When I start reading a book named after one of its characters, I simply can't help the anxiety to meet them. In this case, I was impatient to finally get acquainted with Madame Bovary.

Instead of that, on the opening chapter, we get to see Charles Bovary, the peaceful and shy little boy going to school for the first time. We accompany him while he grows up, study to become a 'doctor' and marry his first wife. After a series of events, he finds and marries his second wife - this time the one - and the story's protagonist finally takes center stage.

Flaubert presents to us on his biggest achievement the story of Emma Bovary - the always sad, sorrowful and never quite fulfilled female Don Quixote (read my review)- who, through her reading of love stories in books and Parisian society's glamorous events on newspapers, hoped for a more exciting married life than what it seemed to be destined for her.

Madame Bovary - who did not love her husband, or her daughter, or her home - was tragically in love with the possibility of a different scenario, and was willing to trade everything for being able to feel and go through breathtaking emotions. Beginning to grow unsatisfied and longing for a hero who would rescue her from her uneventful life, she ends up getting tangled up in a big web of lies, financial debts and cheating with not only one, but two lovers. The excitement of what seemed to be the real life she dreamed of ends up fading out, and finding herself even more lost and lonely than she felt before, she embarks on her ultimate escapade.

Worthy mentioning - and an innovation at the time - is an impressively well crafted scene where Emma and her lover Rodolphe are alone, declaring bit by bit their love to each other for the first time, while, in the meantime, they can (and we can!) overhear the events happening outside on an Agricultural Fair at the village. We get to read, concurrently, the lover's declarations and M. Lieuvain's speech. This technique worked well for building up the readers' (at least this reader's!) enthusiasm and thrill felt when that long awaited moment where we would finally see Emma happy happened.

The novel's impact was so huge that Gustave Flaubert was actually taken to trial for having written such an immoral book. Don't worry though: he was deservingly so acquitted of all charges. Its impact came not only because of the story itself, but also from the author's innovations and style: Madame Bovary - unlike most (maybe all?) novels from that time - totally lacks any personal commentaries or interventions from Flaubert; what we read is simply the report of the character's words and actions, leaving to us the task to try to make sense of their most inner feelings and actions.

Rating: for Flaubert's literary innovations, his beautiful yet sad story and how it was skillfully constructed, 4 stars.

The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classics" for the first time, then determine whether or not they deserve the label. Madame Bovary is book #26 of the series.

The story in a nutshell:
Considered by nearly everyone to be one of the best novels ever written, French cynic Gustave Flaubert's 1857 Madame Bovary (originally published serially in 1856) is one of the first fiction projects in history to be as much a deep "character study" as a vehicle for simply propelling an exciting plot; it is an ultra-detailed look at an ultra-complex person, the Emma Bovary (nee Rouault) of the book's title, where the whole point is not just to learn what happens to her but what makes her tick in general. Because make no mistake, Bovary is one of the most complicated characters in the history of literature too, still able to ignite passionate arguments among fans to this day: some see her as a clearly sympathetic and very typical woman, forced into a whole series of awkward situations by a whole series of incompetent men in her life, just like such dunderheads have been doing to smart females for centuries; while others see her more like an unmedicated sufferer of bipolar disorder, constantly flip-flopping on what she wants out of life depending on what in particular she doesn't happen to have that particular moment, constantly adding unneeded drama to her life when bored and treating pretty much every single person around her like complete crap.

Raised in a convent, a lover of erotica, desirous of an expensive urban lifestyle yet not very smart about money, it is this dichotomy of traits that keeps Bovary careening from one radically different situation to the next: first falling hard for her father's roving rural doctor (full-time "good guy" and hence impotent cuckold Charles Bovary), thinking that their marriage will finally bring her the sophisticated Paris life she's always dreamed of; then trying and failing at a domestic life as a small-town wife and mother, after it becomes clear that Charles prefers the dowdy provincial life of the northern French farmlands, leading to a hot-and-cold emotional affair with a young law student there named Leon; then a move to essentially one of the first large "suburbs" in France's history (the fictional mid-sized Yonville, not too far from Paris by carriage or rail, based on the real-life suburb of Ry), where she embarks on a much more serious affair with a major hater-playah named Rodolph; then an unceremonial dumping by Rodolph, after she offers to leave her husband for him and bring the kid along, leading to a short period again in her life as a pious born-again Christian; with all of that followed believe it or not by a reacquaintance with the now successful young urban lawyer Leon, leading to a sexually explicit "hotel afternoons in the big city" affair (the part of the book that led to its infamous obscenity trial when it first came out); which then finally leads to an ending whose details I'll leave a surprise, but let's just say results in ruin and/or death for nearly every freaking person involved. Oh, those French and their happy endings!

The argument for it being a classic:
Madame Bovary established so many firsts, its fans will argue, it's sometimes scary: not just the first novel ever to be written in the modern, pared-down "conversational tone" we know today, not just one of the first novels to complexly combine both character and plot development equally in one manuscript, but also one of the very first novels in history to establish the "Realist" school of thought, a set of conventions which now guide almost all contemporary novels being written (but more on that in a bit), all while ironically being a perfect example of a Victorian-Age Romantic novel as well, and of containing all the hallmarks that fans of Romanticism look for even while making vicious fun of them too. In fact, this book is almost like a freaky artifact from a future time that shouldn't actually exist, if you want to get technical about it; a book that reads exactly like a contemporary mainstream-lit character study, but published at the same time as the severely overwritten, overwrought, epistolary-style adventure tales and pseudo-science babble much more typical of the mid-1800s. It's not just important as a historical artifact (but more on that in a bit too), not just seminal to the arts in about a half-dozen different ways, but is still a surprisingly great read even 152 years later; nearly every novel being written today owes one aspect of its form or another to this ultra-important precedent, fans argue, making it the very definition of a literary "classic" that should still be picked up by every lover of great books out there.

