"Her will, like the veil strung to her bonnet, flutters in every breeze; always there is the desire urging, always the convention restraining."

Most of us, at one time or another, have wished for some elusive ‘thing’ that we believed would make our lives complete, but Emma Rouault has turned wishful thinking into an art form. Life on her father's farm is dull as dishwater, so to escape the boredom, she reads romance novels and dreams of a white knight on a majestic steed who will carry her away.

Enter Charles Bovary, a country doctor coddled far too long by his mother, who barely graduated from medical school and experienced nothing but bad luck in love. The last thing he needs is a flighty, beautiful wife with Champagne tastes that far exceed his income. But when Emma’s father breaks his leg, and Charles is called in to mend it, the farmer’s daughter bewitches him, and their fates are sealed.

My heart ached for Charles; he loved his wife and would have given anything to see her happy. But he had to engage with Emma; destructive, miserable Emma… I longed to reach into the pages and give her a good shake. She continually chased a dream while ignoring the steadfast love that waited patiently for her on her doorstep.

Madame Bovary is a tremendous tragedy brimming with beautiful prose. Bravo, Monsieur Flaubert!

For one of the most influential novels ever written, Madame Bovary is an understated affair. Flaubert is courageous in his treatment of female marital dissatisfaction, though I wish his Emma were able to act with a little more intelligence. Her dissatisfaction and desire for emotional fulfillment are perfectly understandable given her societal and personal circumstances, but her selfishness, recklessness and stupidity erase much of the sympathy one might have for her. Her husband is a pathetic character; a man who is constant and dedicated to a marital ideal, while neglecting the reality of his wife as a living, breathing person. I really did feel for him in the end. Though neither character is particularly admirable, the culpability lies less in their personal failings than in the norms of sexual separation and emotional repression that thrust Charles and Emma unprepared into each other's lives. What could Charles Bovary know about women, and what could Emma really understand about marriage; about herself? Despite the controversy, I find it hard to believe this novel could have enticed anyone to commit adultery. It's about as good a deterrent as I've read.

n  "Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon."n

It's always difficult to properly appraise a book when one hasn't read it in the language in which it was written. My edition was translated by Geoffrey Wall, who preserved Flaubert's distinctive punctuation, italicisation and paragraphing habits. Though the overuse of exclamation marks is discouraged by modern-day publishers, Flaubert scatters them like seed. I'm all for it, as it added to the vibrancy of his writing.
I read this classic at a leisurely pace, one chapter at a time, in between newfangled reads. I carefully jotted down notes and some well-chosen passages, intending to reproduce them here. Sadly, I unintentionally left my humidity-corrugated notepad by a pool in Thailand! : (
Emma (Madame Bovary), along with Lady Chatterley and Anna Karenina, is in the running for literature's most famous adulteress. And in that respect, she doesn't disappoint.
Defying convention, Flaubert deliberately chose to make his bourgeois femme fatale unlikeable, which I saw as a good thing: it makes her character believable; it makes her seem modern, (Flaubert would cast her as an influencer if he could come back to life) and it shows the extent to which the author was unfettered by tradition.
Emma "Drama Queen" Bovary, whose untamed heart rules her head, is trapped in a boring, frigid marriage and, without a care in the world, looks for love and lust elsewhere. In many ways, she behaves like a sex-hungry man who can’t keep it in his pants, except she’s living in patriarchal France in the 1800s!

Of course, when a literary character plays with fire, you just know they're gonna get burnt!

Yes, Emma is shallow and selfish and wants what she can't have but, because she is a flawed human being wholly driven by sentimentality, I somehow sympathised with her.
Translations notwithstanding, I really enjoyed Flaubert's anomalous writing style and luxuriant prose but, for me, this isn't the page-turner that Anna Karenina is.

n  Splendid, Accessible Prose in Lydia Davis' Translation of Madame Bovaryn


Madame Bovary dreams of the romantic adventures of which she reads and stands out as possibly the most self-centered anti-heroine in the Western canon. Yet, it could be that some who haven't read it have no idea of the "ending" ending (which I won't give away here).

If you haven't read this, I recommend this translation, in which Lydia Davis' prose is sublime, e.g.:

n  Love, she believed, had to come, suddenly, with a great clap of thunder and a lightning flash, a tempest from heaven that falls upon your life, like a devastation, scatters your ideals like leaves and hurls your very soul into the abyss. Little did she know that up on the roof of the house, the rain will form a pool if the gutters are blocked, and there she would have stayed feeling safe inside, until one day she suddenly discovered the crack right down the wall.n

The novel was ground-breaking in several ways, not the least of which is the well and range of human emotions that ebb and flow through the reader while marveling at Flaubert's astounding attention to detail. Clunky translations of this novel in the past took away from the experience of the sadness, anger, disgust, contempt and pity that this translation so aesthetically accentuates.

I highly recommend this translation if you haven't read this.

