Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Unsatisfied Women
While Jane Eyre told a story of a girl who was hard-pressed to find love, or when she did was afraid of pain. Nonetheless she was accepting of the love that she was given....where as Emma Bovary was not. Emma is an incredibly selfish woman who is not satisfied with her loving husband. A lot of woman crave the kind of love from a man, and all she can think about is what greater love is out there. She can't accept how much Charles wants and desires her; all she can think about is what else is there. What? Why isn't Charles enough? I don't understand why when these other men come alone, Leon or Rodolphe, she just becomes enraptured in them. No matter the pain and the bullshit that both of them put her through, she is forever endowed to them. Why? What's wrong with Charles. Is she just unsatisfied because it wasn't her original plan? Is she pissed at the arrangement of it? Is she trying to prove independence? Just inevitably women are way too picky, but I'm not sure of the theme Flaubert is trying to identify, in no way is this a feminist book because she isn't really a product of oppression, besides her own unhappiness with her marvelous life. Eh?
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2 comments:
From my perspective I found Charles quite a boring person, and that his "love" was more of a blind devotion, which though it may be sweet and wonderful, I (personally) would get sick of someone doing everything I say whenever I say it, and ALWAYS going out of the way to do something nice for me. Though I think this is a fairly good way to live, and a fairly good love to have, well (I) may be a hopeless romantic, but I also believe in adventure and excitement, which seems to be what Emma craves as well, none of which is in Charles.
I'm curious about this issue of 'selfishness' (you're not the first to tag Emma as such). I think you're right that Jane provides us with a much more ready (and readable) example of a feminist heroine; but at what point does standing up for oneself become "selfish". Doesn't Emma, in her own way, "resist" conventions (and the lot she's been given) in much the same ways that Jane does? So why to we love Jane and loathe Emma?
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