Genre: Fiction/Classic
Page Count: 389
Charles Bovary, the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Bovary senior, is also the only doctor in a distant village. When one night, in emergency, he’s called for aid of an old farmer Rouault, upon reaching there, the young Charles falls in love with the farmer’s beautiful daughter Emma.
Her gorgeous looks bring back Charles, punctually, everyday to aid for Rouault, and upon witnessing his sincerity and his immediate effects of treatment, the old farmer offers him Emma’s hand for marriage. The innocent Emma happily looks forward to her new life with Charles, but much to her demise, she’s unaware of the unbearable emptiness that awaits her there.
As compared to the contemporary fiction, it was rare for classical fictions to feature a female protagonist, and to present the conditions of a life that a woman lives. Since Charles is but a very simple man with the busy life of being a doctor, Emma is therefore front and center throughout ‘Madame Bovary’.
Like the modern-age ladies, Emma’s passive and misplaced wishes for an almost ‘utopian life’ after marriage become source for the terrible consequences that she goes through in her later life. Seeking the promised love and happiness, which is unbearably absent from her life with the ‘uncool’ Charles, Emma instinctively falls for the charms of other young and attractive men.
But men being men, aren’t sensitive to her deep desires for connection and love, and rather use her for their own physical pleasures. Despite it all, Emma cannot dismiss the callings of her heart or find any sort of content with Charles, and after her first lover Leon leaves the town and her for Paris, the rich landowner, Rodolphe takes his place.
Quite evident that Rodolphe’s interest lies entirely in Emma’s irresistible beauty and the desires that such beauty would invoke in a man, Emma is nevertheless blind to it all and sees only the fulfillment of her long-awaited happiness with him.
Completely detached from her life, she even behaves un-motherly cold towards her little daughter Berthe, whom, at the time of her birth, she wished to be a boy for he would then have the freedom to enjoy life the way she never was allowed to; and when her rendezvous become inflamed and consistent, she even propels Rodolphe to take her far away from her dreadful life.
Although such stories of women becoming utterly bored from there domestic lives and as a result going off to start a new life, are common to hear these days, to read one that was written in the 19th century is both rebellious and new. Flaubert was even taken to court for the obscenity of ‘Madame Bovary’, featuring a married woman as a philanderer.
However, regardless of the controversy, Flaubert may have successfully given a voice to many women who passively go through such passionless domestic lives, believing it as their fate. And with the tragic ending of the novel, where Emma, witnessing the betrayal of her lovers and finding herself under huge debts, commits suicide, Flaubert once again narrates a very important fact, that the glittering promises of adultery aren’t always gold and only lead to destruction from all sides.
As Durant writes in ‘Fallen Leaves’ that ‘we soon will find dullness in adultery and shall once again return to our domestic lives and cultivate our own gardens’.
Flaubert’s brilliant novel isn’t as black and white as my review of it, but much richer and nuanced. His prose is, hands down, one of the most beautiful that I’ve ever read, and his story is beautifully balanced – the readers now hating Emma, now grieving for her, taking in all the aspects of human conditions in the array of its characters.
Finally, I don’t recall a novel that captured such a trueness of passions, emotions, and drama – it’s exhilarating, moving, and poignant.
I cherished this novel fulfillingly!
Ratings: 5/5 ***** November 17, 2020_