There’s one other thing about Emma’s suicide: she was expecting that her death from self-poisoning would be like the romance novel heroines; painless, and she would remain beautiful in death with everyone weeping for her. It was her final effort to have some element of romanticism in her life, even if it’s when she dies. Instead, she suffers horribly, dies about the most undignified death one can imagine, and ends up a hideous corpse. Right until the end, her idealistic fantasies just never could be.
I read MB about 2 years ago and was fascinated by how up-to-date it is. The book addresses so many things and has so many levels to explore. What particularly appealed to me was the hidden and at the same time obvious criticism of consumer society. One thing is clear: MB is a person focused on outside things. While she prays in the church and participates in the service, she is only focused on the outside: the valuable equipment and paintings, the rituals, etc. But she doesn't get the real core of faith. It is the same with the rest of her life. It is the outward appearance (clothes, public prestige, etc.) in which she seeks fulfillment. But this fulfillment is fleeting because it has no depth. The merchants who surround her know this, recognize it, and exploit it. Even when she almost has one foot in prison, the tailor, to whom she is heavily in debt, still talks her into buying something or at least tries to. What a picture of our times! The show must go on. But all that glitters is not gold, and anyone who concentrates on that will not be happy in the long run. At least, that is one of the lessons I have learned from Flaubert's wonderful book.
I completely agree and Flaubert did such an amazing job of capturing it all so well. Have you read any more Flaubert? I wonder what to read next from him. Thank you for sharing.
This!! specially the part " even when she almost has one foot in prison, the tailor, to whom she is heavily in debt, still talks her into buying something or at least tries to" as I binge consume and have obsession to buy new things constantly even when I know I'll be broke the first week in the month if I buy this or that , but somehow I convince myself to do it ! last year I inherited a million from a family member but I sadly consumed it on buying useless fancy stuff that I thought I had to get at the time and I regret it now , what you said really addressed my issue and called me out , thank you I even took a screen shot of your comment lol
Saw it in a second hand store and remembered that I loved it but not sure why. God, it was so good. Your insights about Instagram and the way it makes me feel and how nothing has changed since Emma was lounging around in a robe tied with a silk scarf and giving away boots every time they got dirty. I wish people didn't think the book was only about adultery, because it's so much more than that--happy for this review (and the commenters here) who really understand why I am Madame Bovary.
This was such a great novel. I laugh when I hear the movie being called a romance. I’m like oh nooooooo. I love it though. It’s been one of my top reads this year.
Wonderful discussion, thank you for sharing your thoughts! I'm reading it now as part of a course called "The delights and dangers of reading about love in the nineteenth century". I absolutely love this book; possibly more than anything I have read while studying for my degree at uni. The writing is immaculate, and the way Flaubert deals with such essential themes is genius and very relatable to our present day, as reality and imagination is part of our human condition. I do feel some sympathy for Emma; the dissapointment that comes with an over-active imagination is not unfamiliar. Charles broke my heart though; all his failed attempts at trying to gain her affection. The scene on one of the nights leading up to Emma's departure with Rodolphe is awesome. Charles takes in the sight of his sleeping wife and baby, and he is just so content with life. While he imagines his daughter growing up, becoming educated and getting married, Emma is dreaming of galloping horses, magneficent cities and her an Rodolphe in silk robes. Such a wonderful illustration of how apart they are in spirit while sharing the same bed.
Over the years I've probably read Madame Bovary at least ten times - I absolutely love it, on every level. This was an excellent analysis, particularly on a psychological level. The use of language in the book is akin to music and is probably the primary reason I keep returning to it. My favorite English translation (I think I've read most of them) is a fairly recent one by Adam Thorpe. He is a poet himself and this probably contributes to his grasp of the aesthetic aspects of Flaubert's writing - its poetry. Also, as opposed to Lydia Davis, who seems to have conflicted feelings about the novel, Thorpe truly loves it as a work of art and I think has a deeper grasp of what its all about. For him it wasn't just a gig - he really dug deeply into researching the novel and Flaubert's process.
