Rating: 
Summary: An Ironically Beautiful Novel
Review: The plot of Flaubert's masterpiece is deceptively simple: a woman falls into a self-destructive downward spiral of material possessions and sex. However, most conventional criticism seems to indicate that this simplicity was Flaubert's intent: Madame Bovary seems most directly intended to be a critique of romanticism. This direct attack on excessive emotions and superficial, deceptive optimism keeps the book thematically interesting, and thus a potential reader should not fear a certain awkward, flatness in the reading - the book feels surprisingly fresh.However, more important than the theme of the novel to me is the style Flaubert exercised in writing it. Flaubert was a dedicated believer in "le mot juste" - the right word. His novel is filled with beautiful, moving, and precisely worded descriptions. At times Flaubert elevates his writing to a poetic - dare I say it? - sublime level. Madame Bovary, to me, is first a beautiful book and secondly a relevant one - the careful reader may find himself constantly putting aside the novel to consider the gentle beauty or dark terror Flaubert can conjure in a paragraph. As for myself, as an amateur writer, I was intrigued by Flaubert's complicated system of symbolism, which winds through and unifies the novel. Stylistically, he is certainly a man to consider as a model of effective, deep writing. So, a reader interested in a book which remains relevant in modern times (which themselves can be characterized as possessing a certain amount of unhealthy optimism) and still manages to be highly readable, interesting, and beautiful, should defiantly consider Madame Bovary. Like any great work of literature, Madame Bovary is thought provoking and requires special attention to detail. Although even enjoyable on its most superficial level, the novel works on so many deeper levels that one can certainly enjoy thinking further about the novel. A sloppy reader will not enjoy Madame Bovary, but I heartily recommend it to any reader who has a genuine interest in the beauty of language (even in translation!).
Rating: 
Summary: Heavy on character development, light on plot
Review: Madame Bovary is the story of a beautiful young woman (Emma Bovary) married to a devoted oaf of a husband, Charles--the country doctor. He loves her but is not smart, glamorous, exciting, or forceful. Emma has grown up reading magazines of wealth, glamour and romance, so she falls into the pit of despair when she realizes that Charles is it for her for the rest of her life. She then has two affairs, and racks up a staggering amount of debt, to make up for her misery.
Emma is portrayed as extrordinarily selfish, greedy, and foolishly romantic. However, there is something in her that did not make me hate her. She is trapped because she is a woman during the Victorian era, and her options are severely limited. She acts out in frustration of her limitations. The character development of all the townsfolk of Yonville are wonderful, showing multi-faceted personalities and underlying motives. Particularly intriguing are the characters of Homais, the pharmacist practicing without a lisence and doing his best to keep that fact secret, and Charles's mother, the elder Madame Bovary, who loves and controls her son so much that she is extremely jealous of Emma.
The plot in this novel is minimal. But the writing is beautiful and characters complex. The ending, admittedly a bit melodramatic, made me wonder about all the impressions I had gathered during the first 3/4 of the book. All in all, not an exciting read, but a memorable one nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece!
Review: This is a masterpiece of world literature! Flaubert's description of french small town, its daily life, its characters, are excellent. The psychological description are so well depicted that they transport you to the character's most inner psyche.
This is a must!
Rating:
Summary: A Plotless novel with Poetic Prose
Review: AS I reach the end of my career, I've begun reading "classics, that I had skipped to concentrate on my major then my field.
I found Madame Bovary to be lacking a plot...simply: a bored housewife who feels entitled to a White Knight to rescue her, who is entranced by her romance Novel, has no idea how to BE romantic to those who deserve her affections: her husband, her child, and her servants. She abuses all as she dreams of impossible idealism, then begins adultrous affairs in her quest for romance, never understanding that her lovers are interested in her body, not her romance.
Thus said, this was one of the most incredibly perfect novels to read from a language standpoint. As there truly was no plot, it was not unusual for me to re-read the previous few chapters again and again for the flow of the words, the beauty and the perfectly chosen words (wouldn't Flaubert be proud?)
I don't believe Flaubert's raison d'etre was to present a tale, rather it was to use the tale as an excuse to present an exquisite display of subjective descriptions of French life, French people and individual foibles. Nobody is spared from the clergy to the merchant class, and most particularly to Emma herself.