The argument against:
Ironically, the only criticisms of Madame Bovary I could find seemed to argue that the book is just too well-written; that Flaubert created such a hyper-realistic emotional trainwreck, they ended up disgusted by her and couldn't even finish. "Ugh, that Emma, I can't stand her, she's so despicable," I saw one online critique after another say, none of these people apparently realizing that that's the whole point; that the entire purpose of this book existing is to present this ultra-flawed, many times legitimately despicable character, to examine what motivates her and how she can be so sympathetic at times too, to understand ourselves better and especially those parts of our own personalities we share with her.

My verdict:
So how exactly should we feel about Emma Bovary, anyway? Well, to ponder that question is to avoid the much more remarkable point -- that Flaubert managed to create such a magnificently complicated creature to begin with, one who can still inspire such enflamed debates about her character a full century and a half later. (And by the way, how dispiriting to finally learn that Tom Perrotta's novel Little Children, which I highly favorably reviewed here in 2007, owes much of its success to a rather literal rip-off of many of Madame Bovary's key points, all the way down to sometimes stealing entire scenes beat-for-beat. Sheesh, no wonder Perrotta's follow-up The Abstinence Teacher was such a miserable stinker; he had no seminal semi-forgotten public-domain classic to lean on that time.) Not to mention, concentrating on Bovary's sometimes abhorrent behavior ignores a much more important point -- that every single character in this novel is abhorrent, done so by Flaubert very deliberately. Let's not forget, the book is set in the years of France's so-called "July Monarchy," which in a simplified nutshell saw the creation for the first time in history of middle-class suburbanites; and like every other bitter artist in history, Flaubert despised middle-class suburbanites with every fiber of his being, and meant in many ways for Madame Bovary to be a devastating indictment of them all -- from the schizophrenic Emma to the facile Charles, from the jealous village pharmacist Homais to the weasely neighborhood merchant Lheureux. Let's always remember that Flaubert worked for decades on an epic called Bouvard and Pecuchet, which he always considered his perpetually-unfinished masterpiece; but that when it was finally released to the public posthumously in 1881, it turned out to be not much more than a massive unfocused rant, a grand satire concerning the utterly pathetic mediocrity of most human beings and the utter folly of ever thinking we will learn anything by studying history. Now that's a bitter French artist, my friend.

But if this weren't enough, there's also the matter of the utterly remarkable language and structure used, which I now know for a personal fact because of doing this CCLaP 100 series is just so profoundly unlike any of the other novels that were being published at the same time; it really does feel like some freaky anomaly that shouldn't actually exist, snatched from the 1930s during the height of Early Modernism and somehow by time-machine accidentally left behind in the middle of the Victorian Age. (And even more remarkably, Flaubert himself wasn't particularly prolific or well-known, only finishing three other novels besides Bovary and all of them obscure even during his own lifetime.) This is why you hear so many people rave about this book's style, because it really is a perfect example of what the French call seeking le mot juste ("just the right word"); there are passages on display here that can instantly transport you in just a few paragraphs to a misty early evening in 19th-century northern rural France, before you even realize what's going on or that you'd left in the first place. And all of a sudden you've missed your bus, and you're standing on the streetcorner cursing Flaubert for being such an astounding writer in the first place.

It's remarkable, I think, that this book lays the entire groundwork for the Realist school of literary thought, a full 50 years before Henry James and others even first came up with the English version of the term, and like I said nearly every mainstream-lit novel written today gets at least some of its cues from it; because much like the "Socratic method," Realism has become so permeated in our culture that we don't even realize anymore that that's what it is when we see it, with the entire thing essentially boiling down to the idea of writing stories in a "realistic" fashion, as if we were invisible ghosts hovering over the shoulders of the characters and quietly observing the events of the story as they actually happen (now known as "omniscient narration," and the basis behind 95 percent of all novels written). But it's also true what its fans say, that it doubles as a perfect Romantic novel too, a different school of literary thought with goals that sometimes clash with those of Realism; like the best of Victorian-Age literature, Madame Bovary too places great emphasis on emotions, feelings, passion, madness, and all the other great hallmarks of being an alive human being, and also like all great Victorian novels it too features as a character a buffoonish adherent of rationalism (in this case, the constantly pontificating pharmacist Homais), a holdover "true believer" from the 1700s Enlightenment who both the Romantics and Realists could agree on regarding their mutual hatred. (Stupid fun-hating scientists!)

Although I'm only about a quarter of the way through the CCLaP 100 as of the writing of this particular review, I think it's safe to say that this is going to turn out to be one of my absolute favorites of the entire series, and it's simply astonishing in my opinion how well it's held up now over the last 150-odd years. It's a standard-bearer for sure of this entire series, one of only a handful of books in existence that nearly everyone agrees is a classic, which then helps us make the relative determination as well for much more troublesome candidates. If you're to read only a handful of books in the CCLaP 100 series, do make sure to make Madame Bovary one of them.

There’s something about Flaubert’s writing that makes me want to comment on his books as I’m reading them. I had that experience with Bouvard et Pécuchet last year and I had it again while reading this book, so I jotted down my thoughts as I read.

Part I jottings
When you’re reading such a famous story as this one, the ending of which everyone knows already, you read it differently. You dawdle along, indulging yourself with odd details. And so, in these early pages, I’m admiring how Flaubert describes the part of France in which he has chosen to set his story: Haute-Normandie, his home territory. It’s clear that he loves the countryside around Rouen very much.
I’m also enjoying the fact that there’s more than one Madame Bovary in the story. Mme Bovary ‘mère’ is a formidable lady who ushers in Madame Bovary ‘belle-fille’, formidable in her own way if not exactly ‘belle’. But Mme Bovary the second, in spite of faithfully taking the medicine prescribed by her doctor husband Charles, dies conveniently, allowing Madame Bovary the third, the very incarnation of ‘belle’, to be ushered in, bringing bag-loads of tension in her train. If she was a match, she’d ignite all by herself.

Now that he’s set up his story, and described its landscape, I feel that Flaubert is really testing his writerly capacities. He’s challenging himself to inhabit Madame Bovary the third’s fiery spirit. He’s good at this. He’s so good at it that I wonder how he can keep it up. I’m noticing too how often he describes the view from her window as she stares longingly at the broader world beyond the walls of her narrow life. That reminds me of something, though I’m not sure what..

