Goodreads | Madame Bovary (Bantam Classics)

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Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

03/27/08

bookshelves: continental-european, film, nineteenth-century, psychological-drama

Read in October, 2002

recommends it for: incurable romantics and those who love nineteenth-century literature in general

Like every European teenager who takes French at secondary school, I was supposed to read Madame Bovary when I was seventeen or so. I chose not to, and boy, am I glad I did. I couldn't possibly have done justice to the richness of Flaubert's writing as a seventeen-year-old. Moreover, I probably would have hated the characters so much that I never would have given the book another chance. Which would have been a shame, as it's really quite deserving of the tremendous reputation it has.

...more Like every European teenager who takes French at secondary school, I was supposed to read Madame Bovary when I was seventeen or so. I chose not to, and boy, am I glad I did. I couldn't possibly have done justice to the richness of Flaubert's writing as a seventeen-year-old. Moreover, I probably would have hated the characters so much that I never would have given the book another chance. Which would have been a shame, as it's really quite deserving of the tremendous reputation it has.

Madame Bovary is the story of Emma Rouault, a mid-nineteenth-century peasant woman who has read too many sentimental novels for her own good. When the hopeless romantic marries Charles Bovary, a country doctor, she thinks she is going to lead a life full of passion and grandeur, but instead she gets stuck in a provincial town where nothing ever happens. Hell-bent on some escapism and yearning for someone who understands her romantic needs, Emma embarks on two adulterous affairs, plunges herself into debt and ends up very badly indeed, leaving behind a husband who might not have been the dashing hero of her dreams but who most certainly did care about her.

Madame Bovary is most famous for its portrayal of an unfulfilled woman, and indeed it's Emma's ennui and desperate need for romance that the reader will remember. They are described so convincingly that it's hard to believe the author was a man rather than a woman. However, Madame Bovary isn't all about one woman going through life dreaming and breaking down every time reality catches up with her. Like other great classics of realism, it's about society – about the social mores and conditions which instil certain kinds of behaviour in people and then punish them for it. Flaubert's depiction of Emma's provincial village (a haven of all that is base and mediocre) is painstakingly detailed and realistic. It's a wonderfully vivid and well-observed account of life in mid-nineteenth-century rural France, where people go about doing their jobs, conducting illicit affairs, gossiping behind each other's backs, ruining each other financially and generally leading lives which are far from exalted. Flaubert's portrayal of his characters is unabashedly vicious and misanthropic, but such is the quality of his writing that you forgive him for taking such a dim view of humanity. There are descriptions in the book (the seduction at the market, the club-foot operation, the endlessly prolonged death from arsenic poisoning) which rank among the best things nineteenth-century realism has to offer – gloriously life-like scenes which make you feel as if you're right there in the thick of things, watching things happen in front of your horrified eyes. And if the whole thing has a tragic and deterministic slant to it, well, so be it. That's realism for you. At least Flaubert has the decency to grant his heroine a few sighs of rapture before her inexorable demise. For it may be a realist novel, but it has some genuinely romantic moments of passion and drama (cab ride through Rouen, anyone?), and is all the better for it.

Ultimately, how you respond to Madame Bovary depends on your own susceptibility to romantic notions. If, like Emma Bovary, you're prone to dreams of passion, beauty and perfection, and yearn to feel and experience rather than being stuck in a dreary life in a village where nothing ever happens, chances are you'll be able to relate to Emma and thus see the genius of Flaubert's depiction of her. If, on the other hand, you think that such romantic escapism is a lot of sentimental, self-indulgent claptrap (which it is – that's the tragedy of it!), you probably won't be able to relate to Emma at all, and therefore won't much appreciate her as a tragic heroine. As for myself, I'm definitely in the former camp. If I'd been Emma, I probably would have walked into the same traps that she does. I would have fallen in love with the one neighbour who seems to understand my need for intensity, I would have gone through the same mad cycle of repentance, dissatisfaction and making the same mistakes again, and I probably would have spent a bit too much money in my quest for soul-affirming experiences, as well. My ruin wouldn't have been as complete as Emma's, but it would have been fed by the same dreams and desires. Oh, yes. So don't let anyone tell you Madame Bovary is an old-fashioned creature whose dilemmas are no longer relevant to modern readers. There are plenty of people in modern society who are as much in love with romance itself as she is, and not just women, either. And as for discontent, how many people today aren't dissatisfied with their lives because they don't match the glamorous/exciting lives they see on TV? And how many people today don't rack up huge debts because the magazines they read have led them to believe that they're entitled to more than is within their means? Replace 'sentimental novels' by 'TV', 'movies' and 'magazines', and all of a sudden Emma's cravings won't seem so outdated any more. Quite the contrary; they're as timeless and universal as they ever were. That's the hallmark of a classic – it speaks to us from across a century and a half and shows us ourselves. We may not much like the picture of ourselves, but it's pretty powerful all the same.

