Madame Bovary

De Gustave Flaubert

Emma é uma mulher sonhadora, uma pequeno-bur­guesa criada no campo que aprendeu a ver a vida através da literatura senti­men­tal. Bonita e requintada para os padrões provincianos, casa-se com Charles Bovary, um médico interiorano tão apaixonado pela esposa quanto entediante. Nem mesmo o nascimento de uma filha dá alegria ao indissolúvel casamento no qual a protagonista sente-se presa. Como Dom Quixote, que leu romances de cavalaria demais e pôs-se a guerrear com moinhos, ela tenta dar vida e paixão à sua existência, escolha que levará a uma sucessão de erros e a uma descida ao inferno.

• Idioma: Português
• Editora: L&PM Editores
• Data de lançamento: 29 de ago. de 2003
• ISBN: 9788525409713

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) was a French novelist who was best known for exploring realism in his work. Hailing from an upper-class family, Flaubert was exposed to literature at an early age. He received a formal education at Lycée Pierre-Corneille, before venturing to Paris to study law. A serious illness forced him to change his career path, reigniting his passion for writing. He completed his first novella, November, in 1842, launching a decade-spanning career. His most notable work, Madame Bovary was published in 1856 and is considered a literary masterpiece.

Avaliações de Madame Bovary

[jackmassa · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

English translation by Merloyd Lawrence. Fantastique.

[deltaqueen50 · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

I have been reading Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert by installments from Daily Lit since November, 2018. I was very happy to reach the end of this book although it certainly held my attention throughout the reading, but there was an inevitable sense of doom building. The story, set in 1840’s Normandy, is of a doctor’s unhappy and unfaithful wife. I found this a very sad tale, as to me, it was obvious that Emma was married to a dull man and had no outlet available for her other than adultery. Women of a certain class did not work, or really have much to occupy their time, other than oversee the servants. Emma Bovary was a woman of passion, in fact shopping excited her every bit as much as sex. Yes, she was beautiful, somewhat selfish and immature but I still felt a great deal of sympathy for her. It was hard not to emphasize with a woman whose happiness was so out of tune with her situation.Did I have sympathy for her husband, Charles, yes, indeed. He tried to provide Emma with what he thought he wanted and she carefully never revealed her unhappiness in the life he provided her. Charles was not the brightest of men, he was quiet and easily satisfied, didn’t have a romantic bone in his body and apparently never questioned their life or situation until it was too late. The Boyarys were a mismatched couple and the marriage, right from the start seemed doomed to failure.Flaubert has written an excellent morality tale that still stands today. Our happiness does not rely on anyone or anything other than ourselves. Emma Bovary paid a heavy price for her longings to escape the caged life that she lead and this book reminds me that woman can still fall into the same patterns as Emma Bovary even though we have more choices today in our search for a fulfilling life.

[debbiemccauley-2 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

Written in 1857. Emma, a doctor's wife, is lonely and bored and has affairs with Rodolphe and Léon which are both ill-fated. In her disillusionment she has a taste of arsenic with the usual outcome. Okay, but showing it's age.

[eoin-311239 · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

The kind of book that uses "spaded" as a transitive verb and it works. (How to judge classics in translation? The voice is so far from Davis' own work (as well as her Proust) that one assumes the translation is impeccable. What struck me most was how idiotic, provincial, and fixed the characters were regarded by the narrative voice. Still, pretty good for a first novel circa 1856. The structure is, of course, flawless. Worth it for the opening scene of poor Bovary in school.)