Madame Bovary is a gorgeous comedy of manners… The narration is flowery and almost baroque… There is no sympathy for the characters… The snide style of the novel is unique.
Gustave Flaubert begins from afar… From the school years of Charles Bovary – the future doctor and subsequent husband of Emma Bovary… Being already married one night he visits a patient and there he meets his daughter…

Charles was surprised by the whiteness of her fingernails. They were glossy, delicate at the tips, more carefully cleaned than Dieppe ivories, and filed into almond shapes. Yet her hand was not beautiful, not pale enough, perhaps, and a little dry at the knuckles; it was also too long and without soft inflections in its contours. What was beautiful about her was her eyes: although they were brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her gaze fell upon you openly, with a bold candor.

Nonetheless some mysterious spark flies between them… And his destiny chooses to set him free… So there is a new marriage…

Emma, however, would have liked to be married at midnight, by torchlight; but Père Rouault found the idea incomprehensible. So there was a wedding celebration to which forty-three people came, during which they remained at table for sixteen hours, which started up again the next day and carried over a little into the days that followed.

Charles is absolutely happy… But to Emma he is just a way station…

She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins. She needed to derive from things a sort of personal gain; and she rejected as useless everything that did not contribute to the immediate gratification of her heart, – being by temperament more sentimental than artistic, in search of emotions and not landscapes.

They relocate to another town… Her daughter is born… Their life goes smoothly… But she wants more… She wants to run away from everyday routine…

But she was filled with desires, with rage, with hatred. That dress with its straight folds concealed a heart in turmoil, and those reticent lips said  nothing about its torment.

Even the most innocent romantic dreams may lead one far astray.

(Book 886 from 1001 Books) - Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

Madame Bovary is the debut novel of French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856.

The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg and meets his patient's daughter, Emma Rouault.

Emma is a beautiful, daintily dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent.

She has a powerful yearning for luxury and romance inspired by reading popular novels.

Charles is immediately attracted to her, and visits his patient far more often than necessary, until Heloise's jealousy puts a stop to the visits.

When Heloise unexpectedly dies, Charles waits a decent interval before courting Emma in earnest.

Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles marry. The novel's focus shifts to Emma.

Charles means well but is plodding and clumsy. After he and Emma attend an elegant ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma finds her married life dull and becomes listless.

Charles decides his wife needs a change of scenery and moves his practice to the larger market town of Yonville (traditionally identified with the town of Ry).

There, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe, but motherhood proves a disappointment to Emma.

She becomes infatuated with an intelligent young man she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who shares her appreciation for literature and music and returns her esteem.

Concerned with maintaining her self-image as a devoted wife and mother, Emma does not acknowledge her passion for Léon and conceals her contempt for Charles, drawing comfort from the thought of her virtue.

Léon despairs of gaining Emma's affection and departs to study in Paris. ...

مادام بوواری (بواری) - گوستاو فلوبر (مجید ، نشر مرکز) ادبیات فرانسه؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه آوریل سال 1982میلادی

عنوان: مادام بواری؛ نویسنده: گوستاو فلوبر؛ مترجم: رضا عقیلی، محمد قاضی؛ تهران، انتشارات کیهان، 1341 ؛ در 386ص؛ چاپ دوم 1357؛ چاپ دیگر سوم تهران، نیل، 1362؛ در سی و هشت و 366ص؛ چاپ پنجم 1369؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، مجید، 1380؛ در 648ص؛ شابک9644530055؛ چاپ دوم 1381؛ چاپ چهارم 1386؛ موضوع: داستانهای نویسندگان فرانسه - سده 19م

مترجم: مشفق همدانی؛ تهران، چاپ چهارم امیرکبیر، 1395؛ در 392ص؛ شابک 9789640016985؛

مترجم: سوسن اردکانی؛ تهران، نگارستان کتاب، 1388؛ در 726ص؛ شابک 9786005541533؛

مترجم: مینا آذری؛ مشهد، مرندیز، 1394؛ در 444ص؛ شابک 9786001062957؛

مترجم: سمیه موحدی فرد؛ قم، نظاره، 1395؛ در 432ص؛ شابک 97860083940389؛

مترجم: سارا راکی؛ قزوین، آزرمیدخت، 1396؛ در 440ص؛ شابک 9786007241691؛

نقل قولی از «فلوبر» هست که: من خود «اما بواری» هستم. پایان نقل

نخستین اثر «گوستاو فلوبر» است؛ «فلوبر» پس از نگارش اثری با عنوان «وسوسه سن آنتوان»، از دوستان منتقد خود «ماکسیم دوکان»، و «لویی بونه»، دعوت میکند تا داستان را، برای آنها بخواند، ولی آن دو، داستان را اثر بدی برمیشمارند، و به او پیشنهاد میکنند، که داستان دیگری درباره ی «دلونه»، از آشنایان آنها، بنویسد؛ بر این اساس، «فلوبر» آغاز به نگارش داستان «مادام بوواری» میکنند، ایشان کوشش کردند تا داستان را براساس شخصیت‌های واقعی بنویسند، و با سود بردن از مشاهدات، و ذهن خویش، رخدادها را، در طول داستان، گسترش میدهند؛

