From the Bookshelf of The Year of Reading Proust…

Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert,

Lydia Davis (Translator)

Start date: October 1, 2012

Finish date: October 28, 2012

Discussion: Preliminary Reading

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Preliminary Reading

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Mar 30, 2014 Garima rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-2-cents, prude-me-not, favorites, no-kidding

Her too-lofty dreams, her too-narrow house.

We meet and greet different sorts of people; we greet and read different sorts of books. Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Jane Eyre. With her modest dreams and dignified living, it was easy to accept and love her. She was far from perfect but there was hardly a thing I would have changed about her. A fictional character of literature exemplifying the virtuous side of real life but she was not alone. There were some other characters surround Her too-lofty dreams, her too-narrow house.

We meet and greet different sorts of people; we greet and read different sorts of books. Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Jane Eyre. With her modest dreams and dignified living, it was easy to accept and love her. She was far from perfect but there was hardly a thing I would have changed about her. A fictional character of literature exemplifying the virtuous side of real life but she was not alone. There were some other characters surrounding Jane who certainly struck a chord with me but the music thus created was not a soothing melody. The arrogant ways of Reed cousins and the vindictive streak in Bertha Mason’s love symbolized an unpleasant world which held within it afflictive but relevant stories. In one such story this year, I met Emma.

But shouldn’t a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him.

The Bored and Beautiful, Madame Bovary. We all probably know her. That naive little girl who doesn’t appreciate the toy in her hands because another child owns an artificial but glittering tiara. That reckless young woman who jots down a list of inordinate whims which could culminate into a glorious Happily Ever After when time comes. That unfortunate mature lady who finally realizes the vacuity of her air castles when it’s too late. Emma while single had imagination and anticipation; Ms. Bovary while married had perversity and passion. It was difficult to love and accept her but that’s precisely what I did- with a little help from Flaubert’s terrific writing and a little help from the world around me.

Love and its vicious pleasures don’t spare anyone. Those pleasures when turned inside out, sometimes take the shape of eternal sufferings too. The difference possibly lies in the vacuum created out of being in love and the idea of being in love. Both can be fatal but I would like to believe that the latter is something that is bound to make a person delusional about oneself and everyone around. Emma tried to form a derisory bridge from her idea too, in a hope to reach an unknown destination she usually read in her books but eventually she suffered too.

Where could she have learned this depravity, so deep and so dissembled that it was almost incorporeal?

Why, from this society only. A society which thrives upon displaying its pretentious happiness and insists on concealing the perpetual sadness. A society which constantly invent ways of piling up the debt upon another person while wearing the sham of welfare. A society where another Madame Bovary, Emma’s mother-in-law, silently accepts her fateful marriage. Amidst all these lies, it’s no wonder that Emma learned something which was not worth learning at all. Flaubert, through his omniscience narration hasn’t passed any judgment or jumped to futile conclusions here. He has simply stated how people conduct their lives when materialism comes to the forefront of one’s mind. Love goes to hell in such cases.

She was the beloved of every novel, the heroine of every drama, the vague she of every volume of poetry.

Ah! The irony.
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May 28, 2012 Leo Robertson rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewtastic

There are two kinds of poor writer smugflourishes that I don’t like:

1. The aimless simile. “Life is like a cat. You’ve got two of them and it has fur on the outside! Badum-PSH” I’ve got some constructive criticism, a great way to improve those is delete them and come up with something original.
2. Using “There are two kinds of” as an emphatic opener. There’s not two kinds of anything.

There are two kinds of classic [1]:
1. The true classic- you open it, there are words in it, that’s generally a goo ...more

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Sep 08, 2025 Brooklyn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: great-books-groupreads-completist, book-club-books, classics

I read this for a great books club - one day I dream of reading this in French. What a gorgeous book and translation. Honestly there are no redeemable characters except perhaps Charles or Berthe - Emma’s daughter. Though this book is tragic and I cried at the end - it is also quite humorous as Flaubert skewers the middle class bourgeoisie of which Emma Bovary is a product - who believes in all the fairy tales she’s read of how life should be. Which is her tragedy as well. She is never satisfied. ...more

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