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I agree with much of what you say. Legolas Send a noteboard - 20/01/2011 07:57:57 PM

Reading Madame Bovary in French was, on balance, a good idea. There were more words that I did not recognize than in other French authors, primarily because Flaubert uses very vivid descriptions that are precise in their detail, and because he will at times enumerate various types of objects. He names the types of flowers and trees and carriages and almost never uses generic terms for them. In addition to the wealth of equestrian terms in particular, there were enough pieces of Normandy jargon (sometimes explained in the notes, sometimes not) that occasionally I was unable to find the word in the massive Oxford-Hachette Dictionary that I have.

Yeah, it was certainly a bit of a blow to my ego... I'm used to reading French with only the occasional word that I don't get, but in some of Flaubert's more descriptive sentences I barely recognized any of the nouns. His clothing descriptions are pretty bad in that regard too. And occasionally the footnotes gave some translation that I still didn't understand (haven't bothered looking anything up).

However, after the first sixty pages or so I had looked up all the words I needed and the novel flowed the way it should. It was then that I began to notice just how spiteful, cynical and mean-spirited Flaubert was being. I understand that he wrote about the country around Rouen, his home town, and that he was filled with contempt for the “provincials”. I can to a certain extent appreciate the elitism of his commentary generally. However, his contempt runs far deeper.

My experience was a bit different - I kept encountering unknown words all throughout the book, but I found it flowing well enough from the start, I didn't notice any difference in the beginning being harder or easier than the rest. And as for the mean-spiritedness, I only encountered it on occasion in the early parts of the novel, but it became more frequent later on, definitely.

There are, quite simply, no heroes in Madame Bovary. There are no “good” people. Charles is an awkward, disgusting man who is extremely stupid. He becomes corpulent and this fact makes his eyes look beady, he knows absolutely nothing of the world and he nearly kills the servant at the local inn when he is convinced to try, as an obscure local medical officer (not even a doctor), to “cure” clubfoot, when the medical experts of the time knew of no cure. The neighboring pharmacist, Homais, is a would-be intellectual who really is quite stupid and vulgar himself, but he tries to hide his stupidity behind a veneer of learning just thick enough to fool those around him. The merchant, Lhereux, is a duplicitous, avaricious manipulator who intentionally pushes Emma and her husband ever deeper into debt, pretending to be their friend, and that the debt is not going to be enforced against them without mitigation, until the moment when he is ready to strike and seize their assets. Emma’s lovers are an indifferent playboy (Rodolphe) and a weak, indecisive notarial student (Léon). Emma herself is a vapid woman who lives in dreams, and solely in dreams, unable to reconcile them with any set of realities. Whether she is in the ecstasies of religion (at the convent and then following Rodolphe`s abandonment of her), or living in a world of Tristan and Yseult, of sultans and odalisques, and the attendant adultery and star-crossed love, she ignores the gross realities around her, from the flies dying in the kitchen when Charles meets her to the disgusting banality of Rouen and the carriage-ride to and from Rouen. Even her suicide is envisioned by her as a beautiful, tragic gesture but becomes an agonizing, gross farce. The only person one can truly feel sorry for is little Berthe, who we are told in the last lines of the book, is forced to work in a cotton mill following the deaths of her parents.

Yes, I'd been feeling sorry for Berthe pretty much since she was born, but the ending was of an unexpected brutality. Pretty much the literary equivalent of "rocks fall, everybody dies", if you ask me. I don't know if I'd judge all of the characters as harshly as you do - Emma and Charles are certainly deeply flawed characters, but the book wouldn't be very good if you couldn't sympathize with them at all. And with Monsieur Homais, too, it's only at the very end that Flaubert pulls out all the stops and depicts him as a terrible person - prior to that, he was pompous, arrogant and often a fool (that one run-on sentence early on is hilarious), but not wholly unsympathetic, imho anyway.

