Synopses & Reviews
Bored and unhappy in a lifeless marriage, Emma Bovary yearns to escape from the dull circumstances of provincial life. Married to a simple-minded but indulgent country doctor, she takes one lover, then another, hastens her husband's financial ruin with her extravagance, and eventually commits suicide.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was brought to trial by the French government on the grounds of this novel's alleged immorality, but unlike his less fortunate contemporary, Baudelaire, he narrowly escaped conviction.
Flaubert's powerful and deeply moving examination of the moral degeneration of a middle-class Frenchwoman is universally regarded as one of the landmarks of 19th-century fiction. It is reproduced here, complete and unabridged, in the classic translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling, daughter of Karl Marx.
Review
"As for the intimate, deeper center of the book, there is no doubt that it resides in the adulterous woman; she alone possesses all the attributes of a worthy hero, albeit in the guise of a disgraced victim." Charles Baudelaire, L'artiste
Synopsis
Bored and unhappy in a lifeless marriage, Emma Bovary yearns to escape from the dull circumstances of provincial life. Powerful, deeply moving examination of the moral degeneration of a middle-class Frenchwoman.
Synopsis
At convent school, a girl acquires romantic notions of a lover who will live for her alone. She marries a kind but dull country doctor and discovers that "This life of hers was as cold as an attic that looks north; and boredom, quiet as the spider, was spinning its web in the shadowy places of her heart." Emma Bovary's quest for escape from the emptiness of her bourgeois existence leads to infidelity and financial extravagance, and Gustave Flaubert's powerful and deeply moving examination of her moral degeneration is universally regarded as a landmark of nineteenth-century fiction.
Flaubert was brought to trial by the French government on the grounds of this novel's alleged immorality but narrowly escaped conviction. Madame Bovary remains a touchstone for literary discussions of provincial life and adultery as well as a summit of prose art, a pioneering work of realism that forever changed the way novels are written. This complete and unabridged edition features the classic translation by Eleanor Marx-Aveling.
Synopsis
Powerful, deeply moving examination of the moral degeneration of a middle-class Frenchwoman.
Synopsis
Bored and unhappy in a lifeless marriage, Emma Bovary yearns to escape from the dull circumstances of provincial life. Powerful, deeply moving examination of the moral degeneration of a middle-class Frenchwoman.