Analysis of Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Beginning in 1557 and lasting until 1966, the Roman Catholic Church found it necessary to publish the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in order to ban works that the church deemed offensive. Originally produced by Pope Paul IV in 1557, this list of forbidden books included all books that Roman Catholics were prohibited from reading, unless they had special permission, and failure to abide would regularly result in excommunication¹.The Roman Catholic Church's goal in creating such a list was to prevent the public from being aware of such ideas that these works introduced, all of which were in contradiction to what the church stressed as sins. The abolishment of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1966 by Pope Paul VI took place as the Roman Catholic Church realized that limiting works that were offensive to the church did not subdue immoral ideas from being spread as people would find ways to obtain these works². Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, was a novel placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1857 by the Roman Catholic Church for renouncing morality as its ideas would lead to a decline of a proper and respectable society.

One of the most important aspects the Church stresses is that "thou shalt not commit adultery". During the time this novel was published, it was nearly unheard of for either spouse in a marriage to be unfaithful, thus committing to one's marriage and working the marriage out during hardships. Madame Bovary's extreme nature of adultery is clearly one aspect that the Roman Catholic Church thought would bring about new ideas, making people think it was acceptable to cheat on your spouse if you were unhappy, or possibly even get divorced. The reader is introduced to this general thinking in the early stages of this novel. Charles, a doctor who is married to a woman named Heloise, continuously visits his patient's daughter Emma, whom he has fallen in love with. As Heloise dies suddenly after Charles and his parents are upset with her about the fact that she lied about her wealth before their marriage, Charles now is no longer restricted and wastes no time to get consent from Emma's father so that they can get married. Though Charles would get married right away, "the marriage could not decently take place till Charles was out of mourning"³. While Charles should be grieving his wife's death, Emma are Charles are actually planning out their wedding. This section of the novel conveys to the reader that people in society are not always loyal to their spouse and that once your spouse dies, though you should mourn or at least pretend to, it is acceptable to quickly move on with your love life.

While introduced with Charles committing adultery, the reader also witnesses Emma cheating on Charles during countless scenes in this novel. Emma's first encounter is with Leon, a boarder of Charles's correspondent Homais, whom fall in love due to their shared interest for romanticism. Though Leon is at first hesitant viewing Emma and Charles' marriage as a barrier, Emma and Leon eventually meet again at an opera and end up going on a carriage ride where they make love for hours. When Charles's gives Emma the power of attorney in order to settle their debts and sends her to see Leon for three days to draw up the papers, Emma takes this as a chance to meet Leon and enjoy a three day honey moon, not having to be as worried about making excuses to see Leon anymore.

Emma has a similar relationship with a man named, Rodolphe Boulanger, meeting and making love with him secretly. The difference in this relationship is that Rodolphe viewed Emma's marriage as handy because he could make love to her and not have to worry about being committed. The irony of their relationship is that while Rodolphe confessed his love for Emma at an agricultural fair, a speech about public morality concerning "greater devotion to the public welfare"⁴ and people "born of respect for law and the practice of duty"⁵ was given. This scene disregards public morality as Emma is committing adultery at the same time she is listening to a respectable speech. This scene expresses to the reader the idea that there is public morality but one still has their own life and can choose to ignore what is moral if one chooses to.

Madame Bovary satires the church by proving how it is unable to help Emma with the problems that she is facing. When Emma decides to ask the priest for help since she is suffering with unhappiness, he seems to be busy with his own problems. He calls his catechism students "young scamps [that] respect nothing"⁶ as the reader is introduced to the priest kicking a catechism book on the floor. When Emma tells the priest that she is ill, the priest thinks she is talking about the weather claiming "these first warm days weaken one most remarkably"⁷. The priest is clearly more worried about his out of control catechism class that he fails to recognize the problems that Emma is dealing with. This scene attacks the church by showing how priests, who one is supposed to go to for spiritual leading, are actually no help at all and have their own share of problems. This scene demoralizes priests as the priest Emma talks with is harshly talking about his students, provides Emma with no help, and instead of picking up the catechism book he is kicking it.

