Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (great reads txt) ๐
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Madame Bovary, often ranked among the greatest novels of all time, is Flaubertโs 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 storyโs 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; Emmaโs 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 Marxโs 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-Avelingโs 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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โBut with me,โ replied Emma, โit was after marriage that it began.โ
VIOne evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing.
It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flowerbeds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fรชtes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond the river could be seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.
With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and schooldays. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.
On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his dayโs labour, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour.
Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.
The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners.
โWhere is the curรฉ?โ asked Madame Bovary of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.
โHe is just coming,โ he answered.
And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Abbรฉ Bournisien appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.
โThese young scamps!โ murmured the priest, โalways the same!โ
Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is foot, โThey respect nothing!โ But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Bovary, โExcuse me,โ he said; โI did not recognise you.โ
He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.
The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily.
โHow are you?โ he added.
โNot well,โ replied Emma; โI am ill.โ
โWell, and so am I,โ answered the priest. โThese first warm days weaken one most remarkably, donโt they? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Monsieur Bovary think of it?โ
โHe!โ she said with a gesture of contempt.
โWhat!โ replied the good fellow, quite astonished, โdoesnโt he prescribe something for you?โ
โAh!โ said Emma, โit is no earthly remedy I need.โ
But the curรฉ from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards.
โI should like to knowโ โโ she went on.
โYou look out, Riboudet,โ cried the priest in an angry voice; โIโll warm your ears, you imp!โ Then turning to Emma, โHeโs Boudet the carpenterโs son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even say โMon Riboudet.โ Ha! Ha! โMont Riboudet.โ The other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Monsieur Bovary?โ
She seemed not to hear him. And he went onโ โ
โAlways very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he
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