Flaubert's Theory of Life

The French novelist, Gustave Flaubert, has a lot to teach us about the nature of life. In his debut novel Madame Bovary, Flaubert sought to wake his society up to the injustice and hypocrisy he saw. He despised that people, especially women, were judged so harshly for their decisions, that everyone appeared to be self-righteous and how consumerism was ruining the world around him.

The remedy, as he saw it, was to create a novel that exposed all of these flaws to the light of day. He hoped that with his novel, Madame Bovary, people would be kinder, less judgemental and ultimately, treat each other better.

Who is Gustave Flaubert?

Gustave Flaubert was a prominent French novelist during the 19th-century. He was quite distinguished and made a name for himself in France, becoming one of the pioneers of literary realism.

Flaubert published Madame Bovary in 1856. The inspiration for the book came from a newspaper story of an aristocratic woman who had taken her own life. The article detailed the tragedy of this woman's life, who had been married and had a small child, who had an enormous amount of debt from shopping, and who had taken many lovers. The article ended by supposing that her death was a kind of cosmic justice from her sins.

Flaubert saw this as an injustice to blame the woman’s suicide on the notion of sin. He theorized that anyone regardless of class or status can become consumed by desire that can never be quenched. Through his empathetic description of Emma Bovary in the novel, we as the audience can begin to understand why someone’s life may follow this trajectory. This in turn actually teaches us a lot about how to live a life of contentment.

Flaubert wants us to be compassionate

Flaubert observed that many people in his French, upper-middle-class society did not have the capacity to accept shortcomings in themselves or others. In writing the story of Emma Bovary, he hoped that everyone would be able to see others through the lens of compassion.

In the final pages of the novel, when Emma Bovary is laying down in her bed after drinking arsenic, there isn’t a sense of condemnation or judgment for her decisions but rather, compassion and sadness for the life lost. During the 19th-century, suicide was incredibly taboo. By Flaubert breaking down this prejudice, he opened the doors to compassion.

Flaubert is incredibly good at highlighting Emma Bovary’s good qualities as well as her downfalls. She’s human, like us. We can all relate to wanting the fulfillment of marriage but facing the reality of a broken relationship. We can empathize with her desire for a child but then not knowing how to be an attentive mother. Finally, we all know how easy it is to fall into debt from trying to fill emotional voids with objects.

We live in a more consumeristic society than ever and so for us in the 21st-century, these lessons in compassion are still relevant. Flaubert wants us to acknowledge that we are not perfect; that we all make mistakes but this doesn’t mean we deserved to be judged and condemned. If anything, it means we can come together and support each other as we go through these universal struggles together.

The illusion of happiness is the source of our suffering

During the 19th-century, France was going through all sorts of shifts. In politics, the Second Empire led by Napoleon III began to crumble which caused a period called the “long depression” to follow until the turn of the century. This mirrored many social changes including young people being killed in combat, industrialization, and commercialization.

Flaubert saw that because of these unsettling changes, people were growing more and more distant from each other. This distance coupled with commercial marketing caused people to have a ravenous appetite for consuming products to bring happiness.

In the Vedas, the illusion that happiness can be acquired outside of one’s self is called maya or delusion. Falling into delusion means we begin to grasp at false hopes of happiness, like buying more clothes or wanting a bigger house, causing more unhappiness. Our desires are endless, meaning consumerism ultimately leads to dissatisfaction not fulfillment. Instead of trying to endlessly satisfy our desires on a whim, the Vedas teaches that happiness and fulfillment can be attained by controlling one’s mind and being present in the moment.

In the novel, Emma’s mind is clouded with images of having a rich husband to dote on her because of all the romance novels she read as a child. Coming from a rural farming town, it seems that marriage will solve her unhappiness and restless state of mind. However when she gets married to a man who can support her financially, but she becomes less attracted to him after the initial attraction wears off.

Emma is then deluded into thinking multiple affairs will fulfill her desire for romance, but they just cause her heartbreak. Motherhood then becomes her goal, but she soon grows distant from her child. Emma feels helplessly depressed because all the expectations she has of life are never met. In a sense, it’s her illusion of life, marriage and motherhood that lead to her unhappiness.

Flaubert calls us to accept life for what it is. He doesn’t want us to fall into the same entrapments of illusions and expectations as Emma does. Expectations limit us from appreciating the beauty of life -- and from accepting how life is rather than how we wish it to be.

Flaubert wants us to understand our addictions

Addiction is another prominent theme in Madame Bovary. Emma becomes addicted to shopping when her other avenues for fulfillment fail. She has failed to have a passionate romantic marriage, failed to enjoy being a mother, so now she has only one option left. The 19th-century was becoming increasingly consumeristic and this worried Flaubert. After all, companies were advertising that their products could make someone happy, and so debt became a reality for many high-class French women.

Emma also becomes addicted to taking lovers. She wants to experience love so badly that she will take up anyone that offers her that. She becomes addicted to traveling too when her small town in France doesn’t please her anymore. In Vedic philosophy, this is a symptom of the monkey-mind. Emma is letting her mind’s desires control her, leading to unhappiness.

Flaubert highlights that we have to be brave enough to face our addictions if we want to gain control of our minds back. In a very avant-garde way, Flaubert calls us to ask ourselves why we are addicted to certain behaviors that aren’t serving us. He calls us to examine our behavior, take responsibility, and see how we can change our lives for the better.

Maybe Emma would've stopped spending if she had realized she is using shopping as an escape from her unhappy marriage, or lack of purpose in life. Looking at the underlying reason for our addictions allows us to release them, and create a happier life for ourselves.

We should be coming together rather than drifting apart

Flaubert was a revolutionary. In a time of racism, classicism and prejudice, he was the one trying to bring his society closer together. The quote below is my favourite quote from Flaubert, because it shows how a change in consciousness can change the world. Like in the Vedas, our separation from each other, nature and the divine is simply an illusion that we cannot hold onto so strongly.

“I’m no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country...to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid. I am a soul brother to everything that lives, to the giraffe and to the crocodile as much as to man.”

— Gustave Flaubert

Flaubert lived in a time when the French middle class thought they were the pinnacle of civilization. He saw that aristocrats were arrogant and pompous, completely missing the point of life entirely. In his desire to make a difference, he ultimately called for an end to discrimination based on wealth, ethnicity, gender, and any other arbitrary differences.

The notion that we all belong because we are all on this planet together is revolutionary even to this day. He preached rights for same-sex relationships and animal welfare. He asked us not to hate someone because of the country they live in and instead to be kind to others.

Flaubert encourages us to see ourselves at one with everything. There is no real boundary, only the boundaries we create within ourselves.