Example Of Madame Bovary Essay

Madam Bovary is a novel written by Gustave Flaubert in 1856. It takes us through the journey and the life of an extremely complex character Emma Bovary, who was a doctor’s wife. Emma had adulterous relationships and lived ahead of her means in order to get away from the ordinariness and emptiness of her life. Madam Bovary was later turned into a romance and drama film in 1949. It was written by Robert Ardrey and directed by Vincente Minnelli. In the film, the figure of Emma Bovary as a character in the novel causes cheers of approval and howls of outrage as Gustave Flaubert is tried to prove that he did not write an indecent novel. In order to prove that, he wrote a moral tale, he decides to narrate a story about the beautiful Emma Bovary an adulteress who destroyed the lives of all the people she came in contact with.
Madam Bovary, the novel and Madame Bovary the film are almost equal compared to other novels and films adaptations which are always totally different. However, the novel gives a better version of what is really happening compared to the film version. The story line is the same except the setting and the plot. The film makes the novel more interesting and justifies its story line.
However, there are a number of differences but they were necessary to make the film interesting and acceptable to the audience. It is easy to see the plethora of difference between Madam Bovary the novel and Madame Bovary the film. The plots of the two are completely different. The book takes place in provincial northern France and it begins with Charles Bovary who is depicted as a kindhearted and stolid man without much ambition. It also talks of his marriage to Emma and his past wife. The film opens up in a court whereby Gustave Flaubert as James Mason has to defend his novel in the court to avoid it from being banned. He has to explain why he wrote an indecent novel as it was accused to be dishonor and an insult to womanhood in France. Unlike the novel Madam Bovary, the Madame Bovary 1948 film version starts with the trial at the beginning and at the end of the story. The novel version was not affected by the plot of the film because it was just trying to justify what was written in the novel was not immoral. The film version was told from the standpoint of Flaubert being on trial so as to make the story in the novel look moral and not indecent as it had been alleged to be.
The character of Emma in the novel is very different in the film. In the novel, we are introduced to her at her father’s farm. She is depicted as an elegantly dressed beautiful, well educated young woman and has a latent and powerful yearn for romance and luxury judging from the kind of novels she reads.
In the film, Emma is introduced as a twenty year old living with her father in a small farm in the country. She is depicted as lonely and the books she reads are her companion. She is said to fantasize about love and she is convinced that she will one day fall in love and have a good life, we are not told is she had good education like in the novel and this changes her character. In the film, Emma falls in love instantly with Charles but in the book, it took time for Charles to court her before they got married.
The novel Madam Bovary and the 1946 film Madame Bovary have many similarities than differences. The story line is the same except for a few changes Minnelli made in the film that were necessary to make it interesting and acceptable to the audience. The differences in the novel and the film did not affect the meaning of the story as the changes in the film kept the story moving and did not really cut down to anything extra. In fact, Flaubert being on trial in the film depicted that the novel was indeed on trial as it was being accused of indecency and so it made the story line interesting.