Review: Madam Bovary


I finished reading Madam Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, after two aborted starts. The beginning of the novel is slow and I kept getting sidetracked. I must say that the novel is excellent.

The story is about Emma Bovary and her husband Charles. Charles is a country doctor in a small French farming village. He barely gets his medical degree and settles down with an older widow that his mother chooses for him to marry. One day while setting a broken bone for an old farmer he meets Emma, the farmer's daughter. She is young and beautiful and Charles falls in love with her. His wife dies and soon he courts Emma; and they marry.While Charles is madly in love with Emma, married life is not the same for her. She becomes depressed and is unhappy, her only solice is reading novels, especially cheap romances.

He moves her to a new town hoping that a change of venue will do her good. There they meet Leon an aspiring lawyer and Mr. Homais the town chemist; two characters that will be very important in the story. Leon and Emma have a brief flirty affair that ends when Leon leaves to study in Paris, convinced that he will never consumate his affair with Emma. After Leon's departure Emma starts a torrid affair with a wealthy local playboy, Rodolphe Boulanger, who sees her as ripe for seduction.

Her relationship with Charles slowly disintegrates as Emma's unhappyness is compounded by her desire for a rich and extravagent lifestyle -- one that she leads by borrowing money from Mr. Lheureux. Emma wants to run away with Rodolphe, but he abandons her when she becomes too much trouble. This sends Emma into despair and she spends the next six months in her sickbed with a broken heart.

On her recovery Charles takes her to Rouen to see the opera. Here she meets Leon again. She and Leon conspire to meet again and this finally consumates their affair. They have a torrid affair in Rouen, with travelling to meet him under the lie that she is taking music lessons. During this time Emma is satisfying her desires for luxury and fine living; still on borrowed money from Mr. Leureux.

As her affair with Leon cools down Lheureux comes to collect in full all the debts that Emma had built up. She desperately tries to get money, from Leon, Rodolphe, and anyone else who she thinks could help her. No one will give her any money. In despair, she takes poisen and kills herself. Charles is heartbroken and later died a broken man, her duaghter is sent to a relative who sends her to work in a factory.

This novel is definitely a writers novel. It is starkly realistic and its tone is dark. The language used by Flaubert is amazing. The sentences work magic as the reader progresses through the story.