illustration of Emma Bovary standing in front of a window and looking over her shoulder

Madame Bovary

by Gustave Flaubert

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Madame Bovary Questions and Answers

What are the main themes of Madame Bovary?

In Madame Bovary, what do windows signify?

In chapter 29 of Madame Bovary, why does Emma say: "there's something sweet in your eyes that does me so good"

What books are mentioned in Madame Bovary?

What is the first name of Madame Bovary?

What is the relation of Emma Bovary with her children in the novel Madame Bovary written by Gustave Flaubert?

What role does fate play in Emma's downfall in Madame Bovary?

How are women portrayed in Madame Bovary?

What is Emma's psychological problem?

Why was Madame Bovary banned?

Sketch the character of Emma Bovary.

Perhaps the most famous line in Madame Bovary occurs when the narrator likens human speech to "a cracked kettle." The inadequacies of language is another theme that runs throughout the novel. How does this affect the novel as a whole?

What are some examples of irony?

Why is Madame Bovary considered one of the greatest works of realist literature?

What are the factors that are the cause for the tragedy of Emma Bovary in the novel "Madame Bovary"?

How Gustave Flaubert showed his disaappointment with middle class in his novel Madam Bovary?

What is the nature of man and God in Madame Bovary?

Discuss disillusionments in Emma Bovary's life.

Describe the devotion of Charles Bovary to Emma in Madame Bovary.

What is the role of indirect libre writing technique in Madame Bovary?

Who dropped the copy of the book Conjugal Love?

How have conventional values been challenged in Madame Bovary?

How is analepsis used in Madame Bovary?

"Emma Bovary is always in search of shortcuts to escape from her misery, but the same shortcuts takes her towards misery." Explain.

Emma is the victim of her own delusions. Analyse her character in the light of this statement.

In addition to her affairs with Rodolphe and Leon, Emma Bovary accumulates a crushing amount of debt. What, in your opinion, leads Emma to spend so lavishly and borrow so unwisely?

In studying Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, in what way can we say that the novel is an autobiographical one?

In Madame Bovary, examine the motives behind the actions Emma took in the narrative. 

What passages show the emotional state of both Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary and Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady?

Madame Bovary often uses a subjective third person point of view. What effect does this method have on the reader's impression of Emma?

What problem does Homais present in a subjective conception of modernity?

"A book is a tool of liberty." How does this relate to Madame Bovary (Flaubert) and Confessions by JJ Rousseau?

Examine the themes of protests and revolution in Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

How does unfettered subjectivity create the modern conception of tragedy?

What is the effect of half of the last chapter of Madame Bovary, including the last two paragraphs of the novel, being devoted to the pharmacist Homais?

What is the purpose of the discussion to convince Charles to take Madame Bovary to the opera in Rouen?What is the significance of the discussion?

In Madame Bovary, how does the contrasting perspective in the Bovary marriage correspond to the treatment of reality?

Is the modern vice of ennui used in "The Death of Ivan Ilych" or in "Hautot and His Son" as it is in Madame Bovary?

What are similarities between Michael Henchard in The Mayor of Castlebridge and Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary?  

Does Madam Bovary reflect the destructive power of love? Could we in some extent compare it to Anna Karenina on the same theme in question?  

Vladimir Nabokov argues that "Flaubert's bourgeois is a state of mind, not a state of pocket."  Where do you see this in the novel?  In Flaubert? 

Madame Bovary Emma's lowlier status is beautifully summed up in the line "see the white dress of her first communion lengthened for the occasion ".of course adultery was frowned upon in the 1800's. in particular when the adulterer was a woman. how much if any do you think emma's "humble" beginnings play into her choice of lovers?

How would I approach the task of composing a fictional letter from Boulanger to Emma on the eve of his departure?   Cover the conventions pertaining to audience, register, and form.