Excelentă și la a treia lectură.

إلى الملولين جدا وكارهي الكلاسيكيات واللي مش هيقرأوا هذه الرواية وأي حد معدي بالصدفة: يومك لذيذ وبعد..
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This is my third attempt at writing the review for the work. I tried and tried, but found myself at loss with words each time I sat and thought about the character of Emma. Her character, at the outset, is contemptible. A woman, who engages in an ignoble behavior with other man, someone who is not in control of her emotions, someone who doesn’t live in her present, ignores her child and husband for an illicit relationship, lives for her own gratification and is self-indulgent to the point of being a hedonist. No, one cannot forgive her.

To some extent, I agree. I found myself quite angry with her several times, more specifically towards the end, when her husband died and their only child was left to labor. It evoked a kind of rage, as I felt dearly for the child. But I couldn’t bring about myself to loath Emma. No, I couldn’t do that. Rather I felt pity for her, for I could acutely feel the despair which she might have gone through while living a dull provincial life. And many reasons, in my opinion, contributed to her despair. First one being, that she was a woman of an above average intelligence, who was infatuated with grandeur of a bourgeois society. She was a little educated and had been under the influence of what she might have gathered from her school life. If only, she had been exposed to other opportunities to explore more in life, she might have not felt the despair and earnestness to break away from her family. I have witnessed such a case in real life, where owing to an above average intelligence and for a restriction to explore in more in terms of education and career, a woman turned insane. Emma turned to experience adventure and fallacy of love. It is something not to be detested but to be understood.

Secondly, if she was born in a rich family, the society wouldn’t have affected her so. Thirdly and most importantly, if her husband was less sluggish and more enthusiastic, perhaps it would have helped her in finding other outlets for her frustration. As a woman, I think I can safely say that women do not respect men with less ambition. That said, I am, in no way trying to justify the actions taken by Emma. Rather, trying to analyse her reasons for doing so.

Gustave Flaubert has been such a master of the craft! Though through his work, he has given us a glance into the bourgeois culture which prevailed during his times and an account of the result of despair, on the part of a woman, that could arise from an unhappy married life; I think he has also incited us to question the very basis of a married relationship. Though the times have changed, women now more independent and free to indulge in their vocations and hobbies, but still, when it comes to marriage, the bottom line I guess, remains the same.

5 stars for bringing Emma almost alive!

The story of Emma Bovary, an adept reader of romantic novels, facing marriage and the dullness of provincial life in Normandy.

This is an emblematic novel for a range of different reasons : its scathing style, its sorry and flawed characters, its true-to-life, acute, sharp psychological portrayals, the beauty of Flaubert's fully fleshed out prose.

Flaubert's story is also a prime opportunity to read biting irony on the pettiness of the country clerks and shopkeepers and it offers a terrific glipse at a silly, seamy, ludicrous flirt during a session of the Agricultural Fair. That speaks volumes about the odds Flaubert may have faced and the throes he may have lived in the flesh before his novel came to fruition.

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L'histoire malheureuse d'Emma Bovary, lectrice consommée de romans d'amour, que rien n'a préparé à vivre un mariage forcément décevant et les amourettes médiocres pour l'en distraire.

Un roman exemplaire à plus d'un titre. Son style ravageur, ses personnages et leur histoire touchante et triste, la pénétration psychologique de l'auteur, la beauté de la langue charnue de Flaubert.

Ce texte de Gustave Flaubert est aussi l'occasion de scènes mordantes sur la vie provinciale normande : opinions politiques des notables et des commerçants, une scène de séduction délicieusement stéréotypée et mièvre au cours d'une foire agricole (à l'insu et aux dépens d'Emma qui en est l'objet).

Tout ça en dit long sur les déconvenues et le désenchantement que Flaubert a dû connaître en personne avant de pouvoir accoucher de ce roman éternel.

„Poți rezuma aceast roman ca povestea unui adulter provincial și, totuși, să dai dovadă, prin chiar acest rezumat, că n-ai priceput absolut nimic din Doamna Bovary” (Robert McCrum).

În locul unei recenzii zadarnice, aș menționa rapid două lucruri. Mi se par mai utile decît recenzia. Primul e că doamna Bovary suferă de așa-zisa eroare quijotică. Cînd citește, Emma confundă ficțiunea cu realitatea. Ar dori să modifice realitatea în sensul ficțiunii, ar dori să-și trăiască viața ca într-o ficțiune. Aș lega această observație de un amănunt mai puțin observat de cititori. Nici eu nu l-am remarcat odinioară.

