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The Americanization of Emma Bovary: From Feminist Icon to Desperate Housewife

This article investigates Emma Bovary’s surprisingly widespread appearance in twenty-first-century American women’s media culture, wherein she has transitioned from cautionary figure to postfeminist icon. Historicizing Emma’s often troubled image, the article traces her current popularity to her earlier recuperation and simultaneous Americanization by second-wave feminists, arguing that an interest in Madame Bovary spoke to the era’s interrogation of the effects of gendered power. During this period, feminists exonerated Emma of her multiple failings on the grounds that her dilemmas, particularly with respect to marriage and motherhood, could be recast in gendered terms. In contrast to these forgiving accounts, contemporary appropriations of Emma in works such as Little Children, Desperate Housewives, and The Sopranos coldly point out the deficiencies of the women to whom Emma is compared, citing them as foolish readers who neglect or ignore the insights her struggles could provide. Such products mimic the ambivalent attitude Gustave Flaubert demonstrated toward his fictional creation: as is Emma, contemporary female characters are assessed from the perspective of ironic distance, a postfeminist sensibility characterized by tonal fluctuations between sympathy and disdain.