Part 1 of Essay
Gustave Flaubert’s tells the story of a woman’s quest to make her life into a novel. Emma Bovary attempts again and again to escape the ordinariness of her life by reading novels, daydreaming, moving from town to town, having affairs, and buying luxurious items. One of the most penetrating debates in this novel is whether ....

Part 2 of Essay
.... shows how Flaubert is a romantic realist. Flaubert gives Emma, his central character, an essence of helpless romanticism so that it would express the truth throughout the novel. It is Emma’s early education, described for an entire chapter by Flaubert, that awakens in her a struggle against what she perceives as confinement. Her education at the convent is the most significant development in the novel between confinement and escape. Vince Brombert explains “that the convent is Emma’s earliest claustration, and the ....