And I have to smile at his foresight when he makes Emma Bovary wish that the name Bovary will become famous, that it will be displayed all over bookshops and repeated in the newspapers.

But as the quiet pages turn, I find myself longing for a change for Emma and for me as a reader. Her world is too limited. What about the reader’s needs, dear M Flaubert? Spare a thought for us.

Emma is invited to a ball in the neighboring château and I think, yes, Flaubert is going to change the pace here, and he does. The comical descriptions of dinner at the chateau remind me of the humurous juxtapositions that occurred on every other page of Bouvard Et Pecuchet, and I can’t help wishing this book could be more like that one. But unfortunately, the château episode is soon over and it hasn’t delivered much in terms of change for Emma - or for the reader.

Thoughts on Part II

This section starts off with a little more promise. Emma and Charles are moving to Yonville, a little town in a valley by a meandering river. Flaubert describes the road leading to the town as bordered by young aspens, une chaussée plantée de jeunes trembles.
The French word for aspen, ‘tremble’, immediately reminds me of Tennyson’s lines from The Lady of Shalott:
Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver,
thro' the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot.
Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers,
and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.

I remember the descriptions of Emma looking at the world through her window, and I think, Yes! Up to this point, Emma has been exactly like the enchanted Lady of Shalott, looking out at the world as if from a mirror, cut off from real life.
Perhaps from her window in Yonville, she will see Sir Lancelot riding by...

The town provides some interest for the reader in any case. We are introduced to a colorful set of inhabitants. There’s Mme Lefrançois, who runs the local hostelry; there’s her club-footed man-of-all-work, Hippolyte; her regular customers: a querulous tax collector called M. Binet and a young lawyer’s clerk called M. Leon Dupuis. Then there’s a slimy haberdasher called M. Lheureux; the Rouen-Yonville stage-coach driver Hivert; a sanctimonious clergyman called M. Bournisien and a free-thinking but rather pedantic pharmacist called Homais.
An immediate battle of words between the clergyman and the pharmacist livens up the story nicely. I welcome these new characters, no matter how sanctimonious or pedantic. And Homais reminds me quite a bit of Bouvard and Pécuchet, though admittedly Homais seems actually to know what he’s talking about unlike that comic duo.

But while introducing several interesting and comic characters, Flaubert is simultaneously playing with our expectations. He tells us there was little to see in Yonville - the single street, the length of a rifle’s range, stopped short at the corner of the road. If you turned right at the end, you arrived at the cemetary. The mention of a street the length of a gun’s range, and which comes to an abrupt end, combined with the mention of a cemetery, doesn’t augur well at all.

But perhaps I’m wrong to focus on premonitions. On her first morning in her new home in Yonville, Emma looks out the window and sees the lawyer’s clerk, Leon, go by. Is he Sir Lancelot? In any case, within the space of a few pages, he seems to have cheered Emma up considerably. I’m cheered up too because I’m really enjoying the contrast between the super scientific conversations which Homais engages in with everyone, and the super romantic conversation that Emma and Leon have at every opportunity.

But Flaubert is still offering us hints about the future: Homais praises Emma’s new house and mentions particularly the advantage of having a side door in an alleyway that allows people to enter and leave without being seen.

The pages go by without much happening, and the side door remains unused. Oh, wait, something is happening. A bunch of characters are going on a day trip! How exciting!
But it’s only to visit a linen factory.
In Part II, the character list may have expanded but life in Yonville Yawnville hasn't really become more interesting.

Emma is increasingly bored and exasperated by her gentle husband Charles and by her narrow life in the town. I’m feeling the same with regard to Flaubert. I absolutely can’t find fault with the writing but the story is becoming just as much a torment for me to read as it is for Emma to live through.

But a passage beginning, ‘Un soir...’ , and which mentions spring and buds, etc, brings hope - for the reader, at least.
Alas, the passage ends with the church bells tolling in peaceful lamentation. Poor Emma. Poor me.

And poor Leon has become so bored with Yawnville that he can’t stand it any longer. He leaves without having once made use of that tempting side entrance.
What has Emma to look forward to now?
Oh right, an Agricultural Show…
But in the meantime, Emma has realised that Leon might have been her best chance at love and she missed it. Really, it goes from bad to worse. I’m certain Flaubert was chuckling to himself as he wrote!
But perhaps shedding a little tear too. His ability to perfectly phrase his character’s thoughts excuses him a lot:
C’était cette rêverie que l’on a sur ce qui ne reviendra plus, la lassitude qui vous prend après chaque fait accompli, cette douleur enfin que vous apportent l’interruption de tout mouvement accoutumé, la cessation brusque d’une vibration prolongée.

Emma has bought herself a prie-dieu, a gothic kneeler. I can’t believe Flaubert wrote that with a straight face.

Oh! It’s market day in Yawnville. Perhaps something will happen today...

Why yes! From her window Emma spies a fine Sir Lancelot in yellow gloves. Or is it Mr Bingley? A single man with twenty thousand a year renting a house in the area, he must surely be in want of a....
Ah! His name is not Bingley but Boulanger, Rodolphe Boulanger. He sounds as romantic as a red-nosed baker. But still, he’s arrived just in time to escort Emma to the Agricultural Show! Who’d have thought the Agricultural Show could turn into a romantic venue!

And side by side with the romance, Flaubert offers us a comic interlude between Mme Lefrançois and Homais, who according to Flaubert, has expressions to suit every circumstance, even unfortunate ones. Quelle épouvantable catastrophe ! s’écria l’apothicaire, qui avait toujours des expressions congruentes à toutes les circonstances imaginables. Yes, I was right. This IS a comic novel!

