Madame Bovary (AmazonClassics Edition) by Gustave Flaubert (PDF)

Description

Emma Bovary, daughter of an uneducated farmer and wife of a dull doctor in northern France, harbors a passion for everything beyond her grasp—sophistication, romance, love, and deliverance from her banal provincial life. Motivated by the primal, idealized, and vain, she seeks adventure. And with each new endeavor, Emma sets for herself an inevitable and inescapable trap.Condemned as an affront to public morals, Madame Bovary’s obscenity trial made it notorious. Today, Emma stands as one of fiction’s most famous figures, and the novel itself, among the most pioneering and influential in world literature. AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.Revised edition: Previously published as Madame Bovary, this edition of Madame Bovary (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐GF’s style is liberal, descriptive, daring, and uncensored. His French style of writing was so obvious and the French culture has vividly inspired his style of writing.4**** : Beautifully written, solid story, flawless emotions, and a fair and honest description of French life back then.Dr. Amir GendySurgeon and Author of “BETTER” and “ The Future of Medicine and the Fate of Humanity”

⭐Madame Bovary is one of those books we’ve all heard about but never get around to reading.I recommend reading this book before watching any film production of this Flaubert accomplishment.The story starts out by introducing Charles Bovary, who eventually marries Emma, the principal character of the book. Charles is by even 19th century standards , a nondescript regular guy. He is the village doctor, but not a particularly good one. Charles has one saving grace: he loves and adores his wife, the beautiful but irresponsible Emma. She plays the outward part of a good wife but inwardly seethes with contempt at the ineptitude and bumbling simplicity of her husband. Emma reads too many romance novels which causes her to regret that her husband does not measure up to any of her book heroes. From her novels she is convinced that a “man surely , ought to know everything, ought to excel in a host of activities , ought to initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all its mysteries. But this man knew nothing, taught nothing, desired nothing.” (pp39, Chap.7).Emma has a string of affairs to assuage her personal unhappiness. She goes into debt in order to buy her lovers more and more expensive presents. In the meantime , she neglects her daughter and her husband. Marital life bores her to tears and the responsiblities of married life disgust her.The story ends in a way we do not want.Questions remain for the modern reader. It is as relevant today for women to ask themselves:1) If our marriages are unhappy , do we just bail ? Have lovers? Pretend there is no problem?2) Has society ceased to offer women support and encouragement for their very important roles as wives and mothers?Jackie Kennedy once said ,” I’ll be a wife and mother first, then First Lady.” She also said,”If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.”This book has a great introduction and analysis of the novel ,but I suggest reading it only after one has finished the book.The themes of Emma Bovary are timeless and thought-provoking. This is not light reading. But it’s well worth it to set aside some summer day for reading this unique portrayal of an unhappy wife in 19th century France and see its parallels in our modern world.

⭐This is definitely a classic and I am so glad I read it. I was amazed at how easy it was to relate to these characters. This was written over 150 years ago in France and its plot still relevant today, any where on the globe. It is very easy to relate to the feelings and struggles of the characters.I started off feeling sad for Emma. It seemed she was a young attractive women stuck with an older man, who expected so much from her. It was clear right away she regretful for a decision made out of desperation to begin the life she envisioned for herself in her head. Its easy to feel for sad for her at the beginning, taking over the household of a dead controlling wife. It turned out her dreams where totally unrealistic and that she was just flat out materialistic and greedy. Turns out her husband Charles was a great guy, that gave her way to much control over the money. Poor man had two horrible wife’s and died broke on a park bench. She had everything she needed and more to live perfectly happy. I went from feeling sad for her to feeling sad for him and despising her. If things had not fallen apart financially during her affair with Leon, I am sure Charles would of been the one ingesting the Arsenic.I felt no sympathy for her at the end, she got what she deserved. I do feel bad for Charles and Berthe. Charles died a pauper and poor Berthe will be a servant for the rest of her life, working to pay her aunts bills. All these lives ruined over self pity and greed. I have to say it sure makes a great novel.A definite must read, I found it a little bit of tough read in some spots due to some of the words (mostly French) but it was well worth it. If you like to read, read this novel

⭐It’s hard to understand how this edition was created. It’s as though someone with about three week’s knowledge of French decided to translate Madame Bovary into English. They’ve gone through the book and replaced the French words that they knew with the English translation. But that doesn’t explain why ‘Los Angeles’ appears so often throughout the text. I eventually worked out that the female form of the French definite article (‘la’) gets replaced with ‘los angeles’.I subsequently bought the Amazon edition (at no cost at all) which is perfectly fine. Here are a couple of the bizarre translations that I’ve found: ‘parents’ becomes ‘mom and dad’ and ‘fort’ becomes ‘fortress’. After one chapter I found the book unreadable and gave up.Don’t bother with this edition.

⭐I thought there must be something wrong with my Kindle but I’m told by someone who lives in the 21st century that this translation was possibly done by a machine. It certainly can’t have been done by anyone who speaks either English or French. What’s the point of selling rubbish like this? I have given it one star simply in order that I can warn off other prospective buyers. I shouldn’t have been so cheap. You get what you pay for, except not in this case.

⭐I thought reading this novel in French might help me with learning the French language, but I was sadly mistaken, as this particular book is full of errors, making it more of a hindrance than a help. As the book was originally written in French, I was surprised that this appears to have been translated very badly back into French from English. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??? Flaubert must be turning in his grave.

⭐This is a bad translation, clearly done by someone who is not a fluent English speaker.Although it is widely regarded as a great story, I found the central character to be so shallow and self-centred that I couldn’t engage in the story or find it in myself to care what happened to her.I don’t believe that even a good translation would have made me change my mind.

⭐if I have to come clean about my opinion about this book I would need to take things back to when I was a teenager, the first time I read this book – and please note that I only read it because everyone said it was a classic and I was curious, I did not like it at all, I thought Madame Bovary was a cold heartless woman who only wanted to make troubles and who married on the heat of the moment then blaming innocent people around her but now after 20 years I read it again after many failed attempts. This book is very poetical too in the description of nature and emotions, Madame Bovary is sometimes capricious and impulsive but always unhappy and unable to grasp the happiness that at times seems to be there for her. I am not going any further because I do not want to spoil things for someone who hasn’t read it or does not know the plot.at the time I wrote the draft for this review the only audio version was as far as I knew, the Whole story audio books unabridged 11 CDs version read by Davina Porter who does a great job, she does not overdo it and while keeping perfect balance in the voice she is not too cold or too impartial or too melancholy which is a great thing. in a few words you have the feeling that she is impartial but not too cold or detached, she reads at the right pointRecently Naxos released their own version of the book (11 CDs) and when I knew the reader was Juliet Stevenson I could not resist buying this version as well. for those who do not know Juliet Stevenson she is excellence and to me her voice has also an evocative power that transports me there especially if listened to at night in complete silence … magic

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