The Beauty of Corruption: Physical Descriptions of Flaubert's Protagonist Anonymous 12th Grade

Gustave Flaubert, the author of Madame Bovary, creates a multitude of contrasts throughout his novel between beauty and foulness. By combining the two extremes so often, it results in a camouflage of the nefarious aspects of the novel by the handsome. Extremely prevalent in Emma Bovary, Flaubert contrasts Emma’s ever increasing beauty with her slowly rotting core. This results in two personas, the romanticized and realistic versions of Madame Bovary. Flaubert fixates on certain elements of her appearance, such as her hands, her hair, her skin, and her eyes, as well as how these features come to full fruition when she eventually dies.

When first described, Emma’s hand “was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles,” (Flaubert, 10). Her hands suggest the kind of work that she does, honest manual labor. Not only does it allude to the type of work she has to do, but also the effort put into said work. Her hands are constantly busy, as idle hands are the devil’s playthings. The phrasing Flaubert wields, “not white enough,” suggests a standard that Emma falls short of. This contrasts with an incident later on in the novel when Emma spends fourteen francs--a large sum of money at the time--on lemons to...