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3.51 AVERAGE
3.51 AVERAGE
This book contrasts well with Tess of the D'Urbervilles, in that it's a spoiled rich social climber who gets her comeuppance instead of an innocent person in bad circumstances. Flaubert had a lot of demons to exorcise by writing this book. Can we make a psychological study of men who write books that are very negative towards women? Make no mistake, I enjoyed this book quite a bit, but sometimes I stop and wonder what happened to some authors that they can write such things.
Zamanında okuduğum kitaplar, sonu düşününce başka türlü olamaz, toplum tarafından kabul edilemez denilen kitaplardan. Kocasının hareketleri ise bir nevi ahlaksızlık belkide, hayatının sonuna kadar bu lekeyle yaşayacak. Düşünüp taşınmak gerek tabii. Güzel bir kitaptı. Dönemimizde bile insanları şoke edebilecek bir konusu var.
this is the only Madame Bovary that came up in the search...and it's a beautiful book...but I would recommend reading the Lydia Davis translation. I read it in a grad class and I have yet to find its equal. So, remember...LYDIA DAVIS TRANSLATION.
Chalk this one up to "live and learn". I downloaded the free Kindle edition and soon regretted it. It was clear from the get go that this was an awkward translation, awkward enough to make the reader wonder why this story is so celebrated. Thus, I won't even attempt to write a reader's review of the novel. The up side is that now I'm inspired either to try reading it in French or to buy one of the highly rated English translations.
Books choose you. Books choose you. Books choose you. Books choose you. Books choose you. Books choose you. Unbelievable. Books choose you.
This novel got Mr. Flaubert in a world of trouble because of its (for the time) scandalous content. Of course today we don’t find anything shocking in that, the same way we don’t find anything shocking in “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, but back then, the unpleasant reality of women’s un-virtuous behavior clearly got everyone’s panties in a twist.
Personally, I found the rather pathetic story of Emma Bovary to be extremely modern. Maybe things simply haven’t changed much since then, but I feel like people who project huge unrealistic fantasies on their lives and then get very upset when reality fails to live up to the fantasy to be an incredibly common thing. It’s why most Canadian households are deep in debts: it’s not enough to have a home, you need a bigger home, you need to vacation in Cuba every spring, you need to dress better than your colleagues, you need the latest Apple gadgets and so on. Living above one’s means out of vanity, to compensate for what one feels to be a mediocre day-to-day is clearly nothing new. I’m not saying one should settle for mediocrity, but I think people tend to measure what will bring them happiness on a very warped scale that ultimately doesn’t bring them any real satisfaction.
Emma’s incapacity to admit that anything less than what she read in romance novels is good enough for her is the root of her problems. Of course, her immature and selfish attitude aggravates it – not to mention that she has terrible taste in men. You can tell that it won’t end well for her pretty early on, just as easily as you can tell that Flaubert really hates the bourgeois and the suburbs… Her husband is a spineless dweeb and her lovers are just as selfish and vain as she is. Add money troubles to her mountain of emotional dissatisfactions and you got a real ugly mess…
So why read it if it’s so bleak and if the characters are so annoying that I rolled my eyes non-stop for 400 pages? Well, because the writing is unbelievably great, for one thing! I read it in the original French and the descriptions give you such a precise, yet not over-bearing picture of the settings, the landscapes, the characters. It’s simply beautiful to read! It is also a masterful and thought-provoking character study: as deeply irritating as Emma can be, when you are in her head, it is difficult not to start feeling bad for her at some point. I wanted to shake some sense into her, but I also wanted to give her a hug and a cup of tea. By no means am I condoning her behaviours, but the poor thing was also so friendless, left with nothing but her own very misguided views on what to do to get out of her funk. I wished she had a good girlfriend who could have tough-loved some sense into her before things got out of control and brought on tragic consequences on her entire family.
I really enjoyed the book: the quality of the writing, the fascinating cautionary tale and the characterization totally justify this book’s classic status. The writing is not heavy or ponderous, so even readers who usually dislike classics can enjoy this one without it dragging on endlessly (I’m looking at you, Victor Hugo!).
