Le motif de la chaleur et de la serre chaude dans Madame Bovary de Flaubert

The article examines the theme of warmth (chaleur) and its leitmotif, the theme of the hot-house (serre chaude), as symbolic expressions of Emma's striving to attain an ideal state of existence (emotional and social) in the midst of her spiritual isolation and feeling of alienation from her milieu. Flaubert bodies forth this aspiration and its attendant alienation by using what Bachelard terms "the dialectic of opposites" (la dialectique des contraires), namely, sensations of warmth opposed to sensations of coldness, the former indicating the plenitude of the ideal state, the latter, the lack of it, or inability to achieve it. This method of designating a sentiment by means of a physical sensation is well suited to the character of Emma, basically sensual. The contrasted physical states of warmth and coldness stand for, and underscore, the fundamental argument of illusion and reality. The leitmotif of the hot-house (an artificially created atmosphere fostering exotic plants) helps in portraying the theme of illusion. (In French.) (LL)