And now it’s Emma who’s described as having a red nose! Is Flaubert mocking his main character?
Yes, he seems to be mocking everyone in the course of this Agricultural Show episode, juxtaposing contrasting scenes to great comic effect. While the local Deputy engages his large audience at a slow pace on the subject of cereal production, Rodolphe engages his tiny audience at a fast pace on the subject of serial seduction. The deputy is planning a venture involving manufacturing linen, Rodolphe is planning a venture involving bed linen!

The comic strand has the upper hand in this section, and it may well be descending into complete farce because Homais is proposing a radical new medical procedure to cure Hippolyte’s club foot. Is Flaubert trying to turn Homais, the supreme unbeliever, into a Messiah who will make the lame walk and the blind see? In the predictably disappointing aftermath of the miracle procedure, Flaubert gives us some great dialogues between the priest and the pharmacist. These are definitely my favourite parts.

Meantime, Emma dialogues with her conscience on the subject of her affair with Rodolphe. Yes, you’ve guessed right, the side door on the alley has been finally put to some use.

But Rodolphe doesn’t measure up to Emma’s expectations, and his letter of adieu arrives by the unfaithful side-door. While I’m reading Rodolphe’s letter, I’m distracted by the mention of a ‘mancenillier’ tree so I pause to look it up. It’s a poison tree, a tree of death. Flaubert is amusing himself again.
And even as Emma enters crisis mode, Flaubert makes Homais create a comic diversion. And then he gives Charles serious money troubles just to bring us back into serious mode again.

In the next section, Flaubert cooly announces that Emma wants to become a saint! Elle voulut devenir une sainte. Am I the only one who notices this constant lurching between the serious and the farcical?

Ok, she’s now safely through the ‘saint’ crisis and Charles is going to take her to see ‘Lucia de Lamermoor' at the Rouen opera house. This should be a serious episode but it’s introduced by another farcical debate between the pharmacist and the priest. The two are stock comic characters. But romance prevails in spite of the comedy; Emma, like Lucia in the garden scene, meets her old love Leon at the opera.

This more mature Leon turns out to be as calculating in his modest way as Rodolphe was, and he manages to get Charles to agree to Emma staying on an extra day in Rouen by herself. So the pair rendezvous at the cathedral which gives Flaubert an opportunity to indulge in flamboyant parallels between Emma’s situation and the edifice itself. The cathedral is described as a gigantic boudoir, the vaulted ceiling extending its ribs like arms to receive Emma’s confession of love for Leon, the stained glass illumining her face, the smoke from the incense burners creating an angelic halo, etc, etc.
Someone convince me that Flaubert wasn’t laughing when he wrote this. And there’s a ridiculous person hanging around who insists on giving the pair a guided tour, especially of the Chapel of the Virgin under which is buried a Louis the Something, seigneur of something else, etc, etc, who died on the 23rd of July, a Sunday…

The reference to the ‘Sunday’ is one detail too much for Leon. He flees the cathedral’s suffocating arms dragging Emma behind him, and grabs a cab. Not just any cab of course. It has to be a cab that has blinds that can be pulled down completely. Flaubert sends the cabby and his two passengers on a crazy journey around and around the city so that people in the streets see the cab go by again and again and are amazed at the apparitions and reapparaitions of a shuttered vehicle in broad daylight. Phantasmagoric!

When Emma gets back to Yawnville after the cab ‘ride’ there’s bad news. But Flaubert can’t just give us a simple delivery of bad news. No, the scene has to open with Homais castigating his apprentice for daring to unlock his medicine cabinet - where he has a bottle of arsenic locked away. Homais is so carried away that he expostulates in Latin and would have expostulated in Chinese or ‘groenlandais’ if he knew such languages! In the middle of all this expostulating, he conveys the bad news to Emma: Charles’ father has died.

The story moves on through many more chapters as Emma and Leon find possibilities for more rendezvous, sometimes described in ridiculous terms, sometimes in sublime ones: for Leon, Emma is the heroine of every novel and drama. She is the unnamed She of every love poem. But above all, she’s an angel! This is heady stuff!

Emma’s stolen idylls cost money so she borrows and borrows on the strength of Charles’ inheritance. Each time the story strikes such a serious note, Homais is called in to do another comic turn. The man who used to spout Latin at every opportunity suddenly starts peppering his conversation with slang terms to great effect: nous ferons sauter ensemble les monacos. L’apothicaire, autrefois, se fût bien gardé d’une telle expression ; mais il donnait maintenant dans un genre folâtre et parisien qu’il trouvait du meilleur goût ; et, comme madame Bovary, sa voisine, il interrogeait le clerc curieusement sur les mœurs de la capitale, même il parlait argot afin d’éblouir les bourgeois, disant turne, bazar, chicard, chicandard, Breda-street, et Je me la casse, pour : Je m’en vais.

Then for ten pages or so, there’s no comic contrast. Flaubert is serious at last. Leon is gone - or as Homais might say, he’s vamoosed. Emma is left with nothing but debts and broken dreams - described in the most beautiful language needless to say.

Just when I’d given up on any more comic turns, Homais comes to my rescue to advise against eating wheat and dairy products! There’s nothing new in the world surely.

And even when things worsen, he still manages to make me laugh. He declares that in cases of poisoning, the most important thing is to carry out a test. Follow the scientific method. Everything will be fine if you follow the scientific method and carry out tests.

At the very worst moment after the famous doctors have arrived and given up on curing the poison victim, Homais feels obliged to entertain them at his house, sending out for pigeons and lamb chops, the best cream and eggs, and warning his wife to take out the wineglasses with the stems. He even dares to offer the famous doctor his own diagnosis, not omitting to mention that he can’t imagine where the victim could have come upon the arsenic.

And while the entire town, me included, are waiting for news of the victim, Flaubert allows Homais to continue his farce. He can’t finish dinner with the famous doctor without a coffee from a very scientic-sounding machine, using coffee he has of course torrified and pulverised himself, and when he offers the famous doctor sugar for his coffee, he uses the scientific name: Saccharum, docteur?

Soon Homais is back in the sickroom, using all his science to protect the dying woman from the priest’s superstitions. But he doesn’t succeed: Emma is encouraged to bestow on a crucifix the most loving kiss she’s ever bestowed on a man’s body. It’s a wonder Flaubert didn’t name her Marie Madeleine!

