Perhaps the first point to make about Madame Bovary is that, even though it is rightly hailed as a realist masterpiece, puncturing the idealism of the romantic fiction of the earlier part of the 19th century, it can be read and enjoyed on many levels and in different ways. As it’s clearly impossible in just a few minutes to capture all the elements of this great novel’s complexity, I am going to dwell instead on just a few examples that show its richness. Today, I am going to suggest that now is the time to finally take the book down from your shelves or order it from your favorite bookstore. I suspect that Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel Madame Bovary is one of those books at the top of many people’s “To-Read-One-Day” lists. Note to readers: You may choose to read this analysis of Gustave Flaubert ‘s Madame Bovary here or listen to it on the audio file at the end of the article. Then, without missing a beat, she switches to smug, cynical satisfaction, as Rudolf admires the letter and congratulates himself on his close escape.Rodolphe (Christophe Malavoy) and Emma (Isabelle Huppert) at the agricultural show in Claude Chabrol’s 1991 film of Madame Bovary. In a swoony, sighing voice full of noble suffering, Jackson reads his flowery letter of tears and regret, saying he loves her too much to ruin her life and her reputation. To Rudolf, Emma is just one in a long series of conquests, and he gets cold feet at the thought of being permanently responsible for her welfare and that of her child. Jackson is especially outstanding in the scene which takes place the night before Emma plans to run off with her lover, Rudolf. Emma's unrealistic dreams (she yearns for a perfect, romantic love that will sweep her away into perpetual bliss) lead her into one affair after another, and then to financial ruin and suicide. Her reading perfectly captures the restlessness of Emma Bovary, a character perpetually dissatisfied with her solid, steady husband and bourgeois life in provincial 19th-century France. Glenda Jackson hits the mark in this superb narration of Flaubert's classic novel.
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