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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Key Examples in Madame Bovary
Part 1, Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Pink-Feathered Bird:
As Emma’s discontent with married life with Charles grows in Part 1, Chapter 6, she begins to reflect on love and in doing so compares love to a pink-feathered bird, which reveals how love for Emma is more than just about affection for another person:
But the anxieties of her new situation, or perhaps the agitation caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last possessed that marvellous passion which had hitherto been like a gorgeous pink-feathered bird floating high above in a splendid poetical heaven; – and it seemed quite inconceivable that this calm life of hers could really be the happiness of which she used to dream.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Beeswax-Stained Heart:
In Part 1, Chapter 8, Madame Bovary uses a simile to compare Emma’s obsession with living more extravagantly after her encounter with noblemen at a ball with her similarly affected shoes, which are stained with beeswax from the ballroom floor.
Unlock with LitCharts A+She made no protest though; piously she folded away in the chest of drawers her lovely ballgown and even her satin slippers, with their soles yellowed from the beeswax on the dance-floor. Her heart was just like that: contact with the rich had left it smeared with something that would never fade away.
Related Themes:
Part 1, Chapter 9
Explanation and Analysis—Shipwrecked Sailor:
While despairing about the dullness of her married life in Part 1, Chapter 9, Emma compares her growing hopelessness for something interesting to happen to that of a shipwrecked sailor.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Down in her soul, the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked sailor, she perused her solitary world with hopeless eyes, searching for some white sail far away where the horizon turns to mist. She didn’t know what her luck might bring, what wind would blow it her way, what shore it would take her to, whether it was a sloop or a three-masted schooner, laden with anguish or crammed to the portholes with happiness.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Tropical Plant:
Once again, when reflecting on the mundanity of her life and wishing for something greater in Paris in Part 1, Chapter 9, Emma compares love to a tropical plant to explain how she believes love has a very particular set of requirements to flourish:
Unlock with LitCharts A+Like some tropical plant, did love not require the correct soil and a special temperature? The sighing in the moonlight, the long embracing, the tears flowing down on to the hands of the one forsaken, all the fevers of the flesh and the tender anguish of loving – none of these could be had without a balcony in some great tranquil château, without a silk-curtained deep-carpeted boudoir, with lavish vases of flowers and a bed on a little platform, without the sparkle of precious stones and the glitter of gold-braided livery.
Related Themes:
