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Rating: 
Summary: A woman of your dreams?
Review: A beautiful, brilliant book with one large flaw: it was too easy for Emma to cheat on Charles. Charles is a good-hearted, well-meaning but stupifyingly boring person. The book would have been better (and more believable) if the choice to cheat on him would have been more difficult. I love Flaubert, but Charles Bovary is possibly the most uninteresting person in all of literature.
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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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.
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Summary: Victims of Circumstance
Review: As noted by many previous reviewers Flaubert's style is stark and direct, he simply tells us a story in chronological order of events without any moral judgement. Morality in this novel is left open to the reader's judgement and interpretation. Set in the 19th century French countryside it is a tragic tale of a marriage between Emma Rouault and Charles Bovary told in three parts.
Begins with a brief but thorough look at the early life of Charles - his education, career as a "health officer", first marriage, his wife chosen by his mother for her money, a sickly unappealing widow much older than he, then meeting Emma through a call to her father, his wife's timely death. Emma is young and inexperienced, her head filled with romantic fantasies and an active imagination. Their courtship is brief and the story really begins with the marriage of Emma and Charles. Quickly Emma finds herself stuck in a dead existence, not only does Charles lack imagination he is as dull as a post. Flaubert explicitly tells us just how stupid Charles is such as when he goes to a ball and stands for 5 hours watching a card game not knowing what else to do or in the case of the horrible operation on the man with the club foot. Doomed from the start by incompatibility the relationship spirals downward from disillusionment, to an unrequited attraction, a nervous breakdown, move to another town to get away, affairs, child neglect, debt and suicide.
Still a timeless classic worth reading for anyone who feels trapped in circumstances beneath their capacities, in a world too small for them. There was little choice for a woman in the 19th century countryside as Emma reminds her lover, she cannot make her own living in the world or choose to court who she wants. Her great imagination and feeling nature with no outlet for it dooms her to eternal loneliness, controlled by passions that are never satisfied and eventually leads to delusions and debauchery.
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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.
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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.
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Summary: Fantasy versus Reality
Review: The language of Madame Bovary lingers on the tongue long after the final page has been read. It is true poetry. Madame Bovary is an entertaining book mixed with adultery, secrecy and arsenic. The two main characters, Emma and Charles, are true opposites. Charles represents a mind based solely in reality, lacking imagination. He is a dimwitted country doctor who remains happy as long as he makes everyone else happy. He has no desire for riches and merriment. His wife, though-- Emmma Bovary-- contradicts him. She embodies a romantic, head-in-the-clouds soul. As the book carries on, her soul flickers like a flame, and every time she catches a glimpse of finery, that flame conflagrates; every time she attends a dance or visits Paris, that flame builds inside her-- hungry, wanting more. She reads romance novels and believes that is how life really should be. When she commits adultery, it is not about the adultery to Emma. It is about the fantasy she believes she is fulfilling. But, to Emma, it seems that no matter what she does, she cannot feel fulfilled. That flame just rises and rises in her and she cannot control it with any amount of trinkets and satin curtains. She is tragic because she is destined to be unhappy; her dreams are too high out of reach. Her only option is to be engulfed in a flame she cannot squelch. In the meantime, Charles is increasingly upset by her as well. After all, he only wants to make others happy, and his dearly-loved wife is not happy. This book truly represents two worlds at odds: reality versus fantasy. It is fascinating and I would truly recommend it.
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Summary: The Original Desperate Housewife
Review: This book will never make it on the Oprah Classics Booklist...too dark--which is shame. It is an amazing story of a woman, and more amazing--it was written by a man. Where did he get this knowledge? How did he understand Emma? This was in the days before therapy groups and tell-alls. It is also a masterful book about lust and the cult of idols. Since I first read this book I remember what Flaubert warned us of...do not touch the gilt (the gold leaf) on our idols, it comes off on our hands. A warning as we worship at the altar of celebrity. This is a book for today.
Rating: 
Summary: buy the book...but buy a different edition
Review: With the emotional maturity of a fourteen or fifteen year old girl or possibly just the sociopathic tendencies, Emma (Madame Bovary) is at the same time fascinating and detestable. She is remarkably similar to many stories of ex wives I have heard over the years and, if living in this century would certainly have had a string of husbands, using and abusing each one while they loved her. This story does not have the repentant air of Moll Flanders (Defoe) and I would not recommend it to a young girl. That being said, it is not the `dirty' book I expected. Emma is the kind of person who idealizes what she does not have, expects love to come with thunderbolts and poetry and to stay that way for all time. From her education at the convent to her life on her father's farm, to her marriage to Charles Bovary and through two prolonged affairs with other men, reality can never live up to Emma's expectations of what it should be like. Once the novelty wears off, she thinks there is something wrong with where she is or who she is with. In her mind, she feels that she deserves this imagined ideal and directs her hatred on whomever she feels is standing between her and the experience of the ideal. This, unfortunately, is most often her loving husband, Charles (although her parents, lovers and money lenders are not immune from her contempt either). Charles continually gets a bad rap from reviewers for being stupid and cowardly. I found him to be neither extreme. Not a dullard, he is naïve and trusting. He is very much a middle of the road man in my eyes - not the cream of the crop but not the dregs either. Just your average everyday man making a living and supporting a wife who he thinks the absolute world of. There is a strong possibility that this is a fictionalized account of a real woman and this is an important point for me. If simply fictional, it is so realistic it is depressing. There is no author's invention to make the reader feel better about what has happened.
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