[richardderus · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

BkC153) Flaubert, Gustave, [MADAME BOVARY] (tr. Lydia Davis): Classic novel, deathless. Sorta like a literary zombie. Rating: 3* of fiveThe Book Description: As if one is really necessary. Well, here it is:A literary event: one of the world's most celebrated novels, in a magnificent new translation.Seven years ago, Lydia Davis brought us an award-winning, rapturously reviewed new translation of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way that was hailed as "clear and true to the music of the original" (Los Angeles Times) and "a work of creation in its own right" (Claire Messud, Newsday). Now she turns her gifts to the book that redefined the novel as an art form.Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she is married to the provincial doctor Charles Bovary yet harbors dreams of an elegant and passionate life. Escaping into sentimental novels, she finds her fantasies dashed by the tedium of her days. Motherhood proves to be a burden; religion is only a brief distraction. In an effort to make her life everything she believes it should be, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs. Soon heartbroken and crippled by debts, Emma takes drastic action with tragic consequences for her husband and daughter. When published in 1857, Madame Bovary was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for its heroine. Today the novel is considered the first masterpiece of realist fiction. Flaubert sought to tell the story objectively, without romanticizing or moralizing (hence the uproar surrounding its publication), but whereas he was famously fastidious about his literary style, many of the English versions seem to tell the story in their own style. In this landmark translation, Lydia Davis honors the nuances and particulars of a style that has long beguiled readers of French, giving new life in English to Flaubert's masterwork. My Review: Realism à la Balzac gets a hefty infusion of Romanticism. The novel will always be very important for this reason. It was Flaubert's trial for obscenity, due to his authorial refusal to explicitly condemn Emma Bovary for adultery, that opened the floodgates of “immoral” realistic fiction. If anyone needs any further reason to read the book, it's also got some juicy Faustian bargaining in it. Plus everybody dies. (Srsly how can anything about this famous book be a spoiler? Don't complain to me about it.)So the review is really about this translation by Lydia Davis. She's alleged to have done a fabulous, marvelous job.Uh huh.Then, in sudden tenderness and discouragement, Charles turned to his wife, saying:“Kiss me, my dear!”“Leave me alone!” she said, red with anger.“What is it? What is it?” he said, stupefied. “Calm yourself! Don't be upset!...You know how much I love you!...Come to me!”“Stop!” she shouted with a terrible look. (Part II, ch.8)Literal translation isn't always the best. Can you, like me, hear the nails and smell the sawdust as this wooden edifice is erected? Can you, like me, feel the uncertain sway of the uneven floorboards as we ascend ever farther up Flaubert's towering if creaky scaffolding?A well-furnished mind has Bovary in it. Unless you want to slug through the mannered 19th-century French, or have a high tolerance for sawdusty English prose, I'd say do the Cliffs Notes and call it good.

[smiler69 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

What an incredibly unpleasant woman! I usually have nothing against an unlikeable protagonist, as they often make for interesting reading subjects, but this Madame Bovary had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Fickle, vain, selfish, materialistic, disloyal, unappreciative and self-delusional as she was, I kept waiting for something truly horrible to happen, other than her habitual small hypocritical cruelties to her husband and her constant infidelity. (slight spoiler here) Her tragic end was too long in coming and even there, she somehow didn't offer satisfaction. (end of spoiler) She is bored with her life, married to a husband who idolizes her but offers little intellectual or romantic stimulation, she is bored with her little daughter and her perfect little bourgeois home, even as her husband puts no restriction on her spending so she can decorate it with every possible amenity she might desire. She is bored with reading... bored with life. The kind of woman who, even were she to live in this modern world and have all the choices she might desire, would probably still marry a boring rich man so she could go right on being bored and insufferable. I only rated this book with three stars because it IS Flaubert who writes beautifully of course, but I was bored out of my mind throughout. Maybe it's catching?

[ursula_2 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

I am really enjoying diving into these books with only whatever vague notions about them I have picked up over the years. What I knew about Madame Bovary when I started it: she has an affair? So I was a little thrown when the book started with some boy named Charles who was going to school and being made fun of, and we followed him on to being a not-very-good student and a not-very-confident doctor. He marries a woman chosen by his mother, but although both of them have the same name, neither his mother nor this wife are the Madame Bovary. The wife is a widow who is supposed to be rich, but she is older and not very attractive. Finally, when Charles attends to a man on his farm and meets the man's daughter Emma, I realize she will become the title Madame Bovary.And so she does, after the widow dies and a decent amount of time has passed. Emma is beautiful and vivacious, and positive that married life will be incredibly romantic, just like in the novels. Soon, she realizes that she is not exactly swept away by a great love for Charles. She finds herself attracted to a young man in their town, and they do that dance of wondering if the other one is interested, but no one will come out and say it because it would be unseemly. Eventually, he leaves town. Emma tries devoting herself to being the best wife (and mother, there is a child in the book who is clearly not on Emma's radar and therefore not really on ours), but she finds that she now not only doesn't have that all-consuming love for Charles, she kind of can't stand him. What to do, what to do? Enter Rodolphe, who we are introduced to as a serial seducer. At this point, I started calling Emma "poor, stupid Madame Bovary." Of course, she falls for him. Of course, he is not nearly as committed as she is. And it doesn't end well for her. There's a lot more plot after that, but I really want to talk about what the book is saying. Two things stood out to me. One: adultery is just as boring as marriage if you carry it on long enough. Two: adultery is bad, but buying on credit is worse. I enjoyed the read, although the last 10% was sort of pointless to me. Some quotes:"Charles's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought.""But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.""Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment."

