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Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert

Start date: September 1, 2019

Finish date: September 30, 2019

Discussion: Past Book Discussions 2014-19

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Past Book Discussions 2014-19

Dec 2019: The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
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Oct 10, 2021 Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 4-5-stars, beautiful-cover, historical, paperback-own

4.5 Stars ⭐️

Mel 🖤🐶🐺🐾

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Feb 20, 2022 Maureen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: u-l, classics

Emma, Emma, Emma!
Madame Bovary is a tragic story. Emma was brought up in a convent and loved to read romance novels. She marries Charles who truly loves her, but Emma craves more. Emma finds him boring and desires excitement. She has affairs and purchases extravagant things to make her live fulfilled.
I really did not like Emma, but in the end felt sorry for her.
Emma was self absorbed and very selfish. Even motherhood was a disappointment to her.
The writing was very engaging, it made me feel sorr ...more

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Apr 08, 2022 Theresa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: dragons-spotted-in-the-wild, francophilia, z-dragonopoly-2022, highly-recommended-by-me, classics-and-classic-redos, z-2022-top-10, z-aty-2022

If you are going to read an English translation of Madame Bovary, and you want the one that is closest to the experience of reading it in French, you grab this Lydia Davis translation, and only hers. Between high school and college French Literature classes, I've read Madame Bovary in the original language twice, and though it has been decades since then, this was a book that stuck with me as if I'd only read it a few years ago. As I read Davis' translation, I was reading the original Flaubert, If you are going to read an English translation of Madame Bovary, and you want the one that is closest to the experience of reading it in French, you grab this Lydia Davis translation, and only hers. Between high school and college French Literature classes, I've read Madame Bovary in the original language twice, and though it has been decades since then, this was a book that stuck with me as if I'd only read it a few years ago. As I read Davis' translation, I was reading the original Flaubert, she captured so perfectly the tone, the style, the intent. the experience. Also, make sure to read the introduction Davis wrote - it was so interesting and also explained a few things like why there are notes at the end without links or footnotes in the text to lead you to them (these notes provide additional information like definitions of unusual terms, historical background to persons named, - all those things you find yourself looking up as you go if you are reading in ebook). It was a joy to read!

Madame Bovary is the story of a dissatisfied young woman in rural France between 1830-1848 who lives a highly romantic internal life and can't accept that all the high romance in her mind does not exist as a way of life, and is thus unable to accept and submit to the ordinary boring tedium of her life. We follow her from a girlhood embracing of pure religious love through marriage, flirtations, adultery, and even to a degree of prostitution, each 'interlude' more tawdry, until finally, in a desperately emotional act, she commits suicide. Of course, this being Emma Bovary, that death by suicide is longer than any stage death.

But it is also, equally, a portrayal of the rural french middle class (the bourgeoisie) in the mid-19th Century that arose after the French Revolution, displayed in all its narrow-minded, judgmental, hypocritical, uneducated, parochial, even reactionary splendor. Flaubert ruthlessly displays all his characters to the reader, as well as the background against which they live; putting them in front of the reader for judgment, free of the judgment of the author. Yet...though spare, Flaubert's style is highly descriptive without being florid or lyrical, slyly humorous while completely free of author moralizing. It's up to the reader to decide which characters are to be castigated, which embraced with pity, which to denounce, which to empathize with, if any at all. Even more radical was how Flaubert put a woman's psychological and sexual nature at the heart of his story, a woman who is complex, not only a saint or a sinner, not glorified or judged. This was a complete departure from the writing style of the Romantic Era that was then all the rage (a style which Flaubert disdained even though he admired and corresponded with many of the writers of that era); contrast with Frankenstein: The 1818 Text, the works of George Sand (though you can see the influence of her Indiana heroine in Emma), even Jane Austen (Willoughby and Marianne of Sense and Sensibility often came to mind during the Rodolphe/Emma affair).

It was published in 1856 creating quite a sensation and uproar due to the presentation of explicit sex (though not what we in the 21st Century consider 'explicit' by any means -- this would today be described as 'closed door sex') and sexuality front and center without any countering sermons or moralizing or judgment. It was initially published in a slightly abridged serialization, then after a morality trial brought by the Church which tried to suppress it, published in book form with the abridged sections restored after Flaubert won at trial (he then added an acknowledgment to his Rouen lawyer which I totally approve!). Flaubert forever changed the way fiction was written, creating a rational and realistic sparer style of writing that benefited so many later writers like Hemingway. Without Madame Bovary D. H. Lawrence could not have given us Lady Chatterly's Lover or Kate Chopin given us The Awakening.

How do I, a 21st Century feminist, see Emma? Certainly not with any sympathy nor with a sense that she's a victim of society. Emma's unhappiness and ultimate death are all her own, from her own weaknesses and yearnings. Emma controlled her life and in fact lived as she wanted - or more correctly as she wanted at any given moment as what she wanted was a life that only lived her mind. She was not driven by society or her husband or others to her actions and death. Emma is not a sypathetic or particular likeable character. Essentially none of the characters are particularly likable or sympathetic but you do recognized them, find humor in some, dislike of others, sympathy as well (I always find myself feeling great sympathy for Charles though he does contribute to Emma's downfall and demise even if only indirectly by loving her too blindly). Flaubert was not writing a sentimental novel, but one that shone a harsh light on the weakness and pettiness of the bourgeousie. ...more

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