Iată! După ultima întîlnire cu Rodolphe, Emma e disperată, a făcut datorii imense și nu găsește înțelegere la nici un creditor. Rodolphe o respinge. Rătăcește pe drumuri și, într-un tîrziu, iată Fatalitatea!, ajunge la prăvălia farmacistului Homais, intră pe coridorul unde se află ușa laboratorului cu medicamente și droguri și îi cere tînărului slujitor Justin (care o iubește în taină) să descuie ușa. Cheia are o etichetă pe care stă scris cuvîntul „Capharnaum” (poftim amănunt!). Merge la rafturile sprijinite de perete și întinde mîna după arsenic:

„Luă borcanul albastru, smulse capacul, vîrî mîna înăuntru și, scoțînd-o plină de praf alb, începu să-l mănînce chiar din palmă”. Detaliul e teribil, cred că arată, printre multe altele, cît de tare se urăște pe sine femeia.

Dar nu-i numai atît. Amănuntul și mai grozav abia urmează. Emma se întoarce acasă, se așază la birou, scrie în grabă un bilet, îl pune într-un plic, adaugă „data, ziua și ora”, apoi se întinde pe pat și începe să se observe:

„Un gust iute pe care-l simțea în gură o trezi... Luă o înghițitură de apă și se întoarse cu fața la perete. Gustul acela îngrozitor de cerneală stăruia: Cet affreux goût d'encre continuait”. Prozatorul însuși spune că a simțit aievea, cînd a scris aceste propoziții, gustul otrăvii.

Faptul că, înaintea sfîrșitului, eroina simte în gură un gust „iute, îngrozitor de cerneală” (ne-am fi așteptat la un gust amar, la orice altceva) pare menit să atragă atenția asupra principalei sale greșeli. Nu-i bine să citești ca Don Quijote...

P. S. În Capharnaum / Capernaum (așezare din Galilea), Iisus Christos a vindecat mai mulți bolnavi: slujitorul unui centurion roman, un paralitic...

P. P. S. Se pare că arsenicul nu are nici un gust. Doar un ușor miros de usturoi.

الرواية تنتمي الى المدرسةً الواقعية والتي بدأت في الظهور في بداية القرن التاسع عشر.

مدام بوفاري التي اصابت نفسها وعائلتها بالخراب بسبب نفسها الشهوانية والتي ام تستطع السيطرة على نفسها والحفاظ على شرف زوجها رغم الحب الذي يكنه لها ومركزه المرموق في المجتمع الريفي كطبيب رغم عدم تقدمه في هذه المهنة بسبب تعليمه المتقطع والذي فرضته عليه أمه.

دعوة الى حفلة من المجتمع الراقي (الأرستقراطي) يقلب كيانها بعد حفلة راقصة شاهدت فيها الشباب والرجال يرقصون ويمرحون. عادت ولَم يعد شيئا يعجبها لا بيتها ولا حياتها ولا زوجها.

سقطت في بئر الخيانة والتستر على هذه الأفعال مستغلة طيبة زوجها الذي احبها وحاول بكل استطاعته انزيرضيها حيث ترك مدينته وزبائنه الكثر لينتقل الى الريف.

لكن هذه الخيانة كانت تسير بما تشتهي حتى وقعت في الدين وذلك من اجل تغطية رحلاتها ومبيتها في الفنادق.

كان بامكانها ان تنهي المأساة باعتذار لزوجها ولكن ابت لنفسها هذه المذلة وتنهي الرواية بطريقة مأساوية وأثرت على حياة روجها وطفلتها التي كانت الخاسر الأكبر في النهاية.

أحب ان أقول ان الرواية رغم ما فيها من خيانة فلن تجد فيها كلمة واحدة تخدش الحياء العام.

والمؤلف توسع في وصف المباني والحدائق والأجواء والبساتين حتى تصل الى مرحلة الملل بعض الشيء رغم ان احداث الرواية بطيئة جدا.

في نهاية الرواية محاضر للمحاكمة التي أقيمت المؤلف والناشر كون الرواية في ذلك العصر كانت مخالفة للأسلوب والمنهج السائد.

***NO SPOILERS***

Gustave Flaubert’s beautiful way with words can’t compensate for Madame Bovary’s lackluster tale of Emma Bovary trapped in an unhappy marriage to boring Charles. It sounds like a soap opera--this premise that has been explored before--but unlike a soap opera, Madame Bovary lacks what makes soap operas so watchable for so many: drama and tension. Here the marriage is the focus, yet strangely, Flaubert never honed that focus nor did he keep the focus on the marriage for much of the book. Madame Bovary wanders off on numerous tangents--even opening on a tangent--that have no bearing on the plot. This makes for an uneven reading experience. Just when the main story involving Emma and Charles heats up, it switches gears to focus on an agricultural fair or soporific discussion of club feet.