I'd give the book four and a half stars if I could, but alas. In the absence of half stars, four stars will have to do, with the assurance that it's well worth another half.
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Núria rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

10/13/07

bookshelves: 2006, 5-favoritos, decimononicos, literatura-en-frances, mios, para-la-isla-desierta, read-more-than-once

Read in May, 2005

recommends it for: rebeldes inconformistas y melancólicos insatisfechos

Uno de los libros más deprimentes que he leído nunca. Uno de los pocos que me ha hecho llorar (literalmente). Uno de mis favoritos, a pesar de que leerlo cada vez sea una experiencia devastadora, pero supongo que soy masoquista.

Emma Bovary es un seregoísta, caprichoso e inmaduro, y encima con muy poco criterio. Pero a pesar de todos sus defectos, Emma se hace querer, no sólo porque sea un personaje perfectamente construido, sino porque es apasionada pero está profundamente insatisfecha...more Uno de los libros más deprimentes que he leído nunca. Uno de los pocos que me ha hecho llorar (literalmente). Uno de mis favoritos, a pesar de que leerlo cada vez sea una experiencia devastadora, pero supongo que soy masoquista.

Emma Bovary es un seregoísta, caprichoso e inmaduro, y encima con muy poco criterio. Pero a pesar de todos sus defectos, Emma se hace querer, no sólo porque sea un personaje perfectamente construido, sino porque es apasionada pero está profundamente insatisfecha, y aún así no quiere resignarse. El problema de Emma es el que tenemos todos, que la realidad no resulta nunca tan maravillosa como nos habían prometido. El problema de Emma no es que haya leído demasiados libros, sino que ha creído que lo que le contaban los libros era la realidad. A pesar de que se da un porrazo tras otro, a pesar de que tiene delante de sus narices la evidencia de que la realidad nunca es tan maravillosa ni intensa como la ficción, ella sigue queriendo algo más. Desea algo con todas sus fuerzas, lo consigue, pero una vez lo ha conseguido se da cuenta que no es lo que imaginaba, que esto tampoco le va a traer la felicidad. Por más cosas que consiga nunca será feliz porque la insatisfacción ha arraigado en ella. Es por todo esto que la obra es tan triste, porque parece que nos dice que la felicidad nunca es posible.

Emma nunca conseguirá la felicidad, pero los otros personajes tampoco. Creo que quizás el personaje más significativo de toda la novela sea León. Al principio, León es un joven idealista, apasionado, que anhela una felicidad que está más allá de la vida burguesa a la que está destinado. Pero luego se va a estudiar a París y lo perdemos de vista durante algunos capítulos. Cuando vuelve a reaparecer, se ha convertido en una persona práctica, cínica y materialista.

La primera vez que lo leí me pareció que esta evolución era demasiado brusca para ser del todo creíble. Ahora me doy cuenta de que era la única evolución posible y que es un acierto que Flaubert nos de esta elipsis y no se preocupe en describirla, porque al fin y al cabo ésta es la evolución natural, no es necesario contar nada, es de manual. León no tiene otra opción que renunciar a todos los sueños vagos y los deseos intangibles de juventud, y convertirse en un perfecto burgués con un perfecto trabajo y una perfecta familia. En esta sociedad tan hipócrita y abyecta, no hay lugar para los que no se conforman, los que quieren salirse de la norma; no hay lugar para Emma.

