Madame Bovary
Table of Contents
FROM THE PAGES OF MADAME BOVARY
Title Page
Copyright Page
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
THE WORLD OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT AND MADAME BOVARY
Introduction
A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
Dedication
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
PART TWO
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PART THREE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ENDNOTES
INSPIRED BY MADAME BOVARY
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
FOR FURTHER READING
FROM THE PAGES OF
MADAME BOVARY
Emma seated in an armchair (they were putting her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she were to die. (page 34)
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books. (page 35)
In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused—the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women. (page 51)
Léon was weary of loving without any result; moreover, he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it.
(page 112)
She had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband was odious, her life frightful. (page 173)
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.
(page 177)
She had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. (page 180)
She appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a headless serpent covered with luminous scales. (page 183)
Every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet. (page 268)
Emma found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.
(page 269)
There is always after the death of any one a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it. (page 301)
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Madame Bovary was initially serialized in French in Revue between October and December 1856. Eleanor Marx Aveling’s English translation was first published in 1886.
Published in 2005 by Barnes & Noble Classics with new Introduction, A Note on the Translation, Notes, Biography, Chronology, Inspired By, Comments & Questions, and For Further Reading.
Introduction, Notes, A Note on the Translation, and For Further Reading
Copyright © 2005 by Chris Kraus.
Note on Gustave Flaubert, The World of Gustave Flaubert and
Madame Bovary, Inspired by Madame Bovary, and Comments & Questions
Copyright © 2005 by Barnes & Noble, Inc.
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Madame Bovary
ISBN-13: 978-1-59308-052-5 ISBN-10: 1-59308-052-2
eISBN : 978-1-411-43259-8
LC Control Number 2004102195
Produced and published in conjunction with:
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GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Gustave Flaubert was born in 1821 in Rouen, France. His father, a respected surgeon, raised his family in quarters near the hospital where he worked. Young Gustave would sometimes observe his father’s procedures, including autopsies. The clinical, almost detached detail with which Flaubert depicted Emma Bovary inspired a famous cartoon recalling his childhood experience: Emma on the cadaver’s block, being dismembered by the surgeon’s son.
But Gustave was also a deeply romantic young man, and he developed an early and permanent disdain for the life of the French bourgeoisie. Its banalities and exigencies trapped him for a time, as he was encouraged to study law, like many a respectable bourgeois son. However, in 1844 his schooling in Paris came to an abrupt halt when he had a series of health problems resulting in seizures and a coma. These attacks, now thought to be symptoms of epilepsy, required Flaubert to leave school and return to the provinces. Established on his estate in Croisset, he dedicated himself to his true passion—literature.
Flaubert’s convalescence was soon disrupted. His father died in January 1846, and his beloved sister, Caroline, who had recently given birth, died six weeks later. In his mid-twenties, Flaubert became head of a household that now included his mother and his sister’s daughter. Although the three lived a placid country life together for many years, Flaubert often visited Paris, where he fell in love with Louise Colet, cultivated a friendship with writer and photographer Maxime du Camp, and witnessed the Revolution of 1848. He worked for many years on a novel, The Temptation of Saint Anthony (finally published in 1874), that in its early drafts was criticized by his friends for being overly romantic.
Upon returning in 1851 from a tour of the Near East, he began a novel in which he experimented with a new narrative style. Working tirelessly for almost five years, taking great care over each sentence, Flaubert composed his masterpiece, Madame Bovary, the story of a disenchanted provincial wife. When it was published (in installments in 1856, in book form in 1857) Madame Bovary caused a sensation; its frank depiction of adultery landed Flaubert in the courts on charges of moral indecency. Exonerated, the author became a respected frequenter of the Parisian salons, was awarded the French Legion of Honor, and formed friendships with George Sand, Emile Zola, and Guy de Maupassant.
Although he continued to visit Paris frequently, Flaubert lived for most of the year in Croisset, where he wrote and revised his works, and amassed an astonishing body of correspondence. He is also remembered for his novels Salammbô (1862) and A Sentimental Education (1869) and for the collection Three Stories (1877).
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