Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (great reads txt) 📕
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Madame Bovary, often ranked among the greatest novels of all time, is Flaubert’s first novel, and considered to be both his masterpiece and one of the most influential works in literary history, with authors from Henry James to Proust to Nabokov heaping it with praise.
The novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a commoner wife of a country doctor, and her attempts to escape the drudgery of day-to-day mediocrity by engaging in adulterous affairs and overspending on luxuries. She remains unsatisfied even though her husband adores her and they want for little, and her shallowness eventually leads to their ruin.
The story was first serialized in Revue de Paris, where prosecutors tried to have it censored for obscenity, arguing that not only is the story immoral, but that realism as a literary style is an offence against art and decency. The trial only served to increase the story’s fame, and when it was published as a single novel it quickly became a bestseller.
The novel is groundbreaking in its emphasis on the psychological and emotional lives of its characters. Literature up to then had mostly focusing on the external events that make characters react, instead of focusing on the internal thought processes of those characters. Madame Bovary changed that forever. It was also revolutionary in its criticism of the middle class, which at the time was a still-new social class vying for elbow room between the working poor and hereditary aristocracy. Flaubert critiqued the middle class as being ambitious, shallow, greedy, materialistic, and totally without culture; Emma’s burning desire to reach even higher social strata, contrasted against that satisfaction being fundamentally denied to her by her middle-class nature, is an early echo of Marx’s theory of alienation in industrial societies.
Today Madame Bovary, with its careful but charming description of the banality of everyday life, is considered the first great example of literary realism in fiction novels. Eleanor Marx-Aveling’s translation, though over a hundred years old, is remarkably fresh and smooth, and is a pleasure even for modern readers.
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- Author: Gustave Flaubert
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He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made—
“It is the fault of fatality!”
Rodolphe, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean.
The next day Charles went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Charles was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart.
At seven o’clock little Berthe, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner.
His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.
“Come along, papa,” she said.
And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead.
Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist’s request, Monsieur Canivet came thither. He made a postmortem and found nothing.
When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Bovary’s going to her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Rouault was paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.
Since Bovary’s death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and public opinion protects him.
He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.
EndnotesA quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat. ↩
Latin: “I am ridiculous.” ↩
A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell. Here, the evening prayer. ↩
In place of a parent. ↩
A mixture of coffee and spirits. ↩
Used the familiar form of address. ↩
With almond milk. ↩
The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of notaries. ↩
Black currant liqueur. ↩
On the straight and narrow path. ↩
Upon my word! ↩
A loving heart. ↩
Offhandedly. ↩
It corrects customs through laughter. ↩
Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie. ↩
The worker lives by working, do what he will. ↩
Manservant. ↩
In rum. ↩
People dressed as longshoremen. ↩
Psalm CXXX. ↩
Rest traveler. ↩
Tread upon a loving wife. ↩
ColophonMadame Bovary
was published in 1857 by
Gustave Flaubert.
It was translated from French in 1886 by
Eleanor Marx-Aveling.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2006 by
An Anonymous Volunteer, Noah Adams, and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
Portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw,
a painting completed in 1892 by
John Singer Sargent.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
December 23, 2015, 1:39 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/gustave-flaubert/madame-bovary/eleanor-marx-aveling.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
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