Pero es que los otros personajes tampoco te dan alternativas mejores. El único que parece realmente feliz, Charles, al final de la obra se da cuenta de que todo ha sido un engaño, una mentira. Y los otros son realmente despreciables. El que al final triunfa es el farmacéutico, Homais, que es el típico burgués mediocre que no triunfa por su inteligencia, sino por su jeta y sus malas artes. Al final, la obra nos deja totalmente vacíos, porque no ha dejado de recordarnos ni un instante toda la monotonía, la banalidad y el tedio que hay en lo que llamamos vida, y sobre todo que nunca podremos hacer nada para escapar. ...less

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Shannon rated it:

(review of isbn 207041311X)

09/22/07

Read in January, 2006

Why are all the "great classics" lead by famed female heroines all too often about personal freedom thru means of sexual compromise leading to abject misery and ultimate demise? I realize it's an accurate depiction of culture and times, however why are Bovary and Moll Flanders the memorable matriarchs of classic literature? See my commentary on the Awakening for similar frustrations. Why aren't there more works about strong women making a difference in their own lives if not those o...more

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Trevor rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

07/25/08

I’ve just read Bruce Nagle’s review of this book – in which he talks of the benefits of returning to a classic work of fiction after some time so that a ‘different self’ can ‘acquire new insights’ into a much loved work. If I didn’t have so much else to read this beautiful comment would be enough to make me take up this book again. I remember so loving this book when I first read it that it would be no hardship to read it again.

It is odd the things that get associated with ...more I’ve just read Bruce Nagle’s review of this book – in which he talks of the benefits of returning to a classic work of fiction after some time so that a ‘different self’ can ‘acquire new insights’ into a much loved work. If I didn’t have so much else to read this beautiful comment would be enough to make me take up this book again. I remember so loving this book when I first read it that it would be no hardship to read it again.

It is odd the things that get associated with books in one’s life – I particularly remember reading this one on the train on the way to and home from work years ago. I remember being utterly transported – yes, I know, there’s a pun there somewhere – by the story.

But I also remember talking to a friend on a train about it years later, who was also reading it on the train, talking to her about the ‘error’ I spotted in the book. Who is the narrator? In the first chapter he is clearly a school mate of the child who will grow to become the pitifully inept Dr Bovary – but the narrator becomes God at some stage, well, at least someone with the same ability to peer into the lives of others as God is reputed to have.

This book isn’t the book one might think it is. There comes a moment in this book when one is awoken from a dream and the book stops being a romance set in the French countryside and becomes something infinitely deeper and, well, terrifyingly human.

I’ve only now thought of the connection between Madam Bovary and Nora of A Doll’s House. Two women trapped in unreal kinds of ‘conventions’, both getting into financial difficulty to sustain their unreal lives and then both finding ways to get out of these ‘troubles’ that one might not quite expect – definitely not expecting the consequences given how our expectations have been moulded by the stories up until these points, these 'turning points'. Emma’s (Madam Bovary's) choice seems so romantic at the moment she makes it – but it then so quickly turns to shit – and this is the moment I referred to above, the moment when this novel becomes quite different to what I had expected it to remain. Nora’s choice, on the other hand, is utterly revolutionary - so much so that I believe the play was banned in many countries.

But perhaps that is a difference between life and art – far too often in life the choices we make are the bland middle path and we are not even Emma Bovary (which is no bad thing) but also, far too rarely, are we Nora Helmer either.

If you have never read this, you had better do it now or you simply will not get a chance to experience the joy Bruce spoke of in his review.
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DeLaina rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

02/02/08

bookshelves: read-in-college

Read in January, 1991

This is one of the books that has had a profound effect on my life. The moral? Be happy with what you have and where you are!!! Mme. Bovary fritters away her entire life with thoughts of, "If only X would happen, THEN I could be truly happy" and yet she never is. She gets everything she thinks she wants only to find out she's still not content.

I read this while I was engaged and at the time, thought, "Well, I'll be happier when I'm married, but once I am, then life will be fab...more

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Dot rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

06/11/07

recommends it for: people who like their heroines to sleep around

This is kind of embarrassing. I think I really wanted to be like a literary character when I was a teenager, so I made myself identify with Emma Bovary. We had nothing in common. I was pretty much celibate most of my high school years and really kind of disinterested in romance. She, on the other hand, was love-starved and I'm pretty sure she fucked everyone in the book. Just no alignment whatsoever. But I'm glad I got over that.

