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    Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary
    Madame Bovary
    Audiobook14 hours

    Madame Bovary

    Written by Gustave Flaubert

    Narrated by Juliet Stevenson

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    In Madame Bovary, one of the great novels of nineteenth-century France, Flaubert draws a deeply-felt but sympathetic portrait of a woman who, having married a country doctor and found herself unhappy with a rural, genteel existence, longs for love and excitement. Her aspirations and her desires lead her into a tragic downward spiral.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNaxos Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 30, 2014
    ISBN9781843798484
    Author

    Gustave Flaubert

    Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821. He initially studied to become a lawyer, but gave it up after a bout of ill-health, and devoted himself to writing. After travelling extensively, and working on many unpublished projects, he completed Madame Bovary in 1856. This was published to great scandal and acclaim, and Flaubert became a celebrated literary figure. His reputation was cemented with Salammbô (1862) and Sentimental Education (1869). He died in 1880, probably of a stroke, leaving his last work, Bouvard et Pécuchet, unfinished.

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    Reviews for Madame Bovary

    4/5

    4,955 ratings155 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A true classic. Everyone should read this once. Romantic yet a thriller. Authors today just don't write with this much depth to their characters. (quite racey, as well!)
    • 5/5
      When I was first reading Madame Bovary, I absolutely hated it. I don't mean that it filled me with feelings of disgust or anything like that; I just didn't care about anything that was happening at all. It was tedious and 'bleah,' and I was mostly reading it so that when I reached the end I could say that I'd done it. Also, I suspect that the translation that I read is not the best.But then, at exactly half-way through the book, things started happening and I actually took an interest in them. The first half took me several months of occasionally picking up the book to get through, a few pages at a time. I blazed through the second half of the book in a couple days.Without any detailed spoilers, I will describe it thus: there is a complete lack of sympathy but plenty of misbehavior, dissolution, ruination, desperation, woe, and lingering death followed by more ruination. I am apparently some sort of terrible person, because I enjoyed the h**l out of it. “More, more! Feed me your delicious despair! Omnomnomnomnom!” I'm glad that this edition had an afterward instead of a forward: introductions to classic books have a tendency to ruin the story for you if you don't already know it. (I didn't.)
    • 3/5
      Madame Bovary was a slog and a bore. It is the ageless, timeless story of a woman who is seeking fulfillment in "love." She has romanticized love and will never be happy. Emma tries multiple affairs and spending large amounts of money to make her happy, but no cigar. This was scandalous when it came out in 1856 but would be mild today. Since the story line was blase I looked for great prose; but found little. 384 pages 2 1/2 stars
    • 3/5
      Language was not as absorbing as I'd heard to expect from Flaubert. Try another translation.
    • 3/5
      This was a great narration of a really boring book
    • 4/5
      Finally got to this one after being on my to-read list for some time. I enjoyed it much more than I expected and was struck by how modern Flaubert's narrative structure and prose was in the novel (helped no doubt by the skilled translation by Steegmuller). The narrative focus seamlessly shifts from character to character and the reader is left with no solid empathetic foundation under any of these unhappy characters. It's difficult to completely admire or condemn any of them- each exhibits qualities of greed, love, selfishness, determination, apathy, and hopeful yearning. In short, Falubert has provided a cast of truly human characters.
    • 3/5
      Slap begin, met oninteressante Charles als hoofdfiguur. Pas vaart na ontmoeting met Emma. Geleidelijke opbouw van het thema van de door romantische idee?n tot waanzin gedreven vrouw. Nogal vrijmoedige acties voor die tijd. Prachtige stijl: het midden houdend tussen klinisch-realisme en romantische lyriek. Bitter einde, puur cynisme. Zeer grote roman, vooral door beeldkracht, minder door verhaal en visie.
    • 2/5
      Yes, I know this book is a classic. But boy, was it a depressing book--not at all what I wanted to be reading while backpacking! I only ended up reading it because it was one of the few non-German books in the hostel book exchange, and I found that I almost had to force myself to plow onwards. Yes, it was well-written, and yes, Flaubert did a very good job of creating characters that I could not bring myself to care about at all.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this classic more than I thought I would and did not dislike Emma at all, more I felt sorry for her. This book was hard going at times and I sometimes got lost in the dialogue but it was worth persevering with to its bitter end.
    • 3/5
      Madame Bovary was a slog and a bore. It is the ageless, timeless story of a woman who is seeking fulfillment in "love." She has romanticized love and will never be happy. Emma tries multiple affairs and spending large amounts of money to make her happy, but no cigar. This was scandalous when it came out in 1856 but would be mild today. Since the story line was blase I looked for great prose; but found little. 384 pages 2 1/2 stars
    • 2/5
      Intriguing but also depressing. From the moment Emma nearly died of heartbreak it was a downhill slope to the book's inevitably ridiculous end. I am about to go in search of greater historical context so that I can appreciate its various aspects however my initial reaction is disappointment at the overtly hysterical portrayal of Emma, her implausible wailing and shuddering and sobbing and flying into fits of rage. The book does do well at exploring that vague disappointment that is integral to the process of falling in love; that kind of revulsion that can so often go hand in hand with intimacy. I think I will grow to like it more after I learn more about it.
    • 5/5
      A true classic. Everyone should read this once. Romantic yet a thriller. Authors today just don't write with this much depth to their characters. (quite racey, as well!)
    • 5/5
      I'll think I'll end up reading this one again. I really enjoyed the story and the found the progression of the plot to be realistic (if not always satisfying). I can't decide how I feel about Emma Bovary. I get the sense that I may get a different impression of this book if I read it in a more allegorical, more dispassionate frame of mind.
    • 5/5
      I liked the different phases of this book, the way an innocent girl is transformed, by the author, into someone to pity and dislike.