The Church's disability to provide Emma with spiritual guiding is also evident in a latter part of the novel. Before Emma makes love with Leon in the carriage scene, they meet at a cathedral where perhaps Emma may finally get the spiritual help that she truly needs as she continues to approach her downfall. Instead the beadle at the cathedral offered the two "to see the curiosities of the church"⁸. Emma, in no way came to the church to get a tour, which again shows the church's failure to provide people with the help they need during hard times. Emma agrees to take the tour as she is desperate to get any type of spiritual guidance should could as "she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculpture, the tombs-to anything"⁹. However, once again, the church failed to help Emma as she decided to leave the church and make love with Leon for the first time.

Prostitution and stealing are two additional factors that play a role in the banning of Madame Bovary. Gustave Falubert portrays to the reader that the only power that women has is sexual. As Emma and Charles' financial problems worsen, she ultimately tries to gain money through sex "though she is not in the least conscious of her prostitution"¹⁰. When Guillaumin, a town lawyer, offers to help her if she has sex with him, she refuses, but at the same time, Emma seeks to get money from Rodolphe by pleasing him, though he turns her down. Though the church stresses "thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods", Emma is so desperate that she tries to convince Leon to steal money from his employer, but he refuses. Both prostitution and stealing are portrayed as not exactly moral but acceptable in the circumstances in this novel because they are the only way that Emma can gain money to pay off her debts at this point.

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary attempts to vindicate unethical acts, leading to its long-familiar controversy. It presented readers with a more realistic type of writing that many of the time were not used to or even aware of . As opposed to Romanticism literature, which was deeply religious and popular among Catholics of the time, this novel steps away from the traditional roles of a society and approaches a reality similar to how society views life today. Though many of the ideas in this novel seem common and like every-day life, this was not the case prior to the mid 20^th century, as many of the ideas discussed in this novel were frankly unheard of. The Roman Catholic Church prohibited this novel because they wanted to prevent several of the unchaste ideas from even getting into the minds of society, however failed, since none of this novel is out of the ordinary for those who read it today. The final and most emotionally charged part of the novel that puts the finishing touch on the Roman Catholic's choice to ban Madame Bovary is Emma's decision to commit suicide. Emma, who was unsatisfied with her marriage and no longer had the money to buy whatever she wanted for herself or her lovers because of all the debts her careless spending led to, now had no reason to live. She convinced Justin, the town druggist's assistant, that she needed arsenic "to killed the rats that kept her from sleeping"¹¹, but instead began eating the arsenic, leading to her painful death a few hours later. This scene presents the reader with the ultimate immoral sin of committing suicide, a sin that will bring one's soul straight to hell. Gustave Flaubert justifies the suicide in a sense because to Emma, there is nothing left to live for. While this is not true because Emma still has a husband and a child that most would consider more than enough, everything Emma valued in life was not there. Emma did not have money, a satisfying marriage, or happiness, three qualities she interpreted as a necessity for an ideal lifestyle. No matter how bad one's life may be, suicide is never a resolution and the Roman Catholic Church was afraid Emma's decision of suicide would make others think it was moral as long as they were in similar dilemmas. A major reason that Madame Bovary is prohibited to Catholics is because it denounces the commitment to marriage. When Charles finds out that Heloise lied about her wealth, instead of trying to work out the marriage, he was anxious to start a new relationship with Emma, humiliating Heloise and adding to her sudden death. When Emma is unsatisfied with her marriage that she thought would be much more appealing as the romantic novels that she read described them to be, she unfaithfully decided to seek relationships with both Leon and Rodolphe to help her "boring and dull" marriage. Instead of working out marriages that people did not expect to turn out the way they did, this novel allows the reader to comprehend that adultery is proper in situations where the marriage is not exactly satisfying to both spouses.