Madame Bovary

Rating:
Summary: Bovary - beaucoup de bruit pour rien?
Review: I have now read this book twice in French, and although I am well aware of the mental and creative torment which Flaubert went through in order to produce the novel, I have never been able to see why it has succeeded in enrapturing successive generations so. Bovary is a very ordinary adulteress; Charles is an emotional halfwit. Madame Bovary may be accredited as the first modern French novel, but much of its acclaim stemmed from its "daring" carnality and associated court trial, which, as DH Lawrence once again proved seventy years on, is guaranteed to foster more renown than anything as boring as literary competence. Flaubert's own erotic exploits make much more interesting reading - cast an eye over Julian Barnes' "Flaubert's Parrot."

Rating:
Summary: She wanted more out of life.
Review: Emma Bovary wanted more than what her father had at his ranch. So, she married a doctor, hoping for a life full of romance. When that failed she had 2 different lovers, and did everything in her power to be with them. Dr. Bovary was a fool, he never knew anything that was going on. Emma needed much more than her husband could give, that's why she left and pretended to be taking piano lessons. She was a bored woman, who needed to spend a carefree life. In the end it was her demise. This book was excellent in portraying a woman who only wanted to live in her fantasy world.

Rating:
Summary: This was an excellent book...
Review: I really enjoyed this book, it was one of those books you can relate to. She seemed like the typical housewife, but her wants and desires were so radical it made the book for excellent reading.

Rating:
Summary: THE GREATEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN. PERIOD.
Review: It's all here. All of it. I still can't believe it. ALL questions relevant to human existence are addressed through NARRATIVE, not through Big Talk about Big Ideas. Flaubert respects silence. More writers should learn this trick. (One for the geeks: anti-framing device pre-dates "Modernism" by fifty-ish years AND has emotional resonance. Amazing!

Rating:
Summary: Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: When I read this book I felt as if
time had stopped. It was so, so
boring. Emma Bovary was a psycho.
I hate this book so much. I never
been to hell and never plan on going,
but now I know what it must
feel like after reading that book.
Oh the horrors!!!! The memories
are coming back. I must stop
now before I experience that
hell once again. Please stop
the madness.
No more Madame Bovary!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Ahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: When I read this book I felt as if time had stopped. It was so, so boring. Emma Bovary was a psycho. I hate this book so much. I never been to hell ,and I don't planon ever going. However, I think I know what it must feel like after reading that book. Oh the horrors!!!! The memories are coming back. I must stop now before I experience that hell once again. Please stop the madness. No more Madame Bovary!!!

Rating:
Summary: Madame Bovary exemplifies the essence of XIX century realism
Review: Flaubert's Bovary is perpetual, pervasive. Through her eyes, we see the world as it is: filled with universal virtues and vices that lead to either happiness or self- destruction. Madame Bovary captures the crystallized essence of the human spirit: unpredictable and changing, yet tangible and real. Her passions are those that move the soul, but not the mind; she never considers,she simply acts. Beautiful and uncanny, Emma Bovary's view of the world eventually becomes the harbinger of her own destiny, one that she always fails to accept. But, her own actions never deviate from reality; her character is the very re- presentation of human life. Immersed into a world that affects her own personality, Emma conquers a realism that is always perceptible, that reflects the nature of her own fortune. In effect, she becomes the product of Tolstoi's Anna Karenina and Shakespeare's Juliet, for her own destiny is controlled by passions that are never satisfied, never fulfilled. With Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert presents the strange reality of life. He moves through her his own vision, his own perception. In the process, he joins Dickens,Tolstoi, and Dostoyevski, thus becoming not a writer, but a window that enables us to see face to face what lies behind the apparencies of life,a gateway that connects us with all that moves us to and from our ambitions, our own desires.

Rating:
Summary: Madame Bovary is us
Review: I read the Oxford (Gerard Hopkins) translation which I didn't actually think was very good. Despite its 1981 copyright date the language had a stilted, perhaps "nineteenth century" feel to it. If you have to translate something anyway, may as well translate it into the modern idiom! The good news is that the book itself is so good, it shines through a few odd English words or confusing sentences.
Madame Bovary is wonderful precisely because Madame Bovary is so very unheroic and even despicable. Who hasn't wanted to escape his or her own life at one time or another? Madame Bovary is a woman deeply unhappy with her lot in life, and while we may sympathize with her alienation at times, she most certainly does not achieve the wisdom or heroism so often found in tragic characters. Flaubert describes a world in which all the characters are a little ridiculous (the book is frequently witty) and sometimes horrible and yet, very unusually, there seemed to be no character or even authorial voice that was somehow "above" this world, rather we are all intimately of it.

Rating:
Summary: The cognitive dissonance of the reader
Review: Madame Bovary is considered one of the greatest of novels. It has called by many the most perfectly done example of the form. Flaubert is considered to be the most painstaking and conscienscious of artists whose search for the right word, the mot juste is legendary. And many have said that Madame Bovary is such a perfectly constructed work that not a single paragraph or even a line can be removed.
The novel is too praised for its precision in description and its symbolic evocation of deeper levels of meaning. The scene- construction is considered superb.
The story of adultery and misplaced passion is one which has echoes in other great works, the Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina and it too has some of the tragic quality of those works. Madame Bovary who Flaubert later said ' c'est moi' about is the provincial woman bored to death by her staid conventional husband and longing in part like Don Quixote through her romantic reading for some great passion. The story of her seduction and of her losing herself to that passion is set against the conventional boundaries of the society in which she lives. The description of how that passion turns into a weariness, and how she becomes for her lover simply another cast- off conquest is in some sense a morality fable about the human heart's inability to realize itself fully in loving and intimate relationship. This side of it I believe reveals a certain kind of limitation in Flaubert, in his understanding of life and love.
The novel has always struck me in its cool, ironic tone as being like the characters themselves fundamentally cruel and selfish. There are books we love I think of 'War and Peace' and ' Don Quixote' and even many far lesser works because we love their main characters , and somehow take hope in them. The unsympathetic nature of Emma Bovary and in fact of all the main characters have always meant for me that despite all the critics praise and all the talk of formal brilliance this work does not have a deep or great place in my heart. There is that is a certain cognitive dissonance between the knowledge of what this book is critically , and to so many readers and what it is to me. If I cannot love the characters I cannot love the book fully however brilliant it be.

Rating:
Summary: A beautifully written romantic fantasy that still surprises.
Review: Although a romantic fantasy, this book is a psychological masterpiece. This book caused quite a stir in its day (translated to English in 1886). The way Flaubert portrayed a spoiled adulteress had not been seen in England, and was shocking to many. The genius of the book is Flaubert's plotting, characterization and its vivid descriptions. This takes the novel far past a simple romantic fantasy. The realism that speaks out from these pages, and the unique points of view that Flaubert uses when describing Madame Bovary's scandalous behaviour are what set this novel apart from others. Make no mistake - this book is a masterpiece, and should not be dismissed as just a good story.

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