This book was alright. I don't really remember what went on bec...more

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Katherine rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

02/11/08

bookshelves: awesome

Just finished this morning. Wow. Wow. WOW. Straight into the all-time top 10.

Emma Bovary, wife of a kind and stable country doctor, longs for the depth of feeling and the hyper-reality she experiences in reading romantic novels or attending the opera, but her reality always falls woefully short. In search of a life where her ideals play out for her, she throws herself into high living and adulterous affairs.

This surprisingly bright and lively novel renders the failure of the ideal in rel...more Just finished this morning. Wow. Wow. WOW. Straight into the all-time top 10.

Emma Bovary, wife of a kind and stable country doctor, longs for the depth of feeling and the hyper-reality she experiences in reading romantic novels or attending the opera, but her reality always falls woefully short. In search of a life where her ideals play out for her, she throws herself into high living and adulterous affairs.

This surprisingly bright and lively novel renders the failure of the ideal in relation to the real (or is it the other way around?) and above all, the limitations of being a capital-R Romantic. Amendment 6/18/08: The more I let Madame Bovary sit inside my mind, the more I'm convinced of a philosophical and artistic ambiguity at its core. Yes, Emma's romantic affectation hurts the people who care for her, isolates her in the tyranny of her own feelings, and leads to her (stupid) end, but look at the world that exists in indifference to it. Given a choice, who would enthusiastically choose that? Isn't there something in Flaubert that keeps turning toward dream, in spite of itself?

I hesitated to approach this novel, as I suspect many readers have, because I worried that its narrative would devolve into some 19th-century man making fun of a woman's emotions. However, that's not Madame Bovary at all - in no small part because of Flaubert's incredible amount of empathy with Emma. As another commenter noted, it's not hard to imagine him as a young man reading stacks of trashy novels, sighing beneath the summer stars, and eating all the roses off the trellis. You may be laughing at Emma, but whoever you are, you're laughing at yourself. I'm Emma Bovary too. We all are.

And perhaps I'm reading this with too modern an eye, but I saw plenty of very subtle commentary about the way women are taught to act in regards to their own emotions. For example, how can Emma have any influence in the public sphere or in her own life, other than by creating disruptive, excessively emotional scenes until a man who thinks himself kind-hearted gives in to her? If her passion encompasses her own degradation or her own destruction, so much the better for it. (And as a rather bourgeois woman myself, I feel that Flaubert has nailed the unspoken longing for storms and the terror of their secretly wished-for arrival.)

And the language. Dear god. Two scenes made me put the book down and go get some fresh air because I quite seriously thought I was going to vomit.

Favorite passage:
'As for Emma, she didn't think she was in love with him. Love, she believed, should arrive all at once with thunder and lightning - a whirlwind from the skies that affects life, turns it every which way, wrests resolutions aside like leaves, and plunges the entire heart into an abyss. She did not know that rain forms lakes on house terraces when the gutters are stopped up, and she remained secure in her ignorance until she suddenly discovered a crack in the wall.'...less

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shuurei rated it:

(review of isbn 207041311X)

02/04/08

Read in January, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Madame Bovary depicts a bored and lonely wife. Marrying Charles maybe a big mistake for her but she cannot blame anybody but herself, her decision is subjective. She believes too much in love at first sight. What I hate about Emma was that she was so obssessed with love! But she didn't know what true love is all about. She described loved a hurricane that will just surprised you--love at first sight, her obssession with literature made her believe that when there is a damsel in distress there wi...more

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Helen (Helena/Nell) rated it:

(review of isbn 0140440151)

10/18/08

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Helen (Helena/Nell) by: An unnamed academic in York University...
recommends it for: anyone.

