Madame Bovary
Illustrated Edition
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- $0.99
Publisher Description
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880) was a French writer who became known as one of the West’s best novelists during the 19th century. Known today for meticulously writing down to the finest detail in his search for “le mot juste,” or “the right word,” Flaubert was a perfectionist about his writing and would spend countless hours refining his work down to the word, writing some of the most pure romantic, realist, and stylistic literature in history.
Flaubert’s first attempt at writing was laughed at by his friends. When he completed The Temptation of Saint Anthony in 1849, he read the novel to a few friends who promptly told him to toss his work in the fire. Undeterred, Flaubert spent the next year writing Madame Bovary, his crowning achievement. 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. The plot is simplistic, and some even describe it as archetypal, but the details and patterns woven into the work are what make the novel timeless.
Madame Bovary was serialized like many 19th century novels, and it was attacked for obscenity by public prosecutors when it was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between October 1, 1856 and December 15, 1856. The January 1857 trial only made the book more notorious. After the acquittal on February 7, 1857, Flaubert’s novel became a bestseller, and it has remained one of the standards of Realism.
This edition of Madame Bovary is specially formatted with a Table of Contents and images of scenes and characters.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Glenda Jackson hits the mark in this superb narration of Flaubert's classic novel. Her reading perfectly captures the restlessness of Emma Bovary, a character perpetually dissatisfied with her solid, steady husband and bourgeois life in provincial 19th-century France. Emma's unrealistic dreams (she yearns for a perfect, romantic love that will sweep her away into perpetual bliss) lead her into one affair after another, and then to financial ruin and suicide. Jackson is especially outstanding in the scene which takes place the night before Emma plans to run off with her lover, Rudolf. To Rudolf, Emma is just one in a long series of conquests, and he gets cold feet at the thought of being permanently responsible for her welfare and that of her child. In a swoony, sighing voice full of noble suffering, Jackson reads his flowery letter of tears and regret, saying he loves her too much to ruin her life and her reputation. Then, without missing a beat, she switches to smug, cynical satisfaction, as Rudolf admires the letter and congratulates himself on his close escape.