      Spoilers from here on.

      Emma begins as an innocent creature that falls in love with the first suitable man to make an offer. In this part of the book she is an innocent.

      She tries to love him when they are married but increasingly becomes aware of his faults and his unworthiness for her. In this part she becomes more real. We can relate to her without disliking her.

      She suffers severe depression and begins to exhibit manic behaviors. Still relatable and redeemable.

      She begins a flirtation with a nice man, a clerk. It frightens her and she pushes him away ( he leaves town). She misses him when he is gone. In this part we start to see temptation, but she is still redeemable.

      She begins a love affair with a richer wiser man who is used to having and getting rid of mistresses. He keeps her for a while and the relationship eventually loses its charm dissolving into something like that of a husband and wife. Still we can love our heroine. She is after all being used by this man. He puts her off at the end and she is alone again.

      She becomes depressed again and really begins to start running up bills. Being persuaded to buy nice things by a ruthless tradesman. She is weakened with depression and accepts the goods, always searching for happiness. This is where we start to really change out opinion of her. She has lost all control. We begin to lose hope of her redemption. She goes on to gain power of attorney for her husband and secretly sells a parcel of land to pay of some debts. The tradesman is devious and wrangles all of the money from her.

      She reattaches herself to the first man she flirted with. They become lovers. She has completely lost control at this stage. Her lover is simpler and desires cheaper accommodations and less expensive rendezvous, but she continually pays the additional expenses in order to have better things. This relationship also degrades into a familiar boring relationship of a husband and wife and both parties are ready for an end. Emma is out of control and at this part she becomes unlikeable. A stark contrast to the innocent girl we first met.

      Emma becomes desperate and appeals to all both her current lover and her previous lover in an effort to fulfill her debts. She stops short of allowing the holder of her debts from having sexual contact with her. It is funny because at this stage I would have liked her more if she had slept with him and found a way to use his list to have her debt cleared. This paving the way for redemption and a clean start. Both her relationships lost their lustre and became boring. Why couldn't she just accept that fate and find a way to be at peace with her marriage. Instead she declared she had standards and avoided the debt-holder.

