Emma Bovary should have stayed on the farm.
Instead, she marries an oafish health officer and rises into the middle class of a country town, where she finds boredom, loneliness, empty promises from romance novels and religion, and fury at the cages in which 19th-century France placed women.
Flaubert’s universe is barren of virtue. There is no tenderness or compassion, no understanding or true friendship, no curiosity or wonder in Madame Bovary. No love either, despite all the talking of it.
Everyone is crass and venal, foolish, pompous, scheming and self-serving, craven, dastardly. Words fail the characters – even Flaubert’s words. The novel’s people are surrounded by his exquisite descriptions of wedding revelry, bustling towns, the beauty of nature, but Flaubert’s words make no impression and bring no consolation.
All anyone sees in Emma Bovary is her beauty, her clothes, and her body. So perhaps it makes sense that when Emma tries to solve the problem of her life – a problem she feels but can’t articulate – she turns to sex and shopping. They lead her to misery and destruction, of course.
I don’t think Emma could see other choices. Who is at fault? Emma Bovary herself? The society in which she lived? Or the world Flaubert made for her? Probably all three.
Amazing review. I haven’t read this and now you’ve put me right off. The world is too grim.
Well, it wasn’t exactly my intention to discourage you, but if you asked if a person would enjoy reading Madame Bovary, I would say only if you enjoy emotionally difficult books or if you are particularly interested in style and technique. I find the ending frankly horrifying. Flaubert claimed to have become physically ill writing Emma’s death and I believe him. Thanks for stopping by!
I have read Madame Bovary three times. I love the book. I also love sex and shopping.
Me, 2.5 times. I’d say that I like the book, I admire it in many ways, but I’m not sure I enjoy it. By which I mean that Flaubert got me to put on Emma’s skin (a real tribute to him) so much that it was hard to travel the road with her. House of Mirth did the same thing to me.
When you said “don’t let me down” on your note about following me, you said what I had been thinking looking at the new follows Peter Rabbit got me. I will do my best.
On sex and shopping, I only like one of those two. But I’m not going to say which. I appreciate the time you’ve given me.
P.
Sex and shopping? She could have done worse.
One of the thoughts that didn’t make it into the column is the sense I get from Flaubert that Emma would have been fine if she had been an aristocrat, where a title and wealth would have given her the freedom … a qthing Emma explicitly says she longs for … to have better shopping and better sex. I don’t know if she would have been happy, but she might not have been unhappy. She also would have been better off if she’d been born about 120 years later. I’m sure she would have found a role on daytime tv, at least, and done better for herself.
Madame Bovary is a staple in French literature classes around the world and I have never really seen why. It was enjoyable enough to read once and it made for pretty entertaining discussions with everyone fighting over who was the most horrible character, but I give kudos to the French Lit professors who have to talk about it yearly.
19th century French women had it tough but life for some women was not quite as horrid as Flaubert makes it out to be. French men were not very keen on the new freedoms women were allowed (sex, shopping, romance novels) and made their views known in treatises like Madame Bovary or Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames.
I can see why Bovary’s lasted, but I’m not sure I can explain. The best I can do is say, it is a really odd book. None of the characters seem fully human, not even Emma, and yet I feel incredible empathy for her. Flaubert’s world feels cruelly satiric to me, yet also realistic. Flaubert’s powers of observation and description are incredible, but at the same time are no fun at all. It’s like the book is strengthened, instead of weakened, but its contradictions. It persists because it can’t be dropped neatly into a box and tucked away on a shelf. Or something.
“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”
Ah yes, Emma the Understandable But Rather Unlovable. I do love the book but every time I read it I understand her a little more and like her a little less. It’s a wonderful book for those of us who will always want something more, something different, something else and never quite settle though. It reminds us there are Consequences. Always handy. 🙂
This is an excellent addition to the page. Sorry I didn’t acknowledge it earlier! P.