Hi, I just found your channel and I thought this was a great review. Madame Bovary has been one of my favorite books this year. To answer your question, I do sympathize with her because although she is suffering from her own exorbitant expectations of reality, she isn't self-aware enough to see its impact and I definitely see myself, a fellow romanticist, reflected in her character. I also love how you tied this into modern times with social media. People post the highlights of their life, and scrolling through a feed isn't an accurate depiction of reality and has eminently impacted our view of life. The monotony of life is an inherent part of life, and it's important to keep perspective so we don't continue to foster a mindset of a life where exciting, romantic, erotic things happening are the norm of every day life. I'll try to keep this in mind too :)
Thank you for your very thoughtful (and unapologetic) commentary on "Madame Bovary"--a personal favorite of mine as well! I agree with you about empathy for Emma, as I found her to be captive to the disconnect with herself. Not so unlike many young individuals today who get a lot of misinformation from social media about what it means to live a life of passion these days. Ironically suicide is harrowingly high these days among youth from the same disillusionment Emma Bovary suffered in a novel written in the 19th century! Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" was eerily ahead of its time.
I just finished reading Madame Bovary today, en francais. I really enjoyed it. I thought Flaubert describes many of the characters in a satirical, sometimes grotesque manner. I found these bits rather funny. I loved your video. 15:20-15:40-BRILLIANT !
I've red Madame Bovary years ago in high school and even though I barely remember the plot, I remember it stuck with me as a great book which I need to re-read again once I am more adult. Listening to your absolutely great analysis made me realize the time to reread it is finally here. PS: I found your channel through recommendation on reddit and I am so glad I did. You immediately have a new subscriber.
Hello and welcome to my channel. I would imagine you would see this novel in a very different light than you did while in high school. It was such a great read.
Thank you for this breakdown of Madame Bovary. I just today finished reading it and found it quite tragic, really quite heart breaking as life just collapsed in on its self.
This review was so well done! You have a new subscriber. I've read it twice.. once in my younger days, and again at 70. I never could feel much sympathy for her. There did not seem to be enough redeeming qualities to balance the self centeredness. She came off to me like an entitled little brat
😀😀🤣🥰You are the best analyst I have ever got to listen to in my entire life!! so realistic and the way you be so funny at the same time is just amazing and makes me look at this book with another eye!! I can listen to you for hours again and again....thank you!!!
I read Madame Bovary recently and it was better than any TV show/movie I've seen in the past year (not that I see much of either! lol). It's just incredible how people that lived over 100+ years ago bear such a resemblance to current humans. Yes, they didn't have cell phones or the Internet, but the h*es and f*ckbois still existed. An excellent read -- very deep, full of pathos, and entertaining. Thank you for the review.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize Emma's apparent indifference for her child is what made me less sympathetic to her. I'm sure that Flaubert could've said more about the mother-daughter relationship but probably avoided doing so to maintain the moral neutrality that he was going for.
MB remains, I’m afraid, one of the few novels I found to be unreadable. That aside, now that I have more Stella-reviews under my belt, I feel able to say how much I appreciate your willingness, always, to take on the 'so what' challenge-in your "myopia" assertions here, for example, where you move from text through meaning to value, such that most of us are myopic and shallow in our shunning of reality for contrived social media idealism. Right you are, (with Flaubert's nudge), and this 'value' is why literature matters. (That said, I’m not ready yet to end my quest for enchantment and the sublime. 🧐 Thanks for these fulsome reviews!
Hello!! Yes, never end your quest for enchantment and sublime. I myself am a creative person and so I shall (metaphorically speaking) die if I stop creating or daydreaming. Here comes the but, 😂, I think what a lot of people (MB included) struggle with is the long game or understanding how fleeting happiness is (if they even understand their own happiness at all). Everything becomes boring if you do it enough. So is the problem the “thing” or is the problem you/us? The answer is almost always you or us, at least in my opinion. And while I loved MB, nothing is for everyone. I currently just finished wrestling my way through a McCarthy novel (I usually love his work) and boy is this novel not for me (almost unreadable to me), but there are interesting things to discuss about it and I know others will enjoy what I didn’t. So I’m working an that review now. Thank you for watching!
