Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

This is a title I would think most people have heard of, and associate it with adulterous sexuality and scandal.  Fair enough, that happens, but don’t go looking for any salacious lurid description.  Here’s the juiciest line in the book: ”She tipped back her head, her white throat swelled with a sigh; and weakened, bathed in tears, hiding her face, with a long tremor she gave herself up to him.”  It’s a long way from fifty shades.  

So what’s the big deal?  First published in France in 1856, it appeared in six weekly installments in the magazine La Revue de Paris.  It caused quite a stir.  Certainly adultery was nothing new.  I’ve read in reviews that the scandalous aspect of the story was that it failed to present Mme Bovary in a harsh light, one that would judge her immoral, evil, deserving of scorn.  Instead it largely presented all the characters without judgment, which apparently deviated from the norm and the expectation of writings of the time.  By contrast Julien, of Stendhal’s novel around the same time, The Red and the Black, is arrested, tried, convicted, and executed, a result that is presented as just deserts for his immoral behavior.  In the year following the magazine publication of Madame Bovary, Flaubert and the editors of La Revue were tried for offenses against public morality and religion; they were acquitted, and the story was subsequently published in book form. Doubtless the trial did much to boost sales of the book.

On the title page, the subtitle “Provincial Ways” appears.  Most of the story takes place in a small town, with portions in Rouen, a modest sized city.  Characters include a pharmacist, an innkeeper, a curé (priest), a law clerk, an idle rich dandy, and Madame’s husband, Dr. Charles Bovary.  Flaubert lays out in detail the social norms, dreams, expectations, and fears of such plain people of the time.  Emotions and dreams of glory are pretty over the top for me.  While in a convent in her youth, being read passages from “The Genius of Christianity, “How she listened, the first few times, to those sonorous lamentations of romantic melancholy, re-echoing through the earth and eternity!”  Sheesh.  I was reminded of an incident in my youth, on a beach when a woman was freaking out because my wet dog had shaken on her, and my Uncle Jim, always the one with a ready remark, said, “Great Scott madam! You are distraught!”  There’s a lot of distraught in this book.

An interesting side story is an ongoing argument between the pharmacist and the curé. The pharmacist is a firm believer in science, obviously at odds with the faithful curé.  They debate, argue, and insult each other, though at their last encounter, the curé pats him on the shoulder, saying, “We’ll end up friends yet, one day!”  Interesting that despite 150 years of scientific progress, this debate remains much the same.

I’m glad to have read the book, just so I understand references to Madame Bovary, but I would only recommend it to readers intent on the classics.