      The final part of the book involves what happens after her death. Her husband is faced with her debts, her child ends up in a disgraceful condition and alone in the world because of the selfishness of Emma. She is not redeemable.

      I don't dislike her. I do pity her. She was unhappy. More than that she believed that she deserved better and constantly sought to upgrade her life through lovers and possessions. It didn't work and in doing so she destroyed the lives of those around her.
    • 3/5
      Perhaps I've been reading too much classic literature lately, but I didn't find Madame Bovary all that special -- it probably didn't help that I read another novel with an affair of a similar nature in it, Anna Karenina, just now. In terms of characters, I found it quite realistic: I could believe in all of the characters. Emma, unable to find any satisfaction, quickly getting bored; Charles, a little dense, boring, loving; all the more minor characters. The descriptions of their lives felt realistic, too. But I found it hard to get absorbed in the story: probably because, despite recognising her as a well-written, realistic character, I don't identify with Emma Bovary at all.
    • 4/5
      This classic tale—first published in 1857—about a dissatisfied woman is a sad story of betrayal and infidelity. When Dr. Charles Bovary marries Mademoiselle Emma Rouault, he's head-over-heels in love. However, his new bride is shallow, selfish, and restless. Her wantonness and ungrateful disregard for her comfortable life as a doctor's wife are her undoing. She scandalously enters into several affairs, shamelessly deceiving her husband and living a secret life well beyond her means. Eventually, this leads to financial ruin and, finally, to suicide. In 1857, this book was considered lurid and outrageous, and the author, Gustave Flaubert, was sued in court (but acquitted) for publishing this compelling work. By today's standards, the story is, unfortunately, relatively commonplace.
    • 5/5
      Somewhat heavy on the description, but always interesting. I especially liked the way Flaubert captured the disgust she had for her husband, and all the petty ways he annoyed her...and how she grew weary of adultery. My favorite line was about how adultery can be as mundane as marriage.
      I picked this up because of "Madame Bovary's Daughter" and was glad I did. To me, she was a sad figure, always searching for something just out of reach, and perhaps not even attainable. Interesting how human nature has not changed much since this was written.
    • 4/5
      SPOILERS AHEAD: This is the second translation I have ever read and, if memory serves me correctly, this translation is superior; it is gorgeously written. Is it a product of my having grown older since my first experience with this novel or is Emma objectively insufferable? Whether or not she would be diagnosed manic depressive, I leave to someone else to decide, but she strikes me as simultaneously vicious and imbecilic, in the way a small child is by nature of its inability to reason or control its passions. Charles, meanwhile, is Moliere's Pierrot -- the pitiable cuckold. Certainly, the novel is a masterpiece of realism, most strikingly in the vividly grotesque descriptions of Emma's protracted death. And while some readers cringe at the apparent moral ambiguity of the narrative voice, I find Flaubert (in this translation at least) even-handed in his treatment of the material: his articulation of Emma's worldview is demonstrably not a justification of it.
    • 4/5
      In 19th century France, a bored doctor’s wife has affairs with two men, and in the process, she runs up debts she can’t repay. I was as bored as Emma at some points in the book. I had little sympathy for her because her troubles were largely of her own making. I did feel sorry for her naïve husband, and really sorry for the daughter whom both parents largely neglected. Simon Vance’s outstanding narration made the story more interesting than I otherwise would have found it.
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book a lot more than I thought I would, but be warned this gets graphic and really depressing at the end. Don't read this book expecting something uplifting or to positive moral at the end either. This is literary realism. Bad stuff happens and then life moves on to the next event. Also, this review is going to have a spoiler to the ending, but figured either most people know the ending already or I thought it would be helpful to know the ending before you read the book expecting something different.

