Emma Bovary, victime de son milieu.

Abstract

The first chapter of this study reveals the formation of the great French writer, Gustave Flaubert, as a romantic, realistic and naturalistic novelist. The remaining chapters of the thesis are devoted to an in-depth study of Emma Bovary, the heroine of Flaubert's immortal Madame Bovary. The writer defends her vanity, unhappiness, adultery, and subsequent suicide on the influence of her environment which includes her life as the only child of a widowed farmer who received her education from the narrow teachings of convent Sisters and clandestine sessions with an old laundress who recited from memory spicy love stories not found in the texts of the school. It should be noted that the writer of this thesis spent June and July, 1978, in Paris, Rouen and Croisset, France, doing research in the Bibliotheque Nationale and at Flaubert's home, which is now a national museum.