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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Emma's Eyes:
The novel pays great attention to Emma’s eyes; however, often the descriptions of her eyes contradict each other, particularly concerning her eye color, which draws attention to the motif. Flaubert uses the motif of Emma’s eyes to reflect Emma’s changing ambitions and character. The first mention of Emma’s eyes is in Part 1, Chapter 2 when she first meets Charles:
If she were beautiful, it was in her eyes; though they were brown, they seemed to be black because of the lashes, and they met your gaze openly, with an artless candour.
In this description, her eyes reflect the honesty and naivety of her youth (at least in Charles’s eyes), showing a warm brown. However, their darkness also suggests that there is more than meets the eye, which hints at the ambitions underlying her impending romance with Charles. This motif develops in a later description of her eyes in Part 1, Chapter 5, set early into her marriage with Charles where she has gotten what she wanted but is beginning to realize it’s not enough:
So very close, her eyes seemed even bigger, especially when she first awoke and her eyelids fluttered into life. Black in the shadows, and deep blue in full daylight, as if the colours were floating layer upon layer, thickest in the depths, coming clear and bright towards the surface.
Emma is enjoying the escape from her previous entrapment (tending to her father and helping him on the farm). The luxuries that come with Charles’s larger salary and her role as a wife have opened a whole new world to her. This is signified by the clarity of the blueness of her eyes in the daylight, mirroring how her dreams are coming to fruition. However, the darkness of her eyes in the shadows foreshadows her warring and sprouting discontent. Emma realizes that despite her newfound pleasures, she does not love Charles, so although her more superficial ambitions are achieved, her more complex desires for love are not. This discontent is deep-rooted at first, only existing in the shadows. However, the ball held by the Marquis d'Andervilliers acts as a catalyst for making that darkness and her greedier ambitions more permanent. This can be seen as she is getting ready for the ball in Part 1, Chapter 8:
Her dark eyes seemed even darker.
The darkening of her eyes signals her growing ambitions and only continues as the novel goes on and her passions lead her to immoral ends. For example, at the start of her affair with Rodolphe in Part 2, Chapter 9, she is shocked by the largeness and blackness of her eyes:
But, when she looked in the mirror, she was startled by her own face. Never had she had eyes so large, so black, so mysterious. Something subtle, transfiguring, was surging through her.
She kept saying to herself: ‘I have a lover! A lover!’
The consumption of her eyes by darkness signifies her growing corruption by her endless ambitions and desires for happiness, even as it leads her into adultery, abandoning both her child and her husband.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Gender:
Throughout the novel, Emma is shown with masculine appearance markers or as taking on a masculine role in her relationships, despite many of the characters viewing her as a paradigm of femininity. For example, in her earliest depiction (when she meets Charles in Part 1, Chapter 2), Emma wears masculine apparel:
She had, like a man, tucked into the front of her bodice, a tortoiseshell lorgnon.
Her openness to masculine presentation reappears in Part 3, Chapter 6 when she attends a masked ball:
She wore velvet breeches and red stockings, a gentleman’s wig, and a paper lantern over one ear.
Emma often wears masculine clothing at moments when she’s looking for a means of escape. In the former, she’s trying to escape the farm she grew up on via seducing Charles. This description of the lorgnon comes shortly before the first moment of seduction between the two and is one of the features that draws Charles’s interest. Her later appearance in male costume is set after her disappointment in her failing love with Lèon and overall discontent with life. Her masculine apparel can be seen as an attempt to reclaim his love and the happiness she thinks he should be giving her, as she associates masculinity with a greater sense of control. Due to her position as a woman, she is limited in her ability to change her social status or pursue her dreams, so in moments when she is active in her pursuit of happiness, she draws on markers of masculinity.
Furthermore, Emma often takes on traditionally masculine roles in her relationships. She dominates Charles in their relationship, bullying him to get what she wants, such as pressuring him into performing surgery on Hippolyte. Her desire for control and performing masculinity in her relationships continues with Léon, as seen in Part 3, Chapter 5:
He didn’t question her ideas; he accepted her tastes; he became her mistress rather than she becoming his.
