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A review by icecubecat
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
5.0
Madame Bovary is a classic not just in the excellence of Flaubert's writing creating a vivid depiction of rural 19th century France but also in his excellent exploration of ideas through slightly stereotyped characters.
Flaubert confronts the way the mind is affected by Romantic longings and fantastical dreams, Emma shakes between visions of herself from dutiful wife to adulteress to saint to a gluttonous duchess. In doing so she shakes the world around her as the people around her unaffected by such high-mindedness are left to pick up the pieces of her fancies.
She is trapped in a world too mundane, too normal, too real to ever furnish even the simplest happinesses and dreams she imagines. The tension between her imagination and the world around her swings violently as we experience this change in her perceptions and desires as she influences the way the narrator approaches other characters and places.
Flaubert has you sucked in by her like everyone else in her life and soon you find yourself quickly orbiting her even if by the end you want to break free from her pull.
The book remains ever pertinent in a world where we are so consumed by images and ideals of things from Pinterest boards to clichéd films and music. Flaubert grounds us by showing us what a life too focused on image can result in but also how a life focused on the mundane (such as Charles') can leave us bored and unaware of impending problems.
There's a bit of Emma in all of us and that's what makes her story all the more alluring, after all Flaubert famously said of the book "Emma is me, I am Emma".
Flaubert confronts the way the mind is affected by Romantic longings and fantastical dreams, Emma shakes between visions of herself from dutiful wife to adulteress to saint to a gluttonous duchess. In doing so she shakes the world around her as the people around her unaffected by such high-mindedness are left to pick up the pieces of her fancies.
She is trapped in a world too mundane, too normal, too real to ever furnish even the simplest happinesses and dreams she imagines. The tension between her imagination and the world around her swings violently as we experience this change in her perceptions and desires as she influences the way the narrator approaches other characters and places.
Flaubert has you sucked in by her like everyone else in her life and soon you find yourself quickly orbiting her even if by the end you want to break free from her pull.
The book remains ever pertinent in a world where we are so consumed by images and ideals of things from Pinterest boards to clichéd films and music. Flaubert grounds us by showing us what a life too focused on image can result in but also how a life focused on the mundane (such as Charles') can leave us bored and unaware of impending problems.
There's a bit of Emma in all of us and that's what makes her story all the more alluring, after all Flaubert famously said of the book "Emma is me, I am Emma".