[jhudsui_1 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

I felt obligated to read this novel since I had a used copy lying around free for the taking and Nabokov had praised it so highly, but I wasn't particularly looking forward to it. Because I had heard that the eponym was pretty unsympathetic, and the course of the plot was dreary and depressing. Well, it turns out I didn't hear wrong: Emma is horrible and nothing good happens for all 400 pages of it - but I hadn't been told the most important thing about the book, which is that it's a black comedy. The incredible pettiness and stupidity of all of the characters' (not just Emma's) self absorption and the way they hurtle towards their own ruin as if filled with zeal for the prospect make it an entertaining spectacle. An ironic anti-spectacle as everything about their fuckups is unrelievedly trite and banal. It's like watching a trainwreck, and then watching someone get the bright idea of clearing the wreckage from the tracks by ramming another train into them, and then following through on that idea by sending two trains one from each side. It's glorious in it's utter lack of gloriousness.I'm going to dock it a star though because in my current mood I really could have done with something a little more upbeat.

[alcracka · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

I'm still working out a review in my head, but for now: this book is perfect.

[doryfish-1 · Nota: 2 de 5 estrelas]

Clearly the only way I can get myself to read one of the books in my continually growing to-be-read pile is for there to be a movie coming out. Get on it Hollywood, there are about 60 books I still need to get through.

Disclaimers: I read a translation due to my French being nonexistent, but the original is supposed to be exquisite. I don't have to warn about spoilers in a review about something published in 1856, do I?

Madame Bovary is one of those classics in which the elements that were once fresh and shocking are now cliched. Emma Bovary is unhappily married to a devoted but dull country doctor, Charles. Bored with her duties as a wife and mother, she fantasizes about a life full of romance and pleasure, similar to what she's read about in popular novels. Emma futilely chases these dreams by having love affairs and buying expensive items on credit. Both her lovers grow tired of her, and her debts bring about her husband's ruin. Emma swallows arsenic and dies an excruciating death.

It's said that Gustave Flaubert does not judge Emma, and in fact that's partially why the book was banned and he landed in an obscenity trial. But I don't think I agree with that. Isn't making your character a silly, shallow woman and then having her downfall stem from being silly and shallow pretty judgy in of itself? I've read a lot of books about doomed women and unlike most of them, Emma has no redeeming features. In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy seemed to actually like his heroine. I did not not get that feeling in Madame Bovary.

[bookomaniac-1 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

Slap begin, met oninteressante Charles als hoofdfiguur. Pas vaart na ontmoeting met Emma. Geleidelijke opbouw van het thema van de door romantische ideeën tot waanzin gedreven vrouw. Nogal vrijmoedige acties voor die tijd. Prachtige stijl: het midden houdend tussen klinisch-realisme en romantische lyriek. Bitter einde, puur cynisme. Zeer grote roman, vooral door beeldkracht, minder door verhaal en visie.

[brakketh-1 · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Brilliant realism with characters throughout who are spiteful and hard to watch,

[erickibler · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

I had attempted this book a couple year ago, but was confounded by a bad translation. Then I heard about Lydia Davis's new, highly touted translation through the New York Times book review podcast. It's everything they say. Beautifully done.

This novel is so psychologically realistic, the result of such careful observation of human behavior, that it's amazing it came out in the mid-nineteenth century. Not only that, but it's an early feminist novel!

