Madame Bovary [Annotated]

She has to accept an arranged marriage. And she can try to have some affairs, and have her reputation ruined. But she cannot have it all, love, pleasure, power, happiness, money, control. That belongs to men. It's beyond any notion of merit, or any conscious behaviour a woman might achive or aspire to. A woman could not, freely, choose who to love, if she fell in love. She would either have an affair and be considered a whore or she would have to officially chose to be a whore.

And if you think this is dangerously similar to what we have today, it shows how little society has changed. Is this a good translation? Here's an article where he talks about his translation: I began by reading the much-prasied Lydia Davis translation. His occasional footnotes provided insight into cultural references and his reasoning behind certain translation choices. These added greatly to my enjoyment. Lists with This Book.

This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Darling, why must you make it so easy? I mean for everyone else in the world who goes into this book just looking for an excuse to make fun of you. It makes it easy for people to plausibly dismiss this story with things like this: If it makes you feel better, dear, you are hardly the only one.. Your other compatriots in 19th century repressed female misery receive similar treatment: It is easy to despise you, Emma.

What goes around comes around ,as the wise chanteur sayeth. But in the end, you won, Emma. In the end, though, I kept coming back to one thought: Did everyone read that profile about Dan Savage this weekend about infidelity and marriage? Her eyes are on the cover of this book, and the more I looked at them, the more disturbed I got. This is a novel about how reality can look just the same to you from one day to the next, but to your partner, it can have turned into a hell or a heaven, even if it is the same Tuesday routine as the last one. You never really know what the person across from you is thinking.

How do you really know what motivates someone? Are they with you because they have made a resolution to be? Are they there with you because the stars shine in your eyes? Are they perfect to you because they are about to leave? Marriage, for better or worse, no matter what people say, adds so many complications.

It is the commitment that people twist and bend over and around in so many different contortions to try to make it work- because it is a marriage, because it means something. How difficult is it to trust that people are simply what they say they are? Charles is simple and straightforward and rather sweet- and Emma hates him for it. She smiles and smiles and smiles… and then cheats on him, bankrupts him, tries to prostitute herself and kills herself rather than spend another day with him. This is the most anxiety inducing book I have ever read about marriage. If you're wrong, that's it.

Emma is the incarnation of the expectations of the institution at the time- all-or-nothing. Madame Bovary is destroyed because she tries to put her all into Charles, then Rodolphe and then Leon, and none of them can withstand it. Each of them are good for different things, and only for a little while, and she can't accept it. That is not the ideal. She won't accept less than the ideal. You guys, she's nothing more than exactly what she is told is available to her- granted, she's after the best of what she's told is available: But why do we hold that against her?

He talks about how you have to be willing to change a lot and make a huge effort to keep the deal of monogamy alive. It actually made me think, of all things, a bit about Planet of Slums. That book talks about the millions of people who have been born outside the system, in illegal settlements to parents who are illegal themselves, and who are not, in fact, ignored by the system. They never get into the system in the first place - a system that is not built to cope with the mind-blowing poverty that arises from its excrement. At the risk of sounding like I think relatively-well-off white lady problems bear any resemblance to the horror of someone living on the outskirts of Kinshasa in a lean-to, Emma is just trying to get in to a society that can't acknowledge her and go on.

And in case anyone finds her head-in-the-sand refusal to face the world overly childish or impossible to relate to: The endless line of irresponsible credit she takes out from the scam artist down the street in order to feed her fantasies about the way she believes her life should look has obvious immediate relevance to America in the pre financial crisis era. In some ways, the existential crisis Flaubert is trying to outline here: Monsieur Homais would have done very well on Wall Street. Emma can be read as being more American than French, really.

Emma is a true believer. Failing making it into her fairy tale, she wants to escape where she is- to somewhere else, anywhere else. By the end, I felt like I was suffocating right along with her. Emma adds the present place, the present time, the present person you are with. She really is willing to try anything to escape. On her deathbed, as she pleaded to die, my heart was racing along with hers and the whole finale read like a blockbuster last action scene with explosives and severed limbs flying. Every chapter there was less and less light until she was curled up in a ball in solitary confinement with no hope of escape.

