World Literature
![Gustave Flaubert - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_a_gustave_flaubert.jpg)
Madame Bovary (Vintage Classics)
For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the English translation of Francis Steegmuller), and its creation of a world whose minor figures are as vital as its doomed heroine. In reading Madame Bovary, one experiences a work that remains genuinely revolutionary almost a century and a half after its creation.
Editorial Reviews
"Madame Bovary is like the railroad stations erected in its epoch: graceful, even floral, but cast of iron." -- John Updike
Readers Top Reviews
Bryan Byrd
That 'Madame Bovary' is one of if not the best novel of its kind I have no doubt. Critics have parsed Flaubert's prose far better than I could, but it is apparent that Flaubert intuitively grasped what many writers struggle their whole lives learning, and in the pages of 'Madame Bovary' there is a lifetime's worth of instruction. For that reason, and for its influence on what followed, I'd definitely recommend Flaubert's work to any student of literature, which is the reason for the four star rating. Having tipped my cap to Flaubert the stylist, I'd also say that Emma Bovary's story is such an unsparing study of obsession's downward spiral that I'd hesitate to recommend it to anyone who usually reads simply for content. Emma's reckless pursuit of material and sexual gratification she believes she is entitled to while callously discarding her real responsibilities is no period piece. Instead, it is a well-told tale of behavior that I'm as familiar with in my time as Flaubert probably was in his. Then as now, the results of unchecked self-absorption are ruinous and depressing. I found 'Madame Bovary' ultimately disappointing. After reading some critical build up, I may have expected something it wasn't intended to be. Despite some absolutely excellent passages, I had trouble sustaining interest in Emma Bovary's willful descent, and her unrealistic expectations. Perhaps, as some critics suggest, I should be able to celebrate skillful prose over and apart from a personally unsatisfactory plot, but evidently I'm not enough of an aesthete for that. Additionally, and what may be most unfortunate, 'Madame Bovary' surely suffers from the hordes of pale imitations that followed it, and when returning to the source, unique as it once was, it seems unremarkable now. This edition's translation by Francis Steegmuller certainly seemed adequate to me (as I can't read French), but it may be worth noting to some that it was done in 1957. There are other, newer translated versions available, and while I didn't detect anything that dated this edition, had I known this beforehand, I probably would have opted for the updated version.
Pete Bogg
To our ears, some of the language in Madame Bovary may seem quaint, even comical. When Emma says to her lover Rodolphe, “Take me. I’m yours,” one almost sees Madelaine Kahn in Young Frankenstein. That Flaubert manages to make this tragedy not only relevant to our lives but also engrossing testifies to his skill as a writer. I found myself rooting for Emma at the same time I felt exasperated. In love with love, her passion is thwarted not only because the men she feels love for do not deserve it (they’re either dullards like her husband Charles, or cowardly liars like her lovers Rodolphe and Leon), but also because her society is so limited, offering only the role of self-sacrificing mother, a fate acceptable to some but surely suffocating for others. Yet what remains with me from this book is not the tragedy of a woman destroyed because her nature found no place in her times, but that nearly everyone in the story seems in the end to be hopeless. The novel became for me a picture of a bourgeois society that is cowardly, thoughtless, and superficial. And Emma was not immune to it – part of her passionate sensuality was an infatuation with material wealth – fine clothes, furnishings, and food – and that proved the immediate cause of her undoing as she did the 19th century equivalent of "maxxing out her credit cards and signing up for more". One wants to believe she might have been able to see through both Rodolphe and Leon in time, and perhaps then to see through the illusion of boundless romantic love, and use her sensuality without letting it rule her, taking her pleasures as they presented themselves. In short, one wanted Emma to wise up and stop being a sucker. As Tina Turner sang, "What's love got to do with it?" Poor Emma. Poor us.
I've always avoided this kind of (classic) book so I started it reluctantly. Within 50 pages I was stunned by how good it is. Lots of translations are available; from what I can tell this one (Steegmuller) is still the best.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Part One
We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk. Those who were sleeping awoke, and we all stood up as though interrupting our work.
The headmaster motioned us to sit down, then turned to the teacher and said softly, "Monsieur Roger, I'm placing this pupil in your care. He'll begin in the eighth grade, but if his work and conduct are good enough, he'll be promoted to where he ought to be at his age."
The newcomer hung back in the corner behind the door, so that we could hardly see him. He was a country boy of about fifteen, taller than any of us. He wore his hair cut straight across the forehead, like a cantor in a village church, and he had a gentle, bewildered look. Although his shoulders were not broad, his green jacket with black buttons was apparently too tight under the arms, and the slits of its cuffs revealed red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, sheathed in blue stockings, protruded from his yellowish trousers, which were pulled up tight by a pair of suspenders. He wore heavy, unpolished, hobnailed shoes.
