ISBN: 9780451418500

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 Bovary—a farmer’s d… Plus…

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 Bovary—a farmer’s daughter who, with girlhood dreams fuelled by sensational novels, marries a provincial doctor—Flaubert inaugurated a literary mode that would be called Realism. But so exacting were Flaubert’s standards of authenticity that his portrayal of the breakdown of Emma’s 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 romance—of the need for Romance—in the face of day-to-day banalities. It is a theme that is ironic insofar as the exquisite clarity of Flaubert’s prose serves to hauntingly underline the futility of the heroine’s ultimate tragedy. Trade Books>Mass Market>Fiction>Fiction>Classics, Penguin Publishing Group Core >8<

ISBN: 9780451418500

Both embodiment and victim of the self-satisfied nineteenth-century French bourgeoisie, Emma Bovary lives in pursuit of something more, like the world depicted in the romance novels that … Plus…

Both embodiment and victim of the self-satisfied nineteenth-century French bourgeoisie, Emma Bovary lives in pursuit of something more, like the world depicted in the romance novels that have come to define her. Emma is oblivious to the realities of life, and her romantic delusions and search for transcendence through sex, money, and social position serve only to drive the increasingly troubled woman into an irreversible moral, emotional, and spiritual decline. That the author depicted his heroine in neutral terms, without condemnation, resulted in obscenity charges from the French courts, which likened the “lascivious” Madame Bovary’s “lack of restraint” to “a woman who throws off all garments.” Exactly. Madame Bovary remains one of the most daring and liberating novels ever written. Includes The Trial of Madame Bovary Translated by Mildred Marmur With an Introduction by Robin Morgan and a New Afterword by Frederick Brown Trade Books>Mass Market>Fiction>Fiction>Classics, Penguin Publishing Group Core >8<