Aspects of the Conflict between Identity and Otherness in the Novel “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert

Abstract

Bovarism represents the essential side of the conflict between identity and alterity reflected in the novel Madame Bovary. The concepts of identity and alterity are in a relationship of opposition, identity denoting the fact of being an individual different from everyone else and, at the same time, of remaining the same over time, and alterity being the fact of conceiving one’s own personality as different of how it is in reality, in other words, to consider oneself a different person. The applicability of these concepts to the novel Madame Bovary is visible, if we start from the definition formulated by the French philosopher and essayist Jules de Gaultier (1858-1942), according to which Bovarism represents the faculty acquired by a person to conceive oneself in a different way than in reality, without taking into account the various external events and circumstances that could determine in each individual this inner transformation. According to Gaultier’s theory, when we talk about the conflict between identity and alterity, we refer to a real disease of thought, of soul, of personality, which consists in knowing the image of reality before knowing the actual reality. The prototype of such an approach is embodied by Emma Bovary, dominated by the cleavage between real being and imaginary being. At the base of the conflict between identity and alterity manifested in the form of Bovarism, several main aspects can be delimited which are also this phenomenon causes.