By masculinizing Emma, the novel confronts how Emma is constrained by her gender and highlights to the audience the double standard in how she is punished for her behavior due to her gender. If she were a man, her behavior would be treated more benignly or she would have better access to outlets from her discontent. Her desire for masculinity is associated with the freedom it would grant her. She likewise leverages her femininity by using feminine sexuality to escape her tedious life and find happiness. However, her reliance on femininity leads to her relying on men, whom she feels confined by, which is why she ultimately tries to assert more control through masculinity.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Emma's Eyes:
The novel pays great attention to Emma’s eyes; however, often the descriptions of her eyes contradict each other, particularly concerning her eye color, which draws attention to the motif. Flaubert uses the motif of Emma’s eyes to reflect Emma’s changing ambitions and character. The first mention of Emma’s eyes is in Part 1, Chapter 2 when she first meets Charles:
If she were beautiful, it was in her eyes; though they were brown, they seemed to be black because of the lashes, and they met your gaze openly, with an artless candour.
In this description, her eyes reflect the honesty and naivety of her youth (at least in Charles’s eyes), showing a warm brown. However, their darkness also suggests that there is more than meets the eye, which hints at the ambitions underlying her impending romance with Charles. This motif develops in a later description of her eyes in Part 1, Chapter 5, set early into her marriage with Charles where she has gotten what she wanted but is beginning to realize it’s not enough:
So very close, her eyes seemed even bigger, especially when she first awoke and her eyelids fluttered into life. Black in the shadows, and deep blue in full daylight, as if the colours were floating layer upon layer, thickest in the depths, coming clear and bright towards the surface.
Emma is enjoying the escape from her previous entrapment (tending to her father and helping him on the farm). The luxuries that come with Charles’s larger salary and her role as a wife have opened a whole new world to her. This is signified by the clarity of the blueness of her eyes in the daylight, mirroring how her dreams are coming to fruition. However, the darkness of her eyes in the shadows foreshadows her warring and sprouting discontent. Emma realizes that despite her newfound pleasures, she does not love Charles, so although her more superficial ambitions are achieved, her more complex desires for love are not. This discontent is deep-rooted at first, only existing in the shadows. However, the ball held by the Marquis d'Andervilliers acts as a catalyst for making that darkness and her greedier ambitions more permanent. This can be seen as she is getting ready for the ball in Part 1, Chapter 8:
Her dark eyes seemed even darker.
The darkening of her eyes signals her growing ambitions and only continues as the novel goes on and her passions lead her to immoral ends. For example, at the start of her affair with Rodolphe in Part 2, Chapter 9, she is shocked by the largeness and blackness of her eyes:
But, when she looked in the mirror, she was startled by her own face. Never had she had eyes so large, so black, so mysterious. Something subtle, transfiguring, was surging through her.
She kept saying to herself: ‘I have a lover! A lover!’
The consumption of her eyes by darkness signifies her growing corruption by her endless ambitions and desires for happiness, even as it leads her into adultery, abandoning both her child and her husband.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Emma's Eyes:
The novel pays great attention to Emma’s eyes; however, often the descriptions of her eyes contradict each other, particularly concerning her eye color, which draws attention to the motif. Flaubert uses the motif of Emma’s eyes to reflect Emma’s changing ambitions and character. The first mention of Emma’s eyes is in Part 1, Chapter 2 when she first meets Charles:
If she were beautiful, it was in her eyes; though they were brown, they seemed to be black because of the lashes, and they met your gaze openly, with an artless candour.
In this description, her eyes reflect the honesty and naivety of her youth (at least in Charles’s eyes), showing a warm brown. However, their darkness also suggests that there is more than meets the eye, which hints at the ambitions underlying her impending romance with Charles. This motif develops in a later description of her eyes in Part 1, Chapter 5, set early into her marriage with Charles where she has gotten what she wanted but is beginning to realize it’s not enough:
So very close, her eyes seemed even bigger, especially when she first awoke and her eyelids fluttered into life. Black in the shadows, and deep blue in full daylight, as if the colours were floating layer upon layer, thickest in the depths, coming clear and bright towards the surface.
Emma is enjoying the escape from her previous entrapment (tending to her father and helping him on the farm). The luxuries that come with Charles’s larger salary and her role as a wife have opened a whole new world to her. This is signified by the clarity of the blueness of her eyes in the daylight, mirroring how her dreams are coming to fruition. However, the darkness of her eyes in the shadows foreshadows her warring and sprouting discontent. Emma realizes that despite her newfound pleasures, she does not love Charles, so although her more superficial ambitions are achieved, her more complex desires for love are not. This discontent is deep-rooted at first, only existing in the shadows. However, the ball held by the Marquis d'Andervilliers acts as a catalyst for making that darkness and her greedier ambitions more permanent. This can be seen as she is getting ready for the ball in Part 1, Chapter 8:
Her dark eyes seemed even darker.