شخصیت‌های داستان

اما بوواری: «اِما» شخصیت اول داستان بوده، و نام داستان از نام ایشان گرفته شده ‌است؛ او دختری شهرستانی است که انتظارات سیری ناپذیری از دنیای خود دارد، و مشتاق زیبایی، ثروت، عشق و جامعه‌ ای سطح بالاست؛ بخش عظیمی از داستان حول اختلافات میان ایده ‌آل‌های خیالبافانه و جاه طلبانه «اِما» و واقعیت‌های زندگی روستایی او می‌چرخد، به ویژه که این قضایا او را به سوی دو عشق زناکارانه سوق داده و بدهی‌های قابل توجهی برایش به همراه می‌آورند، که سرانجام باعث می‌شود «اِما» اقدام به خودکشی کند؛

شارل بوواری: «شارل بوواری»، همسر «اِما»، مردی بسیار ساده و معمولی بوده، و با توقعات خیالبافانه همسرش، فاصله بسیاری دارد؛ او پزشک روستای «یونویل» است، ولی در این زمینه، توانایی ویژه ای از خود نشان نداده، و در واقع صلاحیت لازم، برای پزشک بودن را ندارد؛ با وجود اینکه همه ی اهالی روستا از شهوترانی‌های «اِما» باخبر هستند، «شارل» چیزی از این موضوع نمی‌داند، و کنترلی روی همسرش ندارد، زیرا در واقع همیشه درگیر سر و سامان دادن به خرابکاری‌های خودش است؛ او همسرش را می‌پرستد، و او را زنی بی عیب و نقص می‌داند

رودولف بولانگه: «رودولف بولانگه» روستایی ثروتمندی است، که «اِما» را، هم به زنجیره ی بالا بلند معشوقه‌ های خویش افزوده است؛ او به «اِما» علاقه ای در خود نمی‌بیند؛ در حالیکه «اما» بیشتر و بیشتر وابسته ی او می‌شود، احساس دلزدگی، و نگرانی از بی احتیاطی‌های «اِما»، در «رودولف» افزونتر می‌شود؛ پس از اینکه آن دو تصمیم به فرار با یکدیگر می‌گیرند، «رودولف» درمی‌یابد که توانایی آن کار در او نیست، به ویژه به این خاطر که «اِما»، به تازگی صاحب دختری، به نام «برت» شده ‌است؛ به همین دلیل «رودولف»، در روز تعیین شده برای فرار، به تنهایی از روستا می‌گریزد، و «اِما» را دچار شکست روحی شدید می‌کند

لئون دوپوا: «لئون دوپوا» منشی جوانی، از اهالی «یونویل» است؛ او پس از «رودولف بولانگه» دومین فردی است که با «اِما بوواری» رابطه ای عاشقانه برقرار می‌کند

آقای اومه: «اومه» داروساز روستا است؛ او عقاید ضد دینی و آتئیستی دارد

آقای لورو: «لورو» تاجری حقه باز است، که پی در پی «اما» را، به خرید جنس‌های خویش وامیدارد؛ و از او می‌خواهد که پول آن‌ها را بعداً بپردازد؛ «لورو» با سودهای کلانی، که روی وام‌های «اما» می‌کشد، مبلغ بدهی‌های او را بسیار بالا می‌برد، و همین موضوع نقش مهمی در تصمیم «اِما» به خودکشی دارد

چکیده داستان: داستان «مادام بواری» با فرستادن پسری توسط مادرش، برای تحصیل درس پزشکی آغاز می‌شود؛ فرایند این داستان با پزشک شدن این پسر، «شارل بوواری» پی گرفته می‌شود؛ این جوان کم بضاعت، که پزشک تازه‌ کاری نیز به شمار می‌رود، طی ماجراهای ویژه ای با دختر ثروتمندی، برای بار دوم ازدواج می‌کند؛ شهرستانی بودن، و نداشتن اعتماد به نفس شارل، زندگی را برای او دستخوش تغییرات فراوان و پر هزینه‌ ای می‌کند.

مادام بواری زیبا، جلوه ‌ی عشق را در مردان بسیاری می‌بیند؛ «اِما» درست در زمانیکه باید به عشق تکیه کند، آن‌ها را توخالی، و پوچ می‌یابد؛ هر کدام از آن مردان، به نوبه ‌ی خود ضربه ی مهلکی، به روح این زن جوان، وارد می‌کنند، و جالب اینکه، «شارل بواری» از داستانها خبر ندارد؛ آگاه شدن «شارل بواری» از رویدادها زمانی ممکن می‌شود که شالوده ی خانواده «بواری» از هم گسسته است

اصلی‌ترین محوریت اصلی داستان، تأکید بر مسائل غیر معمول در ازدواج و مخالفت با فضای سنتی فرانسه آن دوران، می‌باشد؛ در واقع داستان با یک حادثه ی پیش پا افتاده آغاز می‌گردد، و در ادامه زنی را به نمایش می‌گذارد، که برای آزادی، و برآوردن خواسته‌های گوناگون خود به هر سوی روی می‌آورد

