(written for the course Modernism and Postmodernism Period by Wesleyan University)
Karl Marx in his works defends that society must fight against control. In The Communist Manifesto he claims ‘The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.’(p.37) This social conflict is between the bourgeoise and the working class, in which the Estate was created to keep the dominant class interests, although it should represent everybody’s interest. He argues that this infinite war is caused by the capitalism, because of the different and inequal classes it creates. He suggests that the workers should take on an organized revolutionary action to overturn the capitalism provoking a socioeconomic changing.
To Marx, the French Revolution doesn’t mean a human emancipation, on the contrary, what really happens is the freedom of the selfish man, a man apart from his community. The one who is really free with this French Revolution of the 18th century is the bourgeoisie. His radical vision indicates that the bourgeois society had conquered its upmost level, creating a new society, a new world, a new history phase, which Marx mentions as it being the new victorious class in the Estate becoming the new dominant instrument, which aims the eternal social slavery by the enrichment process of its owners, ‘The “dangerous class,” the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.’ (The Communist Manifesto, p.173). The Estate is in a crescent capital domination instrument over the labor.
In The Civil War in France, Marx announces a ‘possibility of a social revolution’, a new labor social consciousness about the capital. This anxiety for the labor class emancipation would free it for the dominant class. The new labor class revolution would affect the production relationship, giving to the community the ‘private property’ back and unleashing the productive forces to the human for his self-benefit in general.
Gustave Flaubert, the writer of Madame Bovary novel, creates a character that has to live in a 19th century France which is going through an immense political instability. He writes about the problematic issue of the modernity.
It’s in a historical moment which confronts many visions of the world. A good example about this contrast is in Homais, the pharmacist, and Bournisien, the priest. Homais is an Enlightenment character in favor of the progress, as we can notice in part II chapter 2 when he speaks “I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the ‘Echo des Feuilletons’; and in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the ‘Fanal de Rouen’ daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity.”, while Bournisien represents the French Christianity with values are based on the Church.
The novel shows about Emma Bovary’s feelings, full of romanticism, especially when she gets involved firstly with Rodolphe and afterwards with Leon, living her romance intensively. Flaubert shows that the hero Emma is not a positive character from middle 19th century. She is a caricature, as Marx would say. If we pay close attention to Emma, we can see she is a medieval person, living in an unreal past as we read: ‘She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.’ (part I, chapter 6)
Thinking closely about Madame Bovary we may conclude that the novel is about two structural levels. The first one there are characters living the reality, where Flaubert represents the social moment. In the second level, Emma Bovary reflects the esthetic concept, where she is unable to be happy in a productive era. Modernity is a tragedy, once it does not bring a better life. She lives in an idealism that she puts love out of the real present context; a context represented by the bourgeoisie transforming every reality of the poor people in tragedy.
Bibliography
Engels, Friedrich; Marx, Karl. The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary, 1856.
Marx, Karl. The Civil War in France, 1871.
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