Personally, I found the rather pathetic story of Emma Bovary to be extremely modern. Maybe things simply haven’t changed much since then, but I feel like people who project huge unrealistic fantasies on their lives and then get very upset when reality fails to live up to the fantasy to be an incredibly common thing. It’s why most Canadian households are deep in debts: it’s not enough to have a home, you need a bigger home, you need to vacation in Cuba every spring, you need to dress better than your colleagues, you need the latest Apple gadgets and so on. Living above one’s means out of vanity, to compensate for what one feels to be a mediocre day-to-day is clearly nothing new. I’m not saying one should settle for mediocrity, but I think people tend to measure what will bring them happiness on a very warped scale that ultimately doesn’t bring them any real satisfaction.
Emma’s incapacity to admit that anything less than what she read in romance novels is good enough for her is the root of her problems. Of course, her immature and selfish attitude aggravates it – not to mention that she has terrible taste in men. You can tell that it won’t end well for her pretty early on, just as easily as you can tell that Flaubert really hates the bourgeois and the suburbs… Her husband is a spineless dweeb and her lovers are just as selfish and vain as she is. Add money troubles to her mountain of emotional dissatisfactions and you got a real ugly mess…
So why read it if it’s so bleak and if the characters are so annoying that I rolled my eyes non-stop for 400 pages? Well, because the writing is unbelievably great, for one thing! I read it in the original French and the descriptions give you such a precise, yet not over-bearing picture of the settings, the landscapes, the characters. It’s simply beautiful to read! It is also a masterful and thought-provoking character study: as deeply irritating as Emma can be, when you are in her head, it is difficult not to start feeling bad for her at some point. I wanted to shake some sense into her, but I also wanted to give her a hug and a cup of tea. By no means am I condoning her behaviours, but the poor thing was also so friendless, left with nothing but her own very misguided views on what to do to get out of her funk. I wished she had a good girlfriend who could have tough-loved some sense into her before things got out of control and brought on tragic consequences on her entire family.
I really enjoyed the book: the quality of the writing, the fascinating cautionary tale and the characterization totally justify this book’s classic status. The writing is not heavy or ponderous, so even readers who usually dislike classics can enjoy this one without it dragging on endlessly (I’m looking at you, Victor Hugo!).
I don't know whether to view this as a comedy of errors or one heaving bosom and two throbbing manhoods short of a Harlequin romance novel.
I completely get the originality of this story, considering the date in which this was published. The ideas he presented had not been written before in accepted novel form (and still wasn't accepted at his time). To present love and lust so openly and honestly was taking quite the risk. I also acknowledge that Emma Bovary was a product of her times--unable to discuss with another woman her ideas of love, and once married, unable to change her social situation.
The part of Rodolphe's corruption of Emma was at first glance daring and provocative. It gave Emma the illusion that what was happening had happened to her by no fault of her own. And then to turn that corruption into Emma corrupting Leon was another brilliant turn in the story. Once corrupted, Emma's true form emerged--greedy, selfishness, and frustrated by a broken knowledge of her inability to effect any real change in her life.
However, looking past all the bravery of his time, this story boils down to one woman wishing her love life was filled with white knights and poems and fireworks. But relationships--true relationships--require work, leaving even the most passionate affairs to eventually dull and smolder. Flaubert said it best, "Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage." So all that leaves the reader is one sorely confused girl with no one to guide her.
This may be a barrier-breaking novel, but it still is just a story about romance gone wrong. And that just doesn't suit my taste, hence the 2 stars.
I completely get the originality of this story, considering the date in which this was published. The ideas he presented had not been written before in accepted novel form (and still wasn't accepted at his time). To present love and lust so openly and honestly was taking quite the risk. I also acknowledge that Emma Bovary was a product of her times--unable to discuss with another woman her ideas of love, and once married, unable to change her social situation.
The part of Rodolphe's corruption of Emma was at first glance daring and provocative. It gave Emma the illusion that what was happening had happened to her by no fault of her own. And then to turn that corruption into Emma corrupting Leon was another brilliant turn in the story. Once corrupted, Emma's true form emerged--greedy, selfishness, and frustrated by a broken knowledge of her inability to effect any real change in her life.
However, looking past all the bravery of his time, this story boils down to one woman wishing her love life was filled with white knights and poems and fireworks. But relationships--true relationships--require work, leaving even the most passionate affairs to eventually dull and smolder. Flaubert said it best, "Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage." So all that leaves the reader is one sorely confused girl with no one to guide her.