زمان اوج داستان، در شرایطی پدیدار می‌شود، که شخصیت اصلی داستان، برای دست یافتن به خواسته‌های خود، به هر کاری، تن می‌دهد؛ به همین دلیل احساس سرخوردگی، و گاه رضایتمندی، در سرتاسر داستان، به جذابیت آن می‌افزاید، در چکیده ی «مادام بواری»، عشق و نفرت را کنار هم، و در فاصله ‌ای بسیار کم، می‌توان مشاهده نمود؛ باید توجه داشت، که عامل بروز همگی رویدادهای این داستان، یک رخداد عجیب و خارق العاده نبوده؛ بلکه تنها نارضایتی یک زن جوان، و خواسته‌های کمال‌گرایانه ی او توانسته او را به ورطه بکشاند

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 21/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 14/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Moira posted a terrific review of Rabbit Redux the other day, and it made me realise something I should have noticed years ago. Rabbit Angstrom is Emma Bovary's literary grandson! As Moira says, Updike was deeply influenced by Nabokov, a fact that had somehow passed me by. Nabokov, in his turn, was a disciple of Flaubert; he famously said that he'd read all Flaubert, in the original French, by the time he was 14. So the family tree is clear enough.

It's one of those cases, though, where things have sort of skipped a generation. It's not hard to see that the three authors are stylistically close. But Flaubert and Updike are both ultra-naturalistic and Nabokov is not, and Nabokov also has quite a different take on psychology compared to the other two. So you don't immediately link Updike to Flaubert, or at least I didn't; though I do remember, at least once, defending Rabbit by comparing him with Emma. It seemed somehow like a reasonable comparison, but I'd thought it was just a chance resemblance.

Now that I have the missing link, it's all painfully obvious. The central characters in both stories are marked by early experiences which give them exaggerated hopes of what they can expect out of life; Rabbit is a high-school basketball star, and Emma attends the unfortunate ball at the château La Vaubyessard. After this, everything is a disappointment to them, and they find life with their respective partners, Janice and Charles, dull and stultifying. Their sense of frustration drives them into increasingly disastrous sexual liaisons, which eventually kill them and destroy several other lives as well.

Flaubert makes no obvious attempt to judge Emma, which led to many of his contemporaries denouncing the book as wicked, immoral and even obscene, charges which are often applied to Updike for similar reasons; many American readers today dislike Rabbit as much as late nineteenth century French readers disliked Emma. To me, these criticisms are completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not Rabbit and Madame Bovary are great books. We see Emmas and Rabbits all around us; ignoring the novels is hardly going to make them go away. And the language is so delightful, especially Flaubert's.

I'm in the middle of reading Madame Bovary for the third time. Emma has just met Rodolphe: he's put together a crude but effective seduction strategy, which he's already starting to implement. As usual, I'm willing her not to fall for him, but I don't think it's going to work out the way I want it to. Poor Emma.

_______________________________________________

Finished. It's an almost perfect book, that you can read any number of times. Here are some of my favourite passages.

The trashy novels that Emma reads when she's feeling depressed during the early years of her marriage:

Ce n'étaient qu'amours, amants, amantes, dames persécutées s'évanouissant dans des pavillons solitaires, postillons qu'on tue à tous les relais, chevaux qu'on crève à toutes les pages, forêts sombres, troubles du coeur, serments, sanglots, larmes et baisers, nacelles au clair de lune, rossignols dans les bosquets, messieurs braves comme des lions, doux comme des agneaux, vertueux comme on ne l'est pas, toujours bien mis, et qui pleurent comme des urnes.

MM. Bournisien and Homais watch over Emma's corpse, while squabbling with each other:

Le pharmacien et le curé se replongèrent dans leurs occupations, non sans dormir de temps à autre, ce dont ils s'accusaient réciproquement à chaque réveil nouveau. Alors M. Bournisien aspergeait la chambre d'eau bénite et Homais jetait un peu de chlore par terre.

Rodolphe finishes his break-up letter:

-- Comment vais-je signer, maintenant? se dit-il. Votre tout dévoué?... Non. Votre ami?... Oui, c'est cela.

«Votre ami.»

Il relut sa lettre. Elle lui parut bonne.

-- Pauvre petite femme! pensa-t-il avec attendrissement. Elle va me croire plus insensible qu'un roc; il eût fallu quelques larmes là-dessus; mais, moi, je ne peux pas pleurer; ce n'est pas ma faute. Alors, s'étant versé de l'eau dans un verre, Rodolphe y trempa son doigt et il laissa tomber de haut une grosse goutte, qui fit une tache pâle sur l'encre; puis, cherchant à cacheter la lettre, le cachet Amor nel cor se rencontra.

-- Cela ne va guère à la circonstance... Ah bah! n'importe!

Après quoi, il fuma trois pipes et s'alla coucher.

And a little earlier, this, which I think is simply one of the most heartbreaking paragraphs ever written.