The story’s biggest offense is its direct telling. The union between Emma and Charles is an unhappy one because Flaubert says it is. Emma falls in love with her lovers and they her just because; the actual falling in love is never shown. Similarly, Emma is unhappy with Charles simply because, according to Flaubert, Charles is dull. This is a story long on exposition and short on showing. Dialogue is scarce. Action is languid, with no urgency. There’s no hook.

At no point does Madame Bovary pull readers into the heart of the story and hold them right there. This is what happens when the couple at the center of the story isn’t well drawn. Flaubert sat down to write a story about a woman in crisis, whose marriage is a failure, whose husband she finds inadequate. This premise has so much potential for drama--but not if the two main characters are mere outlines. Flaubert shined the spotlight on Charles so infrequently that it’s hard to get a sense of him outside of what he does for a living; he interacts little with Emma except to fawn over her. Emma is insipid, self-absorbed, unsatisfied, and depressed, but this is all there is to her. These aren’t characters with life. Put them together, and they simply stand beside each other limply. There’s no being gripped by the mounting tension and drama as husband and wife slowly realize their marriage is disintegrating.

Nevertheless, the story is, at least, a good portrait of depression and despair. This focus may exasperate some readers, but Flaubert depicted the depth and emptiness of loss deftly--and he did so many times throughout. Some may complain this lends a sulky tone to Madame Bovary, and it's true that there are long, angsty (maybe melodramatic) passages; however, because of the care Flaubert took with authenticity, here Madame Bovary is shot through with realism.

The novel is most impressive for its writing, which is straightforward and accessible while also beautiful at times:

. . . the fiery glow that had reddened her pale sky grew gray and gradually vanished. In this growing inner twilight she even mistook her recoil from her husband for an aspiration toward her lover, the searing waves of hatred for a rekindling of love. But the storm kept raging, her passion burned itself to ashes, no help was forthcoming, no new sun rose on the horizon. Night closed completely around her, and she was left alone in a horrible void of piercing cold.

(See also the saved quotation below this review.) This is a review of the Francis Steegmuller translation, an excellent translation (save “innocent of stockings” for “barefoot”) that preserved Flaubert’s mastery of words. This is where Madame Bovary’s verve lies--in the words, not the story.

On the flip side, excessive description loses readers while once again taking the story down an annoyingly tangential path. In particular, Flaubert lovingly described his characters’ clothing and appearance, and landscapes received only slightly less attention. This could be chalked up to scene-setting, but it’s hard to argue how the number of flounces on a dress is relevant (or is even interesting). With the large cast of characters being mostly bland and extraneous, it looks like Flaubert hoped vivid descriptions of appearance could stand in for vivid characterization. In short, Madame Bovary’s artistic writing is what takes the breath away, not the story, which sounds more scandalous than it actually is.

Le podría haber dado perfectamente 5 estrellas, porque es una obra maestra de la Literatura por méritos propios... pero Emma Bovary. Emma Bovary es probablemente uno de los personajes más insufribles que nadie ha creado nunca. Y la cuestión es que su mera existencia eleva la novela a la categoría de clásico. Emma Bovary es real. De hecho, todo el mundo conoce a una Emma Bovary: una pava infantil y melodramática que no sabe lo que quiere y se cree más lista que nadie y a la que todo el mundo engaña porque en realidad es más tonta que meter los dedos en el enchufe.

Emma es un ser vivo, una persona. Una persona a la que me hubiera gustado estrangular en algunas partes de la novela.

Aparte de eso, el libro tiene un ritmo sorprendentemente ágil para ser tan profuso en descripciones, y ello se debe a que las descripciones sirven para ambientar las escenas. Es una novela muy cinematográfica, hay momentos en que incluso ves el plano.

También me sorprendió mucho el sentido del humor. Yo no soy muy aficionada al humor francés, pero lo cierto es que Flaubert tiene un tipo de humor que me gusta y le da un bienvenido toque de ligereza a una historia tan melodramática. Y no es que sea excesivamente melodramática, se podría decir que el autor incluso se muestra sobrio donde podría haberse dejado llevar, pero por supuesto tiene su carga dramática, es la historia que es.

Con todo (especialmente la propia Emma) es un libro que he disfrutado mucho y me alegro de haber leído.

Necesitaba volver a leer esta maravilla. Muy para vacaciones, y habían un montón de cosas que había olvidado por completo. Me parece una novela que resalta lo desvalidas que estaban las mujeres en esa época, crecían para no poder manejarse en el mundo, tenían que ser protegidas para sobrevivir, cosa que me desesperó. Emma! Sufrí por su infelicidad, y no se diga por su mal manejo de finanzas, que al final la perdió. Ay!! Esta novela hay que leerla, es tan hermosa!