In the Count of Monte Cristo, we root for the hero to get thrown over the side of a cliff in a body bag because it is his only hope of escape. How could we do less for poor Emma? She deserves her chance to make it to the place she always hoped for- even if priests and businessmen argue whether she got there over her corpse. Flaubert handles his prose deftly, precisely, and with a deceptively commonplace hand. Parts of this novel are spine-tinglingly sordid, others wrench out your gut, most of it can be drearily, boringly, mind-numbingly quotidian, and every so often, a gem shines through that makes you turn around and look at someone you had thought you were done being interested in.

And the Tuesday before that. And probably next Monday. The morning when you woke up vowing that today it was all going to be different, that afternoon when you just wanted to die, the evening when you forgot it all making dinner and laughing about that thing you saw on the internet. Yet, even your complaining makes me want to hug you. I guess what I am saying is why are you so awesome, Monsieur Flaubert?

View all comments. This is one of the books that has had a profound effect on my life. Be happy with what you have and where you are!!! 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 fabulous". After a few This is one of the books that has had a profound effect on my life.

After a few years I found myself playing the same role as Mme. I want to be content with my circumstances, whatever they may be, and Mme. Bovary is a reminder of what happens to those who are unable to find contentment in the journey, and are continually seeking yet another unsatisfying destination. View all 34 comments. Oy, the tedium, the drudgery of trying to read this book!

I tried to get into this story. It's a classic, right? And everyone else likes it. I kept making myself continue, hoping I could get into the story and figure out what's supposed to be so good about it. I won't waste any more of my precious reading time on this. It's about a self-absorbed young wife who longs for anyone else's life except her own. When she's in the city, she dreams of the farm.

When she's in the country, she Oy, the tedium, the drudgery of trying to read this book! When she's in the country, she dreams of the city. When she's at a social gathering she imagines that everyone else's life is so much more exciting than her own. Too many wordy descriptions of what people were wearing, what the buildings looked like, etc. If you're going to take a long time to tell a story, it had better be a good story.

This one is NOT!

View all 14 comments. Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books. I was mesmerized and suffered along with her as she capsized further and further into the ambushes life presented her.

Yes, I felt like I was in a trance and could not escape. Oh, Emma, dear Emma, why do people hate you so? Why did you make them feel that way? I am sorry for being so blunt. You, and your seemingly shallow priorities, gave your critics plenty of ammunition. You did the unthinkable. What excuse did you have for such a selfish, impulsive and futile behavior?

Did you by any chance hear Virginia Woolf say 'You cannot find peace by avoiding life. What did you have to dive head first before she even professed this truth? The horror of being a woman with no choices… As I read on, I kept coming back to one thought: She was not alone in her infidelity, did you know that? Not in her time, not today.

What about the reason for marriage? She married to escape, I know. And she hoped for a better life. Maybe she romanced him, what woman would not do it in her place? Why did I marry? All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married… But she—her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.

And I remembered Jane Austen, who opened the door for woman to search for happiness in their marriage.

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Why did women marry in those times? Women married only to increase their social standing or for money, but with Austen they start to have a chance at happiness. Flaubert does something similar with Madame Bovary, I believe. I pitied her for each time she fixed her gaze on some scheme of happiness and how her eyes led her astray.

Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home. The only pastime she could enjoy without guilt was reading. From that she built fantasies, it is true.

But did she not have the right at least of her own fantasies? It seems not, as we overhear Charles and her mother in law talking: If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn a living, she wouldn't have these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from idleness in which she lives. Reading novels, bad books, works against religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child.

Anyone who has no religion always ends up turning badly. As if she had the choice of earning a living, being a female. The only choice they see to avoid her turning badly is to forbid her reading her novels. One of the few pleasures she was allowed. She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past.

A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. She was so right, men at least were much more free than women. I not only comprehend her reasons, but commiserate with her.

So, why look at a baby girl she knew had been born with the wrong gender! It all went against her most heartfelt dreams. Emma might have towards the end had a touch of evil brought by desperation. Oh, she tried to renounce all her dreams through moments of fervent religious devotion.