Madame Bovary is such a strange book! It was one of five novels on the preliminary reading-list sent out to students just before I started a degree in English Literature at the University of York (England) more than thirty-five years ago. Good god—what a thought! The others on the list were Scarlet and Black, Anna Karenina, Great Expectations and Middlemarch. An amazing set. I galloped through them (I used to read faster in those days), and then I forgot Madame Bovary ...more

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Cendri rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

06/04/08

Read in June, 2008

This was the first book I read on my new Kindle (a birthday present). This is totally irrelevant to the book, but it was a "novel" experience, so I thought I'd share :)

I'd tried to read M. Bovary once before and failed utterly. This time it clicked. As I've gotten older, I've gotten more cynical, more critical of unabashed love. All those movies where the guy gets the girl and they kiss and hug and walk off into the sunset - I now wonder: what happens later? If we checked back...more

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ruzmarì rated it:

(review of isbn 0393979172)

04/07/07

bookshelves: grenouille

It's not hard to find a nineteenth-century novel that depicts the world of ordinary people ruined by ambitions beyond their station, but Madame Bovary might just be the best of the bunch. Emma Bovary is a bizarre and dubious heroine, frustrated with her lot in life and her husband's complacent mulishness about things. She has affairs, spends money lavishly - money she doesn't have -, racks up thousands of francs of debt, pushes her husband Charles to perform surgeries outside his capabilities,...more

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Bruce rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

06/04/08

Read in May, 2008

An outstanding classic of late 19th century literature. For me this was a reread after about 25 years, and the work was as impressive this time as it was before. Reading excellent literature at different stages in one's life is a fascinating experience, since one brings a different "self" to the work and takes away new insights.

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Taka rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

10/03/08

bookshelves: french_lit, japan_jul07-present

Read in October, 2008

A perfect novel?

That's what the critics say. Some reviewers are more honest. They say it's admirably boring. The critics snub at them and say they don't understand the true literary value of the novel.

I for one found the first 140 pages supremely boring, with page after page of static descriptions and summaries of what happened. As a modern reader, I would've liked more scenes, but more than that, I wanted more drama. The novel may accurately and vividly depict what the provincial life w...more A perfect novel?

That's what the critics say. Some reviewers are more honest. They say it's admirably boring. The critics snub at them and say they don't understand the true literary value of the novel.

I for one found the first 140 pages supremely boring, with page after page of static descriptions and summaries of what happened. As a modern reader, I would've liked more scenes, but more than that, I wanted more drama. The novel may accurately and vividly depict what the provincial life was like back in the early 19th century France; it may make scathing social commentaries of the day; it may be rich in symbolism and themes that can be studied and discussed in English classes and further vivisected in academic papers; but despite all these seeming virtues, I just have to say that the first 140 pages was quite excruciating and the rest was just short of "good."

It got better after the first 140 pages, no doubt, but I must admit that I wasn't drawn into it. Punctuated by long expositions that didn't progress the story one bit or illuminate the characters in any way, the novel's tempo was much slow and the constant interruptions just plain annoying.

My philosophy is that literature ought to be entertaining as well as edifying and beautiful. Unfortunately, I found Flaubert's translated prose dull and clanky. And more importantly, it was, for the better part of the novel, hypnotically sleep-inducing. It may be edifying or informative or didactic or thematically and symbolically subtle. But without the beauty of the prose or an engaging story, I didn't think it deserves the high accolades it receives universally from anyone who studied literature.

I love reading literature, but when I'm evaluating any work of it, I try to leave what others have said before and be frank with myself. As far as Madame Bovary is concerned, the prose disappoints and the story sucks. That's my honest-to-God opinion of this much revered, (to me at least) overrated work.

Classics doesn't mean you must like it. If it doesn't make you fall in love with it, chuck it away and move on.

Overall, the first 140 pages sucked tremendously and the rest had its moments but was OK on average = it was OK

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Anh rated it:

(review of isbn 1405880384)

06/27/08

It’s difficult for me to begin to describe this story, it’s because the main characteristic, Emma Bovary, is very complex. When I finished this novel, I felt extremely fortunate because I was born in a time and place in which I have the complete freedom. Throughout the life of main characteristic, Emma Bovary, it’s not fair for the perfect woman; her life was just forced in the small word of a man (it’s popular in the mid 19th century). For me, Emma is very special; she has beauty, smart...more

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Steve rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

05/18/08

bookshelves: french-writers

A masterful examination of what happens when a young woman reared on idiotic and impossible romantic notions of marriage marries a country doctor with simple tastes and small ambitions. She envisions married life as a state that will be full of passion, mystery and exoticism, and is unsurprisingly let down when the reality doesn't measure up to her absurd expectations. She has neither the intelligence nor the practicality to see marriage for what it is-an practical agreement between two indivi...more

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Kristina rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

04/21/08

Read in April, 2008

recommended to Kristina by: Avital Ronell, Joe Litvak

Friends, please comment on this review if you think I'm totally off. I am still thinking this novel over.

