Many critics view this novel as a study of Romanticism vs. Realism Many critics view this novel as a study of Romanticism vs. Realism. What are the aspects of Romanticism that Emma seems to embody? By: Cameron Falk

What is Romanticism?? Romanticism is the attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order, calm, harmony, balance, idealization, and rationality that typified classicism in general and late 18th-century Neoclassicism in particular. It was also to some extent a reaction against the Enlightenment and against 18th-century rationalism and physical materialism in general. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.

Emma Emma creates challenges for herself through her own romanticism:- -Emma is unable to see herself an the world as they really are, due to her constantly viewing herself and her surroundings in a romantic perspective. Her monotonous life in Yonville doesn’t make matters any better and makes her yearn for something more.

Emma “She wanted to get some personal profit out of things… looking for emotions, not landscapes”(24-25). Emma read Romantic novels when she was in the convent; they made her dream of a more romantic life from her early age. “They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain fever had set in”(148) Emma was reacting extremely to Rodolphe’s farewell letter and had ‘brain fever’ for 43 days. “In the letters Emma wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion trying to keep itself aliveby all external aids”(261) So even at times her Romanticism was completely perfect. In fact in cases like this she struggled just to keep it alive.

Emma and Paris/ Wardrobe “She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turn, between the lines of streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses”(39). “She [Emma] wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris”(41). Wardrobe: “Along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half- hid smiling faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly- closed hands, whose white gloves outlines the nails…”(34) “...he [Justin] greedily watched all these women’s [Emma’s] clothes spread out about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars...(132)

Emma’s vs. Rouault’s ideal wedding Emma wanted a Romantic wedding while Rouault wanted a more practical, “normal” wedding. “Emma would, on the contrary, have preferred a midnight wedding with torches, but old Rouault could not understand such an idea”(17).

[Rodolphe and Emma’s] & Leon’s Relationship “Oh forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I am imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it? Tell me! He [Rodolphe] was kneeling by her”(220). Easily manipulated by Rodolphe’s Romantic language “I am your servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong”(134). (Leon) “And indeed, what is better than to sit but one’s fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?”(58). “…I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears”(59).

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