And Flaubert isn’t done with us yet. Homais and the priest sit by the deathbed arguing about religion until they both fall asleep, when they are shown to be indistinguishable from one another: two fat men nodding in their chairs, their chins resting on their chests. When they wake up, their differences re-emerge: one sprinkles the room with holy water, the other with chlorine and the story ends on that note.

I really believe ‘Madame Bovary’ is a comedy. But Homais would no doubt prove me wrong. Using suitably scientific methods, he would prove that the majority of readers consider it a tragedy. So be it.

Oy, the tedium, the drudgery of trying to read this book! I tried to get into this story. Really, I did. It's a classic, right? And everyone else likes it. I kept making myself continue, hoping I could get into the story and figure out what's supposed to be so good about it.
I won't waste any more of my precious reading time on this. It's about a self-absorbed young wife who longs for anyone else's life except her own. When she's in the city, she dreams of the farm. When she's in the country, she dreams of the city. When she's at a social gathering she imagines that everyone else's life is so much more exciting than her own. Blah, blah, blah.
Too many wordy descriptions of what people were wearing, what the buildings looked like, etc. If you're going to take a long time to tell a story, it had better be a good story. This one is NOT!

Friedrich Nietzsche is reported to have said:n  "I go on smiling and laughing for the simple reason that if I don’t smile, I may start crying.”n Smiling is a way to cover up tears, that is to say, you shift your energy from the tears to the smile so that you can forget your tears. But, sad story, everybody is full of tears.
‘Madame Bovary’ has been on my mind in the last couple of months-the real reason why I couldn’t say-but trusting the calling I have eventually managed to get it started (as a matter of fact, it is a revisit after couple of decades). I have been enjoying it up to the moment I started to feel that Madame B. and the people from her surroundings got me too irritated and nervous. Why? I think I am in possession of some valid answers, unless I contradict myself.
Love can never really be a great base for marriage because love is fun and play. I don’t recall now what books/novels has read Madame Bovary in her youth-there were some listed, if I’m not mistaken-but, the basic truth is that if you marry someone for love-only-you will be frustrated, because soon the fun is gone, the newness is gone, and boredom sets in [It is always correct-politically to speak up based on own, personal experience, but, when this is not in place, I usually ground my statements on everything I’ve seen around me, from early age up to present, to have affected my family, relatives, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, etc.].
Marriage should be for deep(er) friendship, deep(er) intimacy. Love is implied in it, but it is not alone, or the only thing to create the bond(age) of marriage. That is to say that there is no reason to marry someone only because of love. So, marriage should be spiritual [heavy word, but it’s the only one I really like to connect to the marriage itself]. There are many things which one can never develop alone. Even your own growth needs someone to respond, someone so intimate that you can open yourself totally to him or her.
But, as per centuries and centuries of recorded history, the only known routine is to go into marriage because of love-name it in different ways, depending on each person. It looks that-according to society conventions-a person cannot love outside marriage, so basically marriage and love (that is the romantic love) should go together, necessarily, in a formalized manner.
So, what is the marriage of Madame & Monsieur Bovary about – just a painful suffering, a long suffering, with false smiling faces. It has simply proved to be a misery from start to end (in most cases, it can be just a convenience.) Their marriage failed because it was not grounded on deeper things: for intimacy, for a co-inherence, to work on something which cannot be done alone, which can be done only in a deep togetherness. He needed a wife, a companion to share his daily life, she needed a lover, but supposedly a lover to love her as per the novels she read and based on which she developed a fantastic imagination on how this should be unfolded. Eventually, the real differences between the characters- certainly there from the start- led to a growing discontent that engulfed all, more and more in time and destroyed the illusion of a (perfect) marriage.
I would not disagree completely with some criteria. In general, or as a rule, the woman can be satisfied with one love, utterly fulfilled, when she looks at her man’s innermost qualities. That is to say that she does not fall in love with a man who has a beautiful muscular body [doesn’t hurt, if it is so], but she falls in love with a man who has charisma – something indefinable, but immensely attractive – who has a mystery to be explored [what a lovely word-mystery, wouldn’t replace it for anything in the world]. She wants her man not to be just a man, but an adventure in discovering consciousness. So far so good ;-) …

...In a better world, with better understanding, we could pay closer attention and learn something from marriage. All human hearts are the same and their ultimate desire is also the same: happiness, perfect and pure happiness.
Like other similar related themes, this novel is a perfect eye-opening. I tend to incline that if I’m not 'blind'-except during certain astrological phases- and if I can still proper see, marriage-as representation of the whole world in a miniature form- it teaches many things: that you don’t know what love is, that you don’t know how to relate, that you don’t know how to communicate, that you don’t know how to commune, that you don’t know how to live with another. Eventually, it teaches you your reality, that something deep inside you needs transformation so that you can be blissful alone and you can be blissful together. So, the bondage is transformed into sharing, that gives freedom for growth to both. It is something like a mirror, showing your face to you in all its different aspects. And, surely it is all needed for achieving maturity.
Most of the differences between men and women are because of (thousands of years) conditioning. They are not fundamental to nature, but there are a few differences which give them unique beauty, individuality. It’s a shame though that this does not become a creative flow between them.
When being in relationship, in a thousand and one ways you are provoked, challenged, seduced. Time, again and again, you come to know your pitfalls, your limitations, your anger, your lust, your possessiveness, your jealousy, your sadness, your happiness all moods come and go, you are constantly in a turmoil. But this is the only way to know who you are. Eventually, the characters let their veils fall and revealed their true faces. Is it fate to blame? Not really. But it can be, too. If we choose to.
What is the secret of remaining happy and married? I don’t know! I assume that nobody has ever known otherwise the secret would have been open to the world.

