Madame Bovary

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The theme in Madame Bovary that stuck out the most to me was the theme of escape. Throughout the novel Emma is constantly looking for an escape from her reality. This could be attributed to the death of her mother at a young age and her father’s subsequent actions that brought her into an unfamiliar environment at that very sensitive and impressionable time. His solution to Emma’s lack of a woman role model was to get her out of the situation she was in: give her an escape. From this she learned that when life gets tough or doesn’t turn out the way one thinks it should the thing to do is change one’s environment. This lesson was affirmed through every novel she read. Since she couldn’t physically change her environment when she lived at the convent she turned to the novels to be the escape for her mind. From there on Emma went from mental escape to physical escape. The next escape was once again provided by her father as he helped her “escape” from the convent. Of course, as soon as she was home she wanted to escape from home back to the convent; that is, until Charles came into the picture. To her Charles was her dream escape incarnate. He represented an ultimate escape from her childhood and from her father. But the dream could not last. As soon as Emma does not get her way with a midnight wedding she looks for escape. As an adult she finds the escape through materialism, excessive buying, moving to a new town, lovers, religion, and continuing the novels.