Il s'était tant de fois entendu dire ces choses, qu'elles n'avaient pour lui rien d'original. Emma ressemblait à toutes les maîtresses; et le charme de la nouveauté, peu à peu tombant comme un vêtement, laissait voir à nu l'éternelle monotonie de la passion, qui a toujours les mêmes formes et le même langage. Il ne distinguait pas, cet homme si plein de pratique, la dissemblance des sentiments sous la parité des expressions. Parce que des lèvres libertines ou vénales lui avaient murmuré des phrases pareilles, il ne croyait que faiblement à la candeur de celles-là; on en devait rabattre, pensait-il, les discours exagérés cachant les affections médiocres; comme si la plénitude de l'âme ne débordait pas quelquefois par les métaphores les plus vides, puisque personne, jamais, ne peut donner l'exacte mesure de ses besoins, ni de ses conceptions, ni de ses douleurs, et que la parole humaine est comme un chaudron fêlé où nous battons des mélodies à faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les étoiles.

Recently (November 17, 2023, to be exact) I had the pleasure of attending the world premiere of Emma Bovary, an adaptation for the ballet and presented by The National Ballet of Canada, in Toronto. Such production was outstanding and the choreography was extraordinary.
So, as soon as I arrived home I searched for my copy of this book, because I felt the need to re-read it (but this time in English).
I read this work during my early teens, and in my memory I remembered this book being about adultery, but the adaptation for the ballet was a lot more than just that. In the ballet the portrait of mental illness was very strong and touching. You do feel sorry for the main character, but at the same time, you hate her. She is very unlikable, so I think that the majority of the negative reviews of the book are based on that alone, which I think is very unfair, but I have only to accept those opinions.

Yes, I had to re-read this book, to see what I missed out on my first reading. The ballet gave me a different perspective and I loved the adaptation.

This novel was originally serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856, and then published in two volumes the following year.

Upon its release, the French government accused Flaubert of obscenity, but, in my opinion, there is nothing vulgar, offensive or obscene about this book, but perhaps during those years no one would consider the desires of a woman as being normal. But I’m not sure if anything was lost in translation.

But it is said that this is a work of profound humanity, and according to some, it opened a new age of realism in literature.

Yes, I have to agree that the development of the storyline is not very engaging.
This is not a page turner.

My favourite part of the book was the last 20%, which was very well written and tragic.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the time it was written and I had to take that fact into consideration, hence my ratings.

I did read this edition and at the same time I listened to the audiobook narrated by Leelee Sobieski (on Audible).

I noticed some differences in the words/phrases such as below:

Audio x ebook

Stifled laugh x stifled bomb

Five hundred lines x five hundred verses

She always accompanied him x She always reconducted him

I didn’t write all of the difference between editions (there were too many), but this sample will give you an idea of what I’m trying to say.
After a few chapters I switched editions and found one that was exactly like the audiobook (it happens to be an edition by Amazon Classics).

I should have googled for the one considered as the best translated edition, before starting.
Anyways, I did it after and this was the result: “The original, classic translation from 1886 is the one by Eleanor Marx-Aveling (the youngest daughter of Karl Marx) and the one that's trendy now is the 2010 translation by Lydia Davis.”

Paperback (published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction): 368 pages

ebook (kindle - Amazon Classics): 372 pages (default)

ebook (Kobo), The Floating Press (Release Date: January 1, 2008): 399 pages (default), 115k words

Audible - Audiobook narrated by Leelee Sobieski: 12h 32min (normal speed)

incidentalmente, il più grande personaggio letterario creato su base di mediocrità umana. il rapporto disfunzionale tra le romanticherie che riempiono la testa di emma e le possibilità offerte dal tenore della vita con charles schiantano lei ma fanno di questo romanzo non solo il capolavoro che è, ma uno dei più sottili (e meno pomposi) attacchi alla piccineria bempensante e borghese che flaubert detestava.
con la sua insoddisfazione, le sue vite prese in prestito dai libri, le sue smanie senza costrutto e il suo concedersi a uomini che non la amano mai abbastanza, emma ci appare miserevole ma nel contempo stacca i suoi compaesani e il loro ottundente autocompiacimento. sia sul piano dell'entusiasmo e della curiosità, sia nel non farsi bastare (fino alla sragionevolezza) la grazia e il tedio a morte del vivere in provincia.
ancora, emma porta all'estremo patologico il meccanismo dei «desideri mediati» e dei modelli che secondo l'antropologo rené girard riguarda personaggi fittizi come lei, don chisciotte e vari della recherche, ma anche (fuori dai libri e in misura diversa) tutti noi in quanto esseri umani desideranti e mimetici. ecco perché, in questo senso, si detesta il personaggio di emma bovary soprattutto quando ci si illude di essere svincolati dalle dinamiche di desiderio-tramite-modelli, ma in realtà si percepisce particolarmente radicata quella somiglianza che ci si affanna a negare. ammettere al contrario, come gustave, che «madame bovary c'est moi» sarebbe segno di maggior equilibrio. statevi accuorti.