I could FEEL and SMELL and TASTE Yonville. Sometimes I would re-read a particular sentence or paragraph in wonderment at the talent required to write so perfectly. I found myself wanting to call my High School English Teacher, Ms. Celina Rios-Mullins to discuss the book. Had I been forced to read this in High School, it would have been wasted on me as I would have skimmed frantically trying to find a story. This is a novel that needs to be slowly tasted, digested, followed by a fine wine of discussion.
As with the first time I saw "Gone With the Wind," I was surprised to find the heroine the villain. That very selfishness gives Flaubert his means to convey the failings of Emma. I found it interesting that Emma never understood her paradoxical concept of life....that to find love, you must give it,....to be romanced, you must be romantic. It's similar to one's one married life...that once the honeymoon phase is over, the true work is in making the mundane romantic, to find love in lasting another week, another year.
Emma never had unrequited love....she loved herself.
Had Rodolphe not been a pre-determined cad, she had a vague chance of success, but when she went on to Leon, she had begun to lie even to herself.
Poor Charles was unsuited for her ideals, but surprisingly was quite in love with her. He would have been happier with a simple country maiden who was content to sit in the the "eternal garden."
I found the ending a tad melodramatic and somewhat surprising, but then again, I must remember that foul play was rarely rewarded in the older novels.
I contrast this novel greatly with the Scarlett Letter and find the two heroines utterly distinct.....with Saintly Hester at one end and Cold Emma at the other. Scarlett's trangression was one of genuine love whereas Emma's was idealistic selfishness.
I do find this to be a magnificent novel, but I pity youths who are forced to read this for class, but am excited for those who can embrace the power of the narrative and the beauty of the subjective descriptions of the simplist aspects seen only to the eye of a true novelist: a bird angling in flight, a clerics cloak fluttering as he thinks he has found a source of revenue from a wealthy person who has entered the church for refuge, a redezvous room of unromantic romance.
Rating:
Summary: Ok, so it took a while.....
Review: ...but i got through it. For the second time, that is! I have a nagging feeling, ALL the time, while reading a translated work, that perhaps I'm missing something... perhaps the translator didn't quite get it the way it was meant to be. This work put that fear to ease. The book kicks off slowly, and has several meandering (poetical prose) pages, but patience pays off as one gets under Emma's skin. Emma, the common woman! Emma, the married common woman! Emma, the married common woman... who read a romantic book or two too much... and imagined she would find happily-ever-after as long as she found the right man to love... Oh, Emma! What made this book great was the telling of a common story, with common dreams, and unusual actions... in beautiful language... and with a very well developed central character. I was very involved with the story and character once i got past the first thirty percent or so of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Emma's dilemmas
Review: "Madame Bovary" is considered a masterpiece by historical context, but it's easy to see why it holds up well today. As much a social comedy as a personal tragedy, it taps into the same kinds of emotions and desires that have shaped Western society for the past 150 years -- ambition, lust, escapism. It is a depressing novel whose heroine is so thoroughly unsympathetic that you read it to find out if she gets what she deserves. Emma Rouault's misfortune is that she grew up with unrealistic expectations about life. As a girl, she indulged herself in romantic novels and developed maudlin and almost fantastical notions of what love and marriage must be like. She accepts the proposal of a socially awkward widower and doctor named Charles Bovary, even though she does not seem to have much genuine love for him. In accordance with her fantasies, their wedding is straight out of a fairy tale. The fairy tale doesn't last long. Emma soon finds herself bored by her husband's spartan lifestyle and annoyed by his occasional professional ineptitude. Shameful of what she perceives to be her low social status as a country doctor's wife, she is attracted by the glamor of big cities and high society she reads about in the fashionable magazines. She dutifully takes care of her household, but she is selfish, temperamental, and mean to her servants and her baby daughter. What's pathetic about her is that she wants to experience the kind of love she's read about in her books, but her personality is so antithetical to what love is that she will never be able to understand or appreciate it in its purest form. After the Bovarys move to a small rural town called Yonville, Emma's beauty and charm attract the flirtatious attentions of several men in town, including two with whom she succumbs to adultery: Leon, a young law clerk, with whom she carries on an affair in the nearby city of Rouen under the guise of taking piano lessons; and the suave but sleazy Rodolphe who, impudently (and correctly) calculating her husband to be a naive dullard, uses her and throws her away like the tramp that she is. In the course of her webs of deceipt and her taste for expensive, fashionable things, she drives herself and her husband into irreparable debt with morbidly tragic conclusions. The characterization of the Yonville townsfolk is so rich that whole other novels could be written about them. In particular there is the garrulous pharmacist Monsieur Homais, a neo-Voltaire type of character who disdains the clergy and has faith in science and a morality based on common sense. Such characterization provides a comic counterbalance to Emma's majestically tragic figure; I've seen the same kind of thing in novels by Balzac and Thomas Hardy, where the unwashed masses are always there in the background, reassuring us that the world, on average, goes on the way it always has even while the main characters are front and center playing out their little dramas.
