Nothing about them is romanticized or exalted, so that it is possible for the reader to see himself in a new and harsher light, and he cannot avoid sympathetic identification with them. As a matter of fact, some critics have pointed out the close relationship between Emma Bovary and the heroine of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, for provincial life is the same everywhere, and these two women, despite their differences, are afflicted by many similar problems and frustrations.įlaubert's characters are all ordinary people and are very much like ourselves and our neighbors. The costumes and settings may change, but people do not, and human problems remain the same. In all of these aspects, this novel is as pertinent today as when it was written. Furthermore, it examines middle-class conventions and the myth of progress, exposing weaknesses and hypocrisies, and it deals with the inability of the different characters to communicate with each other. Madame Bovary is a study of human stupidity and the "romantic malady," the despair and unhappiness faced by those who are unwilling or unable to resolve the conflicts between their dreams and idealized aspirations and the real world in modern terms, one might say it is a study of a neurosis.
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