Madame Homais Character Analysis

devotion settles upon Charles, somebody that she perceives as affluent and interesting. She does have interest in Charles in the beginning, but is also notable that she is basically, as per the traditions of Nineteenth Century France, gifted to Charles by M. Rouault as if she were a possession and her marriage is not secured through her own independent decisions. Charles being submissive by nature quickly becomes overpowered as Emma takes on the traditional masculine roles of the marriage, the more assertive one which makes her the soul of the novel and worthy of being a protagonist. On the other hand Madame Homais is everything Emma is not. She devotes her whole life to her brood of oddly-named children, to her husband and to his career. She

She has been constructed has a parody of the ideal mother: This character deserves no amount of praise as she adopts extreme measures on behalf of motherhood. Madame Homais’s embodying of the appropriate mother role is further linked to her distinct lack of sexual appeal. The claim that she is the “best wife in Normandy” is immediately offset by a description of her as someone who is boring to listen to and is slow in movement, so common in appearance and indulge in restricted conversation., an upshot which leaves readers in no doubt over the limited appeal of the socially sanctioned roles available to women at the time. Although, Emma’s sexuality serves as a contrast to the passionless Madame Homais as well as to the sexually deprived Madame Bovary senior, it is when she too attempts to don the cloak of divine motherhood that Flaubert makes clear the relationship of dependence existing between the virtuous mother and her alleged oppositional counterpart, the salacious

In this way, Flaubert’s fictional explorations of mother’s sexuality and others soon to follow. Victorian era is characterised more by preoccupation rather than austere and widespread denial where mother’s sexual desire are concerned. The tragic folly of various nineteenth century fictional heroines serves as a part of broader revelation of the price to be paid for the forceful attempt to appropriate particular human desires and experiences. Hence in Madame Bovary a deflection of desire in response to dominant modes of representation paves the way for exploitative and destructive patterns of behaviour. As Flaubert’s narrative reveals, the forbidden will inevitably both beguile and destroy the subject. Chapter – 4 Women’s Psyche and Social