NB: ≪ A Sufi mystic who had always remained happy was asked…. For seventy years people had watched him, he had never been found sad. One day they asked him, ‘What is the secret of your happiness?’ He said, ‘There is no secret. Every morning when I wake up, I meditate for five minutes and I say to myself, ‘Listen, now there are two possibilities: you can be miserable, or you can be blissful. Choose.’ And I always choose to be blissful. ≫

Madame Bovary was a real treat. I'm glad that I chose to read it at this point in my life, and not any younger, as I'm not entirely sure that I would have been appreciative of the story, and the richness of the characters. I now know, why Madame Bovary is such a popular novel.

The story centres on Emma, a woman that believes in dreaming, passionate love and adventure, and when she marries Charles Bovary, it is evident to her, that she is not going to get that with him. So, she seeks her needs elsewhere, with two other men. She delves into two affairs, and while her needs are sufficed, she ends up in large amounts of debt, which inevitably, leads to destruction and despair.

Flaubert was a wordsmith, and his beautiful, life-like descriptions of everyday life scenes, that were so in depth, such as the club-foot operation, had me racing through this book. I felt like I was in the room, observing that operation, and I could almost smell the sweat. As for the tragedy itself, I thought it was rather drawn out, and I think in this case, it needed to be. It was shocking, unthinkable and I felt my heart banging in my chest. It takes something extraordinary to be able to do that, and this book has succeeded.

مائة جلدة..و مائة دينار ذهبي هذا هو تقييمي.. بضمير مستريح لجوستاف فلوبير ومدام "زلطة " الشهيرة ببوفاري
الدنانير مكافاة على حذقه ومهارته في رسم لوحات ادبية لا تصدق..و الجلدات او الضربات ..لانه يصرف ذكاءه في ما لا يفيد

لو كان فلوبير يحيا بيننا اليوم لكان طبيبا نفسيا بارعا يتم الحجز عنده قبلها بستة اشهر..انظروا للاقتباس على لسان بوفاري
ا"كان الكذب ضرورة بل هواية..بل لذة يحلو المضي فيها الى درجة انها اذا قالت انها سارت على جانب الطريق الايمن فتاكد انها كانت على الجانب الايسر )

"نعم هناك بشر على هذه الشاكلة..و كيف سنتعرف على خلجات نفوس الحمقى و ذوي النفوس الدنيئة؟؟ نعاشرهم او نقرا عنهم لنشعر ان الادباء وهبوا عيونا غير عيونننا..هذه رواية ضد الروايات.. تؤكد طوال الوقت على الاثر السيء للروايات على عقول ونفوس السيدات..نعم هكذا أكد فلوبير على لسان عدة شخصيات في الرواية..وللحق اذا كانت الرواية من عينه بوفاري..فنعم والف نعم

تقييمي بالتفصيل:الاسلوب والوصف:5نجوم..اتقان شخصية البطلة 5 نجوم..باقي الشخصيات 2نجمة..الحبكة :2نجمة...القابلية للقراءة 3 نجوم
الهدف او الرسالة:صفر
النهاية:صيييييفر.. وتحت الصفر

انا ام مسلمة..في العقد الرابع وذات ثقافة اجنبية..و تقييمي خاضع لهذه المعايير شئت ام ابيت
لي اعتراضيين جوهريين على مدام بوفاري..الاول كأم..اقوى الغرائز لدى المرأة على الاطلاق هي "الامومة" هل تساءلت يوما لماذا يوجد عقاب حازم للزنا وللاب الذي يضيع من يعول.. ولكن لا يوجد احكام حازمة ضد اللام المهملة ...لان هذا منافي للطبيعة و ما جُبلت عليه الام
بوفاري كانت ام بشعة والأسوأ على مستوى الأدب العالمي ..حتى عندما رغبت في زيارة ابنتها المبعدة عند المرضعة لاول مرة..اصطحبت حبيبها
بل و في المشهد الادبي الاكثر ازعاجا لي ..نراها تلكزها بعنف عندما تقترب منها..فتقع الرضيعة ذات العام الواحد ويشق خدها!! لان المدام منزعجة من عشيقها

و هكذا فازت من الصديق حسام عادل بلقب مدام زلطةا
كم يوجد من هذه العينة في العالم؟واحدة بين كل الفين أم؟ ..اذن ما الهدف من التعمق في مشاعرها التافهة لأكثر من 400صفحة؟

سبق وقلت ا ن بوفاري مثال لمرض اضطراب ثنائي القطب و هو مرض مميز للشخصية الادمانية..تفتنك ..تسحرك..في البداية ثم تقع فريسة لكل مساوؤها المعروفة..وهي الفريسة المفضلة للنصابين ودائما تجد ساذج يتحمل مسؤلياتها...بوفاري مدمنة للجنس ..و هو المرض الاقل تعاطفا في العالم..زوجها منحها كل ما تبغيه امراة في الوجود..و يكفي انه يحبها بجنون طوال 7 سنوات عجفاء هي عمر هذا البلاء"الزواج"و لكن وجدت كل القطط الفاطسانة فيه لتخونه مرارا
..بل و تضيع ماله و توقعه في ديون اسطورية..و عندما تقترب ابنتها منها يقول ابيها: ابتعدي انت تعلمين ان والدتك لا تحب ان نزعجها! !!ا

السؤال مرة اخرى: كم يوجد من بوفاري في العالم ؟؟.وهل يستحب عرض نموذج شديد الاستثنائية بين النساء..قد يكون موجود بنسبة 10%من الرجال.. اذن المطلوب مني كام وزوجة عندما اتعرض لكل هذا التبجح و التبطر بينما اعاني انا من مشااااكل مادية ومعنوية حقيقية وواقعية..المفروض اقول انا ملاك كدة .. و لماذا اتحمل كل هذا..؟
هناك حرق قادم للاحداث
و عندما تاتي نهايتها هزيلة ..فلا يفتضح امرها....بل تقرر الخلاص من حياتها في نفس اليوم الذي سيباع فيه اثاثها في المزاد..و هكذا تحقق الجملة الشهيرة"عاش خاين ومات كافر" بل و زوجها بعد معرفته بأنها سبب إفلاسه .بل وتشريد ابنته.. و بخيانتها بعد وفاتها بعامين يظل يحبها بل يموت حبا(او جوعا )!!هنا سئمت انا حياتي كلها حقا

