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

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of 16 topics — 510 comments total

Preliminary Reading

Edmund White's "Proust"
By Nick · 11 posts · 125 views

last updated Dec 07, 2014 08:11PM

William Carter's Proust Bio
By deleted member · 79 posts · 196 views

last updated May 04, 2013 12:19PM

showing 1 of 1 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Mar 30, 2014 Garima rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, prude-me-not, my-2-cents, 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.
...more

99 likes · Like · see review

May 08, 2012 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: france, favorites

Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.
There is something eternal about the plight of Emma Bovary. She is a foolish woman, she is insipid and shallow, she is material, and shrouds herself in her illusions about love just as she shrouds herself in pricey dresses and wraps. But, she is never quite unrealistic, her absurdities are, to a degree, universal, and so whether we read Madame Bovary as a comedy or a tragedy largely depends on the moment and our present sentiment ...more

24 likes · Like · see review

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

6 likes · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2014 Natacha Pavlov rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: french, classics

I don’t think I’ve ever been so annoyed by a book’s characters yet still interested enough to want to keep reading (*cough, Emma Bovary, cough*). I ascribe that to Flaubert’s writing style, which I’d first enjoyed 8 years ago when I was 21 living in Paris (and visiting Rome) and read “Salammbô.” Although I knew of the famous Madame Bovary, whatever compelled me to read the other novel first was on point because it’s still my favorite of the two. Needless to say, the stories are quite different ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Oct 12, 2012 Jane Massy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Emma is infuriating, tragic, self deluding and somehow I felt sympathy. I wonder how much one is influenced at the age you read it. And of course, at this stage in the journey in equality for women and in an era of living life in a fantasy world (hello) means that as a women today it's hard to feel much except fury at her silliness and at the same time sympathise with the impossibility of her achieving her romantic fantasies in a world where women have no rights except those awarded to them by t ...more

Like · see review