Alone and Anguished: Characters in Madame Bovary

In Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary," the author uses several different scenarios of enclosed spaces, both physically and metaphorically, to show the anguish that their characters are feeling. The strongest three representations are: the introduction of Charles Bovary to his new school, the weeks before Madam Bovary commits suicide, and the weeks before Charles Bovary's death. Each situation uses solitude to show the powerful emotion that the character is feeling at the time.

In the opening scene of the story, Flaubert writes of Charles Bovary's first day at his new school. The character is shown as alone and possibly frightened by his new environment, in which he knows no one and is unfamiliar with the particular workings of the class. One specific example is the description of the class ritual of throwing hats onto the floor when entering the class room. Charles Bovary doesn't know the custom, thereby singling him out among his new classmates (1089). Later the teacher singles him out once again when Charles is required to stand and give his name. The character is shy and scared; forcing the teacher to ask for his name repeatedly until Charles screams it out, causing the rest of the class to laugh at his humiliation.

Charles' later wife, Madam Bovary, is not happy with her marriage and slowly delves into the world of adultery. She uses her husband's good name to try and advance her image by purchasing things of great material wealth on lend notes issued in that name. Over time the lend notes pile up and force Madam Bovary to attempt anything she can to pay them without her husband knowing. After a long deliberation, in which many solutions are attempted and denied, Madam Bovary is forced to kill herself in order to escape the problem. While the notion of suicide is more romantic than realistic, the overall message of the passage is clear, in real life things do not always turn out to be the way people want them. By leaving Madam Bovary alone and bereft of hope, Flaubert uses her anguish to show the unhappiness that often is felt by people in the real world. The final act of singularity is seen in the death of Madam Bovary, who dies alone in her bed, her husband forgotten and discarded nearby, with nothing but pain to keep her company until her death.

The death of Charles Bovary at the end of the story is the direct example of a person alone in their anguish, with no reasonable way out. After the long, agonizing death of his wife, Charles Bovary discovers the records of her various acts of adultery, but with no real friends and estranged from his mother, Bovary has no one to consol him. This is a realistic ending to the story, because in normal life people do not often recover from such an incident, as they may be shown to in more romantic types of art or writing.

In a whole, Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" shows several different examples of a realistic character alone and in anguish. Using the introduction of Charles Bovary, the death of Madame Bovary, and the death of Charles Bovary, Flaubert shows three characters, at separate times, alone with their problems and alone with their sorrow, with no real hope of escaping it before destiny allows.