Alors Pécuchet le tournant vers la Grande-Ourse, lui montra l'étoile polaire, puis Cassiopée dont la constellation forme un Y, Véga de la Lyre toute scintillante, et au bas de l'horizon, le rouge Aldebaran.

Ils ne furent pas plus heureux sur la communication qui existait entre une citerne de Falaise et le faubourg de Caen. Des canards qu'on y avait introduits reparurent à Vaucelles, en grognant: -
"Can can can" d'où est venu le nom de la ville.

 

Parfois, ils sentaient un frisson et comme le vent d'une idée; au moment de la saisir, elle avait disparu.

Le sujet s'accorde toujours avec le verbe, sauf les occasions où le sujet ne s'accorde pas.

Ils en conclurent que la syntaxe est une fantaisie et la grammaire une illusion.

En regardant brûler la chandelle, ils se demandaient si la lumière est dans l'objet ou dans notre œil. Puisque les étoiles peuvent avoir disparu quand leur éclat nous arrive, nous admirons, peut-être, des choses qui n'existent pas.

 

- "La vie est un passage, mais la mort est éternelle!"

Et Pécuchet survenant, ajouta que les animaux avaient aussi leurs droits, car ils ont une âme, comme nous, - si toutefois la nôtre existe?

Mais bientôt ils s'ennuyèrent, leur esprit ayant besoin d'un travail, leur existence d'un but!

Monstrously selfish woman damages everything of value in her life and everyone who loves her. I found it surprisingly modern and easy to read - I practically zoomed through it. The writing is delicious and the humor is wicked. I'm only sorry that it took me so long to get around to reading it. 

I expected to be bored silly, but have really been enjoying this story. The writing is much more... modern, I guess, than I expected it to be, although I am having to stop and check some unfamiliar words or references that are either specific to the setting (France) or the time (mid1800s). We're really just getting to the juicy parts, though. 

I understand why this book was so scandalous at the time it came out. It dared to voice the fears of many women at the time (I would go so far as to say the majority of poor and working class women). Emma, while not a likable character, was trapped by society's expectations, which to some extent makes her sympathetic.

She thought she wanted to be married based on what society dictated a gently bred girl should do. The reality of her married life made me think of a line from Thomas Hardy's [b:Far from the Madding Crowd|31463|Far from the Madding Crowd |Thomas Hardy|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388279695s/31463.jpg|914540], when Gabriel Oak initially tries to convince Bathsheba Everdene to marry him. He described what their married life would be like thusly: "And at home by the fire, whenever you look up, there I shall be—and whenever I look up there will be you." I remember reading that line and being horrified by the prospect. Sadly that was likely what the reality of married life was for the majority of women. Yes, Charles was a good, decent, hardworking, honorable man who adored Emma. But unless a woman is head over heels in love with her husband (and I imagine it helps if she's a little short on intelligence and imagination), such a life would be unbearable! Thank God society has changed.

And really, it all boils down to the fact that Emma just didn't want to be married. She wanted romance and passion. While her husband was very much in love with her, he was quite incapable of the sort of passion she craved. When someone else offered it, she was all too willing to allow herself to be seduced. Obviously, such behavior was totally unacceptable at the time. Even by today's standards, there are a myriad of unflattering appellations which would be used on a woman like that. Easy, slut and loose are just a few of the less offensive ones. Oops! Did I say society had changed? Obviously, not as much as we would think. Women are still judged more harshly than men.

I decided to pick up this book after a friend of mine saw a television adaptation of what he said was regarded as the most perfect novel ever written. Intrigued, I offered to read it with him and we both quickly acquired copies.

 

Now that I've finished it I question the appellation. It may be a subjective standard, but to me a perfect novel should have at least one sympathetic character, and Madame Bovary has none -- least of all the title character. I found Emma Bovary to be a self-centered person with unrealistic aspirations that brought her family to its doom. Perhaps because of the fact that I have a child of my own I felt that her treatment of her daughter Berthe to be especially unforgivable, and I felt nothing for pity for a fate inflicted upon her.

 

Yet while I contest the view of Madame Bovary as the "perfect" novel, it is undeniably a great one, well deserving of its place in the pantheon of great literature. The flaws which made the characters unsympathetic also made them multi-dimensionally human and fueled my momentum through the novel. I also found its depiction of life in nineteenth-century France incredibly rich and real (perhaps understandably so, given the extent to which Flaubert drew from his own experiences to infuse his work with realistic details). But what clinched it for me was Flaubert's description of the elements of Emma Bovary's downfall, as the author provides what might be the first literary depiction of a person brought down by the scourge of consumerism. It gave his novel a feeling not only of being modern, but even prescient, as it's a moral tale that has become ever more relevant since its first publication. So while the novel may not be perfect, its is nonetheless fully deserving its reputation as a great book.