At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved… Intrigue, however, had already tempted her and kept coming her way. Why would she be invited and attend a ball in a house so out of her reality? Was it not a trap? After that, you could not help yourself but wish you had access to that fairy like life. What an ambush, when she was attempting to behave: Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains.

Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. Such a fortuitous event served only to stress the undesirability of her life. After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing nothing.

Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast. Another bait would present herself in the person of Monsieur Lheureux. Why, I could give you some, if need be. The endless line of irresponsible credit was not more than an option offered her that she could not have imagine existed if were not for this trickster. Later we witness how she tries to reform, to be more tolerant and wishing to endure her life as it was, taking responsibility for her daughter and taking interest in the housework.

She is tired of him, no doubt. She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. Yes, but how to get rid of her afterwards? Oh, yes, she went along with it and of her free will. But it was too much temptation, for someone so thirsty. I imagined that if it was not Rodolphe it would be another. And later on came Leon. After the affair with Rodolphe begins, Emma marvels at how much she had lacked living before: So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium.

An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights. Thus, Flaubert puts all these temptations in her way. It is as if Emma when walking down a meadow starts to stumble on beautiful, ripe apples that lie on the ground and cannot resist but pick some and take a few bites.

Could she have resisted them all? But could Emma have escape her destiny? Could she have simply accepted life as it was offered to her? I believe all that she lived was utterly inevitable. Could she have run away from her own behavior and avoided her ultimate destiny? Emma was on the same boat as Oedipus found himself in. I felt after reading Oedipus Rex that there was not really anything that Oedipus could have done to get himself out of his destiny.

Could Emma have done it differently? It seemed to me that the more Oedipus attempted to get out of it, the deeper he was immersed in its inevitability. It is simply that there was no way for him to avoid doing it all and facing his fate. I do not believe so. There was no chorus to declare that to us, but Flaubert himself serves the role, even if it is not so explicit and you have to read between the lines: It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat.

She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her. And so it all ends… But as in the beginning in the end, you beguiled me Emma. I was with you from the start and you could not escape me even in death. Seriously, I tell all your critics, your tragic story would not leave me alone. You had no choice like Oedipus could not escape killing his father or marrying his mother.

So, why people do not stop condemning you when they pity him? You were clever and wanted to exercise your intellect. Imagine the frustration of nothing to do? Perhaps your mother in law was right, you were fated to end badly. What a tragedy of never finding someone that could begin to understand you. Flaubert with his impressive prose evokes her thoughts and feelings throughout the novel, and I had no choice but be enticed by his heroine.

She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale, quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes, and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her. Finally, I think I was able to grasp the reasons that make Madame Bovary a classic, a modern tragedy where a soul is doomed because she appreciates and battles against all that comes her way.

Despite her limitations in life and as a product of her time, Emma has an unbridled passion and ends pursuing her fantasies. That ends condemning her. Nevertheless, Emma Bovary is brave in her irresponsible choices because it brings her closer to the happiness she wants, even if doing so she is able to attain only a glimpse of her dreams.

Even if for that she had to die. And she died so that other women could strive for a more compassionate fate. View all 48 comments.

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Three and a half stars, uprated to 5 stars because I can't get it out of my head. Not sure what to make of it. The self-obsessed Emma Bovary was obviously to me a side of Flaubert himself. She feels that there is so much more but her limited life fences her in and instead of drawing into herself, seeing what she has to offer, how to make the best of herself, she wants happiness to come to her just as it does in the romance novels she, and Flaubert, read.

I understood that spiritual Three and a half stars, uprated to 5 stars because I can't get it out of my head. I understood that spiritual flailing around, turning this way and that, using looks to make up for depth, using sex to pass for love, and enjoying fooling those she lived with into believing what they saw was what they got. We've all been a bit shallow at times, but to have made a whole career, a whole life of it, no! But then Emma departs from the author and becomes entirely his creation. She doesn't think forward, thinks her beauty will solve all. Thinks that those who say they love her don't mean they love having an affair, having sex, with her but that they love her deeply and for all time.

