Goodreads | Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics)

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Bovary	5	05/23/2008 07:54PM

Martine rated it:

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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Nicole rated it:

08/01/08

Read in August, 2008

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

This book is probably deserving of more than three stars, and I expect I will read it again at some point and be able to give it a different rating. Working in favor of this is Flaubert's generally lovely prose and lush entwining of commonplace details and objects with philosophical asides, psychological observations, and some interesting commentaries on religion, which I imagine did not reflect popular opinion at the time this book was first published. Flaubert's dialogue is also cleaner and le...more This book is probably deserving of more than three stars, and I expect I will read it again at some point and be able to give it a different rating. Working in favor of this is Flaubert's generally lovely prose and lush entwining of commonplace details and objects with philosophical asides, psychological observations, and some interesting commentaries on religion, which I imagine did not reflect popular opinion at the time this book was first published. Flaubert's dialogue is also cleaner and less stilted than what I would generally expect from a book of this period, with the exception of Homais the apothecary, and this comes across as intentional on the author's part, a trait specific to that character.

My first time reading it, however, I found myself deeply frustrated with the weaknesses of Emma Bovary. Her absurdly romantic ideals are simply unattainable, yet to her the world is not worth living in if she can't attain them, which makes the end essentially a foregone conclusion early on in the story. No lover, however handsome or charming or wealthy or smitten with her, will ever be able to provide her with the devotion and lavish attention she requires every single moment of every single day. The irony is that her husband is perhaps the closest to this she could possibly get, yet she can't tolerate him. Which leads me to wonder if she would have turned against any man she married ... she gives reasons for her dislike of Bovary, but they are so petty that they feel more like excuses than anything else. It seems impossible to me that any man could have made her happy for long once she was permanently tied to him.
The men around her are also rather pathetic. Her husband dotes on her to the point of alienating his own mother, but is willfully oblivious to her affairs, which she is at times clumsy about hiding and at other times doesn't bother to hide at all. Her first affair ends in an act of cowardice, and her second fizzles out despite their mutual denial of the reality that their passion has faded.

The fact that I'm so frustrated with the characters may actually just point to this being a better book than I give it credit for. I also admit to having limited sympathy for heroines who desire deeply, get what they desire and devour it, and then can't live with the consequences so sink away into madness and death. I will try to justify my rating without attacking the characters further.

There are a number of peripheral characters brought in, a couple from Tostes, but primarily ones from the Bovarys' time in Yonville, who are part of a scene or discussed briefly early in the book but not characterized strongly enough to stick clearly in my memory, and then brought back in towards the end of the book with the expectation that I'm still going to remember their relevance. In several cases, I don't, which leads me to wonder what purpose the author had in creating them at all and why he felt them sufficiently important to the story to reappear near its close.
Also, I wonder about the necessity of the text after Emma's death. We do need to know that neither of her lovers attended her funeral and that they were both sound asleep while Charles was up all night mourning her, but we know that he will never recover from her death. We know he still has tremendous debt that he can't repay hanging over his head (and if the debtors would not bend for Emma, they certainly will not for him), we know the rest of his existence will be grim and dull without her in it, we at least suspect that her affairs will come to light posthumously (after all, that letter is still waiting to be accounted for), and we know that his sorrow over her death will eventually kill him. The only hope of redemption from this is their daughter, but, while he clearly cares about the girl, she cannot possibly replace for him the magic that was Emma. This, I think, would be clear to the reader without spending the last pages of the book detailing it....less

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Núria rated it:

10/13/07

bookshelves: 2006, favorites, literatura-francesa, owned, 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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Kristina rated it:

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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Katherine rated it:

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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Trevor rated it:

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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Kitty-Wu rated it:

(review of isbn 0140449124)

02/08/07

Read in September, 2005

Atención!!! Destripo libro!!! No seguir leyendo si aún no lo has leído

Madame Bovary ha pasado a la historia, además de por estar maravillosamente escrito, por haber creado uno de los personajes más recordados de la literatura. Madame Bovary es lo que es porque representa un prototipo de mujer diferente, especialmente si la situamos en su tiempo y contexto. Es una mujer rebelde, apasionada, que se opone a la mediocridad, y que, además, comete adulterio.

Hasta aquí bien, pero la Bova...more Atención!!! Destripo libro!!! No seguir leyendo si aún no lo has leído

Madame Bovary ha pasado a la historia, además de por estar maravillosamente escrito, por haber creado uno de los personajes más recordados de la literatura. Madame Bovary es lo que es porque representa un prototipo de mujer diferente, especialmente si la situamos en su tiempo y contexto. Es una mujer rebelde, apasionada, que se opone a la mediocridad, y que, además, comete adulterio.

Hasta aquí bien, pero la Bovary es también un personaje igual de mediocre que aquellos a que se opone y me explico: es vanidosa, vacua, pretenciosa, ambiciosa, caprichosa y, en palabras del propio Flaubert en las cartas finales, "es una mujer de naturaleza perversa, de falsa poesía y de falsos sentimientos".