I don't know that much about French literature except for the "corruption" it symbolized for British Victorians. However, if there is any corrolation between what was going on generally in British and French literature, then I am very surprised this novel was written in 1857. It seems much more like a modernist or late-century novel to me than one that was written in the Victori...more Friends, please comment on this review if you think I'm totally off. I am still thinking this novel over.

I don't know that much about French literature except for the "corruption" it symbolized for British Victorians. However, if there is any corrolation between what was going on generally in British and French literature, then I am very surprised this novel was written in 1857. It seems much more like a modernist or late-century novel to me than one that was written in the Victorian era. This is not only because of the way Flaubert writes so "explicitly" (for the time) about Emma's adultery -- and even more surprisingly, her lack of remorse or restraint in them -- but also because of the morbidity -- and sometimes even morbid humor? -- of some of the images; for instance, the blind man seems like something out of Djuna Barnes, and when the black liquid pours out of Emma's mouth after the onlookers comment on how beautiful she looks in death (is it wrong that this is my favorite moment in the novel?), it seems like a modernist comment on Victorian obsession with the beauty of female passivity, or perhaps simply a comment on the necessary decay of beauty.

I think this novel is generally seen as a tragedy (?) or at least melodrama, but I read an interesting post here about the novel as black comedy, and I'm inclined to agree. First off, the various scenes featuring horrific views of the body (the prolonged death scene, the operation on the club foot, the blind man, etc) seem related to black comedy... am I completely off here? Also, I was fascinated with Emma, but somehow I didn't see her story as tragic exactly. Her desires are definitely real, and I certainly felt for Emma, but her desire for romance is at once understandable and laughable. There does seem to be something comic (I'm talking morbid and ironic humor here) and horrific about her insatiable desires. The image of her eating the arsenic, just shoving it in her mouth, is burned into my brain. At the beginning of the novel, she doesn't eat because of depression, but at the end, she has turned into the opposite, consuming to the extent that it actually kills her. She goes from this quietly pathetic creature to someone who has completely lost all control. I suppose one could argue this is exactly a sexist stereotype of women -- either completely passive/selfless to all-consuming -- but even so, the way Emma vacillates between these positions suggests that throwing herself into these stereotypical roles is the only pleasure she can derive from such a dull life.

I agree with Avital Ronell (Crack Wars) that Emma Bovary is an addict. She longs for a "fix," and once she gets one, she needs more and more to satisfy her, until she's lost everything in the service to her "addiction." (Incidentally, what is it about these arguably proto-feminist characters whose downfall or awakening derives at least as much from financial issues as sexual ones -- Emma Bovary, Nora in A Doll's House, Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, etc? Perhaps a comment on how thoroughly women's sexual and economic fates are intertwined?)

Finally, I will say I did feel sorry for Charles, not so much because Emma cheated on him -- who could blame her? -- but because he was so dumb and naive. I think it's funny that some people condemn Emma for her "selfish" behavior. If I were married off at 18 or 20 or whatever to a guy I realized was dull and kinda dumb, with no hope for divorce, I might look for some kind of escape or diversion as well. It was a stroke of genius that Flaubert didn't make Charles a bad guy -- in fact, he's the only one who was faithful to Emma and always thought well of her, though he didn't understand her -- but rather just clueless and boring....less

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David rated it:

(review of isbn 0192840398)

05/03/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in May, 2008

Flaubert is da bomb! Seriously, Who knew? I suppose if I had done French, rather than German, in high school I would have discovered Madame Bovary before now. Better late than never.

Obviously, I knew what Madame Bovary was about before reading it. But I had no idea how brilliantly Flaubert would suck me in to the story. He pulls no punches, just lets the story unfold to its horrifying, inexorable conclusion. What I hadn't expected were his unerring eye for the details of the life of the bour...more

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