I dedicate this review to my dear friends Will, Jeffrey and Sidharth, whose wise words have always inspired me


SPOILERS


n  "Did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm...But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted heart, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing."n


If Emma Bovary had been born into another century, into our century, she could have been a great artist. It is arguable whether she has the talent, but she certainly has the soul. Her weakness could have been her strength in our times. Unfortunately, she lived in the XIX century society that didn’t encourage her sensitiveness, her gentleness, her highly emotional and romantic nature. Instead, she lived in one that did not tolerate passion, assertiveness and freedom of spirit and mind in women. (Her father sees her as useless and instead of trying to help her grow, develop, he is only too quick to find her a husband, and this husband and his mother go as far as forbidding her to read novels) When we long to be understood, to be happy, to be connected, we also long to be seen. For someone else to see what we ourselves cannot or don’t want to see. Sometimes we live on the edge of self-discovery and we only need a gentle push into the right direction. Emma waits, hopes to be saved, to be discovered, to be helped. Like all of us, she longes to be noticed and appreciated.


n  "At the bottom of her heart she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. Each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow."n


However, all those rudiments that could have resulted into something wonderful, were molded into something destructive. She is too obsessed, too possessed by her desires. Her romantic nature dives her to harsh judgementalism, she is condemned and renounces everyone and everything that falls short of her idea of perfection. She is a woman incapable of seeing nuances. She is a woman of extremities. Even her feelings are such. Both her joys and disappointments are to the max.


n  "Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins. She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes."n


Would she have been happier had she found what she was looking for? And what does she look for? A man with the imagination and passion her husband lacks and with the loyalty and trustworthiness her lovers fail to provide. One might argue that Charles offers her at least the latter. But I don’t think so. Does he want her to be happy? Yes. Does he love her? Very much so. But love and connection aren’t the same thing. She condemnd him for being so very far away from her ideal and he condemns her by failing to be interested into the inner workings and struggles of her soul. He isn't even aware of them. He is a man satisfying himself with the ostensible. He isn't a man of deep thoughts and desires. This simplicity partially takes a good direction, because it results into a calm, amiable, trusting and optimistic nature, into a man needing a little to be happy. He is easily content. He is a man in denial. A man who needs a hurricane to wake him up. To me the two of them, while miles away from each other in other ways, are very much alike in their inability to see nuances. They are equally blind, equally self-absorbed. And they mutually destroy each other.


n  "Charles’s conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and every one’s ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him...If he had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him."n


The same could be said for Rodolphe, who is too lost in his idea of women being weak, superficial and undeserving of his loyalty and affection. He falls in love with her, but fights with this love and his desire to give into it until the end.


n  "Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fulness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars."n


He does not want to believe that Emma draws from a deeper well. Maybe too deep. Yet, would she have been happy had he stayed by her side, had he taken her away from her unhappy, lifeless marriage? I doubt it.


n  "She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him."n


When we are too fixated on some purpose, if we reject everything and everyone else that falls short from the image we carry within ourselves, even if we do achieve our dream, we wouldn’t be able to appreciate the result. I have always believed that our ability to appreciate the grand things is build upon our ability to cherish the little ones. Is the ultimate goal the only goal? It is so for her. Only in the end, on her deathbed, she reveals a deeper, calmer, more compassionate, more conscientious side of her, which only shows that had she been given a chance, she could have been someone very, different.


n  "So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery, and meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly noises, she heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and distinct like the echo of a symphony dying away."n


We breathe life into others through both our happiness and our sorrow. We are always open to the former, but seldom to the latter. I see this book as one illustrating what happens to women stuck into society that suppresses them, smothers them, that pushes them into a corner and leaves them there to rot. Another person’s misery can be our own awakening. However, there are many who, like the characters in this novel, always choose to look the other way. And there are many who see human heart as something to step on and human misery as something to build upon. We all strive to build ourselves strong, but many believe that the best way to do so is by closing their hearts to human weakness and pain, including their own. But I believe that if we devoid ourselves of empathy, we deny ourselves happiness as well. My friend Will has told me more than once “It is important to let yourself feel the pain” My friend Jeffrey has told me "It is both weakness and strength' And my friend Sidharth has told me more than once, to be sensitive is to be vulnerable, but it is also to be alive. I believe that we are truly alive only when we have something/someone we would die for.

Read count: 1

Oh, Emma. Emma, Emma, Emma. Darling, why must you make it so easy ? No, dear, (for once) I don’t mean for the men. I mean for everyone else in the world who goes into this book just looking for an excuse to make fun of you. I would say that most people don’t know that much about France, but they do know a few things: that they like their baguettes, their socialism, Sartre, dirrrty dirrty sexy lurrrve and they despise this thing called the bourgeoisie. This book doesn’t really do a thing to disprove any of this (though I can’t say baguettes had a prominent place in the plot), and I expect that it had a great deal to do with starting the last two stereotypes. Emma, my dear, Desperate Housewives isn’t your fault, but you can see why some people might blame you, don’t you? Your constant, throbbing whining about how your (plentiful) food isn’t served on crystal platters, how your dresses(of which you have more than a typical country doctor’s wife) aren’t made of yards of spider-spun silk, and most of all how your husband dresses wrong, talks wrong, thinks wrong, WEARS THE WRONG HAT (!!), and is so offensively happy with you that he enjoys coming straight home to tell you about his day and relax in front of his fireplace every night instead of going out drinking- well, there’s a saying about the smallest violin, isn’t there?