وهنا ياتي اعتراضي ال��اني: هناك سخرية مستترة من الإيمان عموما ...فالخطيئة الثانية تبدا في الكاتدرائية ..و الشخصيات المؤمنة يتم اقصائها وتهميشها....وشخصية الصيدلي الملحد من اخبث الشخصيات الادبية..و هو الشخصية الوحيدة التي فازت بكل شيء في انتصار كامل غير مبرر للشر

لقد احترت حقا في تقييم الرواية فهناك روايات تخرج منها باحساس بغيض يملاك ضيقا و حقدا. هل هناك رسالة خفية ؟ لم افهمها..و اعتذر عن الاسهاب الشديد

The first reading of this novel does no justice to its original intended effect. The book must be reread especially if it was first encountered when the reader’s life was still devoid of romance. Not until the second time around do the details linger, memorably, and the speedy plot that Part One promised is detained for the remaining Parts Two & Three which include photographically-intense colors and emotions felt (or, even not felt at all) by Emma Bovary. The plot is carefully-crafted; it is bookmarked by the lives of the secondary characters, as if Mme. Bovary is the (literal) center meanwhile her dilemma is a more private one: that lives go on before (the education and upbringing of the incompetent man that will be her husband) & after (the deaths of the members of the Bovary clan, the success of M. Homais) the actual core means that the world at large is indifferent to her & her tale is almost wholly forgotten, just swallowed up.

Here for the reader’s consideration is a full life. Perhaps “robust” would not be a correct adjective to describe a life of desperation and woe. Emma Bovary is human because she is not all good nor all evil. She is materialistic but also idealistic. Wife and lover. Belonging nowhere, like a character born at the most inadequate of times. Like Oedipus with the Oracle, however, she is knowledgeable of the fate that is in store for adulteresses.

The plot has plunges and heights, a spectrum that is available to anyone belonging to the human race. The pathos comes from all the chains Bovary must break to become free, and the further entanglement of her emotions complicate matters. Mme Bovary does not commit suicide with arsenic because of monetary problems. The title is perfect since it is itself a title: Madame Bovary. There are several Madame Bovarys in the book, including Charles’s first wife and his mother. She is called Emma when she is free, when her identity becomes her own & she is dehumanized no longer, especially not by the sympathetic reader.
t
Who can escape their position in society, their gender, their duties, their fate? Rodolphe tells Emma: “if two poor souls should finally come together, everything is organized to prevent them from uniting. Still they try, they beat their wings, they call out to one another.” It's this attempt which makes Madame Bovary a classic, modern tragedy where a soul is doomed because she feels everything, yet is only able to express the most minimal. Emma Bovary is in love with the notion of love, the conventions are her ideals, & she is nevertheless brave to at least try.

This book! I'm so split on what I think.

Firstly it's a typical classic, it's way longer than it needs to be and overly descriptive. Some chapters I'm really into it and others I'm looking around for any distraction. I found it hard to keep my attention from wandering while reading this book.

Secondly, madam bovary! What a girl. I'm guessing she was the original bored desperate housewife? I kind of liked her, her inability to settle, her boredom, her disappointment with life, her need for something more exciting.

Mixed feeling on this one so three stars, good in places but a bore in others, am glad I've finally read it though, that's another classic off the list.

گوستاو فلوبر نزديك چهار سال براي نوشتن اين داستان وقت صرف كرد.وي سبكي كاملا جديد پديد آورد؛ اينكه راوي داستان فقط ناظري باشد دقيق براي نمايش زندگي و نظر شخصي اش در داستان دیده نشود
به قول خودش: هنرمند باید شبیه پروردگارِ خالق باشد، نادیده �� برهمه چیز توانا؛ ذاتی که در همه جا حس شود اما به چشم نیاید

:در مورد کتاب
يك زندگي نزدیک به واقعيت، كه خبري از انسان هاي كاملا خوب يا بد نيست، و انسان ها در كنار خوبي،بدي هم دارند و همه شان مردمي معمولي هستند كه دچار روزمرگي شده اند، به غير از اِما و پدرِ شارل كه براي قلب خود ارزش قائلند ولي راه اشتباهي را انتخاب مي كنند

جامعه و اخلاقیات در اروپای آن زمان هنوز نمی توانست چنین انسان هایی را درک کنند

شخصيت داستان زني شبيه مادر ترزا يا ژاندارك نيست،دختري معمولي است كه وقتي در صومعه داستان هاي مبتذل عاشقانه را دزدكي و به دور از ديد راهبه ها مي خواند ،آرزوي اين دنياي خيالي شب و روزش را مي ربايد

اِما در تمام عمرش در پي اين خوشبختي مي گردد ولي نه در برِ معشوق و نه در خانه اي با اسباب گران قيمت و نه در جاي ديگري، هيچوقت آنرا پيدا نمي كند

اين قسمت دقيقا نفرت نويسنده از سبك رمانتيسم افراطي را نشان مي دهد و اينكه اين داستان ها چه تاثير بدي بر ذهن خام دختري نوجوان مي گذارد

ازدواج اِما با شارل اقدامي عجولانه بود و دختري كه در رويا ها سير مي كرد،مجبور بود كمي از اين رويا ها فرود بيايد تا شايد طعم خوشبختي را بچشد.ولي هركاري كرد نچشيد چون او مزه اي مي خواست كه در زمين خاكي و قابل لمس وجود نداشت

اِما خيلي زود از شوهرش نااميد شد،چون شوهرش شبيه قهرمان داستان هايي كه خوانده، نبود.تلاش كرد شوهرش را تبديل به چنين مردي كند ولي نه شارل چنين ظرفيتي داشت و نه اين قهرمانان واقعي بودند

ولي اِما بجاي واقعيت بيني همه چيز را تقصير شوهرش ديد و شروع كرد به سقوط
...كردن
شايد اگر قبل از ازدواج عشق را آنطور كه هست مي شناخت و یا عاشق می شد و حتي در آن شكست مي خورد،زندگيش در آينده عوض مي شد

كارل گوستاو يونگ هر انساني را داري شخصيت مرادنه و زنانه مي داند.شخصيت مردانه اِما قابل توجه است، در چند جاي داستان از زن بودنش متنفر بود و همچو يك مرد بر شوهرش حكومت مي کرد و دوس داشت فرزندش پسر باشد


تنها كسي كه اِما بهش وفادار نبود همسرش بود و در مقابل، همه فاسقانش
...فراموشش كردند به غير از شوهرش

Her too-lofty dreams, her too-narrow house.

