Gustave Flaubert

One of the acknowledged masterpieces of 19th century realism, Madame Bovary is revered by writers and readers around the world, a mandatory stop on any pilgrimage through modern literature. Flaubert's legendary style, his intense care over the selection of words and the shaping of sentences, his unmatched ability to convey a mental world through the careful selection of telling details, shine on every page of this marvelous work. Now the award-winning translator Margaret Mauldon has produced a modern translation of this classic novel, one that perfectly captures the tone that makes Flaubert's style so distinct and admired. Madame Bovary scandalized its readers when it was first published in 1857. And the story itself remains as fresh today as when it was first written, a work that remains unsurpassed in its unveiling of character and society. It tells the tragic story of the romantic but empty-headed Emma Rouault. When Emma marries Charles Bovary, she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women's magazines. But Charles is an ordinary country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to realize her dreams she takes a lover, Rodolphe, and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair. And Flaubert captures every step of this catastrophe with sharp-eyed detail and a wonderfully subtle understanding of human emotions. Malcolm Bowie, a leading authority on French literature, explores Flaubert's genius in his masterly introduction to this must-have book for all lovers of great literature.

Provincial Manners

Madame Bovary

Novel Ideas

…She loved the sea only for its storms, and greenery only when it grew up here and there among ruins. She needed derive from things a sort of personal gain; and she rejected as useless everything that did not contribute to the immediate gratification of her heart..

Zainab 

Künftiges Glück wirft, wie ein tropisches Gestade, auf die unermeßliche Weite, die davorliegt, seine weichen Lockungen voraus, eine düfteschwere Brise, und man ergibt sich willenlos diesem Rausch, ohne sich Gedanken über den Horizont zu machen, der dem Auge unsichtbar ist.

Trotz allem war sie nicht glücklich, war es nie gewesen. Woher kamn es nur, daß sie mit dem Leben so gar nicht zurechtkam, daß alles, worauf sie sich verließ, so rasch verweste?... 

So ist das irdische Leben. Nichts kann uns vollkommen glücklich machen. Kein Vergnügen ist vollkommen. Flaubert hat es auf dem Punkt gebracht. Diejenigen die nur nach dem weltlichen streben werden irgendwann untergehen in der Unzufriedenheit. 

Alles war eitel Lug und Trug! Jedes Lächeln verbarg ein Gähnen der Langweile, jede Freude einen Fluch, jeder Genuß den unausbleiblichen Ekel, und die glühendsten Küsse hinterlassen auf unseren Lippen nur die unerfüllbare Sehnsucht nach einer höheren Wollust.

Bethany Jenkins

They were invariably about love affairs, lovers, mistresses, harassed ladies swooning in remote pavilions. Couriers were killed at every relay, horses ridden to death on every page; there were gloomy forests, broken hearts, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, skiffs in the moonlight, nightingales in thickets; the noblemen were all brave as lions, gentle as lambs, incredibly virtuous, always beautifully dressed, and wept copiously on every occasion. For six months, when she was fifteen, Emma begrimed her hands with this dust from old lending libraries. Later, reading Walter Scott, she became infatuated with everything historical and dreamed about oaken chests and guardrooms and troubadours. She would have liked to live in some old manor, like those long-waisted chatelaines who spent their days leaning out of fretted Gothic casements, elbow on parapet and chin in hand, watching a white-plumed knight come galloping out of the distance on a black horse. At that time she worshipped Mary Queen of Scots, and venerated women illustrious or ill-starred. In her mind Joan of Arc, Héloise, Agnès Sorel, La Belle Ferronière and Clémence Isaure stood out like comets on the shadowy immensity of history; and here and there (though less clearly outlined than the others against the dim background, and quite unrelated among themselves) were visible also St. Louis and his oak, the dying Bayard, certain atrocities of Louis XI, bits of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the plumed crest of Henri IV, and, always, the memory of the hotel plates glorifying Louis XIV.

“It yet seems to me,” said Emma, “that you have little to complain about.”

“Because in the end …” she went on, “you are free.”

Madame Bovary quotes

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