Madame de Pompadour

The 17th century up to the early 18th century is considered one of my favorite time periods. It is just something about the way the people spoke to one another, the way they wore their hair, and the way they dressed that always caught my eye, especially the women. Madame de Pompadour was the person I have chosen to write about for my research paper. I chose Pompadour because I read a brief summary of her life story seeing that she was born into the 17th century and I happened to like that time period got my full attention. Also, I have chosen her because she was well known during her lifetime. There were several sparkles and flames she was introduced to throughout her life. Jeann-Antionette Poisson, also known as Madame de Pompadour, was born on December 29, 1721 in Paris, France. She was the child of Madeleine de La Motte who was known for her beauty and Francois Poisson was her father who was a financier. She also had a brother who went by the name Abel Francois Poisson. Years after Madame birth, her father fled the country to resist from being killed for committing fraud. Even though Francois Poisson returned years later; Charles Le Normant de…

“Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives”(English Standard Version, Peter. 3:1). This excerpt illustrates wives being subjected to a patriarchal society in which they must be obedient towards their husbands. In contrast, Gaustauv Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary challenges this very notion through his brilliant description of Emma Bovary’s desire to explore life through lust. Her…

There are many characters that fall in love with Emma in the novel Madame Bovary. Out of all these characters, the most jealous one is Rodolphe. The least jealous is the naïve and foolish Charles, Emma’s husband. However, it seems that Charles, who happens to be the least jealous one is also most in love with Emma. This is shown by the fact that he goes to great lengths to please Emma and make her happy at his own expense, regardless of Emma’s cold and destructive demeanor towards Charles.…

demonstrates Emma’s downward spiral through her posture and movements along with those imposed on her by others. Throughout Madame Bovary, Flaubert chooses and employs Emma’s specific positioning to serve as a lucid expression of the descending entrapment of her life’s decisions. Emma’s positioning refers to any bodily movement, expression or posture. These positionings reveal her various feelings of fear, desperation, seduction, and insecurity. These feelings appear through decisions she makes,…

Anita Desai's first novel Cry, the Peacock (1963), is about Maya, a dissenting female who battles against three traditional forces in her life: male authority expressed by her husband; her female friends who play stereotypical submissive-wife roles; and her religion's beliefs in karma and detachment. Being over-sensitive, sentimental and imaginative Maya is a total contrast to the rational, logical, Gautam. By making a beautiful use of the symbolic technique, Anita Desai has delved deep into the…

Marie eventually married, had children, moved to London along with her museum, and died, but her art and their influence on society remained. Through the years, many flocked to her wax museums to catch a glimpse of the perpetrators of the French Revolution, the family of the former monarchs of France, or the life-like replicas of those who took a stand for their country. Marie Tussaud’s vision spread as her family opened more museums throughout Europe, America, and Asia (“Our History”). They…

depicts one such person in his novel Madame Bovary, which details the life of its eponymous protagonist, Emma Bovary. Emma has dreams of an exciting, romantic life, but is quickly disappointed by her marriage to an unambitious man and immovable place in the middle class. Throughout the novel, Emma’s idealistic outlook on life, also called romanticism, is undermined by the stark reality of the realistic situations she finds herself in and by other characters whose beliefs directly clash with…

Three characters fall in love with Emma in the novel Madame Bovary. However, not all of them were jealous lovers. For this paper, I will consider the term jealousy to refer to intense lust driven by the impatient and aggressive sexual desire to have another person be yours. Out of all these characters, the most jealous one is Rodolphe. The least jealous is the naïve and foolish Charles, Emma’s husband. However, it seems that Charles, the least jealous lover, is most in love with Emma. Charles…

distress, she kept scanning the solitude of her life with anxious eyes, straining to sight some far-off white sail in the mist of the horizon” (61). The power of this statement reveals Flaubert’s acknowledgment of suffering of women, and the empathy he felt for a woman who longed for more than other’s expectations of her. Siddika published his ASA University Review of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, stating that, “many critics praise her for breaking the conventional barrier of women” (51). Gustave…

Who Should I be Why pink is for girls and blue for boys? Why women have to stay at home and become housewives while men have to work outside? Why female is viewed as the weak and more evil side of the two? Throughout the human histories, women are often required to fulfill certain gender roles the society set up upon them. In the novel of Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel and Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, the female protagonists Tita and Emma use fervor of the youth to conform…