Estoy completamente de acuerdo: la idea que del "amor" se desprende de la Bovary poco o nada tiene que ver con lo que yo lo considero. Emma Bovary se considera enamorada cuando alguien la "adora" (es decir, pierde totalmente su dignidad para satisfacer cada uno de sus caprichos, como sería el caso de Léon), cuando alguien besa el suelo que ella pisa sin protestar ni discrepar... bien, hay una frase que resume perfectamente a lo que me refiero con esta idea: "No quiero a mi lado a alguien que corra cuando yo corro y pare cuando yo paro, eso lo hace mucho mejor mi sombra"; Emma es todo lo contrario, necesita la babería para sentirse bien consigo misma, si discrepas, estás fuera.

La otra manera que tiene Emma de enamorarse es justamente la contraria, entregarse totalmente ella, aguantando lo inaguantable, dejando que el amado sea dueño y señor (Rodolfo), que la anule (Emma querida, eso tampoco es amor...). En definitiva, creo que Emma Bovary no sabe lo que es el amor. Sí la pasión y el deseo, pero lo que se dice querer, Emma no se quiere más que a ella misma. Se autoengaña pretendiendo llenar su vida con aquello con lo que fantasea, pero que no se corresponde con la realidad.

Con esto no quiero decir que no me guste la novela, bien al contrario; las contradicciones y ambigüedades del personaje están magníficamente detalladas, la novela es muy moderna para la época y es bastante poco moralista también para el período en el que fue concebida (aunque los contemporáneos de Flaubert no lo vieran así....). El personaje de Homais, aunque más pesado que un elefante en brazos, es muy interesante en cuanto a las opiniones que vierte sobre la Iglesia y las Instituciones.

Definitivamente, como rezaba la primera entrada de este libro, yo podría enamorarme de Emma Bovary, sí, porqué no, seguramente podría deslumbrarme en un principio, pero nunca podría llegar a amarla.

Gran Obra. Perdón por el rollo....less

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Lily rated it:

(review of isbn 0451528204)

09/28/07

bookshelves: favorites

Read in September, 2007

recommends it for: everybody

I really loved this book. It has to be in my list of favorite books that I've read.

I think the author wanted to make you, as the reader, dislike Emma Bovary because she didn't fit the 'ideal' stereotypical virtuous woman of the time, but I just couldn't. Emma's trials and tribulations begin with her unsatisfying marriage to Charles the doctor.

Charles, who is presented as almost a kind of simpleton early in the book, is a plain kind of man with very plain (and I think Flaubert wanted us...more I really loved this book. It has to be in my list of favorite books that I've read.

I think the author wanted to make you, as the reader, dislike Emma Bovary because she didn't fit the 'ideal' stereotypical virtuous woman of the time, but I just couldn't. Emma's trials and tribulations begin with her unsatisfying marriage to Charles the doctor.

Charles, who is presented as almost a kind of simpleton early in the book, is a plain kind of man with very plain (and I think Flaubert wanted us to think, virtuously simple) tastes. He is satisfied with the life he carves out for himself and thinks that his wife is just as happy as he is.

Poor Emma, meanwhile, is miserable because she is seeking to fulfill all of the romantic fantasies she's grown up reading about. She wants Charles to be everything that he, by his very nature, cannot be. She wants the fairy tale princess kind of charmed life. She wants to be wealthy and contented. She wants Charles to show ambition and to advance their standing as a family, socially.

Emma, seeing that Charles will never change, starts to seek out adventures through affairs with different men. The problem is that they, like she, are looking to fulfill their own selfish desires and her desperate clinging ends up driving them away from her.

The closest she ever comes to a real love affair is the time she spends with Leon in the city, in the little room she's spared no expense in decorating. But, as she is a married woman, this relationship can never really lead to anything but heartache.

Ultimately Emma's end is foreshadowed by her descent into utter and complete corruption. Because of the time during which the novel was written Flaubert couldn't seek out any other ending, save for the Shakespearian one that it has.

I didn't really feel sorry for Charles until the very end of the book where he finds out the truth about Emma's life. He really did love her, in his own way.

This book is a romantic and generally a wonderful way to spend a few hours in another time and place.

*The ending of the Signet Classic edition that I read also includes the trial transcripts where Flaubert faced charges for the 'immoral character of the book.' If you are interested in knowing a bit more about the history surrounding it....less

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Adrienne rated it:

07/22/08

Read in July, 2008

Like many other reviewers I was supposed to read this book in high school, but I'm glad I skipped class because I may not have reread it now as an adult and that would have been my great loss.

It took me awhile to get into the book but I pressed on out of a duty to good literature. Once I really got into it, I really started seeing Flaubert for the genius that he was.

Flaubert's treatment of religion was very interesting to me. Using Homais the chemist as his mouthpiece, he directly ...more Like many other reviewers I was supposed to read this book in high school, but I'm glad I skipped class because I may not have reread it now as an adult and that would have been my great loss.

