This tutorial essay is designed to guide the student in the writing of a compare~contrast essay.

Follow the following codes to understand the various components of the essay, and revisit the rubric for paper specifications and further instructions for this assignment.

Red text = specific details. Blue text = references to archetypal motifs/patterns

Bold text = references to the theme and its supporting arguments.

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Developed by Judy E. Darling GSHS November 21, 1999

Women who pursue romantic illusion are vulnerable to poor decision-making, which in turn makes it difficult for them to return to the world of obligation and duty; this theme is evident in two very similar novels that are both told from the feminine perspective. One is Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, and the other is The Awakening by Kate Chopin. These two very dissimilar authors deliver the same message through two remarkably similar central characters – Emma Bovary and Edna Pontellier. These dreamy women take the same journey and make many of the same stops along the way. An analysis of the archtypal patterns in both novels reveals how both women arrive at the all too common destination of moral and financial ruin.

The first archetypal pattern that reveals the characters’ similarities and the theme is found in the heroines’ reactions to what they percieve as their ‘villianous’ husbands. Edna lives a wealthy and langorous life, vacationing for a month on Grand Isle. Her affluent husband Leonce regards her as another possession, and his attentions to her are kind and considerate, albiet somewhat detached. He leaves frequently for the club, but brings her back money and candy. Charles, Emma’s husband, shares some of the similar characteristics with Leonce, though with less wealth and yet with much more personal and passionate devotion. He dotes on her, wishes to touch her often, and even indulges her with the very things that facilitate her affairs ~ her own horse and piano lessons in the city of Rouen. In reaction to these kindnesses, these women feel revulsed and imprisoned. The husbands are obstacles, terribly real blots upon their dreamy existences.

An additional parallel between the two tragedies involves the archetypal innocent, in this case the children of these two women. Emma’s Berte and Edna’s two sons represent duty and reality to the women. Emma has a wet nurse and then a maid to care for Berte. Edna’s parents frequently take the children for extended periods of time, and she, too, has a maid. Therefore, it would seem that the children are not such an intrusion, but Edna compares them to "…antagonists who had overcome her…" (Chopin 175). Emma cruelly pushes her little daughter Berte away from her, an impulsive decision that causes the child to cut her cheek on a brass curtian hook (Flaubert 124). Nonetheless, Emma and Edna manage to carry on their trysts in spite of the duty they owe to their children. The earliest evidence that their pursuit of romantic delusion will lead them to poor decision-making occurs in this area. By outright aggression on the part of Emma and benign neglect on the part of Edna, and by both their eventual deaths, their children suffer greatly. They may hold their husbands in disdain, but their callousness as mothers is what heightens the pathetic innocence of the children and brings greater condemnation upon them. Particularly on the part of Emma, whom Henry James called "naturally depraved" (47), this disregard for the reality of obligation marks her as more villain than victim. Her ability to make good decisions deteriorates rapidly, and her daughter Berte becomes the innocent and tragic victim. Both women neglected their children, a poor decision, and as romantic illusionists, were unable to resume their reality.

Deluded by the lie of illusion, perceiving their husbands as villains and their children as an incidental intrusion upon their dreams, the women embark upon the journey of transformation. Their first stop is a dalliance with their temptors. Robert so gently seduces Edna on the front porch of her Grand Isle summer home, awakening in her a flirtatious interest in the attention he pays to her. Emma falls for Leon in a similar seduction, talking music and poetry with him by the pharmacist’s cozy fire. Whatever the setting or circumstance, both women see before them substance for their illusion. These temptors are kind, talkative, interested, and not their husbands. Soon both women will be making decisions centered upon their desire to be with these men. Emma will compromise her household to walk with Leon to the wet-nurse’s house, and later will terribly compromise the household to finance her fling in Rouen. Edna, too, will defy social conventions, an act many critics applaud, one even suggesting "she triumphed by defying" (Levine 36), but that nonetheless led to her ruin and death. She spends a very sensual day with Robert, traveling to a small island for church and dinner, a nearly scandalous act for the time. The critic Patricia Allen points out that "So far, Leonce had put a saving public face on her actions…and so far no irrevocable damage had yet been done" (72), but that saving face will soon disappear. So it becomes obvious early on that the illusion they are pursuing as they respond to the tempting whispers of Leon and Robert is impacting their ability to wisely choose their courses of action. The consequences will continue to mount, and the resulting disasters will be more than either woman can sort through or solve. Hence, here is additional evidence that both Flaubert and Chopin understand how nearly impossible it is for any woman suffering from illusion, and growing weaker through its pursuit, to resume a reality radically altered for the worse by their irresponsibility.

Because these women have fallen victim to romantic delusion, and because they are so dissatisfied with the details of their dull lives, they become quite vulnerable to the most tragic of decisions, that of falling for the archetypal trickster. Compromising, alluring, and sensual, both Alcee and Rudolph appear at just the right moment, considering their primary goal is the seduction of a beautiful woman. Like sly stalkers hovering over their prey, these men rely upon clever tricks to ply the illusions they see in their victim’s eyes. Alcee is less villianous than Rudolph; Chopin gives him a mild reputation, subtly suggested by Doctor Mandalay’s "I hope to heaven it isn’t Alcee" (124). His first ‘trick’ is to step inside Edna’s house, after accompanying her home from the races, to ‘light his cigarette" (129). By the time he leaves, Edna has agreed to accompany him to the races again. In a short while, Alcee becomes "like a narcotic" to her (132). Her decision to respond to his advances will create a terrible reality that she cannot face. Unlike Chopin’s sublte characterization of Alcee, Flaubert demonstrates the crafty deceit of Rudolphe quite overtly. Rudolphe bluntly states his goal upon first seeing Emma:

Three flattering words and she’d adore me, I’m sure. How tender and charming it would be. But how would I get rid of her later? …"I’ll have her!" he exclaimed, grinding his stick into a clump of earth. He began working out the strategy of the enterprise and asked himself: "Where should we meet? How? (137)

Emma hoped to transform herself into the perennially beautiful heroine of her romance novels, but she cannot. She is abruptly abandoned by Rudolphe at the very moment she expected to slip out of reality and into the dreamy world of her illusion. In such a fragile state, she reunites with Leon and hopes to begin anew. Emma’s liason with Leon triggers a landslide of wretched decision-making. By the end of the novel, she has created a huge debt for her family and faces blackmail and shame. She has lost all reasoning skills and seems to dash and dart around in a surreal world of shattering illusion. In a grim and gruesome scene, she swallows arsenic and endures a wretched death that her poor husband desperately watches in horror.

Edna, as well, can only transform herself into death

Jung suggests