Madame Bovary: A Story of Provincial Life (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Alan Russell (Translator) "We were at prep, when the Head came in, followed by a new boy not in uniform and a school-servant carrying a big desk..." (more)
Key Phrases: Madame Bovary, Monsieur Homais, Madame Homais (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its inglorious banality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and wholly modern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincial housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. A succès de scandale in its day, Madame Bovary remains a powerful and arousing novel.

Translated with an Introduction by Geoffrey Wall
New Preface by Michèle Roberts --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the younger son of a provincial doctor, briefly studied law before devoting himself to writing, with limited success during his lifetime. After the publication of Madame Bovary in 1857, he was prosecuted for offending public morals.

Geoffrey Wall teaches at the University of York, translated Flaubert's Selected Letters for Penguin Classics, and is the author of Flaubert: A Life.

Michèle Roberts is the author of ten highly praised novels. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; First Thus edition (April 30, 1951)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140440151
• ISBN-13: 978-0140440157
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,531,941 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars translation is everything, March 25, 2006

By	J. Taylor (Malibu, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Typically Penguin Classics does a great job with translating foriegn classics, but in the case of Madame Bovary, they do not. I read two chapters in this book and had to keep going back and re-reading sentences and had the most difficult time trying to figure out what was trying to be conveyed. Finally, I drove over to my local library and checked out the Bantam Classics version and I am extremely pleased that I did. It reads so much better and is actually entertaining. Get the book, but get Lowell Bair's translation.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Madame Bovary: Classic Novel of a Cinderella Dreamer whose Prince Never Arrived, February 26, 2008

By	C. M Mills "Michael Mills" (Knoxville Tennessee) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Madame Bovary is the greatest novel written by Gustave Flaubert. The 1855
masterpiece portrays in searing detail the tragic tale of a young girl whose dreams turned into nightmares; whose sandcastles are swept away by unfulfilled passion; whose young life is ended in a tragic death. Years before Tolstoy limned the adultress woman in his Anna Karenina we see the consequences which ensue when a middle class wife and mother breaks the seventh commandment.
The novel takes place near Rouen in the north of France. There are actually three Madame Bovarys in the story. Madame Bovary Sr. who is the mother of Charles Bovary dominates her weak son. Madame Bovary I is an ugly but wealthy woman who dies allowing Charles to wed the lovely Emma
Bovary who is the the famed woman of the book's title. Emma has grown up on a farm coddled by her widower father. She has immersed herself in romantic tales and spent time in a French convent. Emma dreams of castles in the air and a charming prince to take her to paradise. Today she would be a reader of Harlequin Romances. She is a virgin plum ripe for picking!
Charles Bovary ("bovine" meaning cow-like; also think "ovary for his scandolous wife Emma) is a dull, stupid and lethargic public health inspector. He is a good man but is a total dullard! Charles weds Emma after treating her father. At first all goes well as the couple set up house in a French provincial town where little exciting ever occurs. They have a daughter Berthe with whom Emma has little to do. She never grows up to becoming a mature woman.
Emma carries on two affairs in the novel with the law student Leon and the wealthy but callous womanizing aristocrat Rodolphe. She is sucked into a cesspool of overwhelming debt being addicted to clothing, jewelry and furniture. Emma's lovers forsake her as her disillusionment with men and life itelf takes over life. Madame Bovary ends her life by committing suicide. The account of her horrific, painful and grotesque death from her fatal injection of arsenic rat poison will never be forgotten by the
reader. Despite her many sins she deserves pity at such a sad end. Her husband dies a few years later and her daughter has to be farmed out to a relative.
What makes this novel of adultery, satirical views of provincial life, mockery of the relgious hypocrisy in the French countryside and lacerating portraits of such types as the village atheist Homais so great? In my opinion the reasons this is such a landmark work must include:
a. A picture of a woman seeking to break out of the nineteenth century bourgeoisie view of females as placid wives and mothers with no aspirations of their own. Throughout the novel there are images of birds seeking freedom from cages. Emma is a modern feminist in the nineteenth century society she finds impossible to escape. Emma is an iconoclastic rebel.
b. A satirical and cynical view of human hypocrisy drawn with skill in the pictures Flaubert draws of such figures as the village priest, scientist, merchants and moneylenders. Society is concerned with money and social status to the detriment of more spiritual and ethical values.
c. Flaubert introduces a new realism to the novel which will influence such naturalist as Emile Zola and others. The novel reads as if it was written today instead of over 150 years ago.
d. Flaubert's descriptions of the beauty of nature (and its indifference to human suffering and troubles) are beautifully etched. His use of language and the level of suspense he maintains throughout the work are excellent.
e. Flaubert is not afraid to describe female sexual longings. His sex scenes are tasteful to our eyes but viewed as prurient reading in his own day.
Penguin editons are always a joy to read with their critical apparatus and excellent introductions. Enjoy this great work of literature as soon as you can!

29 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simple Plot, Elaborate Details in This Masterpiece, December 30, 2005

By	M. JEFFREY MCMAHON "herculodge" (Torrance, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

A simple story really: Charles Bovary, an insensitive, crude, socially awkward oaf, sleazes his way into the medical profession and becomes a doctor in small French provinces at the danger of the citizenry. Additionally, Charles marries a young, beautiful woman, Emma, who intoxicated on romance novels, expects her marriage to Charles to be as grand and splendid as the romances she has gorged on all her life. As one would expect, her marriage is hellish, isolating, and frustrating; Emma grows more and more irritable with her husband and looks to allay her frustrations by spending beyond her means and by engaging in affairs with fops, charlatans, and other mountebanks who seduce Emma with the illusions of romance she has read in her novels. Her growing debts and growing disillusionment with her lovers reaches a climax that I'll save for the reader.

The novel's plot is actually a vehicle for Flaubert's real agenda: to skewer the vulgarities and pettiness of the middle-class. He shows no mercy and is rather misanthropic in his portrayal of his characters. Nevertheless, his vision is a true and vigorous one. This is not a novel for people who want to sit back and enjoy a French period piece romance. To the contrary, this novel kills romance and in fact Flaubert was once dubbed "The Hang-Man of the Romantics."