Flaubert's Emma Bovary: Narcissism and Suicide

In a letter to Louise Colet, Flaubert expresses the hope that the “reader will be unaware … of the psychological workings concealed beneath the form” of Madame Bovary (Steegmuller 207). Flaubert's hope has been fulfilled, at least in the case of the critic who says that of Flaubert's “many admirable qualities, psychological insight was not among them” (Turnell 546). Nonetheless, the criticism contains many observations about Emma's psychology, although very few of these observations are of a clinical nature.1 I believe that an understanding of pathological narcissism provides a coherent interpretation of Emma's psychology, as well as a description of the novel's frequently mentioned fatalitéintérieure.

Pathological narcissism is a personality disorder characterized by intense, excessive, and sometimes fatal devotion to the ego-ideal. The function of the ego-ideal in the normal person is to nourish the ego by providing it with self-esteem and a sense of meaningfulness. However, in pathological narcissism, aspirations and ideals which form the ego-ideal become destructive images of “perfection and omnipotence” (Jasovic-Gasic and Vesel 371). The narcissistic ego weakens progressively so that in extreme cases, such as Emma's, “one dies for one's ego-ideal rather than let it die” (Menaker 259). This implacable and deadly allegiance to the ego-ideal is Emma's idée fixe. Because the narcissist believes the ego-ideal to be more real than the object-world (the external world), the ego-ideal malignantly overwhelms the ego with its inordinate needs and demands. Thus, the narcissist is “exploitive