The Novel “Madame Bovary”; A 160-year Marvel by Gustave Flaubert

Just finished my first-time read of the novel “Madame Bovary” by Gustave Flaubert (the Marx-Aveling translation). Wow! Flaubert highlights what I believe is one of the most important universal questions we all repeatedly need to ask ourselves. For example, the question of the vastness and richness of life, and the potential experience and response to our lives well beyond merely: “Good little Daddy gets up and makes breakfast; “Good little Daddy goes to work”; “Good little Daddy comes home and reads the evening paper, and is a great family man”; repeat, repeat, repeat, etc.

Below is a related excerpt from The New Yorker magazine (11.5.17) from a Professor Roxana Robinson, on teaching Madame Bovary to her students each year at Hunter College:

“At the start, Flaubert encourages us to judge her [Madame Emma Bovary]. But by the end he asks us to consider what it means to sacrifice everything for a dream. He asks us to consider human dreams and their worth. He asks who among us are heroes. He asks us to consider the human body, which is such an intimate partner in our lives. How Emma’s body, so strong and vigorous in her pursuit of love, finally compels a dreadful reckoning over which she has no control.”