Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857)

Although it fits the time frame perfectly, in many ways Flaubert's Madame Bovary seems to challenge the prevailing ideas about Victorian womanhood.

Emma Bovary's character faces the same limitations that so many Victorian women struggled against (moving from caregiver and dutiful daughter, to the role of wife and mother), but she rebels against the disappointments.

Some have called her the antithesis of Victorianism and certainly Flaubert's contemporaries challenged the novel, laying charges of obscenity against it upon serialization (1856).

The first time that I tried to read this, I was about twenty; I set it aside after maybe 75 pages. I'd jotted down all the words that I didn't know, but I never bothered to look any of them up, and I never bothered to read any further. Maybe I was too young to fully appreciate the disappointments that eclipsed Emma Bovary's self, or maybe I was too much like Emma, caught up with individual words and what they mean.

"Before the wedding, she had believed herself in love. But not having obtained the happiness that should have resulted from that love, she now fancied that she must have been mistaken. and Emma wondered exactly what was meant in life by the words 'bliss', 'passion', 'ecstasy', which had looked so beautiful in books."

Sadness permeates the novel. And not just sadness, but despair.

"And all the time, deep within her, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a shipwrecked sailor she scanned her solitude with desperate eyes for the sight of a white sail far off on the misty horizon. She had no idea what that chance would be, what wind would waft it to her, where it would set her ashore, whether it was a launch or a three-decker, laden with anguish or filled to the portholes with happiness. But every morning when she woke she hoped to find it there. She listened to every sound, started out of bed, and was surprised when nothing came. Then at sunset, sadder every day, she longed for the morrow."

It's a bleak story, but there is the potential of some terrific conversations about characters' choices (and lack thereof) and the existences that Flaubert creates for them.

Although I hadn't read Madame Bovary when I read Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot some years ago, I've pulled this quotation from my notes; it seems to fit Emma Bovary perfectly, although Barnes' novel is about Flaubert in a more general way:

"It is not just the life that we know. It is not just the life that has been successfully hidden. It is not just the lies about the life, some of which cannot now be disbelieved. It is also the life that was not led."

Reading Madame Bovary, I am saddened by what we know of her life, dismayed by that in her life which was hidden, and disturbed by some of the lies (and the harsh judgements that I so often hear cast against her, often by those who have not read the novel), but most of all, I am intrigued by the life that she could not have led because she did not have an abundance of choices.

I've cross-posted about this novel in three parts on Buried In Print: One, Two, and Three.

Thanks for the hosting of this challenge; I've really enjoyed my reading throughout the year.