Madame Bovary (Cliffs Notes)

Rating:
Summary: madame bovary
Review: An exquisitely written book about Madame Bovary's search for love, and all of the pain and hardships as a result of that search. The book is eloquently written and wonderfully entertaining- making Madame Bovary's character human and real.

Rating:
Summary: not ugly
Review: Madame Bovary is a beatufully written satire on bourgeois society. Flaubert puts humor throughout the book through his characters. Each action of the characters has a hint of fakery that is very characterist of Bourgeois society. The book was not written as a guideline of how to live one's life, but a story of the real problems that the people during that time confronted. I would recommend it to anyone that wants to read one of the most well written and thoughtout books.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent chapter by chapter commentary on the classic novel
Review: When teaching World Literature Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" was the first thing we read in class. Unfortunately we could not read it in the original French, because it there is one novel that should be read that way it is this one; Flaubert crafted literally crafted every sentence in the novel as if it were poetry. No translation could ever truly do it justice. While James L. Roberts' Cliffs Notes on "Madame Bovary" cannot help someone who is teaching/reading this great novel in those terms, it certainly covers all the rest of the bases. After providing a brief summary along with a listing of main and secondary characters, Roberts provides a summary and comments on each chapter in the novel. I appreciate that his comments are laid out as A, B, C, etc., so that the discrete points being made clearly stand out. These Cliffs Notes then provide character analysis of Emma Bovary, Charles Bovary, Leon, Rodolphe and Homais, followed by a look at the critical problems of theme/intent, Flabuert's realism, symbolism, irony/contrast, style, narrative technique, and social commentary. A short biography of Flabuert's life and works, suggestions for further reading, and sample examination questions are provided at the end.

The strength of this particular Cliff Notes is that is focuses more on the specific chapters with more depth than you usually find. This works especially well if you read the summary and comments AFTER reading the corresponding chapter(s) in "Madame Bovary." Flabuert's novel was scandalous in its day and is certainly the first and greatest of all the novels dealing with the "fallen woman." Final Helpful Hint for Teachers: After reading "Madame Bovary" you might have students read "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin, another controversial novel which has an extremely similar plot but was written by an American women. You can have some great compare/contrast discussions.