The darkening of her eyes signals her growing ambitions and only continues as the novel goes on and her passions lead her to immoral ends. For example, at the start of her affair with Rodolphe in Part 2, Chapter 9, she is shocked by the largeness and blackness of her eyes:
But, when she looked in the mirror, she was startled by her own face. Never had she had eyes so large, so black, so mysterious. Something subtle, transfiguring, was surging through her.
She kept saying to herself: ‘I have a lover! A lover!’
The consumption of her eyes by darkness signifies her growing corruption by her endless ambitions and desires for happiness, even as it leads her into adultery, abandoning both her child and her husband.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Flowers:
The novel often uses its setting to reflect the mood of a scene, with flowers being a consistent motif. Flowers are used to externalize Emma’s feelings or the state of her love life, which she is not always forthright about to those around her. The comparison between Emma and flowers is established directly in Part 2, Chapter 12:
Her cravings, her sorrows, her experience of pleasure and her still-fresh illusions had brought her gradually to readiness, like flowers that have manure, rain, wind and sun, and she was blossoming at last in the splendour of her being.
The flower motif surrounding Emma expands on her belief that love can only be produced in certain conditions, like the requirements of a plant, and highlights how she sees herself as molded by the world around her with little agency of her own. Furthermore, the comparison indulges Emma’s love for aesthetics by portraying her as delicate and beautiful. One example of flowers reflecting Emma’s emotions is in Part 2, Chapter 6 after Léon leaves for Paris:
But a gust of wind curved the poplars, and now the rain was falling; it spluttered over the green leaves. Then the sun came out, the hens clucked, sparrows shook out their wings in the damp bushes, and as the pools of rain on the gravel ebbed away they took the pink flowers fallen from an acacia.
The acacia petals being washed away by the storm’s attack on the greenery and flowers mirrors how Emma’s budding feelings for Lèon and hope for love washed away with his sudden departure.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Emma's Eyes:
The novel pays great attention to Emma’s eyes; however, often the descriptions of her eyes contradict each other, particularly concerning her eye color, which draws attention to the motif. Flaubert uses the motif of Emma’s eyes to reflect Emma’s changing ambitions and character. The first mention of Emma’s eyes is in Part 1, Chapter 2 when she first meets Charles:
If she were beautiful, it was in her eyes; though they were brown, they seemed to be black because of the lashes, and they met your gaze openly, with an artless candour.
In this description, her eyes reflect the honesty and naivety of her youth (at least in Charles’s eyes), showing a warm brown. However, their darkness also suggests that there is more than meets the eye, which hints at the ambitions underlying her impending romance with Charles. This motif develops in a later description of her eyes in Part 1, Chapter 5, set early into her marriage with Charles where she has gotten what she wanted but is beginning to realize it’s not enough:
So very close, her eyes seemed even bigger, especially when she first awoke and her eyelids fluttered into life. Black in the shadows, and deep blue in full daylight, as if the colours were floating layer upon layer, thickest in the depths, coming clear and bright towards the surface.
Emma is enjoying the escape from her previous entrapment (tending to her father and helping him on the farm). The luxuries that come with Charles’s larger salary and her role as a wife have opened a whole new world to her. This is signified by the clarity of the blueness of her eyes in the daylight, mirroring how her dreams are coming to fruition. However, the darkness of her eyes in the shadows foreshadows her warring and sprouting discontent. Emma realizes that despite her newfound pleasures, she does not love Charles, so although her more superficial ambitions are achieved, her more complex desires for love are not. This discontent is deep-rooted at first, only existing in the shadows. However, the ball held by the Marquis d'Andervilliers acts as a catalyst for making that darkness and her greedier ambitions more permanent. This can be seen as she is getting ready for the ball in Part 1, Chapter 8:
Her dark eyes seemed even darker.
The darkening of her eyes signals her growing ambitions and only continues as the novel goes on and her passions lead her to immoral ends. For example, at the start of her affair with Rodolphe in Part 2, Chapter 9, she is shocked by the largeness and blackness of her eyes:
But, when she looked in the mirror, she was startled by her own face. Never had she had eyes so large, so black, so mysterious. Something subtle, transfiguring, was surging through her.
She kept saying to herself: ‘I have a lover! A lover!’