      Overall this is a story about an unhappy woman named Emma Bovary. She is married to a doctor and has a daughter. However, she wants more. She wants more money and she wants to travel to exotic places. She meets two other men in her life and has an affair with both of them. She finds her life boring, her husband is boring, and she doesn't seem to think anything of her daughter. As the the book comes to an end, she decided to take life in her own hands by drinking arsenic. Her husband is in grief throughout his life and the daughter is too young to know what happened.

      I really liked this book even though as I write this review it left me feeling a little depressed (that will change when I move on to something else though). For something written in 1856, I thought it was progressive. I've read my far share of Victoria books and a lot of them romanticize death and true love. This book stabs you in the heart. The death scene at the end gets graphic I thought. It might be the translator, but I have a feeling it was Flaubert. Not only does it go into deal how Madame Bovary starts vomiting blood from the arsenic, but you also witness her dying in her bed. Honestly, it feels like someone just actually died finishing the novel.

      I think this Madame Bovary is a relatable character and book in today's world too. Some people might think this book is sexist for killing off the female lead, but n reality it not sexist at all. Inn fact, I knew someone almost exactly like Madame Bovary. She was unhappy with her life, her husband cheated on her, she lost custody of her child, and instead of talking to people about her problems and getting help, she decided to take her life too. As depressing as this book makes people feel, I think it's important to know stuff like this happens more than we think. And like Madame Bovary's husband, I think the best thing anyone can do is just move on with their life and make the best of things.

      I think people should read this book because it's a classic and it makes you think about other people. However, I have warned you that this is nothing light, plot wise. Don't be fooled by the title being a woman's name, it's not a feminist book and nor is the main character likable. It's simply a book about life as if someone is looking out a street window.

      Note: I suggest getting the Lydia Davis translation. She seemed to make this book more readable for modern English speaking folks.
    • 4/5
      Gustave Flaubert famously declared "No lyricism, no digressions, personality of the author absent", when commenting to his friend and literary confidant Louis Bouilhet about his tone of writing Madame Bovary. That is the hallmark of Flaubert's style and the aim of his hard work writing slowly to make sure he had just the right words. He became his characters, entered into their lives and dreamt their dreams. This resulted in the masterpiece that has become a classic of French literature.The story is one of 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. And in the psychological details portrayed by the author, for example in chapter seven: "for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart." This, only one of many instances of the psychology of Madame Bovary and Flaubert's continuing search for le mot juste (the right word). Demonstrating the truth of Keats's dictum about truth and beauty, Flaubert achieves a mood of 'aesthetic mysticism' that has seldom been reached by others. The result is one that we as readers can enjoy and marvel at the power of his words.
    • 2/5
      Clearly the only way I can get myself to read one of the books in my continually growing to-be-read pile is for there to be a movie coming out. Get on it Hollywood, there are about 60 books I still need to get through.

      Disclaimers: I read a translation due to my French being nonexistent, but the original is supposed to be exquisite. I don't have to warn about spoilers in a review about something published in 1856, do I?

      Madame Bovary is one of those classics in which the elements that were once fresh and shocking are now cliched. Emma Bovary is unhappily married to a devoted but dull country doctor, Charles. Bored with her duties as a wife and mother, she fantasizes about a life full of romance and pleasure, similar to what she's read about in popular novels. Emma futilely chases these dreams by having love affairs and buying expensive items on credit. Both her lovers grow tired of her, and her debts bring about her husband's ruin. Emma swallows arsenic and dies an excruciating death.

