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: #12076 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-30
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

About the Author
Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821. After illness interrupted a career in law, he retired to live with his widowed mother and devote himself to writing. He achieved limited success in his own lifetime, but his fame and reputation grew steadily after his death in 1880. Geoffrey Wall teaches French at the University of York. His biography of Flaubert has been translated into four languages. Michèle Roberts is the half-English half-French writer of ten highly praised novels.

Customer Reviews

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?

In Praise of a Great Novel
Anyone who feels compelled to label this novel as boring, trashy, romantic etc. has failed to comprehend the subtleties of this fine novel. It is actually an anti-romance, offering a tragic portrayl of a doomed love affair. In fact, it subverts all of the usual rules of the romance narrative, and in doing so provides a novel of huge significance and cultural importance. As readers we are invited to share in Flaubert's highly perceptive (and at the time, hugely original) account of the human condition. We are not supposed to judge and damn Emma as selfish, irrational, immoral etc., rather her character articulates the great complexity of the human experience. The novel is unique in dealing sensitively with human emotion without resorting to romantic cliches. Emma Bovary is so significant a text in pushing the boundaries of "classic" literature, and has been central to so much critical debate that it is astonishing that anyone could find it boring. I guess some people might be disappointed that the novel isn't as sexually explicit as they might have anticipated, and lacks an ending that matches the romantic ideal.

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.