The consumption of her eyes by darkness signifies her growing corruption by her endless ambitions and desires for happiness, even as it leads her into adultery, abandoning both her child and her husband.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 12
Explanation and Analysis—Flowers:
The novel often uses its setting to reflect the mood of a scene, with flowers being a consistent motif. Flowers are used to externalize Emma’s feelings or the state of her love life, which she is not always forthright about to those around her. The comparison between Emma and flowers is established directly in Part 2, Chapter 12:
Her cravings, her sorrows, her experience of pleasure and her still-fresh illusions had brought her gradually to readiness, like flowers that have manure, rain, wind and sun, and she was blossoming at last in the splendour of her being.
The flower motif surrounding Emma expands on her belief that love can only be produced in certain conditions, like the requirements of a plant, and highlights how she sees herself as molded by the world around her with little agency of her own. Furthermore, the comparison indulges Emma’s love for aesthetics by portraying her as delicate and beautiful. One example of flowers reflecting Emma’s emotions is in Part 2, Chapter 6 after Léon leaves for Paris:
But a gust of wind curved the poplars, and now the rain was falling; it spluttered over the green leaves. Then the sun came out, the hens clucked, sparrows shook out their wings in the damp bushes, and as the pools of rain on the gravel ebbed away they took the pink flowers fallen from an acacia.
The acacia petals being washed away by the storm’s attack on the greenery and flowers mirrors how Emma’s budding feelings for Lèon and hope for love washed away with his sudden departure.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—Latin:
Madame Bovary uses Latin, particularly through Homais, to demonstrate how the bourgeois employ useless class signifiers to assert superiority over the lower classes or raise their status. Homais wields Latin as a power move without the words themself being very meaningful in the situation. He often uses unnecessary Latin or medical phrases within his speech to appear smarter than he is to impress important men. For example, in Part 3, Chapter 8, when offering the famous doctor Monsieur Larivière sugar for his coffee, Homais says,
– Saccharum, doctor?
Homais could have just as easily used the word "sugar," but by using its scientific or Latin name, Homais tries to place himself as an equal to the doctor through their shared medical knowledge. Madame Bovary satirizes the pompousness of the bourgeoisie who try to inflate their self-worth and separate themselves from lower classes through superficial means.
Homais also uses Latin phrases when denigrating those he sees as below him. For example, when he is yelling at his assistant Justin in Part 3, Chapter 2, he says:
Now where would you be without me? What would you do? Who provides you with food, education, clothing, and the wherewithal to assume one of these days an honourable position in society! But you do have to sweat at the old oar, put your back into it, as they say. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.
He was quoting Latin, such was his exasperation. He would have quoted Chinese and Icelandic, if he had known either of those languages…
In this passage, Homais uses Latin amidst a barrage of insults to simultaneously demean Justin and make him feel indebted to Homais, exacerbating their power dynamic. Mentioning that he would quote any language if given the chance demonstrates how the language matters less than the superiority it represents. He uses Latin precisely because the words won’t be understood, so it doesn’t matter what he says in the language or which language he speaks as long as it separates him from the lower class or brings him closer to the upper class. Homais doesn’t actually care about Latin, medical knowledge, or any other class markers he employs beyond their usefulness in uplifting his status.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Gender:
Throughout the novel, Emma is shown with masculine appearance markers or as taking on a masculine role in her relationships, despite many of the characters viewing her as a paradigm of femininity. For example, in her earliest depiction (when she meets Charles in Part 1, Chapter 2), Emma wears masculine apparel:
She had, like a man, tucked into the front of her bodice, a tortoiseshell lorgnon.
Her openness to masculine presentation reappears in Part 3, Chapter 6 when she attends a masked ball:
She wore velvet breeches and red stockings, a gentleman’s wig, and a paper lantern over one ear.
Emma often wears masculine clothing at moments when she’s looking for a means of escape. In the former, she’s trying to escape the farm she grew up on via seducing Charles. This description of the lorgnon comes shortly before the first moment of seduction between the two and is one of the features that draws Charles’s interest. Her later appearance in male costume is set after her disappointment in her failing love with Lèon and overall discontent with life. Her masculine apparel can be seen as an attempt to reclaim his love and the happiness she thinks he should be giving her, as she associates masculinity with a greater sense of control. Due to her position as a woman, she is limited in her ability to change her social status or pursue her dreams, so in moments when she is active in her pursuit of happiness, she draws on markers of masculinity.
Furthermore, Emma often takes on traditionally masculine roles in her relationships. She dominates Charles in their relationship, bullying him to get what she wants, such as pressuring him into performing surgery on Hippolyte. Her desire for control and performing masculinity in her relationships continues with Léon, as seen in Part 3, Chapter 5:
He didn’t question her ideas; he accepted her tastes; he became her mistress rather than she becoming his.
