Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert
This infamous classic is the tragic tale of a woman spiralling towards doom. Emma Bovary is bored with her husband, tired of living in rural France, and fed up of pretending to be content with her lot. The sensational novels she's read have given her a taste for the finer things - and for romance. Though she makes a valiant effort to stay on the straight and narrow, it isn't long before Madame Bovary succumbs to her yearning for more - and so begins her inevitable descent into vice, ruin and madness. We all know how it ends (or we can certainly guess). Here's what I thought of how it got there.
Truth be told, the main reason I read this book is because Elif Shafak's upcoming novel is based on it. Shafak is one of my recently discovered favourite authors, so there's no question I'll be looking for a copy of her new release once it's out. But I decided I couldn't read a contemporary reworking of Flaubert's magnum opus if I hadn't actually read Flaubert himself: too much would be lost on me. The solution? Read 'Madame Bovary'. This I did - and to be honest, it's worth a read anyway. The book was foundational for literary realism, and when it was published in 1856 its uncensored descriptions of Emma's fall into adultery got it banned for impropriety! Naturally, the bad press absolutely rocketed the novel's popularity, and I confess it was with a similar sense of guilty glee that I opened it up last week. Nothing like a scandal to tempt you to read something!
One thing I really enjoyed about 'Madame Bovary' was its yearning. Characters who yearn are a real thing at the moment: lots of the book-lovers I've seen on socials have a penchant for the wistful. People love a slow-burning desire, an out-of-reach lover, the wallowing ache of unfulfilled longing. Well, Flaubert offered this in spades. Emma Bovary's yearning for the charming young Léon Depuis is extremely compelling. She desires him, he desires her, but she is married to her husband and thus the alluring clerk is off-limits. She can only look, never touch, snatch moments, never long enough. The slow build-up of their increasingly irresistible attraction is very convincingly written - and almost too drawn out to bear (there's a hiatus of literal years where they don't see each other!).
When Emma finally lets herself swoon into Léon's arms, it's the moment we've been waiting for for nearly 150 pages. Talk about slow-burn! But watching her fall in love with Léon is a guilty pleasure. Adultery is wrong, and Flaubert makes sure we know it. To read Emma's story is to be morally divided: on the one hand, you desperately sympathise and share her insatiable longing for a bit of romance, and on the other you know that she is walking a dangerous path and making terribly harmful decisions. Emma's husband is not a bad man; indeed, he is harmlessly and pleasantly clueless all the way through. You can't help pitying him - and as for his and Emma's daughter, who sits neglected in the lonely playroom whilst her mother goes off gallivanting, there's no reader who doesn't feel sorry for her. Flaubert sits us rather uncomfortably on the moral fence. It's quite clever.
The problem is, Madame Bovary has filled her head with sensational literature and theatre. A little like Catherine Morland in Austen's 'Northanger Abbey', she has allowed the ideals and illusions of the novel to seep into her reality; she has lost her grip on what is sensible, what is reasonable, what is proper. What's interesting, though, is that 'Madame Bovary' is not a whole-hearted criticism of reading sensationally. That would arguably be quite hypocritical, as it is itself a novel that oversteps boundaries. No: 'Madame Bovary' is just as critical of the men who put Emma down as it is of Emma herself. Whilst we are undeniably positioned to see the lady as too head-in-the-clouds delusional, we equally see the cleric who's afraid of the theatre as an absolute fool. Flaubert mocks both sides - the hedonist and the ascetic, the rebel and the institution.
This indiscriminate mockery lent the whole novel a somewhat cynical tone. I think this is why I found it quite funny. I was not expecting a laugh when I launched into this book - the story is as tragic as they come - yet somehow I kept finding myself chuckling. You see, Emma's downfall is so bad that it becomes laughable. The first man she has an affair with (Rodolphe) is so awful, and the circumstances of their meeting so silly, that the whole relationship is ridiculous. There were some moments of genuine comedy as a result, such as when they confess their love in a hurried rendezvous whilst the town council's agricultural meeting is happening outside the window. Right in between their amorous whisperings, someone yells out "manure!". That's funny.
The whole sequence where Rodolphe pens his break-up letter also had me giggling: the way Flaubert describes him admiring his own prose and dabbing false tears onto the paper emphasises the complete emptiness of his supposed 'love' for Emma - and it's very amusing. Add to this the eye-rolling cameos from the terribly verbose chemist and his hapless assistant, and you have all the ingredients for a comedy! I was surprised, but on reflection all the humour stems from Flaubert's wry, matter-of-fact, depressing realism. Love is unattainable. Dreaming is futile. Boredom is inevitable. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.
Overall, this was a troubling tale of liberty and entrapment, illusion and reality, yearning and boredom. It managed to be both tragic and dryly funny, and it critiqued absolutely everyone who appeared on its pages. I'm glad I read it, but I would caution you: this novel is long and dense. Despite its notoriety, 'Madame Bovary' did not compel me anywhere near as much as other similar novels. Honestly, if you want to read a classic about a woman yearning for passion, I'd recommend Thomas Hardy's The Return of the Native well above this. In my opinion, it does a similar thing, but way better - and Eustacia Vye is a far superior heroine.
You can buy 'Madame Bovary' from Waterstones by following this link (I'll receive a small commission if you do):
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert - Waterstones