خیلی انتظار کشیدم تا کتاب مادام بوواری بە دستم رسید، اما خوشبختانه ارزششو داشت! واقعا فوق‌العاده و بی‌نظیره! یکی از شاهکارهای ادبیات فرانسه‌س.
به نظر من اگه رمان‌خون‌ها مادام بوواری رو نخونن نصف عمرشون بر فناس!
:))
این کتاب، پیشنهادم به دوستانیه که دنبال خوندن شاهکارهای ادبی هستن.

“At the bottom of her heart, however, 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."



Emma Bovary is a woman who inspires the passions of others, especially the passion of men who want to possess her. In Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, it feels like Flaubert has given us the internal conflicts of a real and very complicated person. The work is an engaging read that sometimes feels like a romance, but more often feels like the psychological study of the book's heroine. I'm not sure I liked Emma Bovary, but that's definitely not the point. She exudes a palpable sense of disappointment with life that makes her vulnerable to those who want to control her, either through love or debt. Above all, though, she remains more complicated than the love affairs she engages in, her role as wife or mother or the tragedy that befalls her.

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Emma Bovary has become the epitome of desperate housewife, the archetypal unfaithful wife, the ultimate daydreamer whose fantasies lead to a premature self-destruction.

“She wished she could stop living, or sleep all the time.”

Madame Bovary follows the ‘provincial ways’ of the petite bourgeoisie. Charles Bovary is a so-so doctor, married to an older woman, and is ordinary in every which way. Similarly to Prince Myshkin his naïveté and kind-heartedness are perceived by those around him as weaknesses or signs of stupidity. He falls in love with Emma, the daughter of one of his patients, and lucky for him his wife just ups and dies (as she is hanging the wash she exclaims “Oh, my God!” sighs, loses consciousness and dies: “She was dead! How astonishing it was!”). Charles makes the most of this tragedy and asks Emma’s father for her hand in marriage. After an incredibly ornate wedding the two settle into married life. Or Charles does. He is exuberant, he adores Emma, lavishing her with affection. Emma, on the other hand, finds her husband suffocating and grows increasingly resentful towards him. She craves the “passion” and “intoxication” promised to her in her favourite books (in this she reminds me of Catherine from Northanger Abbey who obsesses over Gothic books, so much so that she ends up viewing the world through Gothic-tinted glasses).

In the following chapter (which happens to be my favourite one) the narrative describes Emma’s childhood and education at a convent. It is there that Emma becomes enthralled by the world of popular romances. She feels “an ardent veneration for illustrious or ill-fated women” such as Joan of Arc, Mary Stuart or the nun Héloïse. Emma is captivated by the regalia worn by the hero of a novel rather than by the hero himself. We find this same attitude towards many things in her life: “She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins”. Likewise, while at the convent she seems to more attracted to the trappings of religion rather than feeling a genuine devotion: she focuses on the appearance of the “white-faced” nuns, the rosaries, the copper crucifixes, “the perfumes of the altar, the coolness of the fonts, and the glow of the candles”. She does not pay attention to the Mass, gazing instead “in her book at the holy pictures with their azure edges”. Emma Rouault loves “the church for its flowers, music for the words of its songs, and literature for its power to stir the passions”.

Emma Bovary strongly resembles her maiden self. She is disappointed by her marriage, for she considers Charles to be a man who “taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing”. She thinks him dull and unambitious, the very opposite of an ideal husband. Emma is equally let down by her experience of motherhood, which is quite unlike the one she envisioned. Finally, her love affairs—with Rodolphe and Léon—seem to offer merely a pretext for her to exchange keepsakes and letters with another person. Emma goes through the motions of being in love without feeling any real love; it is the opportunity of wearing a new riding habit that causes her to embark upon her first affair. It is unsurprising then that she soon grows weary of both her lovers: “[Emma] was rediscovering in adultery all the platitudes of marriage”.

As Emma’s appetite for luxurious material goods increases, she grows more disillusioned with her life, and since the happiness those extravagant items give her is merely temporary, she is unable to fight ennui. Her mounting debt to Lheureux, the man who sells her the material goods she so desperately craves, and her failed love affairs contribute to bringing about Emma’s own demise.

