MADAM BOVARY AND REALISM

MADAM BOVARY AND REALISM

Madame Bovary's book, which made a lot of noise at the time it was written, carries the effect of realism on it. Gustave Flaubert wrote down the realistic effect of the book by dealing with normal life. It's no coincidence that the character's last name is Bovary. The oscillation between high and imaginary passions and real life is called bovarism. The main character Emma pursues her extraordinary passions. These passions and feelings, which are completely opposite to his real life, are ingrained in his mind because of the romance novels he read a lot in his youth. His passions, lusts, and enthusiasm are so great that he does not like the life he has at all. The life in his head is different. For this reason, she is constantly disappointed. His first disappointment is that the feeling he thought was love was not love. When eternal love, happiness and passion did not come after marriage, she realised that she was deceived. Many times Emma was deceived, for she was always chasing what she thought was passion. All kinds of things that excited him in his boring life led him to go after him.Cheating was among these pleasures of Emma. It gave her great pleasure to leave her husband and run into her lover's arms. But the end of these passions was always disappointment.

 In all the descriptions made by Flaubert, he revealed the whole reality of life. You can imagine how deserted, dirty and narrow the streets are. No line is unusual. Everything that a normal person encounters in his daily life has been written down as it is. You feel disgusted. Bad feelings and bad behaviour are not embellished. Events that seem impossible to end with a happy ending do not have a happy ending like in fairy tales. It ends with the ending it deserves, just like the real world. For example, the fact that the main character, Doctor Bovary, performed the operation, which was to be tried for the first time in his period, under non-sterile and inappropriate conditions, caused the patient to lose his leg. Because that's how real life is, there's no room for miracles. Flaubert has amply reflected this reality. In addition, there are many religious elements in the book. However, these religious elements were placed between conflicts. The priest, who argues that the patient can only be healed with holy water, and the pharmacist, who is extremely against religion and superstition, have endless arguments. The dominance of the church and the prejudice against science at the time the book was written are well illustrated by Flaubert. In addition, a dying person's search for God, his taking refuge in him and his attachment to religious values are actually the reflections of the need for asylum, which stems from the fear of death by nature, in the book.The character named Emma is constantly cheating on her husband. The reason for this is that she wants to follow her passions, sees her husband as inadequate, and the feeling that she thinks is love when she gets married is not love. This situation caused him to become ambitious and arrogant. When She gets caught up in human ambitions, she takes a wrong turn. This is what Flaubert is trying to explain. His self-righteousness, his stubbornly seeking love, caused the character to cheat on her husband. However, these feelings were also a deception. In fact, the character is only deceiving himself. If we explain this situation from the point of view of the period, we observe that people lived under difficult conditions in the provinces and that the devotion to the church was extremely advanced. In this case, people do not live their emotions freely and grow by being suppressed. Our character is under the influence of this situation because he only learned about love and affection from the books he read. That's why he was connected to the doctor who came to visit his village from another place. Our character has unconsciously experienced emotions that he has never experienced. That's why he thought that marriage was love and he was very disappointed when he saw that it wasn't. Every choice he made after that was wrong. Because he did not control his emotions, he lived as if he was dispersed. This is the real world of the period when it was published, in fact, suppressed emotions, forced marriages, women oppressed in patriarchal society were well observed by Flaubert.Another issue is that Flaubert put his signature through descriptions. The descriptions of a room, street, or emotion are so well done that it's normal to experience the book while reading it. Everything is realistically depicted, from the smell of the burning stove inside the room. The physical and mental changes that the feeling of being caught creates in people are explained so well that you can feel that emotion. The streets are described, not embellished, they are explained as they are. Everything from the colourless buildings to the puddles of rain water to the mud on people's boots are rendered in a real way. The reason why these can be visualised in the mind is that they are situations that exist in normal life. Flaubert's realist point of view and extraordinary observation skills led to the emergence of the work of art called Madame Bovary.

As a result, the work named Madame Bovary, written by Flaubert, made a lot of noise at the time it was published. It is a work that has been handled from a very realistic point of view and carries the traces of the society in which it lives very well. We see a story where cheating is actually self-deception, ambitions and arrogance consume people over time, and passions exaggerate and harm people. It is the same in real life, as Flaubert reflected this very well. Madame Bovary maintains its place in the world of literature as a magnificent work where you can find something from yourself and the society you live in, find a different detail in every reading, and visualise every description in your mind.