We meet and greet different sorts of people; we greet and read different sorts of books. Last year, I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Jane Eyre. With her modest dreams and dignified living, it was easy to accept and love her. She was far from perfect but there was hardly a thing I would have changed about her. A fictional character of literature exemplifying the virtuous side of real life but she was not alone. There were some other characters surrounding Jane who certainly struck a chord with me but the music thus created was not a soothing melody. The arrogant ways of Reed cousins and the vindictive streak in Bertha Mason’s love symbolized an unpleasant world which held within it afflictive but relevant stories. In one such story this year, I met Emma.

n   But shouldn’t a man know everything, excel at a host of different activities, initiate you into the intensities of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries? Yet this man taught her nothing, knew nothing, wished for nothing. He thought she was happy; and she resented him for that settled calm, that ponderous serenity, that very happiness which she herself brought him. n

The Bored and Beautiful, Madame Bovary. We all probably know her. That naive little girl who doesn’t appreciate the toy in her hands because another child owns an artificial but glittering tiara. That reckless young woman who jots down a list of inordinate whims which could culminate into a glorious Happily Ever After when time comes. That unfortunate mature lady who finally realizes the vacuity of her air castles when it’s too late. Emma while single had imagination and anticipation; Ms. Bovary while married had perversity and passion. It was difficult to love and accept her but that’s precisely what I did- with a little help from Flaubert’s terrific writing and a little help from the world around me.

Love and its vicious pleasures don’t spare anyone. Those pleasures when turned inside out, sometimes take the shape of eternal sufferings too. The difference possibly lies in the vacuum created out of being in love and the idea of being in love. Both can be fatal but I would like to believe that the latter is something that is bound to make a person delusional about oneself and everyone around. Emma tried to form a derisory bridge from her idea too, in a hope to reach an unknown destination she usually read in her books but eventually she suffered too.

Where could she have learned this depravity, so deep and so dissembled that it was almost incorporeal?

Why, from this society only. A society which thrives upon displaying its pretentious happiness and insists on concealing the perpetual sadness. A society which constantly invent ways of piling up the debt upon another person while wearing the sham of welfare. A society where another Madame Bovary, Emma’s mother-in-law, silently accepts her fateful marriage. Amidst all these lies, it’s no wonder that Emma learned something which was not worth learning at all. Flaubert, through his omniscience narration hasn’t passed any judgment or jumped to futile conclusions here. He has simply stated how people conduct their lives when materialism comes to the forefront of one’s mind. Love goes to hell in such cases.

She was the beloved of every novel, the heroine of every drama, the vague she of every volume of poetry.

Ah! The irony.

[Revised 3/21/23]

Ah, Madame Bovary. Isn't that the one where she has an affair and kills herself by jumping in front of a train? No, that's one by Tolstoy. But I'm thinking of adding a new Goodreads shelf: 'Old classics I thought surely I had read years ago, but hadn't.'

There are thousands of reviews so I'll keep this short.



Our two main characters are remarkably unlikable. Emma marries a divorced small-town doctor who's a widower. Isn't there a French expression: "How can a woman love a man who adores her?” Charles acts like a country bumpkin. He adores her and he’s such a cuckold that he is an enabler. If he found her in bed with another man, Emma would say “I was just showing Armande how comfortable our mattress is, and we took our clothes off because it was so hot.” And he would believe her.

The introduction tells us that Flaubert wrote in a letter “Women are taught to lie shamelessly. An apprenticeship that lasts all their lives.” So he created Emma to prove his point. Emma’s picture could appear in an illustrated dictionary under ‘self-centeredness.’ (We’ll put her husband, Charles’ picture, in under ‘cuckold.’)

The biggest red flag for me about Emma is her lack of interest in, dislike of, and even disgust with her baby daughter. She's forever pushing her away and sending her off to her nurse. Her extravagance creates financial problems that she seems not only unconcerned with but unaware of. That extravagance drives the novel to its tragic end.

If you are thinking of reading it, here are a couple of passages that I liked and that illustrate the style of writing. This one is about an old roadside inn: “…a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like plowboys dressed in Sunday clothes, has a cafe on the street, and toward the countryside a kitchen-garden.”



Here's a passage when Madame B and a future lover are beginning to feel attracted to each other: “Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical shores, thrown over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.”

It's a good story and excellent writing, although my paperback edition by Harper Collins has problems. It doesn't name the translator, so it must be an old translation where the copyright expired. I know that Flaubert was a writer known for finding le mot juste. The translator, I think, tried to match that exactness of word usage in English with some fairly obscure English words: diligence (in the sense of a carriage), colza (rapeseed), bistoury (scalpel), faubourg (suburb). The back of the book gives us a glossary that has none of the obscure words I had to look up, but instead defines for us words like ruffian, trivet, penury and gruel! This is what happens when you turn over the glossary task to your graduate student intern and no one else looks over the finished product.

BTW, when is GR going to get around to letting reviewers use italics without having to insert formatting marks?



A great novel and good writing. Indeed a classic. The sex, tame by modern standards, pushed the envelope when published in 1856, and the author was charged with obscenity. It’s a fascinating blend of romance and realism. Flaubert (1821-1880) was a pioneer in French literary realism.

Top photo of Emma from a 2014 20th Century Fox movie at befrois.com
French inn from messynessychic.com
The author on a French stamp from postbeeld.com