By masculinizing Emma, the novel confronts how Emma is constrained by her gender and highlights to the audience the double standard in how she is punished for her behavior due to her gender. If she were a man, her behavior would be treated more benignly or she would have better access to outlets from her discontent. Her desire for masculinity is associated with the freedom it would grant her. She likewise leverages her femininity by using feminine sexuality to escape her tedious life and find happiness. However, her reliance on femininity leads to her relying on men, whom she feels confined by, which is why she ultimately tries to assert more control through masculinity.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Gender:
Throughout the novel, Emma is shown with masculine appearance markers or as taking on a masculine role in her relationships, despite many of the characters viewing her as a paradigm of femininity. For example, in her earliest depiction (when she meets Charles in Part 1, Chapter 2), Emma wears masculine apparel:
She had, like a man, tucked into the front of her bodice, a tortoiseshell lorgnon.
Her openness to masculine presentation reappears in Part 3, Chapter 6 when she attends a masked ball:
She wore velvet breeches and red stockings, a gentleman’s wig, and a paper lantern over one ear.
Emma often wears masculine clothing at moments when she’s looking for a means of escape. In the former, she’s trying to escape the farm she grew up on via seducing Charles. This description of the lorgnon comes shortly before the first moment of seduction between the two and is one of the features that draws Charles’s interest. Her later appearance in male costume is set after her disappointment in her failing love with Lèon and overall discontent with life. Her masculine apparel can be seen as an attempt to reclaim his love and the happiness she thinks he should be giving her, as she associates masculinity with a greater sense of control. Due to her position as a woman, she is limited in her ability to change her social status or pursue her dreams, so in moments when she is active in her pursuit of happiness, she draws on markers of masculinity.
Furthermore, Emma often takes on traditionally masculine roles in her relationships. She dominates Charles in their relationship, bullying him to get what she wants, such as pressuring him into performing surgery on Hippolyte. Her desire for control and performing masculinity in her relationships continues with Léon, as seen in Part 3, Chapter 5:
He didn’t question her ideas; he accepted her tastes; he became her mistress rather than she becoming his.
By masculinizing Emma, the novel confronts how Emma is constrained by her gender and highlights to the audience the double standard in how she is punished for her behavior due to her gender. If she were a man, her behavior would be treated more benignly or she would have better access to outlets from her discontent. Her desire for masculinity is associated with the freedom it would grant her. She likewise leverages her femininity by using feminine sexuality to escape her tedious life and find happiness. However, her reliance on femininity leads to her relying on men, whom she feels confined by, which is why she ultimately tries to assert more control through masculinity.
Related Themes:
Part 3, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Latin:
Madame Bovary uses Latin, particularly through Homais, to demonstrate how the bourgeois employ useless class signifiers to assert superiority over the lower classes or raise their status. Homais wields Latin as a power move without the words themself being very meaningful in the situation. He often uses unnecessary Latin or medical phrases within his speech to appear smarter than he is to impress important men. For example, in Part 3, Chapter 8, when offering the famous doctor Monsieur Larivière sugar for his coffee, Homais says,
– Saccharum, doctor?
Homais could have just as easily used the word "sugar," but by using its scientific or Latin name, Homais tries to place himself as an equal to the doctor through their shared medical knowledge. Madame Bovary satirizes the pompousness of the bourgeoisie who try to inflate their self-worth and separate themselves from lower classes through superficial means.
Homais also uses Latin phrases when denigrating those he sees as below him. For example, when he is yelling at his assistant Justin in Part 3, Chapter 2, he says:
Now where would you be without me? What would you do? Who provides you with food, education, clothing, and the wherewithal to assume one of these days an honourable position in society! But you do have to sweat at the old oar, put your back into it, as they say. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.
He was quoting Latin, such was his exasperation. He would have quoted Chinese and Icelandic, if he had known either of those languages…
In this passage, Homais uses Latin amidst a barrage of insults to simultaneously demean Justin and make him feel indebted to Homais, exacerbating their power dynamic. Mentioning that he would quote any language if given the chance demonstrates how the language matters less than the superiority it represents. He uses Latin precisely because the words won’t be understood, so it doesn’t matter what he says in the language or which language he speaks as long as it separates him from the lower class or brings him closer to the upper class. Homais doesn’t actually care about Latin, medical knowledge, or any other class markers he employs beyond their usefulness in uplifting his status.
Related Themes:
