Book Description
For this novel of French bourgeois life in all its inglorious banality, Flaubert invented a paradoxically original and wholly modern style. His heroine, Emma Bovary, a bored provincial housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. A succès de scandale in its day, Madame Bovary remains a powerful and arousing novel.
Translated with an Introduction by Geoffrey Wall
New Preface by Michèle Roberts
About the Author
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the younger son of a provincial doctor, briefly studied law before devoting himself to writing, with limited success during his lifetime. After the publication of Madame Bovary in 1857, he was prosecuted for offending public morals.
Geoffrey Wall teaches at the University of York, translated Flaubert's Selected Letters for Penguin Classics, and is the author of Flaubert: A Life.
Michèle Roberts is the author of ten highly praised novels.
Madame Bovary FROM THE PUBLISHER
As a provocative tale of passion and complacency, ideals and self-delusions, Madame Bovary (1857) remains a milestone in European fiction. In telling his story of Emma Bovaryﾽa farmerﾽs daughter who, with girlhood dreams fuelled by sensational novels, marries a provincial doctorﾽFlaubert inaugurated a literary mode that would be called Realism. But so exacting were Flaubertﾽs standards of authenticity that his portrayal of the breakdown of Emmaﾽs marriage, and the frankness with which he treats her adulterous liaisons, scandalized many of his contemporaries. Yet to others, the mix of painful introspection, emotional blindness, and cynical self-seeking that distinguishes his characters made the novel instantly recognizable as a work of genius. It is a novel fixed upon the idea of romanceﾽof the need for Romanceﾽin the face of day-to-day banalities. It is a theme that is ironic insofar as the exquisite clarity of Flaubertﾽs prose serves to hauntingly underline the futility of the heroineﾽs ultimate tragedy.
SYNOPSIS
Madame Bovary is the story of a beautiful young woman who marries a luckless and loutish country doctor. She attempts to escape the narrow confines of her life through a series of passionate affairs, hoping to find in other men the romantic ideal she has always dreamed about. Her recklessness comes back to haunt her, however, and the strong-willed and independent Emma finds herself in a desperate fight for existence.
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