Other editions of book Madame Bovary

Sensuous, romantic young Emma Bovary is dissatisfied with her humdrum married life. Seeking passion, she drifts into a series of sordid affairs. Her inevitable disillusionment leads ultimately to her doom. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, it catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world's greatest novelists and ushered in a new age of realism in literature. .

Although Emma Bovary longed for a life of luxury and passion with a dashing lover who would live for her alone, she settled for marriage to a kind but dull country doctor. When the boredom of small-town life becomes unbearable, she indulges in her romantic dreams by taking lovers and extravagant spending. With her disastrous choice to turn her back on the real love that she's offered and restlessly seek something better, Emma reflects the false ideals and shallow values of her spiritually bankrupt society. Her story, rendered in Gustave Flaubert's lyrical prose, constitutes a satire of middle-class pretentiousness as well as an unprecedentedly realistic, nonjudgmental representation of an adulterous heroine.The most influential French novel of the 19th century, Madame Bovary was published in 1857. In addition to its popular and critical acclaim, the novel excited a burst of moral outrage, and Flaubert was unsuccessfully tried on the charge of contributing to public depravity. The book remains at the center of any discussion of realistic novels of provincial bourgeois life and literary depictions of adultery. Graced by 10 full-page line illustrations, this handsome hardcover edition presents the original English translation of Flaubert's masterpiece by Eleanor Marx-Aveling.

Madame Bovary by Gustave FlaubertHow is this book unique?Tablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionAuthor Biography includedIllustrated versionMadame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the precise word"). When the novel was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published as a single volume. The novel is now considered Flaubert's masterpiece, as well as a seminal work of literary realism and one of the most influential novels. British critic James Wood writes in How Fiction Works: "Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible".

Described by Henry James as 'one of the first of the classics' and so regarded ever since, MADAME BOVARY has touched generations of readers and moulded generations of writers. The story of a little woman in a provincial town who dreams of happiness and then perishes by her own hand is worked up by Flaubant into a profound and heart rending study of human bondage.

About Madame Bovary by Gustave FlaubertHow is this book unique?E-reader & tablet formatted, Font Adjustments100% Original contentUnabridged EditionAuthor Biography InsideIllustrations includedMadame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the precise word"). When the novel was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published as a single volume. The novel is now considered Flaubert's masterpiece, as well as a seminal work of literary realism and one of the most influential novels. British critic James Wood writes in How Fiction Works: "Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible".

In Emma Bovary, Flaubert uses irony to criticize romanticism and to investigate the relation of beauty to corruption and of fate to free will. Emma embarks directly down a path to moral and financial ruin over the course of the novel. She is very beautiful, as we can tell by the way several men fall in love with her, but she is morally corrupt and unable to accept and appreciate the realities of her life

How is this book unique? 15 IllustrationsTablet and e-reader formattedOriginal & Unabridged EditionBest fiction books of all timeOne of the best books to readClassic Bestselling NovelShort Biography is also includedClassic historical fiction booksBestselling FictionMadame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the precise word"). When the novel was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published as a single volume. The novel is now considered Flaubert's masterpiece, as well as a seminal work of literary realism and one of the most influential novels. British critic James Wood writes in How Fiction Works: "Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible".