Emma Roualt is a farm girl who has been given a good convent education by her father. She longs for the finer things in life. Music, art, romance, the company of cultured people. She ends up marrying Charles Bovary, a barely competent physician, and a dull man in the bargain. With him she relocates to a small town where everybody knows everybody, has a child, and of course, becomes very unhappy.

Her unhappiness comes not only from her dissatisfaction with her dull, unambitious husband and the life they share, but also from her awareness of the lack of freedom experienced by women in her society. Her sadness allows to to place her hopes for a better life successively, in two adulterous affairs. Rodolphe, the gentleman farmer, has ignoble intentions toward her from the start. Leon, the young law clerk, is too immature to know what he wants.

Serving as sort of a Greek chorus is Homais, the apothecary, who is the Bovarys' next door neighbor. He's a pompous twit who has a number of comic monologues.

In order to finance the tissue of lies she's concocted to carry on her affairs, Emma makes an association with a dry goods merchant who plays with her like a fish on a line, loaning her sums of money and coaxing her to sign promissory notes which eventually come due.

The ending of the book is very dark, but realistic.

[snooksmcdermott · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

somewhere a reviewer called it a 'buddhist morality tale on the futility of desire' which pretty much sums it up for me.

[indreamsawake · Nota: 2 de 5 estrelas]

It's been a few years since I read this book, but I remember thinking how pathetic Ms. Bovary was. I could not develop any sympathy for her whatsoever and thought she was one of those who thought love was about first kisses and butterflies in the stomach. Perhaps she watched too many soap operas. Anyway, not a female character in literature I would aspire to be. Read Little Women or some Jane Austen.

[elizabethandrew-1 · Nota: 2 de 5 estrelas]

I hated this book when it was assigned to me my senior year of high school. Assuming I'd changed since then, I gave it another go. Turns out I had good sense as an 18-year-old. I'm putting it down after 170 unsatisfying pages.

[ianmpindar · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

I did not read this version I read a 'free' Public domain kindle book. It was a great version by Eleanor Marx-Aveling. You don't need to buy it, this version is great, but you will need a device to read it on!

[maryreinert · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

I read this for a book club. I have to admit that I'm not sure I see why it has received all this acclaim. There were pages that I just had to force myself to wade through. That being said, I can see for it's time that it was quite a thriller. The writing style is just so much different than what we as readers of most modern novels are accustomed to.I never felt any kind of sympathy for Emma Bovary, but yet I do believe she is representative of those individuals who are always looking outward to something or someone else to make them happy. Manners, customs, fashions, lifestyles have changed, but there are still plenty of Emma Bovarys today. Good literature lets us see human nature at its best or at its worst; this book does that.As the saying goes, "So many books, so little time" -- if you have lots of time, read this. However, if there's only so much time, there are many more modern novels that will be easier to read and relate to.

[jmoncton_1 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

I just finished Madame Bovary. Ok, I admit that I picked up this book because(according to Wikipedia!) a poll of modern authors listed this as the 2nd most important novel ever written. I'd like to have a conversation with whoever took that poll!! Does the book give an important social commentary about the lives of women? Yes. Is the book interesting? Uh, maybe. Was it earth shattering and changed my view of the world? No. But, I did find the audiobook enjoyable. Donada Peters does a wonderful job in the narration. Maybe I'm a bit jaded because I recently finished Anna Karenina and The House of Mirth - and I loved both books, but they also deal with a similar topic.

[chaosmogony · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Brilliant book.

Flaubert's hatred of the bourgeois really shines through in his portrayal of provincial France, with Charles' meekness and his willing obliviousness of reality, and Emma's constant search for happiness which inevitably leads her to ruin.

You want to detest them both for their flaws; yet at the same time you realize that they're both human beings and operating from very real perspectives, keeping with Flaubert's ideas on limiting the author's influence.