It seems that Flaubert has a general contempt for humanity. Yes, he has a more sarcastic tone when talking about the simple people of Yonville. The abbé, Bournisien, is a petty man who ignores his parishioners and gets drunk when he can. The townspeople are crude. Poor Catherine Leroux (or rather, Catherine-Nicaise-Élisabeth Leroux) is described as having clothing so dirty that even after she’s just cleaned it she is embarrassed to go up to the stage at the agricultural fair to claim her prize. Moreover, Flaubert’s description of the Leroux scene implies that he derived a certain level of enjoyment from this level of human misery.

The scenes of Bournisien and Homais getting drunk and arguing during Emma's wake were really quite shocking.

There are some comic moments – the scene with Catherine Leroux is part of a larger scene where Emma and Rodolphe are flirting with one another, discussing the heavenly beauty of soulmates finding one another, all while the mayor is shouting out at the top of his lungs in the square below prizes for sheep and pigs and cows at the agricultural fair, interrupting their “elevated” discourse. When Emma and Léon begin their affair, their carriage rolls around Rouen aimlessly for hours on end because they couldn’t even wait to “get a room”, as they say.

As I told you, my favourite of the comic moments was the scene of the Swiss guard in the Rouen cathedral, mercilessly pursuing the tourists in his cathedral and hellbent on giving them the big tour. But the other two you name were good too. It's kind of odd, the way there are probably less than a dozen comic scenes like that spread across the book - most books would either contain more of them, or none at all.

When I read Le Rouge et Le Noir by Stendhal, I concluded that I would sum the entire book up with one word: le mépris (contempt). Stendhal used that word on almost every page and it seemed to be the driving force of Julien Sorel, the only constant in his changing desires and goals. However, I think that the word is as applicable, if not more applicable, to Madame Bovary, even though Flaubert scarcely mentions it (I think I saw it twice or three times in the book).

That might be because here it's Flaubert showing contempt for most of his characters, rather than the characters for each other? The sub-title, which was mentioned in that article by Julian Barnes as well iirc, "Moeurs de province" (Provincial customs), is a further indication of Flaubert's looking down on those provincial mentalities.

Flaubert’s antiheroes, however, are very real and believable, acting in ways that are more easily understood than the actions of Julien Sorel ever were. The book contains valid criticisms of various human failings and is very well-written. It is a scathing rebuke of a lot of “dreams” and illusions that people create, and not just Emma’s dreams and illusions (though those are obviously central to the story). It hits the reader like a cold shower and retains a forcefulness and truth, even 150 years after its publication. I’m glad I re-read it and glad that I read it in French.

It was the first read for me, but I enjoyed it too, despite the ending that still mystifies me. He certainly has valuable things to say about human nature and relationships, bleak as his view may be. Madame Bovary's reputation as a big classic and in some ways a ground-breaking work is not undeserved, I think.

Reply to message

/Discussion: Madame Bovary Tom - 20/01/2011 06:22:50 PM 8877 Views

Re: /Review: Madame Bovary Camilla - 20/01/2011 07:20:36 PM 2259 Views

Emma didn't try to transcend her world. She tried to escape it. And she failed. Miserably. Tom - 21/01/2011 06:25:36 AM 1694 Views

I agree with much of what you say. Legolas - 20/01/2011 07:57:57 PM 2565 Views

I'm glad to hear that the read wasn't easy for you, either. Tom - 21/01/2011 06:30:00 AM 1682 Views

Yeah, I think it's safe to say some of those words would give even native speakers pause. Legolas - 21/01/2011 06:37:02 PM 2271 Views

I'm certain it was intentional. Tom - 21/01/2011 07:21:45 PM 1650 Views

I want to read two more "serious" works before skipping over to Druon. Tom - 22/01/2011 06:03:09 PM 2035 Views

Ambitious.

Legolas - 22/01/2011 06:26:59 PM 1857 Views

Re: Ambitious.