This may be a barrier-breaking novel, but it still is just a story about romance gone wrong. And that just doesn't suit my taste, hence the 2 stars.
Okay. The whole time I was reading this book I felt pretty “meh” about it. Completely ambivalent. I felt that way even at the end. Then, when writing about it in my Book Club journal/notebook, I thought “oh wow, maybe this book actually was really great!”
Verdict: Well deserving of its place in the Pantheon, this perfectly crafted novel still reads fresh through the years, transcending the ‘life sucks and then you die’ genre.
I read ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ about a year ago so I reckoned it was time to read some actual Flaubert. It was a task undertaken with a sense of duty rather than delight. Barnes’ dissertation of a book hadn’t been the most compelling and I have a natural distrust of the French. Granted, their authors have been gradually winning me over (looking at you duMaurier) but beyond Barnes the only association I had to Flaubert was as the pet anteater of Miss Piggy in Muppet Treasure Island. So I repeated my optimistic refrain, ‘It must be a classic for a reason,’ and tucked into ‘Madame Bovary’.
Pleasant surprises all round. The first thing that struck me was the writing. I was expecting something ornately weighty but instead it was beautiful and easy. I can only assume it improves if read in the original French but I can’t imagine how. It is a perfect story-telling style, which somehow includes all the little minutiae of daily life without wasting a single word. Little things like
‘Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished.’
are at once mundane and picturesque as little things acquire poetry under a sharp focus rather than a misty lens.
I won’t spend too much time on the story of ‘Madame Bovary’ because it is an old one; echoing down through time with spiritual kindred to be found everywhere from ‘The House of Mirth’ to ‘The Bell Jar’. Emma Bovary is young and beautiful at a time when that was all that was required of a woman in order to gain a fairy-tale life. It hasn’t quite gone right for Emma, though, and after the wedding she finds herself not kept in the manner to which she had anticipated becoming accustomed. But its drama Emma is really missing, only desiring riches for their effect as a lubricant sliding her into a glowing world of waltzes and Viscomtes.
Instead limited means (and ambition on her husband’s part) leave her to make a modest glamour at home ordering Parisian fashion mags and fancy flowers for the home. And there it might have ended. Probably did for many women. The smoldering resentment at the world and husband for not delivering the promised dream eventually burns out with time and habit and the bright young lady grows old and shuffles placidly towards the grave. Luckily this is fiction and not post-modern fiction so something a bit juicier has to happen to Emma.
I blame her husband. Perhaps not for the whole lot (although it would do no harm to his quality of life if he were suddenly to grow a backbone) but at least for the first fatal step and a few subsequent slips. The man never met a handsome young fellow he wasn’t keen to shove his young wife into isolation with. Results are predictable. Emma’s other architect of destruction is Monsieur Lheureux who plays the ‘evil’ to Monsieur Bovary’s ‘stupid’, talking Emma into buying things from him on credit thereby digging herself deeper into debt. In the end the only way out is arsenic, which Flaubert and I would not recommend. Chuck Bovary is distraught but it’s only the chemist’s servant boy that weeps for her. This, in turn, made me cry – generally an effect I don’t care for in my books but I’ll forgive this time on grounds of quality of literature.
Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking that sounds like a drag, but that’s my fault, not Flaubert’s. You see, scattered amongst the moments of brain-fever (we meet again, old friend) and angst, lie sprightly little interludes of provincial satire. The Bovary’s neighbors are the un-sung heroes of this book. Their airs and bumblings never let the narrative get too full of itself, acting as counterweight to Emma’s dramas by showing life in the process of ‘going on’ even as she is wrecked in internal havoc.
Emma, the titular Madame Bovary without whom the show could not go on, is a triumph of a literary creation. I feel quite kindly towards her, even if she does sleep around and spend money she doesn’t have and is something of a religious hypocrite and has not readily apparent maternal instinct towards her child. These sins, however, I merely see as byproducts of a thwarted spirit. I rather imagine Emma Bovary as a failed Belle (from Beauty and the Beast). Not ‘failed’ as in Emma has failed, failed as in the world has failed her by not providing an enchanted castle/prince combo on the outskirts of her poor provincial town. (To be fair, the world has failed all us women in a similar fashion, but I digress) You can’t tell me Belle would have fared any better deprived of her Disney magic.
