Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4206 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Synopsis
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'.

Customer Reviews

A Masterpiece
This book is probably a masterpiece. One woman's desperate quest for freedom, and the fatal futility of it as she ventures in a wrong direction. It's a tragedy of the human race: too great to live by rules, too small to be free. Overgrown for crude conventions, dwarfed by the challenges when you break them.

Madame Bovary can't bear her mediocre existence. She loathes her role of the wife of a village doctor; she has no regard for her womanly duties; she cares little about public opinion. She breaks free from it all, and how? In the most conventional way: she takes lovers. Her affairs bring her no love and only fleeting moments of satisfaction. She eventually incurs debts and poisons herself on the day bailiffs raid her house, unable to take the shame.

Could she be blamed for this amateur attempt to make some sense of her life? What other avenues could she explore? There hardly were any opportunities open to women those days to establish themselves professionally. She certainly lacked guidance to become a scholar (she did try to read philosophers, but it didn't take off). She also lacked imagination to make something special of her life, and she didn't find any worthy cause.

She was a product of her class, her upbringing and her society, who dared to question its norms. She thought she was breaking free from those norms, but in reality she was reinforcing them. Norms are not imposed externally. They are within you. They are the building material of your psychic, they guide your actions, and this is the tragedy. But it was still a courageous quest.

The author deserves admiration for being so non-judgemental in this sensitive situation. A woman who cheats on her devoted husband, meanwhile squandering his wealth. She, who selfishly drives her child to the life of an orphan and a pauper. But you close the book feeling only sympathy and sadness at the ways of the world. There's not a trace of moralising here, just a human story.

This book is not an entertainment, not a recreational read. At times the prose becomes too heavy, too crowded. It appears to be in want of finer editing. Do read it if you're prone to think. Don't read it if you want to kill your time.

Beautiful
How does a man write as though he were a woman?

This was well written, knuckle bighting beautiful stuff.
I read a little of how this book has been recieved before I opened the book. I laughed at all the people who claimed that they were Madame Bovary. But to my dismay I too am her! This book has taught me so much about myself.

I find it very hard to get emotionally involved in a book written by a man I just don't feel that they ever understand the mind of a woman but Mr Flaubert sure does.

This book is highly reccomended by my good self. The advice I give you is to put a weekend aside and read this in one huge chunk, it's much nicer that way. I have a memory now of an amazing weekend of self discovery and some of the finest fiction I have ever encountered.

Surprisingly modern writing
I can well understand how controversial this novel was when it was first published. Overall it is a vicious portrayal of small town France. Most of the characters are revealed to be self-seeking and vain. At the heart of the story is Emma Bovary - and Flaubert is, I feel, ambivalent in his attitude to her. He sometimes describes her very favourably and at others as selfish hard-hearted. And we as readers share this ambivalence - is she a cruel temptress who cares little for her own child or is she a victim of the social mores and unable to act independently? Certainly the book highlights how women of the time could only find happiness and fulfilment through a male partner.

The ending is prolonged and horrific. Was Flaubert hoping to attract our sympathy for the hapless Emma or was he ensuring that she was suitably punished for her infidelities?

The writing is splendid - surprisingly modern and beautifully descriptive. I am sorry I let this book sit unread on my bookshelf for so long?