Camilla - 25/01/2011 06:20:12 PM 2728 Views

I don't think I've even heard of Benjamin. Legolas - 25/01/2011 09:41:55 PM 1633 Views

Walter Benjamin Camilla - 25/01/2011 10:00:13 PM 2753 Views

I think he was the youngest son of Jacob. *NM* Tom - 26/01/2011 05:16:26 AM 874 Views

I'm halfway through the second part now Larry - 20/01/2011 11:58:01 PM 1876 Views

I'm interested to see what you think when you finish. Tom - 21/01/2011 06:31:58 AM 1658 Views

I hope to be done with it this evening Larry - 22/01/2011 05:09:23 PM 2115 Views

My thoughts Larry - 24/01/2011 06:48:13 AM 2455 Views

Never beats the reader across the head, eh?

So what do you make of the ending? Legolas - 24/01/2011 10:39:06 PM 2264 Views

The ending fits with the rest of the book, I believe Larry - 24/01/2011 11:04:02 PM 2342 Views

Hm. I think maybe it's because you've read the book before, as Tom admitted. Legolas - 25/01/2011 09:40:36 PM 2190 Views

Your comments are one of the reasons I've sworn off translations. Tom - 25/01/2011 05:50:33 PM 1650 Views

?OT: reading French literature Sinead - 19/02/2011 04:09:36 PM 1670 Views

You're new here, aren't you? Legolas - 19/02/2011 04:50:50 PM 2243 Views

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<quote id="186220">
<quote id="186194">Reading Madame Bovary in French was, on balance, a good idea. There were more words that I did not recognize than in other French authors, primarily because Flaubert uses very vivid descriptions that are precise in their detail, and because he will at times enumerate various types of objects. He names the types of flowers and trees and carriages and almost never uses generic terms for them. In addition to the wealth of equestrian terms in particular, there were enough pieces of Normandy jargon (sometimes explained in the notes, sometimes not) that occasionally I was unable to find the word in the massive Oxford-Hachette Dictionary that I have.</quote>
Yeah, it was certainly a bit of a blow to my ego... I'm used to reading French with only the occasional word that I don't get, but in some of Flaubert's more descriptive sentences I barely recognized any of the nouns. His clothing descriptions are pretty bad in that regard too. And occasionally the footnotes gave some translation that I still didn't understand (haven't bothered looking anything up). 
<quote id="186194">However, after the first sixty pages or so I had looked up all the words I needed and the novel flowed the way it should. It was then that I began to notice just how spiteful, cynical and mean-spirited Flaubert was being. I understand that he wrote about the country around Rouen, his home town, and that he was filled with contempt for the “provincials”. I can to a certain extent appreciate the elitism of his commentary generally. However, his contempt runs far deeper.</quote>
My experience was a bit different - I kept encountering unknown words all throughout the book, but I found it flowing well enough from the start, I didn't notice any difference in the beginning being harder or easier than the rest. And as for the mean-spiritedness, I only encountered it on occasion in the early parts of the novel, but it became more frequent later on, definitely. 
<quote id="186194">There are, quite simply, no heroes in Madame Bovary. There are no “good” people. Charles is an awkward, disgusting man who is extremely stupid. He becomes corpulent and this fact makes his eyes look beady, he knows absolutely nothing of the world and he nearly kills the servant at the local inn when he is convinced to try, as an obscure local medical officer (not even a doctor), to “cure” clubfoot, when the medical experts of the time knew of no cure. The neighboring pharmacist, Homais, is a would-be intellectual who really is quite stupid and vulgar himself, but he tries to hide his stupidity behind a veneer of learning just thick enough to fool those around him. The merchant, Lhereux, is a duplicitous, avaricious manipulator who intentionally pushes Emma and her husband ever deeper into debt, pretending to be their friend, and that the debt is not going to be enforced against them without mitigation, until the moment when he is ready to strike and seize their assets. Emma’s lovers are an indifferent playboy (Rodolphe) and a weak, indecisive notarial student (Léon). Emma herself is a vapid woman who lives in dreams, and solely in dreams, unable to reconcile them with any set of realities. Whether she is in the ecstasies of religion (at the convent and then following Rodolphe`s abandonment of her), or living in a world of Tristan and Yseult, of sultans and odalisques, and the attendant adultery and star-crossed love, she ignores the gross realities around her, from the flies dying in the kitchen when Charles meets her to the disgusting banality of Rouen and the carriage-ride to and from Rouen. Even her suicide is envisioned by her as a beautiful, tragic gesture but becomes an agonizing, gross farce. The only person one can truly feel sorry for is little Berthe, who we are told in the last lines of the book, is forced to work in a cotton mill following the deaths of her parents.</quote>