It makes it easy for people to plausibly dismiss this story with things like this:


(If it makes you feel better, dear, you are hardly the only one.. Your other compatriots in 19th century repressed female misery receive similar treatment:
)

It is easy to despise you, Emma. You and your seemingly shallow priorities, the unthinking selfish harm you did to your husband AND your baby girl, the endless excuses you had for your, frankly, off the charts stupid behavior, the fact that you didn’t even try and communicate how unhappy you were to the guy who loved you who might’ve done something about it (since all the evidence shows that he is willing to COMPLETELY CHANGE HIS LIFE whenever you ask him to) and, finally (what can seem to be) the incredibly coward move you made in finding a way to not face the consequences your childish sense of the world couldn’t believe would eventually come up. What goes around comes around  ,as the wise chanteur sayeth. (Perhaps the alternate cover above should substitute ‘Justin Timberlake’ for Sassy Gay Friend.)

That’s pretty much how I felt about you for about 150 pages after you made your entrance, Emma. While you started your endlessly copied, endlessly bastardized fall from Angel in the Home Grace, and while you tried to make a saint out of yourself for not having sex with a young clerk who couldn’t have supported you anyway. You were simply the grandmother of Lady Chatterley, an extended protest letter to a dead king I couldn’t care less about.

But in the end, you won, Emma. I couldn’t escape you. Seriously, y’all, this book would not leave my head alone, for days, and I thought… many different and contradictory things about it. In the end, though, I kept coming back to one thought: the most terrifying thing I can think of is getting caught in Emma Bovary’s eyes. Did everyone read that profile about Dan Savage this weekend about infidelity and marriage? I did. Emma is the literary incarnation of Savage’s argument. Her eyes are on the cover of this book, and the more I looked at them, the more disturbed I got. Those eyes are the reason that marriage is so frightening, why ‘commitment issues’ exist. This is a novel about how reality can look just the same to you from one day to the next, but to your partner, it can have turned into a hell or a heaven, even if it is the same Tuesday routine as the last one. Emma’s gaze, how each time she fixes her eyes on some scheme of happiness and how those eyes transform everything they see. She shows how unstable marriage is, how thin the foundations are- resting on nothing but the words- “I love you.” Words that just need one more word to dissolve the entire thing. That’s it, you guys. One word and someone’s will to speak it is all that stands between a solid marriage and one that is over- no matter how much paperwork you sign, how many kids you have, houses you fill with furniture. You never really know what the person across from you is thinking. How do you really know what motivates someone? Are they with you because they have made a resolution to be? Are they there with you because the stars shine in your eyes? Are they perfect to you because they are about to leave? Marriage, for better or worse, no matter what people say, adds so many complications. It is the commitment that people twist and bend over and around in so many different contortions to try to make it work- because it is a marriage, because it means something. How difficult is it to trust that people are simply what they say they are? Charles is simple and straightforward and rather sweet- and Emma hates him for it. She smiles and smiles and smiles… and then cheats on him, bankrupts him, tries to prostitute herself and kills herself rather than spend another day with him.

This is the most anxiety inducing book I have ever read about marriage. It’s the 19th century where you have to make a vow for life that you can't get out of, not really, in order to test the idea that you might want to be with someone. If you're wrong, that's it. You've failed. It’s all-or-nothing. Emma is the incarnation of the expectations of the institution at the time- all-or-nothing. Madame Bovary is destroyed because she tries to put her all into Charles, then Rodolphe and then Leon, and none of them can withstand it. Each of them are good for different things, and only for a little while, and she can't accept it. That is not the ideal. She won't accept less than the ideal. You guys, she's nothing more than exactly what she is told is available to her- granted, she's after the best of what she's told is available: the ideal. But why do we hold that against her? As long as we live in a society where we’re told to strive after the ideal, to never give up, you will have people who destroy themselves and everyone around them to get it. Savage’s discussion of what the “ideal” means in real life is enlightening and pertinent here, I think. He talks about how you have to be willing to change a lot and make a huge effort to keep the deal of monogamy alive. Of course everyone has their limits, and in many marriages, the trade offs of one person’s limits for the others (I won’t do this, and you won’t do that- I won’t do that, but I will do this) end up making the deal of monogamy work. But you have to be honest about it, you have to be able to say things that you’ve never said out loud before. You have to admit that you won’t be happy unless you live a life where you have crystal knickknacks on your fireplace, and you get off from pies being thrown in your face. But it’s not that easy- Emma was on her deathbed, writhing in agony from eating arsenic, and she still couldn’t tell Charles what she wanted from him.