Not that she is capable of loving that way herself either, so maybe she really didn't know what it meant. Her idea of love is the bodice-ripper, secret affair, always-exciting, happily-ever-after variety, except her affairs die when the men are satiated with this demanding woman. She can't even conceive of real-life nurturing of her child or being supportive, that's for fools like her husband. She always thinks someone will be there to pamper her and indulge her and that there will never be any consequences, that the piper will not call round to be paid for his pretty tune. Such a sad story, so beautifully written and it deserves a far better review than these few lines but I felt like writing down my first reaction on finishing the book, I don't want the emotions to wear off and have to analyse it critically, it wasn't that sort of experience for me.

View all 40 comments. Apr 07, Nayra. My 3rd reading of this masterpiece written with irony and finesse. The eternal story of Emma Bovary and her broken dreams is heartbreaking every time. The narration is actually quite modern in that the perspective changes quite often from a mysterious first person in the beginning a schoolmate of Charles Bovary? The descriptions of the various locations in the book are always surprising with tiny references to the principle charac My 3rd reading of this masterpiece written with irony and finesse.

The descriptions of the various locations in the book are always surprising with tiny references to the principle characters. It may surprise you to know that this book, which is essentially a tragedy, also is full of humor and sarcasm. In a similar, if more romantic vein, the whispered conversation of Rodolphe and Emma in the lodge as the vice-Prefect gives the world's most boring speech his boss couldn't be bothered to come was extraordinary.

Every word in Flaubert is measured and perfectly weighted to each situation, the original French is absolutely splendid - whether he is describing the pretentious conversation of M. Homais or the various season and their impact on the moods of the characters and tone of the novel. The only criticism that I can bring is that the denouement is a bit long - that being said, there is another fantastic ironic payoff in the last sentence. This book from is of course a product of the Romantic period in culture but it surpasses most of its contemporaries by its precise psychology - both of men and women, its irony, its subtle criticism of the "petit bourgeois" and French society, and the meticulous observation of detail.

Even years later, it remains a monument of literature and a summit of free expression Flaubert was pursued in court and beat the censors. View all 19 comments. View all 8 comments. We are old friends, Emma and I. I spent hours and hours over a dictionary at age seventeen in high school, trying to read about her agonies in original French, with only the Isabelle Huppert film as a guidance. In fact, I actually think I owe it to Emma Bovary that I finally made it over the threshold to understand written French.

That ultimately led me to university studies in French literature, and Since I read Quicksand by Nella Larsen this week, Emma Bovary started haunting my mind yet again! That ultimately led me to university studies in French literature, and a lifelong love for French writers. But she did so much more for me, as well. She awakened in me a sense that the world holds different options for women and men, and that women's dreams are dangerous, detrimental and slightly sentimental and ridiculous.

She made me socially, politically angry for the first time. I know there are thousands of erudite studies showing all the weaknesses of Emma Bovary, but from the start, I could not - would not - see her that way. I was with her when she danced in the ballroom, and I wished the party would never end. I hated the conventional goodness of Charles, and understood Emma's frustration with him better than his frustration with her.

After all, she had ideas, dreams, longings, and he had: I rejoiced that she dared to do what men have always, always allowed themselves to do: She knew she would pay a much higher price than any man ever would for that freedom. I loved the fact that she embraced life in its passion and pain, and I suffered through the horrifying pages of her brutal final agony with the feeling that I would not have wanted her to say no to one single piece of experience in exchange for a better end - living according to her husband's standards would have been death over and over, without end. I am fully aware that this is not a moral reading or interpretation of the novel, and I don't encourage or follow her choices in real life, but I loved Emma Bovary's daring rebellion without limits when I was young, and it has never actually changed.

Whenever I remember my encounter with Emma, the first thought invariably is: Do what you want! She always pulls out, runs away, hides from too strong emotions, and in the end, she resigns herself to rural life with a preacher she hates, and multiple pregnancies to bind her to the hopeless boredom and tedium. Reading about Helga, I found myself thinking again with fondness of Madame Bovary: View all 27 comments. Henry James once said, "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment.

Unfortunately, I had to read a translation as my French is nowhere near good enough to read the original. Though I am assured that the prose in the original French are amazing and inspiring. I can certainly a Henry James once said, "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgment. I can certainly appreciate the characterization and story-telling ability but I personally struggled with the story as I reconciled what Flaubert seemed to be saying about society, women, women who had affairs, men and romance.

