Description

Castigated for offending against public decency, Madame Bovary has rarely failed to cause a storm. For Flaubert s contemporaries, the fascination came from the novelist s meticulous account of provincial manners. For the writer, subject matter was subordinate to his anguished quest for aesthetic perfection. For his twentieth-century successors the formal experiments that underpin Madame Bovary look forward to the innovations of contemporary fiction. Flaubert s protagonist in particular has never ceased to fascinate. Romantic heroine or middle-class neurotic, flawed wife and mother or passionate protestor against the conventions of bourgeois society, simultaneously the subject of Flaubert s admiration and the butt of his irony – Emma Bovary remains one of the most enigmatic of fictional creations. Flaubert s meticulous approach to the craft of fiction, his portrayal of contemporary reality, his representation of an unforgettable cast of characters…
Product Description:

Oh, why, dear God, did I marry him? Flaubert s heroine, Emma, is a bored provincial housewife who abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. Flaubert published published MADAME BOVARY in 1857. The book created a sensation when Flaubert was prosecuted for offending public morals and later acquitted.