"Madame Bovary" takes place in provincial northern France. The story begins and ends with Charles Bovary, a stolid, kindhearted man without much ability or ambition. As the novel opens, Charles is a shy, oddly dressed teenager arriving at a new school amidst the ridicule of his new classmates. Later, Charles struggles his way to a second-rate medical degree and becomes an officier de santé in the Public Health Service. His mother chooses a wife for him, an unpleasant but supposedly rich widow named Heloise Dubuc, and Charles sets out to build a practice in a small village. One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owner's broken leg, and meets his client's daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, daintily dressed young woman who has received a "good education" in a convent and who has a latent but powerful yearning for luxury and romance imbibed from the popular novels she has read. Charles is immediately attracted to her, and begins checking on his patient far more often than necessary until Heloise's jealousy puts a stop to the visits. When Heloise dies, Charles waits a decent interval, then begins courting Emma in earnest. Her father gives his consent, and Emma and Charles are married. At this point, the novel begins to focus on Emma. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy, and after he and Emma attend a ball given by the Marquis d'Andervilliers, Emma grows disillusioned with married life and becomes dull and listless. Charles consequently decides that his wife needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes into a larger, but equally stultifying market town, Yonville. Here, Emma gives birth to a daughter, Berthe. However, motherhood, too, proves to be a disappointment to Emma. She then becomes infatuated with one of the first intelligent young men she meets in Yonville, a young law student, Léon Dupuis, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life", and who returns her admiration. Out of fear and shame, however, Emma hides her love for Léon and her contempt for Charles, and plays the role of the devoted wife and mother, all the while consoling herself with thoughts and self-congratulations of her own virtue. Finally, in despair of ever gaining Emma's affection, Léon departs to study in Paris. One day, a rich and rakish landowner, Rodolphe Boulanger, brings a servant to the doctor's office to be bled. He casts his eye over Emma and decides she is ripe for seduction. To this end, he invites Emma to go riding with him for the sake of her health; solicitous only for Emma's health, Charles embraces the plan, suspecting nothing. A four-year affair follows. Swept away by romantic fantasy, Emma risks compromising herself with indiscreet letters and visits to her lover, and finally insists on making a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, has no intention of carrying Emma off, and ends the relationship on the eve of the great elopement with an apologetic, self-excusing letter delivered at the bottom of a basket of apricots. The shock is so great that Emma falls deathly ill, and briefly turns to religion. When Emma is nearly fully recovered, she and Charles attend the opera, on Charles' insistence, in nearby Rouen. The opera reawakens Emma's passions, and she re-encounters Léon who, now educated and working in Rouen, is also attending the opera. They begin an affair. While Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons, Emma travels to the city each week to meet Léon, always in the same room of the same hotel, which the two come to view as their "home." The love affair is, at first, ecstatic; then, by degrees, Léon grows bored with Emma's emotional excesses, and Emma grows ambivalent about Léon, who becoming himself more like the mistress in the relationship, compares poorly, at least implicitly, to the rakish and domineering Rodolphe. Meanwhile, Emma, given over to vanity, purchases increasing amounts of luxury items on credit from the crafty merchant, Lheureux, who arranges for her to obtain power of attorney over Charles’ estate, and crushing levels of debts mount quickly. When Lheureux calls in Bovary's debt, Emma pleads for money from several people, including Léon and Rodolphe, only to be turned down. In despair, she swallows arsenic and dies an agonizing death; even the romance of suicide fails her. Charles, heartbroken, abandons himself to grief, preserves Emma's room as if it is a shrine, and in an attempt to keep her memory alive, adopts several of her attitudes and tastes. In his last months, he stops working and lives off the sale of his possessions. When he by chance discovers Rodolphe and Léon's love letters, he still tries to understand and forgive. Soon after, he becomes reclusive; what has not already been sold of his possessions is seized to pay off Lheureux, and he dies, leaving his young daughter Berthe to live with distant relatives and she is eventually sent to work at a cotton mill.

Madame Bovary is perhaps the first "modern" novel. It has always been the most popular of Flaubert's books, and the character of Emma Bovary, a beautiful young woman longing to escape from her dull husband and the constrictions of bourgeois life, is one of the most compelling figures in all literature. The story of her adulteries and financial ruin was so shocking to mid-nineteenth-century readers that the author was charged with "offenses against public morals and religion." Flaubert's style, with its elegant, sculpted sentences and passionately observed detail, is rendered here in the classic translation by Francis Steegmuller, who has written widely on Flaubert and is the editor and translator of his letters.

Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is one of the classic books of all time. Originally published by Gustave Flaubert in 1856, Madame Bovary gained popularity overnight. The popularity of Madame Bovary was buoyed by obscenity charges filed by public prosecutors. The trial for the obscenity charges was held in January of 1857; the result being acquittal in February. After the trial, Madame Bovary became a best seller in April of 1857. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert focuses on Emma Bovary who lives a high life and cheats on her husband to escape what she believes to be an empty life. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is indeed one of the few masterpieces ever written. Enjoy Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert today!