Regular marked price: $10.95Discount Price: $8.76
Cost Savings: $2.19 (20%)Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, very first served.
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.8
EAN num: 9780192840394
ISBN number: 0192840398
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 358
Printing Date: June 02, 2005
Publishing house: Oxford University Press, USA
Sale Popularity Level: 354732
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
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 very first published in 1857. And the story itself remains as fresh yesterday as when it was very 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.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
Honestly, this book is a bitter pill to swallow. It's written beautifully and was a real ground breaker for the realist movement, but the subject matter is incredibly tragic. I found it hard to keep reading as Emma continuously dug herself deeper into trouble, dragging her innocent, loving, and devoted family down with her. It is an incredible moral lesson that is still relevant today: "The Grass is Never Greener on the Other Side." Naturally, I found Emma incredibly dislikeable because she was lazy, melodramatic, arrogant, ignorant, and had this air of entitlement that made me want to slap her. But I did feel sorry for her because she was so caught up in this sense of romanticism, she couldn't see straight. Because of her obsession with passion, the choices she made seemed so predictable, and all you could do was watch it happen like a train wreck in slow motion. I loved how Flaubert mixed the mundane with the romantic in his writing. And I loved the bitter ironies he used, too (especially at the end of the story). I think the reader can gain alot from reading this book to this day. It's unapologetic, yet beautiful.
Rated by buyers 
-
This is a very well written novel. It deserves its high status in the cannon of world literature. The most unique and surprising thing about this novel is that it seems to be so timely and modern. Though it was written long before our consumer driven culture of debt, it seems to understand these issues is a weirdly foretelling way. I was an English literature major in college so I was exposed to many fiction works from the time period of Madame Bovary, but I have never read such a modern novel from that time. Maybe Flaubert had a time machine?
Rated by buyers -
Like so many of the classics, Madame Bovary does an incredible job of recording humanity. All of the characters are whole, full-fleshed and individual. Emma's discontent with life, her yearning for something more, has probably been experienced by all of us. Her yearning destroys her, and her husband, but teaches us about ourselves along the way. The reason I love this book, and many of the other classics, is that the characters don't always have reasons, they think and behave erratically, sometimes logically, sometimes foolishly, just like real people.
Rated by buyers 
-
I probably disliked this novel as much as I did 'Sons and Lovers'. For a while I just thought I'd been reading too many French writers (Huysmans, Sand,....) but it was much deeper than that.
Although Madame Bovary is the central character, and an intriguing one at that, I don't believe that she is any more than a vehicle for Flaubert to vent his virtiole against men. There are four principle male characters in this novel and we see them reflected and caricatured in their responses to mixed-up, not altogether lovable Emma.
There is husband Charles who is overwhelmed by the love he feels from Emma - he sees himself as SO lucky. But he is blind - seeing none of Emma's distress, or philandering. And he is not very successful at what he does anyway.
Then there is lover Rodolphe. He is the ultimate selfish prig of a man. He reflects, as he walks away from Emma - having raised her hopes of a new more exciting life - that she was a wonderful mistress but he couldn't possibly compromise his selected way of life. Not for any woman, no matter how rewarding she might be. And when she appeals to him for help, she gets nothing from him.
The second lover, Leon, is a more youthful and inexperienced participant in Emma's life. But later he does marry (not Emma, of course) so it is not commitment he shies away from. Nevertheless he fails Emma.
Finally there is the chemist Homais, Charles's 'colleague'. He also has no sensitivity to Emma, almost misses seeing her at all. Like Charles, he is unsuccessful in some of his ventures, but he has such comically grand illusions about himself.
All four men exhibit fundamental flaws. For me Charles and Leon have some saving graces. But none of them I have much sympathy for.
And then there is the matter of Emma's decline - not due to her affairs. Was Flaubert unable to undermine Emma because of the affairs, because of Emma's selfish self-seeking? Did he have to create other artifices to inflict upon her - and the men around her (not that Homais really notices) - to give the story a 'moral'?
The writing is spectacular - Flaubert was a wonderful observer and expresser of ideas. But for me, good writing is more than observation and a facility with words. It is the structure of the novel that failed me.
Rated by buyers -
Emma is a typical unrealistic romantic girl, who sees love as the solution to all her problems and the answer to all her dreams of wealth and fame. Emma finds married life and attending expensive parties as the doctor's wife very disappointing. She compares herself to the wealthy people at these parties and becomes very depressed and angry at her husband for not fulfilling her dreams of wealth and fame. Emma becomes the center of the story when she begins her adulterous love affairs in an endeavor to bring passion, romance and fulfillment to her empty life. At the end, faced with the emptiness of her fantasies, Emma, makes a tragic decision still hoping for a romantic ending, but that goes badly as well
Even motherhood was disappointing for Emma, as she had hoped for a boy but gave birth to a girl Many of Emma's actions were compulsive in every way and her interaction with her little girl was obviously cruel and selfish.
Emma couldn't see the reality of any person in her life; she over estimated the passion of her lovers, even the sexual attraction between her and Rodolph got cold, even the pleasure of overspending money didn't last. Her husband and child, the only people true to her, were in front of her all of her life but she didn't see it. Was the reason again the hunter/prey nature of human beings? If Charles didn't give her unconditional love, would she not notice his love like she did? If she wasn't that cruel, would Charles idolize her like he did? Are the people who live their lives unnoticed like Charels destined to be like that for the rest of their lives? If Charles had known the true Emma from the beginning, wouldn't he still love her as much and do whatever she wanted to please her?
I don't know about all the emotional conflicts of human beings, but I know that Flaubert was an artist who presented his obnoxious character Emma in a fascinating and very readable way..
Eight years ago, and again recently, I was unable to put the book down until I finished reading it..
Find other books like this one:
