Madame Bovary (Collins Classics)

Gustave Flaubert

May 2012 · Sold by HarperCollins UK

About this ebook

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

‘...for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.’

Married to Charles, a provincial doctor, Emma Bovary yearns for a more glamorous life. Disenchanted with her husband and seeking an escape from their dull marriage she is soon tempted into a brief romantic liaison with another man. Although short-lived, she remains desirous of passion and the finer things in life and embarks on another affair, destroying her reputation.

Considered scandalous at the time, Emma Bovary’s superficial and immoral behaviour shocked readers and caused moral outcry. Flaubert holds up to ridicule not only Madame Bovary herself, but the society that dares to judge her.

Ratings and reviews

Always loved this book. As i get older and more critical and cynical i am beginning to read it differently - with regard to social expectation, the role and rights of women - and the role of women in building these social conventions, the concept of motherhood, the result of sin, the torture of a life, any life, in which you find yourself facing seemingly impossible, mutually exclusive, choices. Such a classic, applicable to today and our lives too. A really readable classic - like Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.

this is a tragedy. Madame Bovary is an unlikeable character and it was hard work to read. if you like tragic opera then this is for you but not for me

About the author

Born in the town of Rouen, in northern France, in 1821, Gustave Flaubert was sent to study law in Paris at the age of 18. After only three years, his career was interrupted and he retired to live with his widowed mother in their family home at Croisset, on the banks of the Seine River. Supported by a private income, he devoted himself to his writing. Flaubert traveled with writer Maxime du Camp from November 1849 to April 1851 to North Africa, Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Italy. When he returned he began Madame Bovary, which appeared first in the Revue in 1856 and in book form the next year. The realistic depiction of adultery was condemned as immoral and Flaubert was prosecuted, but escaped conviction. Other major works include Salammbo (1862), Sentimental Education (1869), and The Temptation of Saint Antony (1874). His long novel Bouvard et Pecuchet was unfinished at his death in 1880. After his death, Flaubert's fame and reputation grew steadily, strengthened by the publication of his unfinished novel in 1881 and the many volumes of his correspondence.