Book Review: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

 “She repented, as of a crime, her past virtue, and whatever yet remained of that virtue was collapsing beneath the frenzied assault of her pride.”

Madame Bovary is divided into three parts, and the first part was nothing short of boring. It was droll and floppy, but thankfully, it’s the shortest part of the novel by far. 

Although the rest of the novel isn’t revolutionary in today’s world or in my opinion (though it was certainly scandalous in the era it was written), it definitely picked up in the latter two thirds. A novel told from the point of view of an adulterous and unhappy wife certainly sent waves through the time’s society which highly valued family structure (and no, that’s not a spoiler unless you know absolutely nothing about the book, in which case, I’m sorry). It’s rather tame today; it’s a mild spice, but still spicy.

Emma Bovary is insufferably shallow, idealist, materialistic, and interminably unhappy with everything that comes into her life. She’s an older, more demanding Catherine Morland with a more bitter and introspective disposition. She’s unhappily married to a rather boring, oblivious man who absolutely adores her. I don’t think she was written to be a likable character, or even a sympathetic character. She whines and whines, she oscillates between bitterness and being a martyr to her own high road, and she (*spoiler*) is the wrecking ball to her husband and daughter’s destruction. 

And Flaubert paints this picture so well; Emma is so insufferable because she is so realistic. You hate her more because you can see parts of yourself in her. I too can be ungrateful, I too can wallow in my own self-pity and be disgustingly proud of myself for being a better person simply because I know I didn’t have to be. And although Emma took those to extremes and literally ruined her life, she does serve as a warning to succumb to our weaknesses. She demanded too much from the world, and that’s unfortunately too relatable.

At times, I did feel sorry for her. Because although her grave was largely dug by her own two hands, she was also a victim to the time period, where women were not really given the option of divorce or granted much independence. Flaubert saw too many beautiful women married to mediocre men and felt compelled to write their story. Emma felt stuck and couldn’t make the most of her situation. The novel begins with her husband’s childhood and ends with her husband’s death; Emma’s story is framed by her husband’s, which was a brilliant literary technique to portray enclosure; she was trapped inside a man’s world, literally trapped in the world of fiction which influenced her so strongly. The novel was short on dialogue, and when it was there, it was de-emphasized by excluding quotation marks, which was an effective portrayal of Emma’s inability to communicate. 

What I found really interesting and a tad confusing was that while Flaubert framed Emma’s story inside her husband’s, he ended the book focusing on Homais, a secondary character that was supposed to be a satirical, comic look at the bourgeois. Homais was a constant presence in the book, but was definitely secondary, and it didn’t make a lot of sense to me that his success was the ending note. But Flaubert went on and on about Homais’ successes, which had the flavor of undeserving triumph. But perhaps Flaubert was commenting on the falsity and unfairness of unreality. Homais, this comically ridiculous character flourished while the lives of Emma and Charles Bovary ended in tragedy. Perhaps it was just another warning to not take life so seriously as Emma.