I guess the heart of the matter (at least how I perceived it in MB) is to be mindful of what one is idealizing. There are pros and cons to everything. And if one sees few cons it is usually because one is blinded by idealism and is no longer objective.
Hi! Sorry it took a me while to come and check this video out. But I haven't forgot :) it's such a thorough analysis, thank you for all the work you put into it. Why do you think the book starts and ends with Charles rather than Emma? I feel there's a meaning to it but can't quite work it out.
Hello! Thanks for stopping by. I think there can be several ways to look at the story beginning and ending with Charles. My take on it is that it was to illustrate the consequences of all the women's actions around him as they all impacted his life and in the end the next generation. Emma was never concerned with the consequences, she was only ever living in the now, and that proved pretty dangerous.
Really great review! I haven't read Madame Bovary, but I really ought to. It definitely sounds like a book loaded with things to ponder. (And I'm loving the editing you're doing. Those ironic pauses to drink were a really great effect! 😆👌
I highly recommend Madame Bovary. It’s brilliant. Let me know if you decide to pick it up. And thank you for the feedback on the editing. I’m trying to strike a balance between informational and personable. Thanks for watching.
omg! you are histerical, "and it doesn't go much better for madame 2!" (charles second ms. bovary) Have lydia davis translation and i really liked the translation. I was glad you gave it an approval. i will begin soon.
A beautiful review, my next book. I did enjoy Withering heights and now Madam Bovary next. I actually started Looking into this book because it’s a little book for my book book I’m putting together. I thought 💭 what is this story. I’ve seen the film and yes I did sympathise with her but I really must read the book… but now which translation…
Great analysis but I'm surprised you didn't mention Homais, who Flaubert clearly despises, represents the banality and unscrupulousness of bourgeois rationalism, and whose success is the subject of the last line of the book.
The author's name is pronounced floh - BEAR. Otherwise, excellent talk. And yeah, I read Mme B. every ten years or so, and it's like it's getting more affecting every time. BTW Flaubert's L'éducation sentimentale is just as terrific.
“Chow-dah!!” 🤣 sorry, I couldn’t help myself. 😊 Thank you for watching and for your recommendation. It’s not surprising this novel gets better with each reading. It’s one of my favourites.
I'm sure this is just too obvious to point up, but the character who tempts Emma to see and spend beyond her means is M. L'Heureux Literally: "Mr. Happy". In that [translated] line from "Driegroschenoper". "When all chase after happiness, happiness comes in last."
Money shot: "I know how to love best. I am your servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!” He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. Emma was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars." Also note the connection between Madame Bovary and Don Quixote. Both have their minds warped by the reading of romances of love and chivalry, respectively. Quixote manages to move the world to share his view, somewhat, though dying through disillusion. Bovary dies because the world insists on being what it is.
When I wrote and filmed this review I had not read Don Quixote yet but I thought about mentioning how both books main characters were “influenced” by the Romantic novels they read. I ended up deleting that part of the video because I felt it wiser to read Don Quixote first before I begin making generalizations about it. But now I have read it and I was going to write a review of it but you have also given me a great idea of comparing the two protagonists to see how and why the stories went so differently for each of them. 🤔 The wheels are turning. 🤓
This is on my TBR mountain. I've only read Flaubert's Salammbo, which he wrote after MB. It's a kind of pulpy, toothsome, historical novel set in Carthage. Child sacrifice, carnage, sensuality. So, a wee bitteen bit different from MB I also have his Temptation Of St Anthony on my list. But I've heard very little about that one.
