Madame Bovary: Irony 2 key examples

Ironically, it is actually the bourgeoisie who are useless and causing problems for lower-class people. This is especially the case for Emma, who has ruined the lives of various poorer people on a whim, such as firing Charles’s longest acquaintance, Nastasie, over dinner not being ready when she got home. Emma’s dismissal of the woman eventually forced Nastasie to leave Tostes. While the “worst” behavior of servants in the novel only results in dinner not being ready or a somewhat lackluster garden, Emma’s bourgeois boredom interprets these as grave offenses and seeks retribution, to devastating effect.

Meanwhile, Emma relies on servants for every matter, even in facilitating her affairs, such as with the wet nurse caring for Berthe or servants passing along Emma’s letters to her lovers. She would effectively be hopeless without them. Even when a person is not a servant, her bourgeois superiority means that her whim of wanting Charles to try out a new surgery causes Hippolyte extreme pain and the amputation of his leg. The devastating effect of bourgeois fancies on the lower class is pointed out in Part 2, Chapter 11:

Gimmicks from Paris, eh! Big ideas from the gents in the metropolis! It goes with strabismus and chloroform and lithotomy – a load of rubbish the government should put a stop to! But they just want to look cute, and they thrust their remedies at you quite regardless of the consequences.

Cite this Quote

This negative treatment of servants throughout the novel, and this early claim of their supposedly problematic nature, highlights the delusions of the bourgeoisie as to the scale of their problems and the negative consequences of their attempts to completely divorce themselves in status from people of a lower class. They ironically position themselves as the victims of circumstance while they oppress and leech off others.

Ironically, it is actually the bourgeoisie who are useless and causing problems for lower-class people. This is especially the case for Emma, who has ruined the lives of various poorer people on a whim, such as firing Charles’s longest acquaintance, Nastasie, over dinner not being ready when she got home. Emma’s dismissal of the woman eventually forced Nastasie to leave Tostes. While the “worst” behavior of servants in the novel only results in dinner not being ready or a somewhat lackluster garden, Emma’s bourgeois boredom interprets these as grave offenses and seeks retribution, to devastating effect.

Meanwhile, Emma relies on servants for every matter, even in facilitating her affairs, such as with the wet nurse caring for Berthe or servants passing along Emma’s letters to her lovers. She would effectively be hopeless without them. Even when a person is not a servant, her bourgeois superiority means that her whim of wanting Charles to try out a new surgery causes Hippolyte extreme pain and the amputation of his leg. The devastating effect of bourgeois fancies on the lower class is pointed out in Part 2, Chapter 11:

Gimmicks from Paris, eh! Big ideas from the gents in the metropolis! It goes with strabismus and chloroform and lithotomy – a load of rubbish the government should put a stop to! But they just want to look cute, and they thrust their remedies at you quite regardless of the consequences.

Cite this Quote

This negative treatment of servants throughout the novel, and this early claim of their supposedly problematic nature, highlights the delusions of the bourgeoisie as to the scale of their problems and the negative consequences of their attempts to completely divorce themselves in status from people of a lower class. They ironically position themselves as the victims of circumstance while they oppress and leech off others.

This irony is compounded by how it is an ongoing joke in the novel that Monsieur Homais wanted more notoriety and respect for his minor achievements and overstepping in local matters, even to the degree of desiring a Legion of Honour (the highest French order of merit) for himself. The novel’s closing line subverts this mockery:

He [Homais] has just received the Legion of Honour.

Cite this Quote

The least deserving character comes out on top despite causing even more harm than Emma throughout the novel. For example, although Emma pressured her husband into going through with the surgery on Hippolyte, Homais was the one to thoughtlessly introduce the idea of the surgery and equally force Charles’s hand. Homais’s careless whim leads to Hippolyte suffering greatly, nearly dying, and having his leg amputated. Furthermore, this failed surgery was a leading cause of the financial downfall of the Bovarys, which resulted in Berthe’s ending as a poor millworker. This is only one example of how Homais is the only one not suffering from his misdeeds.

The irony of the different endings for these similarly flawed characters revolves around the double standard of ambitious men succeeding where ambitious women fail, due to their privileged gender. The novel’s ironic ending exposes the cynical reality that greedy, bourgeois men will continue to get richer while everyone else will suffer.