I can’t blame Emma, ultimately. It actually made me think, of all things, a bit about Planet of Slums. That book talks about the millions of people who have been born outside the system, in illegal settlements to parents who are illegal themselves, and who are not, in fact, ignored by the system. They never get into the system in the first place- a system that is not built to cope with the mind-blowing poverty that arises from its excrement. The system can’t acknowledge it and justify itself. At the risk of sounding like I think relatively-well-off white lady problems bear any resemblance to the horror of someone living on the outskirts of Kinshasa in a lean-to, Emma is just trying to get in to a society that can't acknowledge her and go on. She’s trying with all her might to buy into the fairy tales she’s been told (just like the revived, and growing belief in magic in some slums), and does whatever she has to do to get her hands on it, even if only for a little while. She saw that fairy tales are real (or so she thinks) at that ball that one time- she SAW it, mommy- and can’t handle the fact that they exist on this earth and she can’t be a part of it. And in case anyone finds her head-in-the-sand refusal to face the world overly childish or impossible to relate to: The endless line of irresponsible credit she takes out from the scam artist down the street in order to feed her fantasies about the way she believes her life should look has obvious immediate relevance to America in the pre-2008 financial crisis era. In some ways, the existential crisis Flaubert is trying to outline here: between a solidly practical, profit-and-advancement outlook on life and a sensibility that at least tries to aspire to something higher, even if it is unaffordable or impossible, is the distilled essence of the push and pull of American partisan politics. Monsieur Homais would have done very well on Wall Street. Emma can be read as being more American than French, really.

Emma is a true believer. She doesn’t just want attention from men, or shiny things. I didn’t really believe that until the part where she tries to renounce the whole world for fervent religious devotion. Failing making it into her fairy tale, she wants to escape where she is- to somewhere else, anywhere else. By the end, I felt like I was suffocating right along with her. Virginia Woolf said that the “present participle is the devil” . Emma adds the present place, the present time, the present person you are with. She really is willing to try anything to escape. On her deathbed, as she pleaded to die, my heart was racing along with hers and the whole finale read like a blockbuster last action scene with explosives and severed limbs flying. I didn’t enjoy the journey I had with her, but I had made it and lived in tiny spaces with her, spaces that got ever smaller as the book wound down. Every chapter there was less and less light until she was curled up in a ball in solitary confinement with no hope of escape. In the Count of Monte Cristo, we root for the hero to get thrown over the side of a cliff in a body bag because it is his only hope of escape. How could we do less for poor Emma? She deserves her chance to make it to the place she always hoped for- even if priests and businessmen argue whether she got there over her corpse. If she can’t be buried in ‘blessed’ ground, well, at that point the priest’s God is just another man telling her she has to stay in the woods with the witch and her oven rather than try to find the path home, like she was always taught to do.

Flaubert handles his prose deftly, precisely, and with a deceptively commonplace hand. He doesn’t try for smart metaphors and delicate similes, but rather has characters say what the mean in an effectively believable way that makes Emma a character who can impact the lives of real women. Parts of this novel are spine-tinglingly sordid, others wrench out your gut, most of it can be drearily, boringly, mind-numbingly quotidian, and every so often, a gem shines through that makes you turn around and look at someone you had thought you were done being interested in. In other words, it’s like last Wednesday. And the Tuesday before that. And today. And probably next Monday. The morning when you woke up vowing that today it was all going to be different, that afternoon when you just wanted to die, the evening when you forgot it all making dinner and laughing about that thing you saw on the internet.

Flaubert can’t get it all, or say it all right, but he knows that. In fact, he’s willing to tell his readers that. But he does it in such a way that you just want to punch him in the face like you do that size 0 model who complains that she’s too fat:

“Whereas the truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.”

Aw, come on, Gustave. Why do you want to make those of us with irrevocably not-size-0 rears, who can’t get from Q to R, cry? Yet, even your complaining makes me want to hug you.

I guess what I am saying is why are you so awesome, Monsieur Flaubert?

داستان کتاب مادام بوواری از جایی شروع میشه که شارل بوواری نوجوانه و در مدرسه مورد تحقیر و تمسخر هم‌کلاسی‌هاش قرار می‌گیره و با وجود تلاشی که می‌کنه ابتدا برای تحصیل در رشته پزشکی نمرات کافی رو کسب نمیکنه اما در نهایت پس از جهد زیاد به عنوان پزشک نه چندان حاذق مشغول به کار میشه و مادرش برای تأمین آینده‌ی پسرش مقدمات ازدواج با یک بیوه با جهیزیه‌ی خوب رو براش مهیا می‌کنه. شارل چندان خشنود نیست از زندگی با همسرش و پس از مرگ همسرش عاشق اما، دختر یکی از بیمارانش میشه و تازه اینجاست که مادام بوواری پا به داستان می‌ذاره. مادام بوواری عاشق رمان‌ و عشق‌های آتشینه و در ذهنش چنین چیزی برای خودش تصور می‌کنه اما در واقعیت به چنین چیزی نمی‌رسه و برای رسیدن به خواسته‌هاش مسیر درستی رو پیش نمیگیره تا عاقبت خوبی در انتظارش نباشه. مادام بوواری توانایی تمییز دادن رویا و توهم با واقعیت رو نداشت و برای رسیدن به خواسته‌های خودش به معنای واقعی دست به هر کاری که نباید، زد. کتاب سختی خاصی برای خوندن نداره و جذابیت داستان به میزانی هست که شما رو ترغیب کنه به خوندن در حالی که خستگی خاصی رو متوجه نشید. رمان مادام بوواری بر بسیاری از نویسندگان تاثیر گذاشته و مورد ستایش بسیاری از نویسندگان بزرگ مثل ماریو بارگاس یوسا قرار گرفته.ه