ABSTRACT
Like many great writers, Flaubert had the uncanny ability to get inside the heads of his characters. With a leap of empathy, he imagined the world from the viewpoint of a common, middle-class woman-Emma Bovary-and in so doing, he described how the life of al9th century woman was constrained by a host of social conventions and legal re strictions. With a cynical irony, Flaubert understood too that sexism can be lodged in a woman’s as well as in a man’s mind, and that vanity frailty, and self-delusion are human characteristics that know no gender. Flaubert helped us to understand the complexities of gender by portray ing the myriad events that mold the lives of individual women and men.
