Product Description

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25406 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-27
• Original language: French
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

Genius
I have read this in the original French and in translation and it's quite a different experience. However it is a very good translation and a must read novel.

A thoroughly enjoyed read..
I throughly enjoyed this work which I found both thought provoking and highly entertaining.

It quickly dawned on me that this was no ordinary 'intelligent woman struggling against bigoted times' novel but one that went much deeper than conventional works. I loved the fact that Emma far from being an ideolised good natured heroine was in fact a selfish, sensual and self-centred women with destructive tendencies. It made her much easier to relate to! Despite the fact that she really is a very unpleasant character there was something about her that I found really appealing. Perhaps it was the way that she increasingly gave into her every desire and expressed the disatisfaction that we all often feel with life but fail to show.

Emma seemed to me so very real with her constant search throughout the novel for an elusive ideal of happiness. One she trys to find in her quest for material goods, her love affairs and her brief religious devotion. Many of her passions are shown to be unltimately shallow and without any real substance - in particular her supposed religious extremisim which is quickly forgotten upon meeting with Leon again - her second lover. I found this portrayal to be an honest and reflective account of her search for happiness and her inability to find happiness in any of the aspects of her life.

I felt very strongly that one of the novel's great strengths was the way the character traits of all the other characters contrast with the heroine. From the wonderful portrayl of the arrogant, boastful Homais who's pompus unbearable arrogance and complete lack of self-awareness highlight the frustrations of Emma's life, to Charles her devoted, kind and good husband who is utterly unsuited to Emma and who by being her complete opposite highlights the destrution of Emma's nature.

There are no hero's in the book and I found that its honest portrayal of the frustrations and passions of life just as relevant today as 150 years ago.

If you're a man thinking of getting married.....
... read this first.

"Madame Bovary" may have scandalised French society in the 19th Century with its account of the married life of serial adulterer Emma Bovary, but it is tame by today's standards and now lacks any kind of shock appeal . Emma comes across as a Princess Diana type figure ; a glamourous, flirty hedonist with a fondness for spending large sums of money on trendy clothes and bored with the mundane responsibilities of conservative bourgeois life. However her husband ,Charles, is unlike Princess Diana's Charles; he is totally devoted to Emma ,attentive and indulgent and unsuspectful of any marital infidelity on her part. In fact towards the end of the book it is hard to believe that he still hasn't cottoned on to his wife's fairly blatant Ugandan activites. However apart from the selfish and callous deceptions on her husband by Madame Bovary, there isn't a lot of substance to the novel. Most of the supporting characters are one-dimensional creations and are not particularly sympathetic while the writing style is often ponderous ,verging on the turgid.

There are certainly a lot more Madame Bovary's around today than there was in Flaubert's time ; you could almost say that the majority of women today possess her characteristics and morals. This novel highlights the downside of marriage ; the tragedy and heartache that occurs when one or other spouse succumbs to temptation and corruption and the subsequent deceptions that arise from that. Reading about Mr Bovary's sufferings in this novel would be enough to make any young man think twice about marrying a woman.