Idea’s Reviews > Madame Bovary > Status Update

There are books that you need help to experience. Reading is just the beginning. Here's an article that helped me experience 'Madame Bovary' better:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/...

The plot seems to have picked up. No, wait, that's because I started skimming instead of labouring through the long descriptions. Note to self: Classics cannot be read the same way as contemporary literature.

"His clothes were an incongruous mixture of the workday and the elegant, such as is taken by the vulgar to denote an eccentric way of life, an emotional disturbance, Ora subservience to aesthetics, combined always with a certain contempt for convention, by which they are either fascinated or exasperated." This sounds awfully close to the description of a modern day hipster.

The story continues, faster than I'd expect in a book written in its time. But the over-descriptive style and coy/subtle referencing make this a much more laborious read than I'd like.

"...and once when Madame Bovary chose to maintain that masters and mistresses ought to have an eye to their servants' religion, it brought such anger to Emma's eyes and so cold a smile to her lips that the good woman meddled no more." Nothing about Emma strikes me as wrong. But I'm going by my times where in theory, a woman has the right to her own opinions. In theory, only, though.