It took me awhile to get into the book but I pressed on out of a duty to good literature. Once I really got into it, I really started seeing Flaubert for the genius that he was.

Flaubert's treatment of religion was very interesting to me. Using Homais the chemist as his mouthpiece, he directly shares philosophies about religion that were very contrary to his day. Also, when Emma turns to religion, Flaubert's language in describing her visions of heaven ("seraphic harps" and "a golden throne")mimicks that used to describe her romantic fantasies. Emma has an obsessive fascination with God, and as Flaubert implies, her "relationship" with him verges on being sexual. The relationship is brief and dies out after it proves disappointing, just like her other "escape" relationships. She is using religion in the same way that she used her affairs. It seems like the novel is contending that religious devotion is also a mere escape from boredom or despair.

I was really, really intrigued by the character of Homais. It seems like I would need to read this novel several times through to really appreciate him for what he is. On the surface he seems to have it all together: he has a good wife, children, and he does well in his profession. But he, like Emma, is discontented and seeks fulfillment outside of those things. The interesting thing is that, while Emma's flight tendencies stem from her romantic fantasies and obsessions, Homais is very grounded in science and reason but still has those same flight tendencies, though they are expressed much differently.

I can definitely see why Madame Bovary is required reading for pretty much every student. There is so much going on this book-- stylistically, thematically, and symbolically--that one could read it over and over and never cease to discover new things. It is beautiful.

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Glen rated it:

04/04/08

Read in April, 2008

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Madame Bovary is a cautionary tale. On the surface it appears to be an admonition against infidelity. It appears to be an age-old tale about a woman who is disappointed by the simplicity of her husband. In light of this, she looks outside of her marriage for something that will fulfill her desire for felicity and rapture which she has for many years read about in books.

In truth however, it seems that the protagonist is simply a woman who is unwilling to accept the reality of the world aro...more Madame Bovary is a cautionary tale. On the surface it appears to be an admonition against infidelity. It appears to be an age-old tale about a woman who is disappointed by the simplicity of her husband. In light of this, she looks outside of her marriage for something that will fulfill her desire for felicity and rapture which she has for many years read about in books.

In truth however, it seems that the protagonist is simply a woman who is unwilling to accept the reality of the world around her. She believes that she is owed an aristocratic life of great passion and opulence and consequently she feels justified in doing anything necessary in order to accommodate her lust for these sensations. Although Flaubert uses adultery and lavish spending to express these feelings, they are equally applicable to any person living to petulant excess whether they do it with sex, drugs, gambling, or myriad other vices. In the end, Emma Bovary escapes the hounding of her debtors as well as her own conscience through suicide. Even on her deathbed however, she is furious of the reality that the poison acts slowly and painfully instead of gracefully spiriting her off to an ethereal dreamland the way she romantically sees her fate unfolding. Like so often in real life, this escape is only effective for the perpetrator, and the innocent loved ones end up paying for her selfish life long after she has left it.

Life isn’t always poetic. People often delude themselves with visions of grandeur. Visions in which they see their joys and travails as transcendent epics with much greater significance than anything in the lives of those around us. Eventually we all learn that this isn’t true, just as Emma Bovary realized it in the novel. “Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.” In light of these discoveries, we can both grow up and move forward with our lives, or we can take our delusions to the next extreme in the hope that we will find the ecstasy we feel we deserve. Unlike Emma however, we would do well to realize that this pursuit shall never end in joy.
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Saman added it

04/22/08

نخستین اثر گوستاو فلوبر، نویسنده نامدار فرانسوی است که به عنوان یکی از برجسته‌ترین آثار او به شمار می‌آید

فلوبر بعد از نوشتن اثری به نام وسوسه سن آنتوان از دوستان منتقد خود، ماکسیم دوکان و لویی بونه، دعوت کرد تا داستان را برای آنها بخواند، ولی آن دو، داستان را اثر بدی برشم�...more

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shuurei rated it:

(review of isbn 207041311X)

02/04/08

Read in January, 2008

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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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Lorenzo rated it:

09/06/07

bookshelves: french

I've read this novel when I was just 14. It's one of the books we had to read in my class to discuss them afterwards.

Madame Bovary has been one of the few books I've been obliged to read that I really appreciated. At that time I didn't understand anything about love, passion and betrayals because I was still a child, and yet I had the impression that Flaubert had written a masterpiece.

I remember so clearly that when we chatted about the novel in my classroom, my literature professor joke...more

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Cendri rated it:

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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DeLaina rated it:

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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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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Lisa rated it:

03/01/08

Read in January, 2005

recommends it for: Anyone who has time to re-read it once or twice.

This would have been a 2 star ("It was okay") review, but I read this differently every time I come back to it. The complexity makes it one of the best bargains in literature - It's a different book every time I open it. This book startled me a bit the first time I read it, having the first protagonist I can remember having come across who was not only pretty unlikable, but didn't seem written as though she were meant to be likable. She is not yet another of of those evil but ma

Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics)

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