Now, I would like to take a moment to quote Manny's Review , since he is the one who convinced me to read this book in the first place. So, now back to the tree In fact, it seems to me that he doesn't stop judging through this entire book. You can't see it but you know it's there. Why else would Flaubert so meticulously describe and relish in Emma's fall from grace?

Every little detail is mentioned with the same eagerness as a kid dobbing in their little brother. He puts together a file of evidence for her complicity, a smoking gun as you'd say, and leaves it up to us to point the finger. What would a child do working in a cotton factory, you ask? Oh, just a little mill-scavenging.

They were not allowed to sit, rest, or take a break while the mill ran - which was always except for Sunday when they cleaned the huge, spinning WHEELS OF DEATH that caused these children to live in a constant state of grief and terror Well, doesn't that just cheer you up! The entire story arc and every unnecessary tidbit condemns Emma like one more nail in the coffin. Society is condemned, men are condemned, romantic idealism is condemned.

Really, this novel thinks everyone is to blame. What is this novel's answer to it? It seems to be saying, "Well, that silly woman had so much and she threw it all away and look at her now, kids. And poor, which is really much worse. A safe and comfortable home, a good husband who doted on her and she just couldn't be happy with that. Then it looks at society and says, "Well, you created this and now you've helped destroy her too, you assholes! I wonder what this book would have been like if it displayed a far more realistic approach to a woman having an affair and her reasons.

Because, let's face it, this book's depiction of a woman and why she has extra-marital relations is very obtuse. Emma's life and situation is hardly the common for women who seek more out of life. This book makes her quest for more seem silly, unneccessary and ungrateful. Most of all, I wonder what this novel would have been like if it had dealt with Emma as a real character. One who didn't need to be mostly insane to justify having an affair.

One who wasn't both stupid and entitled and didn't lose all her money through a lack of self-control and ability to take five seconds to do the math. One who was capable of growing and learning from life. Unfortunately all that is lost. Even in the end, Emma learnt nothing. All sound and fury. Much like this novel. My final criticism about this book This was a book about people gettin' it on View all 45 comments. View all 32 comments. Letto un paio di volte e sempre amato. Uno dei massimi capolavori della letteratura, secondo me.

Oggi, per esempio, mi sentivo uomo e donna, amante e amata, cavalcavo per una foresta in un pomeriggio d'autunno sotto le foglie gialle, e io ero i cavalli, le foglie, il vento, le parole dette da lui e da lei, e il sole scarlatto sopra le loro palpebre semichiuse, gonfie per la passione Certi romanzi, pp View all 16 comments. 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.

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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? 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! 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. 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 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. View all 12 comments. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg and meets his patient's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a Emma is a beautiful, daintily dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent. She has a powerful yearning for luxury and romance inspired by reading popular novels. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and visits his patient far more often than necessary, until Heloise's jealousy puts a stop to the visits.

When Heloise unexpectedly dies, Charles waits a decent interval before courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles marry. The novel's focus shifts to Emma. Charles means well but is plodding and clumsy. After he and Emma attend an elegant ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma finds her married life dull and becomes listless.

Charles decides his wife needs a change of scenery and moves his practice to the larger market town of Yonville traditionally identified with the town of Ry. There, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, but motherhood proves a disappointment to Emma. You dawdle along, indulging yourself with odd details. Haute-Normandie, his home territory.

And I have to smile at his foresight when he makes Emma Bovary wish that the name Bovary will become famous, that it will be displayed all over bookshops and repeated in the newspapers. But as the quiet pages turn, I find myself longing for a change for Emma and for me as a reader. Her world is too limited. Spare a thought for us. Thoughts on Part II This section starts off with a little more promise.

Emma and Charles are moving to Yonville, a little town in a valley by a meandering river. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver, thro' the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.

I remember the descriptions of Emma looking at the world through her window, and I think, Yes! Up to this point, Emma has been exactly like the enchanted Lady of Shalott, looking out at the world as if from a mirror, cut off from real life. Perhaps from her window in Yonville, she will see Sir Lancelot riding by The town provides some interest for the reader in any case. We are introduced to a colorful set of inhabitants. Lheureux; the Rouen-Yonville stage-coach driver Hivert; a sanctimonious clergyman called M. Bournisien and a free-thinking but rather pedantic pharmacist called Homais.

