 1968),
p. 224: “Comme la Pallas armée, sortie du cerveau de Zeus, ce
bizarre androgyne a gardé toutes les séductions d'une âme virile
dans un charmant corps féminin.”
19. See M. Picard's excellent article, to which this discussion is
indebted, “La prodigalité d'Emma”, Littérature, 10 (1973), pp. 7797.
20. “A mesure que mûrit le génie romanesque flaubertien, les
oppositions se font toujours plus creuses; l'identité des
contraires s'affirme avec toujours plus de force”,Mensonge
romantique et vérité romanesque, (Paris: 1961), p. 157.
21. R. Lloyd rightly points out in her recent study that “a
gendered reading might begin to unravel many of the malecentred misinterpretations that have grown up around the novel
ever since Baudelaire depicted as masculine all Emma's positive
and active attributes”, Madame Bovary, (London: 1990), p. 172.
22. J. F. Hamilton has argued that “the apparent contradictions
in Emma's character and behaviour” reflect “the salutary urge to
unite the female and male aspects of her being”; see
“Madame Bovary and the Myth of Androgyny”, University, of
South Florida Language Quarterly, 19 (1981), p. 19. Two more
recent considerations of the problematic relationship between
masculine and feminine elements in Emma's behaviour are N.
Schor's “For a restricted thematics. Writing, speech and
difference inMadame Bovary”, in Breaking the Chain. Women,
Theory and French Realist Fiction, (Columbia: 1985) and D.
Kelly's “Gender and Representation” in Fictional Genders. Role
and Representation in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative,
(Nebraska: 1989). Both of these critics emphasise Flaubert's
exploration of significant differences between male and female
attitudes to language, a topic which this article has not
examined.
23. See “J'ai toujours essayé de faire de toi un hermaphrodite
sublime” (Correspondance, ii, 548) and “C' est que j'ai les deux
sexes, peut-être” (Correspondance, (Paris: 1929), v, 268).
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition)
Williams, Tony. "Gender Stereotypes in Madame Bovary." Forum for Modern
Language Studies 28.2 (Apr. 1992): 130-139. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century
Literature Criticism. Ed. Denise Evans. Vol. 66. Detroit: Gale Research,
1998. Literature Resource Center. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.
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