I like Emma because I empathize. All her moods and fevers and selfish behaviors are symptoms of a soul in revolt. Female protagonists, as a general rule, have things done to them. It’s only the men that get to act as architects of their own plotlines. ‘Madame Bovary’ proves the truth of this generalization. Emma feels her wasted potential. I remember a passage in the book where she is thinking on her married life a just sees an endless, featureless corridor stretching down the length of her existence. The adultery, the spending, the religious conversion, the brain-fevers and eventually the suicide are not so much faulty moral choices as they are the only fire-exits available to her in the hospital hallway of her life.
If literature is anything to go by she’s far from the only woman to experience this existential paralysis throughout history. So far, though, she’s the best where I am concerned. (The wingeing lady from ‘The Awakening’ was welcome to her long walk off a short pier) The slings and arrows of the fair sex’s existence is not a story to which I am naturally inclined unless done properly. ‘Madame Bovary’ was pitch perfect but still too depressing for that ultimate 5 star rating. 4 enthusiastic stars though is head and shoulders above what I was expecting. I’m grateful to Flaubert for surprising me. That’s what this 1000 books exercise is about, after all, discovering gems in books I’d have dismissed by their cover (or back blurb). Though I sense I’m unlikely to find an offering in keeping with my own rosy view of life I’m happy to give Flaubert another spin but first I’m back to my comfort zone to find out if androids dream of electric sheep.
I read ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’ about a year ago so I reckoned it was time to read some actual Flaubert. It was a task undertaken with a sense of duty rather than delight. Barnes’ dissertation of a book hadn’t been the most compelling and I have a natural distrust of the French. Granted, their authors have been gradually winning me over (looking at you duMaurier) but beyond Barnes the only association I had to Flaubert was as the pet anteater of Miss Piggy in Muppet Treasure Island. So I repeated my optimistic refrain, ‘It must be a classic for a reason,’ and tucked into ‘Madame Bovary’.
Pleasant surprises all round. The first thing that struck me was the writing. I was expecting something ornately weighty but instead it was beautiful and easy. I can only assume it improves if read in the original French but I can’t imagine how. It is a perfect story-telling style, which somehow includes all the little minutiae of daily life without wasting a single word. Little things like
‘Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished.’
are at once mundane and picturesque as little things acquire poetry under a sharp focus rather than a misty lens.
I won’t spend too much time on the story of ‘Madame Bovary’ because it is an old one; echoing down through time with spiritual kindred to be found everywhere from ‘The House of Mirth’ to ‘The Bell Jar’. Emma Bovary is young and beautiful at a time when that was all that was required of a woman in order to gain a fairy-tale life. It hasn’t quite gone right for Emma, though, and after the wedding she finds herself not kept in the manner to which she had anticipated becoming accustomed. But its drama Emma is really missing, only desiring riches for their effect as a lubricant sliding her into a glowing world of waltzes and Viscomtes.
Instead limited means (and ambition on her husband’s part) leave her to make a modest glamour at home ordering Parisian fashion mags and fancy flowers for the home. And there it might have ended. Probably did for many women. The smoldering resentment at the world and husband for not delivering the promised dream eventually burns out with time and habit and the bright young lady grows old and shuffles placidly towards the grave. Luckily this is fiction and not post-modern fiction so something a bit juicier has to happen to Emma.
I blame her husband. Perhaps not for the whole lot (although it would do no harm to his quality of life if he were suddenly to grow a backbone) but at least for the first fatal step and a few subsequent slips. The man never met a handsome young fellow he wasn’t keen to shove his young wife into isolation with. Results are predictable. Emma’s other architect of destruction is Monsieur Lheureux who plays the ‘evil’ to Monsieur Bovary’s ‘stupid’, talking Emma into buying things from him on credit thereby digging herself deeper into debt. In the end the only way out is arsenic, which Flaubert and I would not recommend. Chuck Bovary is distraught but it’s only the chemist’s servant boy that weeps for her. This, in turn, made me cry – generally an effect I don’t care for in my books but I’ll forgive this time on grounds of quality of literature.
Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking that sounds like a drag, but that’s my fault, not Flaubert’s. You see, scattered amongst the moments of brain-fever (we meet again, old friend) and angst, lie sprightly little interludes of provincial satire. The Bovary’s neighbors are the un-sung heroes of this book. Their airs and bumblings never let the narrative get too full of itself, acting as counterweight to Emma’s dramas by showing life in the process of ‘going on’ even as she is wrecked in internal havoc.
Emma, the titular Madame Bovary without whom the show could not go on, is a triumph of a literary creation. I feel quite kindly towards her, even if she does sleep around and spend money she doesn’t have and is something of a religious hypocrite and has not readily apparent maternal instinct towards her child. These sins, however, I merely see as byproducts of a thwarted spirit. I rather imagine Emma Bovary as a failed Belle (from Beauty and the Beast). Not ‘failed’ as in Emma has failed, failed as in the world has failed her by not providing an enchanted castle/prince combo on the outskirts of her poor provincial town. (To be fair, the world has failed all us women in a similar fashion, but I digress) You can’t tell me Belle would have fared any better deprived of her Disney magic.
I like Emma because I empathize. All her moods and fevers and selfish behaviors are symptoms of a soul in revolt. Female protagonists, as a general rule, have things done to them. It’s only the men that get to act as architects of their own plotlines. ‘Madame Bovary’ proves the truth of this generalization. Emma feels her wasted potential. I remember a passage in the book where she is thinking on her married life a just sees an endless, featureless corridor stretching down the length of her existence. The adultery, the spending, the religious conversion, the brain-fevers and eventually the suicide are not so much faulty moral choices as they are the only fire-exits available to her in the hospital hallway of her life.
If literature is anything to go by she’s far from the only woman to experience this existential paralysis throughout history. So far, though, she’s the best where I am concerned. (The wingeing lady from ‘The Awakening’ was welcome to her long walk off a short pier) The slings and arrows of the fair sex’s existence is not a story to which I am naturally inclined unless done properly. ‘Madame Bovary’ was pitch perfect but still too depressing for that ultimate 5 star rating. 4 enthusiastic stars though is head and shoulders above what I was expecting. I’m grateful to Flaubert for surprising me. That’s what this 1000 books exercise is about, after all, discovering gems in books I’d have dismissed by their cover (or back blurb). Though I sense I’m unlikely to find an offering in keeping with my own rosy view of life I’m happy to give Flaubert another spin but first I’m back to my comfort zone to find out if androids dream of electric sheep.
So many little clever details are thrown in (the priest's umbrella! what a good lad); surprised by how comedic it is, how dark the humor (Homais having the famous doctor over for breakfast!); seeing Emma's slow and steady descent, at once reviling her and feeling sorry for her; the goddman stable boy's "surgery" made me stop reading for the day I was so upset. The kind of story I'd imagine a lot of people would struggle getting through because it is all one intricately planned procession of awfulness. Everyone but the help are, at best annoying, but mostly awful, and only becomes more and more awfuller as you see how their little foibles and traits are manifestations of a Jungian shadow-personality.
Favorite bit(s): "It was the beginning of October. A mist hung over the fields. A few ribbons of vapor lay along the horizon, following the outline of the hills, while others, separating, drifted higher, and disappeared. When, from time to time, the clouds parted, a ray of sunlight would shine on the distant roofs of Yonville, with its gardens running down to the river, its yards, walls, and church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes as she tried to find her house, and never had this poor village where she lived looked so small to her. From the high ground they had reached, the whole valley resembled a vast lake evaporating into the air. Here and there, clumps of trees stood out like black rocks, and the tall rows of poplars, projecting above the mist, were like the lakes wind-tossed, leafy banks.
Favorite bit(s): "It was the beginning of October. A mist hung over the fields. A few ribbons of vapor lay along the horizon, following the outline of the hills, while others, separating, drifted higher, and disappeared. When, from time to time, the clouds parted, a ray of sunlight would shine on the distant roofs of Yonville, with its gardens running down to the river, its yards, walls, and church steeple. Emma half closed her eyes as she tried to find her house, and never had this poor village where she lived looked so small to her. From the high ground they had reached, the whole valley resembled a vast lake evaporating into the air. Here and there, clumps of trees stood out like black rocks, and the tall rows of poplars, projecting above the mist, were like the lakes wind-tossed, leafy banks.