An immediate battle of words between the clergyman and the pharmacist livens up the story nicely. I welcome these new characters, no matter how sanctimonious or pedantic. But while introducing several interesting and comic characters, Flaubert is simultaneously playing with our expectations.

Madame Bovary - Wikipedia

If you turned right at the end, you arrived at the cemetary. Is he Sir Lancelot? In any case, within the space of a few pages, he seems to have cheered Emma up considerably. But Flaubert is still offering us hints about the future: The pages go by without much happening, and the side door remains unused. Oh, wait, something is happening. A bunch of characters are going on a day trip! In Part II, the character list may have expanded but life in Yonville Yawnville hasn't really become more interesting. Emma is increasingly bored and exasperated by her gentle husband Charles and by her narrow life in the town.

Alas, the passage ends with the church bells tolling in peaceful lamentation. He leaves without having once made use of that tempting side entrance. What has Emma to look forward to now? Oh right, an Agricultural Show… But in the meantime, Emma has realised that Leon might have been her best chance at love and she missed it. Really, it goes from bad to worse. But Charles is an ordinary country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to realize her dreams she takes a lover, Rodolphe, and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair.

And Flaubert captures every step of this catastrophe with sharp-eyed detail and a wonderfully subtle understanding of human emotions. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert. Read more Read less. Kindle Cloud Reader Read instantly in your browser. Customers who bought this item also bought. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Product details File Size: G Books December 14, Publication Date: December 14, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers.

Write a customer review. Showing of 17 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. I had read Madame Bovary in the original French in college, getting the gist of the story, but not the subtleties of Flaubert's language. Years later I read an English translation, and it became one of my favorite books of all time. Something sparked my interest to read it again, now probably 35 yrs later.

I savored every word, and often went back to the beginning of the sentence I just read, or even the whole paragraph, for the pleasure of rereading it - like the first taste of a rich chocolate mousse if one could cleanse the palate and taste that marvelous creation anew. There are some French words and phrases here that are not translated, but in the context of the sentence, it doesn't become a problem. Flaubert is an artist of words; his pictures are painted so colorfully that you will be seeing the scene in your head. On the other hand, there are a number of references and annotations that, in the Kindle version at least, are accessible immediately just by touching the screen, then touching it again to return to the text.

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I found this extremely useful and not as disruptive to the flow as having to scroll to the end of a book to look up the notation. Occasionally, a word was split with a space, as a typographical error. After the first few times, when I would come across a partial word, very often the next "word" was the rest of it. This may have happened about a dozen times throughout the book, but it's my only criticism.

MADAME BOVARY: Annotated

There is a foreward that gives historical background and tells of Flaubert's being charged with indecency for the content of the book, and a subsequent trial, at which he was acquitted. One nice little touch is a review of a number of filmed versions of Madame Bovary, where the editor gives his opinion of the strengths and weaknesses of various actress's performance. It propelled me right back on to Amazon to begin looking for one or more of these cinematic retellings, hoping to find the best truest to the book version. Was well into this version when my spouse took my iPad on a trip, so I got a print copy from the library to tide me over.

The difference in the quality of this version and the library copy, translated by Francis Steegmuller, was astounding. This version reads like it was done by a third-year French student: Read side-by-side, it's almost funny. It will be a much better experience. One person found this helpful. Though by current standards, Madame Bovary may be wordy in a few passages, this book is still a standard for excellent literature. I read this in an advanced French course in college.

It was hard plowing through it, and I always had a translation dictionary in one hand. But eventually I learned to love Madame Bovary herself while hating the society she was thrown into. This was a good story,but I found it a little too descriptive at times. It seems that the author used the book not only to tell the story of a disillusioned woman but comment on his feeling about the Catholic Church of the times as well men's views of women.

A good translated version of the classic about the sorry, self -indulgent french woman. Heart wrenching in her disregard for others that leaves her with an empty life, not worth living.