Customer Reviews

Madame Bovary (New York Public Library Collector's Editions)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I read this book as a required reading for my 12 grade Advanced Placement english class and found it a very quick, enjoyable read. Often times a lot is lost in translation, but with a book as wonderful as Madame Bovary, no matter how you slice it it comes off as a masterpiece. A wonderful story about the rise and fall of a once peasant farm girl to a woman of luxury and an adulturous past. This book has everything: sex, love, passion, intrigue, tragedy, death, lies, and appealing characters. Read Madame Bovary!

Madame Bovary is, without a doubt, the best book I have ever read, and I love to read. This is a story about human nature and irony. Emma Bovary wants every man, but the man who adores her. She is selfish, oblivious, and cold. Her husband, Charles, is crazy for her, and she is disgusted by his unconditional love for her. This book is exciting and adventerous, but the element of reality is there too. The mixture of fantasy and reality is beautiful. If you enjoy reading, then this book is a must! I can not reccommend it too highly.

This is one of those books that always seems to come up in literary conversations, and because I like to be in the know, I decided I would pick it up between college courses and give it a try. I Loved It!!!
I was a bit surprised by the introduction to this particular book because the woman who authored it, Robin Morgan, seemed more than a touch pissed off that Flaubert was a sexist ass. In my opinion, as a feminist, it does not matter one bit. This novel is tragic, yes, but beautifully and fluidly written. While Flaubert may have been some kind of jerk (according to Robin Morgan) in his personal and/or literary life, this masterpiece is certainly worthy of praise regardless.
Sure, the characters are unlikable...and that is putting it nicely...but I cannot, in any way, say that they are unbelievable. Emma Bovary, AND her husband Charles, are fatally flawed...but such is the world we live in. Nobody is perfect and this novel is a testament to the fact.
This is a quick read, and again, it is, in my opinion, expertly and beautifully written. I am just miffed that I waited so long to dive into it! Highly recommended.

When I first read Madame Bovary, I thought it was boring and incredibly stupid. But (seeing as I had to write a paper on it) I now realize that it was an incredibly insightful and revolutionary story. After reading some literary criticism from various sources, I finally realized what the story was about. Flaubert uses the simple, plain story of a rural couple to lash out at the traditional roles of men and women in provincial society. To truly understand Flaubert's purpose, I reread the story and realized that Emma was a woman trying to escape from her role as the provincial housewife and Charles was simply a man content with his role. By rereading the book (I know that you might not like it, but if you want to see Flaubert's true purpose you should), I could see that every one of Emma's infidelitys and extravagances were desperate attempts to escape from her philosophical cage known as the role of a woman. So if you want to be done with eveything about Madame Bovary, so be it, but if you want to read a story of a true heroine in a desperate quest, reread Madame Bovary and be enlightened.

Madame Bovary, is a modern book even today. It is incrediable how something that was written so long ago can be soo clearly understood today. Timeless, and at the same time, torturous. I found that it was difficult to put down, and was at times shocked at its candidness. A very good read.

Honestly, this book is a bitter pill to swallow. It's written beautifully and was a real ground breaker for the realist movement, but the subject matter is incredibly tragic. I found it hard to keep reading as Emma continuously dug herself deeper into trouble, dragging her innocent, loving, and devoted family down with her. It is an incredible moral lesson that is still relevant today: "The Grass is Never Greener on the Other Side." Naturally, I found Emma incredibly dislikeable because she was lazy, melodramatic, arrogant, ignorant, and had this air of entitlement that made me want to slap her. But I did feel sorry for her because she was so caught up in this sense of romanticism, she couldn't see straight. Because of her obsession with passion, the choices she made seemed so predictable, and all you could do was watch it happen like a train wreck in slow motion. I loved how Flaubert mixed the mundane with the romantic in his writing. And I loved the bitter ironies he used, too (especially at the end of the story). I think the reader can gain alot from reading this book to this day. It's unapologetic, yet beautiful.

Flaubert's novel was a disturbing read. He assembles a cast of characters who manage not to grow, change, learn, or really connect throughout. They are all utterly trapped within themselves and thus can never really give or receive love. Most shamble along in bovine somnambulance (Charles) or trite smugness (Rodolfe). The two dynamos, Emma and Homais are both the big readers and the major actors; always reading, always striving, machinating, doing. Yet for what? Everything they strive for is vanity, hypocrisy, and destructive. The gender tweak here is that Emma's coveteousness and adultery lead to suicide; Homais's scientific, anticlerical activities lead him to rewards and recognition in his field, though nearly costing several people their lives along the way. For Flaubert, conforming to conventional morality or rebelling against are both futile, sterile strategies. The result is a world of cold instrumentality, devoid of real intimacy. This cynical vision fuels his critique of the bourgeoisie who are by definition precluded from honoring true love and morality. Flaubert does render silent emotions and invisible desires with a most penetrating precision in prose. But it is to dissect and lay bear for derision. Do not look for hope or tenderness here.

I read this book as a required reading for my 12 grade Advanced Placement english class and found it a very quick, enjoyable read. Often times a lot is lost in translation, but with a book as wonderful as Madame Bovary, no matter how you slice it it comes off as a masterpiece. A wonderful story about the rise and fall of a once peasant farm girl to a woman of luxury and an adulturous past. This book has everything: sex, love, passion, intrigue, tragedy, death, lies, and appealing characters. Read Madame Bovary!

In the opinion of our book group, this is still one of the greatest novels of all time in the richness of its descriptions and the loving, yet candid, description of the human condition. Flaubert's use of language and imagery is a beautiful representation of realism. His search for "le mot juste" - or exactly the right word - is still amazing. It was great to read this novel again through "mature" eyes. Life's lessons tend to lend a more sympathetic view of things. Although none of the characters are endearing, they are still engrossing. The story rings as true today as it did 150 years ago when Flaubert wrote it. All in all, Madame Bovary is simply, not just a novel, it is literature.

Madame Bovary, I must emphasize, is not a romantic work. In fact, it is quite the satire. Emma's romantic excesses are portrayed as a *bad* thing. It is interesting in its own way to observe the ways in which romanticism can be made fun of, but the novel tends to drag on and on somewhere near the middle chapter, after the move to Yonville. At the end, its almsot a delight to see Emma die already, and put herself out of her misery.