[figre · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

You never know exactly what you are going to get into when you read older classics – you know, the ones from the 18th and 19th centuries, the ones that everyone tells you should be read, the ones that everyone talks about as great but have never really read. As you go back into those olden times, you far too often find stilted grammar, outdated approaches, descriptions that no longer resonate. I won't give you examples but, I've run into them, you've run into them, we've all run into them – and then wanted to run away.Such is not the case with Madame Bovary. Maybe it is just the translation I read (and any book from another language requires the right translation), but I was instantly transported into this story. I quickly cared about the characters and was quite happy to go along with them on their lives.The plot, like so many others in classical literature, can be found anywhere. Suffice to say we follow the life of Madame Bovary (to be honest, the life of her husband – Charles). She is not happy with what life has given her (in spite of the constant efforts of her husband), and this only leads to her worsening her own situation.To be honest, it would be very easy to hate this book based on how dislikable Bovary is. Yet, the story is so compelling the reader watches it in the same fascination one saves for train wrecks.While some classical literature has made me squeamish at the thought of pursuing more, this book strengthens my resolve.

[lisamaria_c · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

I was assigned this in high school--and remember being decidedly unimpressed--bored. Well, I don't think I can blame that on the translation, I just think that there are some books you're incapable of appreciating, if not because you're too young, then maybe because you just haven't read enough. OK, and probably because you're too young at sixteen to really empathize with Emma and her disappointed dreams. She's a female Don Quixote driven to her ruin by reading too many romance novels. Or so it seems.This time around my magpie soul was entranced by the shiny prose. Even in translation (or maybe in this translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling) I was struck by the beautiful writing. Apparently some contemporaries complained of too much description--imagine that--in the 19th century a novel known for its "excessive details." I didn't feel that way--maybe some familiarity with Victorian verbosity helps. But I felt the descriptions weren't mere bagatelle but really did reveal character. And I was surprised at the sensuality of the prose:As it was empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck straining. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass.ANDIt was the first time that Emma had heard such words addressed to her and her pride unfolded languidly in the warmth of this language, like someone stretching in a warm bath.Or this implied description of sex:From time to time the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression.And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel.Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom.I know, by today's standards tame. But this is set in the 1840s and was first published in serialized form in 1856. Maybe the French were less restrained, but in England it's been claimed they were covering the legs of tables because for them to be bare was seen as indecent. The other complaint of contemporaries according to the book's introduction was Flaubert's "excessive distance"--his ironic tone. From what I gather contemporaries were disconcerted he didn't comment more in the narrative and explicitly condemn Emma. Yet Flaubert never struck me as cold. I remember as a teen dismissing Emma as a rather silly woman. This time around I felt a lot more sympathy for her--even when she does act like an idiot. Which doesn't rule out feeling sympathy for her wronged husband, either. Interestingly, Flaubert begins and ends with poor Charles Bovary. It's an unsparing, unsentimental novel, but not without a sense of intimacy and even painful empathy.

[eclbates · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

When I was first reading Madame Bovary, I absolutely hated it. I don't mean that it filled me with feelings of disgust or anything like that; I just didn't care about anything that was happening at all. It was tedious and 'bleah,' and I was mostly reading it so that when I reached the end I could say that I'd done it. Also, I suspect that the translation that I read is not the best.But then, at exactly half-way through the book, things started happening and I actually took an interest in them. The first half took me several months of occasionally picking up the book to get through, a few pages at a time. I blazed through the second half of the book in a couple days.Without any detailed spoilers, I will describe it thus: there is a complete lack of sympathy but plenty of misbehavior, dissolution, ruination, desperation, woe, and lingering death followed by more ruination. I am apparently some sort of terrible person, because I enjoyed the h**l out of it. “More, more! Feed me your delicious despair! Omnomnomnomnom!” I'm glad that this edition had an afterward instead of a forward: introductions to classic books have a tendency to ruin the story for you if you don't already know it. (I didn't.)

[jennyo_587543 · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

Well, I'm glad I can finally say I've read this book now, but I can't say I was particularly wild about it. I did think it was very well written, and remarkably easy to read (I'm not sure why I always think Classics are going to be difficult...), but I found all the characters irritating and didn't develop any sort of sympathy for any of them. I'm not sorry I read it, and I do think we might have a decent discussion about it at book club this month, but it's definitely not one I'll feel the need to reread at any point in my life.

[clanky_1 · Nota: 3 de 5 estrelas]

This book is supposed to be a classic, but I believe the only reason it was popular back in its day was because it was so scandalous compared to anything else published. The book dragged on and on and the lead character was simply not all that like-able. Sometimes, a person gets what they deserve. Other times they don't. This book exemplifies this, only it takes way too long to do it.