Even before marrying Charles, Emma had fallen prey to ennui: soon after leaving the convent “she considered herself to be thoroughly disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, nothing more to feel”. Whereas boredom is a ‘response to the immediate’, ennui ‘belongs to those with a sense of sublime potential, those who feel themselves superior to their environment’. And indeed, Emma feels a sense of superiority to what surrounds her: her dull husband, her mother-in-law, her servants, the uncouth villagers, the “tiresome countryside, the idiotic petits bourgeois, the mediocrity of life”. Emma is adamant that she has been cast in the wrong role, that of a petit-bourgeois woman, believing that she deserves to live as a heroine in a romance does, married to Prince Charming and surrounded by beauty.

A pattern gradually emerges: time and again Emma is disappointed by her attempts to reconstruct the world portrayed in her romantic novels. At the same time, it is almost as if Emma is unconsciously not really interested in satisfying her desire or making her daydreams reality; what she seems to truly enjoy is the act of desiring itself. After all, it is only in her fantasies, and by apotheosizing her past experiences, that Emma can envision herself experiencing a form of pure sensation and heightened emotion. And perhaps it is the very act of fantasizing that enables her to feel something akin to jouissance, which in Lacanian theory is a form of ‘backhanded enjoyment’, an excessive pleasure that ‘[b]egins with a tickle and ends with blaze of petrol’. The pleasure that Emma feels by longing – by the very act of daydreaming – is similar to the ecstatic feeling experienced by her dream self. Yet, the enjoyment that she derives from yearning is accompanied by a feeling of pain since Emma is only able to long because she is missing something. Paradoxically, then, Emma can find fulfilment in the perpetuation of her non-fulfilment given that ‘every form of fulfilment necessarily brings an end to the desired state of longing, it is only the infinite deferral of satisfaction that keeps desire alive’.

There is the tendency to believe that Emma’s mania, her depression and her subsequent suicide result from her clumsy attempts at upward mobility. Flaubert makes Emma’s desires and her unhappiness quite clear to us: she wishes to live like the heroines in her beloved romances, yearns for an impossible glittery lifestyle but, try as she might, never really succeeds in replicating the feelings or experiences she has read of. Certainly, there are many instances where readers will find Emma’s dissatisfactions to be risible. But, however small-minded and solipsistic Emma Flaubert articulates her sense of entrapment and addiction to longing (for sublimity, love, completion, meaning) in such a way as to challenge easy dismissals of her desires (as being petty or superficial).

There are so many things that made me love this book. Flaubert's prose (or Lydia Davis’ impeccable), his attention to the minute details that constitute provincial life, his irony, his absurd characters....the list goes on.
Flaubert excels at depicting the contradictory nature of people, the fleeting moments of irritation, boredom, hate, passion...there are many scenes which seem to ridicule his characters’ worries, but he never directly pokes fun at his characters (his readers will do that for him). And while a certain sardonic humor prevails there are also episodes that will certainly elicit our sympathies.
Although this novel is often labelled as a romance or a tragedy, Madame Bovary reads like an anti-romance. We have characters such Emma and Léon, idealists, self-proclaimed romantics, who are trapped in a realist narrative. Yet, Flaubert is also making fun of realism. There are so many descriptions of what the characters are wearing, of the smells or objects, houses, streets, you name it. Then juxtaposing these lavish or picturesque descriptions we have scenes detailing Charles’ operating on the stable boy’s club foot, and these scenes make for some nausea-inducing reading material.
Nevertheless this remains a beautifully crafted novel. Flaubert’s acuity, his striking prose, his vibrant characters, make for an unforgettable read. One should not approach this novel hoping for something in the realms of Anna Karenina. Although one could describe Emma as the ‘heroine’ of this novel, she possesses mostly qualities that will make readers hate her. There were many instances in which I disliked her (just read of the way she treats her servants or her daughter or even Charles). But Flaubert is a deft writer, and Emma cannot be simply be labelled as 'unlikable'. In many ways she reminds of the alienated women who star in recent fiction such as the narrator in My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Emma is like them bored, self-destructive, prone to bouts of depression, and finds pleasure only in daydreams.
The first time I picked up this novel I struggled to make it past the first chapter. I then ended up listening to the audiobook (narrated by Juliet Stevenson who gives an impeccable performance) and, just like that, I was transfixed. This second time around I read it myself (I own a very stylish penguin classics edition) and I was once again enthralled by Flaubert narrative. I was particularly intrigued by the seamless way in which he shifts perspectives. This time I was also able to truly savour Flaubert's prose as I already knew how the storyline would unfold. Next time I may try reading the Italian translation and maybe who knows, one day I will be able to read the original French (okay, that's quite unlikely but you never know...). Anyway, I could probably go on and on about this novel. I would not recommend it to those who have a low tolerance for irony and kind of detestable characters.