@TooLateToApologize, You remind me of Anne Bancroft in 84 Charing Cross Rd ! The books ,the glass of ? and even her body language . No,it is not meant as an insult,to the contrary. As an avid reader who devours books I wonder if I should take it easy 😂 All the Best from the UK 😊
How flattering. Thank you for the kind words. Now I need to watch that movie. While devouring books one should never take it easy. It's too late to apologize after all ;)
I have a question Emma was having affairs to isn't that consided selling your body but she would get gifts from them plus that time when she went to rodolphe to borrow money and tells her he loves her she says it back just because she wanted the money
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize The Earth and Germinal. The former is about rural France 1800s. The latter is about miners during the same period. Great novels.
I really liked your remarks! I only disagree with you in your brief admiration of Emma for not having recurred to prostitution, when she, in fact, also did this: “So she set out towards La Huchette, not seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.”
Hello! 👋 forgive me for it has been awhile since I’ve read this book, so please help jog my memory. Is this in reference to her traveling to see her former lover to ask to borrow money to pay her debts? I believe she was over him but was willing to use him to get some money and he asks her if she still loves him and she lies and says she does to get what she needs. One could definitely call that a form of prostitution but I’d still see that while she was willing to do what she had already done she was not willing to break new ground and offer herself to anyone. But perhaps I’m remembering it wrong, let me know. Emma’s “morals” or “ethics” are not commendable by any means though. lol! 😉 oh! What translation are you using?
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize I read it half in the Amazon Classics translation and half in the original French (I have the first on Kindle and the second in the Folio Classique version), the original also uses the word prostitution: Elle partit donc vers la Huchette, sans s’apercevoir qu’elle courait s’offrir à ce qui l’avait tantôt si fort exaspérée, ni se douter le moins du monde de cette prostitution. My interpretation of this is that is that Emma thought herself above the ugly man that was trying to 'buy' her, not above the actual act of using her body for money (just like she thought herself above her husband). She rarely thought about Rodolphe anymore and even hated him for snobbing her, but was quick to offer herself to him for a penny when she needed, even thought she didn't think of it as 'prostitution': ni se douter le moins du monde de cette prostitution. We're women, it's the value society always has given us (as propriety), and Emma herself pointed that one or two times during the book.
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize ok.. so i better buy the penguin deluxe edition with same Lydia davis translation, which is also not on acid free, but paperback and affordable. Thanks for your reply. Tc :)
"Others see only a repulsive old man, but Emma sees the ancien regime. Her vision is truer, for there once really was an ancien regime, and in it there were great lovers" from allan bloom, closing of the american mind. he comments on the same passage. Emma romanticizes what she saw in the marquis father in law scene. It is not real, but Flaubert is commenting on the romantic view, Bloom is noting the popularity and lure of romanticism. The harsh reality is what you correctly observe, Ema is blinded.
I am Indian woman with oriental values yet sympathized with Emma as she was a victim of her naivete and ambition . She did irritate at times but mostly made me feel sad. Your comments are based on indepth understanding of the novel and I gained a lot from them but I wonder why you did not give any importance to Emma 's daughter who rendered orphan and left to lead a life of utter misery . I find her the most pathetic character who deserves more sympathy than even madam bovary, her mother. It's a novel which keeps haunting for a long time .
The daughter is a poor soul who had the misfortune of having the parents she did. She is the one who will suffer through no fault of her own. It's terribly sad.
Hello. Flaubert got the idea for the story from reading about a woman in a newspaper who suffered a similar tragic fate. So the story is "based" on a true story. But over all the themes of this novel are very real and humanity hasn't changed.
Agree, if one has the time and money to get bored, then it boredom.comes. Most people in poor countries have no time to get bored and feel depressed, as they have to work, work, work.
That was an interesting review. I haven't yet read the book but just recently listened to its BBC adaptation and much liked it. Going through your reviews and loving it. Keep it up:)
Welcome to my channel! I haven't seen or heard any of the adaptations. I've seen the movie be classified by some as a romance, which does feel like severe false advertising. LOL!
@@ItsTooLatetoApologize I agree with you on the false advertising of this book as a romance. And you can give its BBC adaptation a chance. Would love to know your view on it.