      It's said that Gustave Flaubert does not judge Emma, and in fact that's partially why the book was banned and he landed in an obscenity trial. But I don't think I agree with that. Isn't making your character a silly, shallow woman and then having her downfall stem from being silly and shallow pretty judgy in of itself? I've read a lot of books about doomed women and unlike most of them, Emma has no redeeming features. In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy seemed to actually like his heroine. I did not not get that feeling in Madame Bovary.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this. I found it a rather quick read. Emma Bovary has a lot of dreams. She doesn't care for reality. She wants romance, passion, beautiful clothes and life. Her quest for the fantasy she thinks she deserves leads to disaster.
    • 5/5
      As relevant now as it was when I first read it 50 years ago. Poor silly Emma!
    • 4/5
      Flaubert’s Madame Bovary sits askew between fading religious conscience and exacerbating moral corruption. Initially deluded by the fairytale idea of marriage, together with the assumed social status that accompanies it, Emma Bovary soon learns of the reality made worse by her husband’s glaring flaws of extreme meekness and dullness. With this infuriating reality, Madame Bovary—imprisoned and choked—can’t make room for compromise and so she turns and looks for doors to leave. Once, she mourns having a daughter due to the financial and social restrictions of the fairer sex. On others, she creates the doors which lead to temporary respite and pleasures that doubly delude her for their potential promises. Adultery and extravagance delight in their volatility. And as debts and heartbreaks accumulate in this almost soap opera, Flaubert never forgets the suspense of being caught nor the complexity of his characters’ emotions. He surprises chapter by chapter. The desperation and motivation sharpen the narrative; the marriage is obscurely dysfunctional, the social status crumbles before it has a chance to raise itself. Yet no one is entirely blameworthy and villainous here. No secret can be hidden forever here. These are the cost of lies; their inevitable repercussions. Madame Bovary revolves around the multifaceted intentions of selfishness. The sadness that clings upon its edges falls down the stairwell of poisonous regrets. Both a religiously predisposed and lethally tragic classic.
    • 4/5
      Fair play, Flaubert - this holds up very well! Still thoughtful and funny after all these years, and that's ignoring how groundbreaking it was at the time. The novel (ho ho) approach has become so commonplace that it's actually hard to appreciate when reading it now. That being said, you can certainly appreciate this as a fine, fun novel in and of itself.
    • 4/5
      Juliet Stevenson is one of my favorite narrators, and she does not disappoint here in bringing this story to life. I loved the writing, and I wish I could find out who did the translation, but even in the PDF materials, that is not provided. The characters are not really likable, and yet one cannot help feeling sympathetic to them. Emma, the lady named in this famous title is a desperate housewife - she is bored and unhappy and unfulfilled. In her quest to find happiness, she covets the wrong things and is easily mislead. She and her husband Charles are too distracted by other things to truly pay attention to one another or to their mounting bills. This allows others to take advantage of them, and we can do nothing but watch as a clever web is woven around them by the manipulative merchant Lheureux and the pharmacist Homais, each acting separately and in their own interests. The author does an excellent job of slowly building the tension until the reader knows that disaster has to be just around the corner - I was amazed at how caught up in the story I got even though I did not particularly like Emma or Charles. I still wanted to know what happened and how it played out. It is hard to believe that this is a debut novel - my only quibble is that the ending feels slightly rushed.
    • 4/5
      OH Gustave, you sure do know how to turn a sentence. Your words are flowery and descriptive. Still that darn Emma could never enjoy the happiness and good life she had and always had to keep searching for that "story-like" romance. Life is not like a romance novel, sorry, Emma.

      The only thing I did not like about this book was the 5 second wrap up at the end. Couldn't Gustave just wrote another book from Charles' point of view and tell us the story of what happened to poor little Berthe? That I would've liked better than the 5 second wrap up that gave me no ending...
    • 4/5
      The kind of book that uses "spaded" as a transitive verb and it works. (How to judge classics in translation? The voice is so far from Davis' own work (as well as her Proust) that one assumes the translation is impeccable. What struck me most was how idiotic, provincial, and fixed the characters were regarded by the narrative voice. Still, pretty good for a first novel circa 1856. The structure is, of course, flawless. Worth it for the opening scene of poor Bovary in school.)
    • 3/5
      Written in 1857. Emma, a doctor's wife, is lonely and bored and has affairs with Rodolphe and Léon which are both ill-fated. In her disillusionment she has a taste of arsenic with the usual outcome. Okay, but showing it's age.