After drudging along in Jane Eyre I have found Madame Bovary to be a nice change. Where Charlote Bronte rambled on about unimportant flowers and irrelevent trees in a sleep inducing tone Flaubert's discriptions have mananged to at least keep me semi concious.
In both novles the issues of God and Religion have come to light. For Jane it was a romantic lovely poetic thing, whereas Flaubert precieves Religion in a more realistic and senseable theme. When Monsieur Homais' goes into his tangent about Religion Flaubert's realistic preception of life truly shines through. For this reason I believe that Flaubert's writing is much more beautiful than Bronte's. The preception the M. Homias has on Religion somewhat mirrors mine, Religion is not something you can teach, Religion isn't something that should set boundries for your life. I believe that religion is something that should be used on those days when the light has burned out, the days that you've lost hope and faith in the world. This means that Religion comes from within yourself, "what lies before us and what lies behind us are nothing compared to what lies within us." I believe that if you teach a Religion if someone tells you how to have faith that faith becomes meaningless to you as a person. Flaubert accentuates this belief when M. Homais explains what religion is to him. M. Homais still believes that there is a divine creator, someone, male of female, what gave him a duty to uphold, I personally disagree with this fact but in 1857 when Madam Bovary was first published, the idea that someone didn't believe in going to church was somewhat tabu and unheard of.
"You can honor him just as well in the woods, in a field, or even contemplating the ethereal vault, like the ancients." To me this passage shows more than a realistic view on religion and life. To me this shows progress, it shows a pathway to religious tolerance, it shows a sence of future understanding and this is when Flaubert's realism really shines through. Besides the bluntly stated ideas, and the characters and through all of the discription and plot twist Flaubert is able to show realism through futuristic ideas. A realist looks beyond tomorrow and into the future before making a decision, a realist doesn't do something foolish in the face of love because he's in the face of love, a realist makes a decision based on real things events that are likely to happen. opptimism and pessimism don't come into the equation the only thing that a realist considers is how what he/she says or does is going to effect the here and now, this life.
Through M. Homais Flaubert proves that even things like religion and love can be approached in a realistic way. That while romance and religion are important, equally important is how you live your life not how you view your life. M. Homais doesn't view religion, he doesn't sit around and have someone tell him how to be religious, he doesn't channel his religion through another human, he experiances his own religion and he doesn't let someone live it for him, nor does he live it through someone else. Essentially Homais lives his own life in the here and now he doesn't look to someone else to do it for him and he doesn't experiance religion vicariously through someone else because he knows that, that isn't religion.
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Wow! A very thoughtful post, and one which is at odds with so many others in its preference for Flaubert over Bronte (I hope you can follow up on this during class). While I like your focus on religion, I'd be careful in your quickness to praise Homais. Granted, his 'enlightenment' version of Religion does seem more 'rational' (and does seem to harken back to an almost Emersonian sense of self-reliance); however, Flaubert may be poking just as much fun at Homais as he does at any of the other characters. Indeed, part of the challenge of this novel may be that there seems to be no one character in the book whom we can truly admire.
I have to disagree with you on how Flaubert focuses in on certain details. I had a hard time reading page after page that described one setting as well as a like 25 pg finale describing Emma's long death process..
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