"Before she married, she thought she was in love; but the happiness that should have resulted from that love, somehow had not come. It seemed to her that she must have made a mistake, have misunderstood in some way or another. And Emma tried hard to discover what, precisely, it was in life that was denoted by the words 'joy, passion, intoxication', which had always looked so fine to her in books." ~ Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
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ReplyDeleteMadame Bovary (1856) first appeared in La Revue de Paris in serialized form. It's the story of Emma Bovary, a doctor's discontented wife, who longs to experience the passion, excitement, and luxury she has only read about in novels. She has affairs, racks up debt, and ultimately takes her own life with arsenic.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to this woman, all except the suicide.
Flaubert's thesis was that extramarital sex as it is suggested or described in many a novel is a fantasy far removed from seamy reality. People were scandalized by his book, which surprised him, as he thought he had written a very moral novel. Note that Emma had romantic notions even of her suicide, imagining that she would swoon away in an elegant death, but the actual experience was horrible and revolting.
ReplyDeleteVictorian ideas fascinated me. Lady Chatterley's Lover is another favorite of mine. So many women have great expectations of "falling in love" only to be sorely disappointed with reality.
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