Customer Reviews

Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I came to Madame Bovary through a perhaps fairly commonplace contemporary window - Julian Barnes's masterful 1984 novel 'Flaubert's Parrot'. Barnes, for those who are unfamiliar with him, is a Francophile English novelist who grabbed me when I was younger and I now read omnivorously. Flaubert's Parrot is a fascinating playful novel meditating on life, art, and especially Flaubert and his life and work, and especially Madame Bovary.

Of course, I was slightly wary of Madame Bovary's massive classic status. It easily holds its own in the pantheon of top five novels ever or something. But to read some of the reviews you might think Emma Bovary was a moderately attractive provincial slapper who got what she deserved.

People who think this clearly have no understanding human psychology. For on a first reading (most novels one reading suffices, but for Madame Bovary it was clear that it demands many subsequent re-readings) it was clear that Flaubert's succes du scandale is perhaps the greatest realist novel ever.

His style is supremely elegant, yet not dated in the way many of his 19th Century contemporaries have become. His subject is the world and its everymen - provincial people, limited in education, with vulgar and at hypocritical mores. His themes are timeless - the disjunction between people's idealised projection of themselves and the reality of their lives, the power dynamics of human relationships, the machinations of the heart, the difficulties of communication between people who live closely knit lives. His characters shine through not as mere holograms but as shining paragons of convincing personalities - the plodding mediocre husband, the frustrated wife, the feckless libertine and (my favourite) the tedious community worthy. These are not cliches but exemplars of so much human existence brought to life by the brilliance of Flaubert's style (he only wrote 25 words a day - slow progress, but well worth it).

Move over Steegmuller, move over Lowell Bair, Margaret Mauldon's translation is fantastic. The translation flows with elegant ease. This translation has proved better and more accurate than any other, as far as I can tell. I highly recommend this translation.

Flaubert claimed to absent himself from his work, to be "everywhere present and yet nowhere visible," and in some points in "Bovary" this technical detachment seems to effect a sense of icy-cold objectivity. And yet every time I read the novel it becomes clearer that it was written in a state of intense emotion, of excruciating moral striving and almost blood-thirsty savagery. With every choice of every "right word" is embedded Flaubert's love or Flaubert's hate, and sometimes both love and hate at once.

What does Flaubert hate? He certainly seems to hate cliche, and Emma's days are wasted in pursuit of one cliche after another. She does not love the three men in her life, or her daughter, or God, or anyone, but sees them as more or less suitable accessories to the cloying romance she would like to make of her life. To say that Flaubert hates the idea of the bourgeois is accurate but potentially misleading. For him, the bourgeois has almost nothing to do with social class and everything to do with a failure to look and think for oneself, everything to do with giving in to the temptation to accept easy generalities ("received ideas") and ignore the value in the minutia of everyday life. Emma does not notice, as careful readers will, the depravity of the aristocrats at the ball because she does not observe them; she is only interested in the *idea* of aristocrats and in how being among them reflects on her. This has nothing to do with being middle class or with being for or against the establishment. Emma adopts anti-establishment attitudes, and certainly transgresses against social custom, but this is Emma at her worst; her affectations are no more admirable than Leon's poeticized histrionics or the pose of Byronic nihilism with which Rodolphe lures Emma into bed. Homais is a self-styled "free thinker," and even a ludicrous sort of bohemian at times, but this doesn't involve any actual thinking or looking.

Cliche is not just an artistic or intellectual sin for Flaubert, but an ethical lapse. (For Flaubert, almost as much as for Aquinas, the good cannot be divorced from the beautiful or the true.) Emma's failure of imagination leads her to brutalize her husband, her daughter, and herself. The novels she reads as a girl might perhaps contain some emotional truths, but Emma reads them literally, expecting that her life will resemble them almost perfectly, even down to the level of interior decoration. Life, of course, fails to oblige, and Emma suffers greatly and causes great suffering. Flaubert truly is attracted to something about Emma's striving, I think, and manages to evoke a great deal of sympathy for her when her flimsy worlds start to spin apart at the end of the novel, but this does not undo the damage she has done.

What is less obvious about Flaubert, or at least less talked about, is what he loves--particulars, close observation, artistic and scientific precision, the poetry of the quotidian, truth, honesty, beauty, ordinary decency, and (surprisingly) intense passion--as can be seen in part in his description of Dr. Lariviere: "He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that generation . . . of philosophical practitioners, who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and wisdom. . . . Disdainful of honours, of titles, and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences." That "practising virtue without believing in it" part rings false to me, as if the author were protecting himself from the charge of sentimentality, but the passage still manages to demonstrate that Flaubert remains the romantic he was in his youth. He has just discovered the romance of the real.

It is in Charles, though, and through Charles's eyes that Flaubert's sense of value can be most clearly discerned. Dullard though he may be, and blind as he is to his wife's faults, his love for Emma and for Berthe is genuine, and he has a gift for happiness that is utterly beyond her or anyone else in the novel: "A meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener . . . now made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open." This handkerchief-headed dunce will experience misery, yes, but he is conscious in a way that Emma will never be, in a way that someone like Rodolphe could never even faintly comprehend.

A wonderful read (even with the translation)!

Flaubert has written an engaging tale (set in 19th century rural France) that is beautifully written (or a least translated). The quality of the prose of descriptions of persons, places and things is of the highest quality; however, some of the conversations between characters, may have lost a little something in the translation. Nonetheless, this book had no trouble keeping my interest and provided me with a dramatic tragedy that was, to say the least, memorable.