[pennyanne_1 · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

I really think you have to be older and to have suffered some knocks in your life before you can relate to this book. When I first read this as a young girl I was revolted by Emma and her behaviour. Now as a much older woman I can understand her so much better - I definitely have sympathy for her now that I did not have as a teenager.

[sanddune_1 · Nota: 4 de 5 estrelas]

The wife of a doctor in the small provincial town of Yonville, Emma Bovary finds the ordinary life which she leads tedious and banal. Her reading of romantic novels have led her to long for passion and romance in her life, something which her husband Charles will never be able to give her or even to understand. Charles is rather stupid and dull but overall a decent man who loves Emma wholeheartedly, while Emma herself, although continually striving for love, seems incapable of understanding true love herself. In reality it is the trappings of a rich lover that she seems to crave (money, fine clothes, fashionable furniture), and in the rich Rodolphe Boulanger it seems that she has found what she desires ...It was interesting to read this novel so soon after Zola's Germinal. Both give a vivid impression of very different parts of French society in the nineteenth century, and Madame Bovary gives a wonderful impression of the constricted and stultifying society in which a woman like Emma Bovary was expected to live. But despite the reader feeling some sympathy for Emma's plight, her evident complete lack of concern for anyone other than herself means that that sympathy is not retained for long. Indeed, there are virtually no likeable characters in the novel at all. While Charles Bovary is well-meaning and truly cares for Emma's welfare, he is also stultifyingly boring, a doctor who is so unsure of his own abilities that he prefers to prescribe no medicines at all wherever possible. The apothecary Homais, who befriends the Bovarys when they first arrive in Yonville, does so in a coldly calculating manner for reasons of business alone. The draper Lheureux deliberately sets out to tempt Emma into debt (not a difficult task) and is not averse to a little blackmail if it will help her to proceed more quickly along this road.But while none of the characters are likeable, they are all very believable and so overall the novel is a rich and satisfying one.

[stevelindahl · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Madame Bovary has been on my list of books to read for decades, but for various reasons I always made other choices. Then my wife decided to learn French and as part of that process read the novel in its original language. I decided to finally pick up this book because it would be fun to discuss when we were both done. I read an English translation by Eleanor Marx Aveling who was one of the daughters of Karl Marx and, following in her father's footsteps, a socialist. I didn't know Marx's background at the time I read the book, but find it interesting, since the results of Emma's decision to pursue a life of self indulgence seem to exemplify the horrors that can happen to people who seek self gratification. In other words, if you believe “greed is good” you probably won't like this book.I read somewhere that Madame Bovary along with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina are the two greatest “adultery” novels ever written. I'm not sure how anyone can make a statement like that, since so many novels have been written about adultery. But there is definitely a connection between these two works. Anna, however, is somewhat sympathetic, being drawn to a single lover she can't resist. On the other hand, Emma's true love seems to be herself. Here's a section from the book when Emma is sitting at an agricultural fair with Rodolphe, the man she's currently attracted to, and reflecting on all the men in her life – except, of course, her husband.Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the "Hirondelle," that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Leon had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Leon was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Rodolphe's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He said—"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.I loved the process of following Emma Bovary as she made selfish decisions, rationalized her behavior, and paid the consequences. There are many reasons to read Madame Bovary, including its influence on later novelists, but it is the careful, detailed exploration of Emma's character that make this novel a masterpiece.Steve Lindahl – Author of White Horse Regressions and Motherless Soul

[helenliz_1 · Nota: 1 de 5 estrelas]

I found Emma Bovary to be a most unsympathetic character. I finished it, but not because I cared what happened

[wonderperson · Nota: 5 de 5 estrelas]

Flaubert is flawless as a writer. It was Nabokov in his tome on Russian Literature which led me to discover him.
This is world reknowned famous story of the tragic lives of Madame Bovary and her husband Mousier Bovary, a double tragedy where unbeknowns to either of them their losses are reflected in the ways their lives end up in a state of tragic self-destruction. Well worth the read and I will definitely read more Flaubert.