Based on Gustave Flaubert’s novel: Madame Bovary

Adapted from English by Agnė PULOKAITĖ

“She wanted a son; (...) she would have called him George, and the thought of giving birth to a boy was like long-awaited revenge for all the helplessness of her previous life. A man, at least, is free (...) She gave birth one Sunday at about six in the morning, as the sun was rising. ‘It’s a girl!’ Charles said.”

One reason Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary remains so relevant is that the desires of its protagonist, Emma, are not entirely her own. They arise from the patriarchal imagination, shaping how she understands love, happiness, beauty and self-fulfilment. What seems deeply personal is in fact formed by social expectations long before it is named as her supposedly personal choice. Today, this process can be described as a social algorithm: a network of cultural narratives, images and norms that quietly shapes all our aspirations and fantasies. Today’s social media feeds and recommendation systems work like the romantic novels Emma reads. They constantly present models of passion, success and happiness, teaching us not only what to desire, but how to desire it. Emma’s tragedy lies not in excessive desires, but in pursuing ideals imposed on her. In this sense, she is no exception, but a strikingly contemporary figure, caught between the promise of individual freedom and the invisible forces shaping her desires.

Oliver Frljić, one of Europe’s most prominent directors, often described by critics as a provocateur of the theatre, created the production Metamorphosis, based on the work of Franz Kafka, at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre. He now presents a new adaptation and a new work based on Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary. According to the director, Emma’s downfall in the novel is neither a moral failure nor the fate of a victim. It arises from a contradiction at the heart of existence: the protagonist is encouraged to desire freedom, romance and self-fulfilment, yet the same society that creates these desires offers very few ways to realise them. Emma’s struggle is between what she was taught to desire and what the world allows her to become.

“Rather than judge Emma, this production explores the mechanisms that create her. It looks at Madame Bovary not only as the story of one woman’s unfulfilled life, but also as an examination of the social forces that shape our desires. Emma’s fate reveals how identity, fantasies and ambitions are formed through stories we inherit before recognising them as our own. Another reason this work feels so contemporary is that we never quite know whose voice we are hearing. Sometimes a sentence seems to belong to the narrator, then suddenly it sounds like Emma’s thought, a social cliché or even our own judgement as readers. Flaubert constantly blurs those boundaries, making it difficult to distinguish observation from desire, irony from sincerity, or criticism from identification. Instead of telling us what to think about Emma, the novel draws us into the language that shapes her,” says Ada.