Eloisa to Abelard, including love as an institution and compared to Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind, a film or The Princess of Cleves or the Triumph of Love

Posted: January 10th, 2014

Your essay should address issues and themes related to women and institutions.

For example, if you’re writing about the body and Madame Bovary (perhaps you’e interested in why her body is always divided up in description) you could incorporate one of the following to help shape your argument:
a medical text from the 19th century that talks about women’s bodies
a fashion magazine or illustration from the 19th century
a contemporary article on women’s bodies in literature
You could also compare the novel to one of the filmed versions of the novel, and compare the way the body is described in the novel to the way it is represented on film.
From here you would formulate a thesis about why Emma is represented in this way. For example, if you went with the medical text option:
Readers encounter Emm’s body as a set of isolated, dissected narrative parts. Madame Bovary thus resembles medical texts of the 19th century, which analyzed women’s bodies piecemeal in order to try and understand their inner workings. Yet even as it references medical ideas, Madame Bovary also presents a challenge to medicine, because cutting Emma up in narrative ultimately distances the reader from a complete understanding of her