We began to recite our lessons. He concentrated all his attention on them, as though listening to a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow, and when the bell rang at two o'clock the teacher had to tell him to line up with the rest of us.
When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done."
But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny.
"Stand up," said the teacher.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh.
He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again.
"Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man.
A loud burst of laughter from the other pupils threw the poor boy into such a state of confusion that he did not know whether to hold his cap in his hand, leave it on the floor or put it on his head. He sat down again and put it back on his lap.
"Stand up," said the teacher, "and tell me your name."
The new boy mumbled something unintelligible.
"Say it again!"
The same mumbled syllables came from his lips again, drowned out by the jeers of the class.
"Louder!" cried the teacher. "Louder!"
With desperate determination the new boy opened his enormous mouth and, as though calling someone, shouted this word at the top of his lungs: "Charbovari!"
This instantly touched off an uproar which rose in a crescendo of shrill exclamations, shrieks, barks, stamping of feet and repeated shouts of "Charbovari! Charbovari!" Then it subsided into isolated notes, but it was a long time before it died down completely; it kept coming back to life in fits and starts along a row of desks where a stifled laugh would occasionally explode like a half-spent firecracker.
A shower of penalties gradually restored order in the classroom, however, and the teacher, having managed to understand Charles Bovary's name after making him repeat it, spell it out and read it to him, immediately ordered the poor devil to sit on the dunce's seat at the foot of the rostrum. He began to walk over to it, then stopped short.
"What are you looking for?" asked the teacher.
"My ca--" the new boy said timidly, glancing around uneasily."
The whole class will copy five hundred lines!" Like Neptune's "Quos ego" in the Aeneid, this furious exclamation checked the outbreak of a new storm. "Keep quiet!" continued the teacher indignantly, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief he had taken from his toque. "As for you," he said to the new boy, "you will write out 'Ridiculus sum' twenty times in all tenses." He add...
We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk. Those who were sleeping awoke, and we all stood up as though interrupting our work.
The headmaster motioned us to sit down, then turned to the teacher and said softly, "Monsieur Roger, I'm placing this pupil in your care. He'll begin in the eighth grade, but if his work and conduct are good enough, he'll be promoted to where he ought to be at his age."
The newcomer hung back in the corner behind the door, so that we could hardly see him. He was a country boy of about fifteen, taller than any of us. He wore his hair cut straight across the forehead, like a cantor in a village church, and he had a gentle, bewildered look. Although his shoulders were not broad, his green jacket with black buttons was apparently too tight under the arms, and the slits of its cuffs revealed red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, sheathed in blue stockings, protruded from his yellowish trousers, which were pulled up tight by a pair of suspenders. He wore heavy, unpolished, hobnailed shoes.
We began to recite our lessons. He concentrated all his attention on them, as though listening to a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow, and when the bell rang at two o'clock the teacher had to tell him to line up with the rest of us.
When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done."
But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny.
"Stand up," said the teacher.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh.
He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again.
"Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man.
A loud burst of laughter from the other pupils threw the poor boy into such a state of confusion that he did not know whether to hold his cap in his hand, leave it on the floor or put it on his head. He sat down again and put it back on his lap.
"Stand up," said the teacher, "and tell me your name."
The new boy mumbled something unintelligible.
"Say it again!"
The same mumbled syllables came from his lips again, drowned out by the jeers of the class.
"Louder!" cried the teacher. "Louder!"
With desperate determination the new boy opened his enormous mouth and, as though calling someone, shouted this word at the top of his lungs: "Charbovari!"
This instantly touched off an uproar which rose in a crescendo of shrill exclamations, shrieks, barks, stamping of feet and repeated shouts of "Charbovari! Charbovari!" Then it subsided into isolated notes, but it was a long time before it died down completely; it kept coming back to life in fits and starts along a row of desks where a stifled laugh would occasionally explode like a half-spent firecracker.
A shower of penalties gradually restored order in the classroom, however, and the teacher, having managed to understand Charles Bovary's name after making him repeat it, spell it out and read it to him, immediately ordered the poor devil to sit on the dunce's seat at the foot of the rostrum. He began to walk over to it, then stopped short.
"What are you looking for?" asked the teacher.
"My ca--" the new boy said timidly, glancing around uneasily."
The whole class will copy five hundred lines!" Like Neptune's "Quos ego" in the Aeneid, this furious exclamation checked the outbreak of a new storm. "Keep quiet!" continued the teacher indignantly, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief he had taken from his toque. "As for you," he said to the new boy, "you will write out 'Ridiculus sum' twenty times in all tenses." He add...