Rating:
Summary: A classic for good reason
Review: Gustave Flaubert's master work, "Madame Bovary," remains a classic not only for his extraordinary creation of a monstrous woman who somehow manages to retain the sympathy of the reader, but also for Flaubert's masterful ability to so skillfully, accurately delve into the thinking and emotions of a member of the opposite sex. Emma Bovary is, in many ways, the French Scarlett O'Hara (rather, Scarlett O'Hara is the American Emma Bovary). She wants what she wants, when she wants it, and damn anything that stands in her way. As she assents to what will clearly be an unhappy marriage, we are given an extraordinarily detailed description of the wedding reception feast, but little of what was on her mind or in her heart. Bovary employs this sort of technique to great effect to show that essentially, the wedding reception food was of more interest to Emma than was her husband, the guests, or the import of the vows she so freshly has taken. The breathtaking ending shows that Emma has learned nothing. As she goes to a rich man to beg on her own behalf, we see that she is envious of his dining room furniture as she enters the house--not that she is distraught at her personal situation. "Madame Bovary" is absolutely required reading.
Rating:
Summary: Madame Bovary, an analysis of human corruption...
Review: Flaubert is a master of satire. He criticizes even language itself in his beautiful work, Madame Bovary. His use of image systems and wondrously hidden sarcasm lend itself well to Flaubert's views on society in 17th century France. I definately recommend this book to any person who is up to a challenge in reading. Flaubert write under the assumption that the reader is ignorant of his true message. He hides his sarcasm, gives themes the actually mean the opposite of what they appear to be, and challenges the reader to spot his hints. If one couldn't, then Flaubert's claims would be justified. Prove Flaubert wrong and read this book. Be prepared for an excellent journey through the ups and downs of human corruption.
Rating:
Summary: Utterly timeless
Review: It is such a pity that we have grown so jaded that this scandalous book now seems tame. It is the classic tale of adultery and what happens if you go astray and refuse to be contented as a cow. The writing was magnificent.
I can sympathize to an extent with Emma. She was a true romantic, trapped in a dingy provincial town. Of course, if one is too jaded, one might find the ending akin to a country western song where the woman dies, the child dies, the lovers desert, and the long-suffering (albeit boring) husband dies.
If for no other reason, read this one for the sheer brilliance of the written word.
Rating:
Summary: Still Luscious
Review: The writing style Flaubert employed in Madame Bovary may be dated today, but the greatness of the book is proven through the title character of Emma Bovary, herself. All the weaknesses and faults Flaubert ascribed to Emma when he created her are still just as recognizable now as they were in 1856. I'm sure many women see aspects of Emma in themselves today, just as they did in the 19th century. While Emma Bovary may be an unconventional literary heroine, I think she's unforgettable, in part, because she really is so completely human. Emma Rouault is a lovable woman, but she certainly has her flaws. When she leaves her father to marry Charles Bovary and live in the small country village of Yonville l'Abbaye, these faults come to light in a very glaring way. Charles is a good man, but emotionally he's rather cold as well as being a very insignificant doctor. Emma, who fills much of her time with the reading of sentimental romance novels, soon finds Charles dull and impoverished. She's come to believe that true love must encompass gallantry, high romance and constant infatuation. Convent educated, Emma is pious and devout even though she feels herself attracted to a man she finds more exciting than Charles, a man she feels will finally fulfill all her frivolous desires and more (exactly what she felt about Charles before she married him). How Emma Bovary comes to grips with her conflicting emotions forms the basis for this story. Madame Bovary is a book that can seem to move along at a snail's pace. The more sophisticated reader will find this gradual buildup a joy; the "thoroughly modern" reader may, sadly, find the book too slow. Flaubert's writing sparkles, however, and it's easy to find yourself engrossed in the story. Although many people find several symbolic references in Madame Bovary, Flaubert, himself, denied that the book had any meaning beyond being a thoroughly engrossing story. Madame Bovary is one of my ten alltime favorite books and I reread it on an almost yearly basis. I believe "the proof is in the pudding." Emma Bovary is still as luscious as she was 146 years ago. That says a lot for any woman...or any book.
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