Yes, I'd been feeling sorry for Berthe pretty much since she was born, but the ending was of an unexpected brutality. Pretty much the literary equivalent of "rocks fall, everybody dies", if you ask me. I don't know if I'd judge all of the characters as harshly as you do - Emma and Charles are certainly deeply flawed characters, but the book wouldn't be very good if you couldn't sympathize with them at all. And with Monsieur Homais, too, it's only at the very end that Flaubert pulls out all the stops and depicts him as a terrible person - prior to that, he was pompous, arrogant and often a fool (that one run-on sentence early on is hilarious), but not wholly unsympathetic, imho anyway. 
<quote id="186194">It seems that Flaubert has a general contempt for humanity. Yes, he has a more sarcastic tone when talking about the simple people of Yonville. The abbé, Bournisien, is a petty man who ignores his parishioners and gets drunk when he can. The townspeople are crude. Poor Catherine Leroux (or rather, Catherine-Nicaise-Élisabeth Leroux) is described as having clothing so dirty that even after she’s just cleaned it she is embarrassed to go up to the stage at the agricultural fair to claim her prize. Moreover, Flaubert’s description of the Leroux scene implies that he derived a certain level of enjoyment from this level of human misery.</quote>
The scenes of Bournisien and Homais getting drunk and arguing during Emma's wake were really quite shocking. 
<quote id="186194">There are some comic moments – the scene with Catherine Leroux is part of a larger scene where Emma and Rodolphe are flirting with one another, discussing the heavenly beauty of soulmates finding one another, all while the mayor is shouting out at the top of his lungs in the square below prizes for sheep and pigs and cows at the agricultural fair, interrupting their “elevated” discourse. When Emma and Léon begin their affair, their carriage rolls around Rouen aimlessly for hours on end because they couldn’t even wait to “get a room”, as they say.</quote>
As I told you, my favourite of the comic moments was the scene of the Swiss guard in the Rouen cathedral, mercilessly pursuing the tourists in his cathedral and hellbent on giving them the big tour. But the other two you name were good too. It's kind of odd, the way there are probably less than a dozen comic scenes like that spread across the book - most books would either contain more of them, or none at all. 
<quote id="186194">When I read Le Rouge et Le Noir by Stendhal, I concluded that I would sum the entire book up with one word: le mépris (contempt). Stendhal used that word on almost every page and it seemed to be the driving force of Julien Sorel, the only constant in his changing desires and goals. However, I think that the word is as applicable, if not more applicable, to Madame Bovary, even though Flaubert scarcely mentions it (I think I saw it twice or three times in the book).</quote>
That might be because here it's Flaubert showing contempt for most of his characters, rather than the characters for each other? The sub-title, which was mentioned in that article by Julian Barnes as well iirc, "Moeurs de province" (Provincial customs), is a further indication of Flaubert's looking down on those provincial mentalities. 
<quote id="186194">Flaubert’s antiheroes, however, are very real and believable, acting in ways that are more easily understood than the actions of Julien Sorel ever were. The book contains valid criticisms of various human failings and is very well-written. It is a scathing rebuke of a lot of “dreams” and illusions that people create, and not just Emma’s dreams and illusions (though those are obviously central to the story). It hits the reader like a cold shower and retains a forcefulness and truth, even 150 years after its publication. I’m glad I re-read it and glad that I read it in French.</quote>
It was the first read for me, but I enjoyed it too, despite the ending that still mystifies me. He certainly has valuable things to say about human nature and relationships, bleak as his view may be. Madame Bovary's reputation as a big classic and in some ways a ground-breaking work is not undeserved, I think. 
</quote>

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