This book must have caused quite a stir in its day, due to what would have been considered a scandalous topic at the time of its original publication. (SPOILER) It is the story of a beautiful, but bored and unsatisfied housewife, paired with a naive, cuckold husband; both of whom unwittingly conspire (her actively, him passively) to lead their marriage on an ever downward spiraling path to ruin.

Simply a superbly told tale! 5 Stars.

I agree with the editorial review above that says you could shake this book and nothing would fall out. I am amazed at how much emotion Flaubert can convey in the midst of apparently neutral descriptions of fact. The story is powerfully told, and nothing is wasted.

The book is rather like a longer alternate version of Hedda Gabler. The author's unblinking eye shows you the virtues and flaws of all characters, letting the reader draw his or her own conclusions.

The startling impact of this novel published 150 years ago can only be imagined. It's doubtful that a female central character had ever exhibited such self-centeredness, held such disdain for her life and those in it, spent so much time romanticizing and fantasizing about future life with lovers, or sunk to such depths of despair when realities hit home. The themes of the book are hardly irrelevant today: the quick onset of marital unhappiness, the excitement, yet limitations, of infidelity, and the financial consequences of extravagance.

Despite the relevance of those issues, the characterizations are not particularly realistic by modern standards: the characters are overdrawn - excessive. Emma is almost childlike in her profound unhappiness and obsessiveness; her husband Charles is beyond oblivious in failing to perceive Emma's thinking and behavior; and the comical arrogance of various professionals, such as the doctors and the pharmacist, is only exceeded by their ignorance and incompetence.

The book is set in small towns in the French countryside. It's difficult for the modern reader to fully grasp that environment, though the author offers fairly detailed and sophisticated descriptions. In fact, one might want to keep a dictionary handy.

The subject matter of the book is commonplace in the modern novel. But the book is interesting just from the standpoint that a nineteenth century author could produce a book that is so psychologically perceptive concerning marital life. It is considered to be a classic for a reason; it remains worth reading.

I really liked this book. Flaubert has such an interesting way of writing. His discriptions are pretty bizarre. For example the way he suggests the lusty acts that are occuring by describing the scenery or architecture.

The characters are so enigmatic and at the same time very simple. That's kind of how the whole book is, complexingly simple. Homais uses a line of (paraphrasing) mistaking arsenic for sugar when making vanilla custard. For me this was the theme of the book, but I'm sure it's different for others.

It's a book that leaves you thinking. There's just so much to take from it and you'd never get it all no matter how many times you read it.

If you are a potential reader of the book, I would recommend that you skip the analysis and comment - and I will not discuss the plot here. Instead, just jump in and read the novel. You can read the analysis later. I read this Oxford version of the novel a few months ago after being directed towards it by such well known writers as Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov. They have written pieces and done interviews where they have pointed to this work of Flaubert as a pivotal work in the development of the modern novel and realism. It was followed by other great novels from writers such as Tolstoy, D.H. Lawrence, Dreiser, and Joyce, etc. It is a great novel, certainly yes, but in addition it is simply a great read.

With all of that fanfare, how does one write a review for Amazon? My quick answer is that the book meets all expectations. It immediately captures the reader. I read it start to finish in one day. It was impossible to put down. After reading it I read Flaubert's "Sentimental Education." It is a somewhat slower paced novel and it is good as well, but not quite as good as "Madame Bovary."

There are a number of charming features found in the novel. These include the interesting characters and the 19th century rural French atmosphere. With this setting and with the interesting characters, Flaubert strives for just the right phrases, the correct plot, and the proper structure to present his tale. It is said that he wrote only 100 pages per year and agonized over every paragraph. It seems as such, because the final product is a smooth quick read.

The prose is beautifully written and has its own charm. Here is an example for about one quarter of the way into the book shortly after from when the protagonist Emma meets her first lover.

"It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind."

So, do not think about this novel too much and do not read too much analysis, just read it an enjoy it. For a follow up analysis, see Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" from his days at Cornell. He dedicates a chapter to "Madame Bovary" and he places it among the great European novels.

Madame Bovary, originally published in 1857, is in a very real sense the first modern novel, which had at its center the emptiness of bourgeois life.

After marrying Charles Bovary, the local physician, the young and bored Emma finds herself living in the small farming town in 19th century France of Yonville-l'Abbaye. The book evokes the petty ambitions that not only yoke Emma, but every character. There is Homais, the blow hard pharmacist. Lheureux, the wealthy merchant, who dupes Emma into unnecessary extravagances while financing and refinancing the loans that will bring her to ruin. The critical mother-in-law, who's mantra seems to be "Emma needs to be forced to work." as she goes on to brandish Emma for making fun of priests by quoting Voltaire. Then finally the dashing and handsome Rodolphe, Emma's first lover, who seduces her even as he plans his escape. Emma is less a fallen woman than an extreme expression of a culture with no values. Flaubert mirrors a society in which he lived, one so unlike ours as to be completely alien. Or was it? The future for Emma was a long, dark hallway with a solidly locked door at its end. Yes, Emma is a shallow, amoral woman who debases herself increasingly as the book goes on. However, the same could be said of all the other characters, as ultimately no one is innocent with the exception of the long suffering husband, Charles, who is too blind to see what's right before his eyes.

Madame Bovary is probably the most beautifully written book I have ever read or ever will read.

This is a very well written novel. It deserves its high status in the cannon of world literature. The most unique and surprising thing about this novel is that it seems to be so timely and modern. Though it was written long before our consumer driven culture of debt, it seems to understand these issues is a weirdly foretelling way. I was an English literature major in college so I was exposed to many fiction works from the time period of Madame Bovary, but I have never read such a modern novel from that time. Maybe Flaubert had a time machine?