Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

Flaubert shows technical perfection in his masterpiece Madame Bovary, yet this is achieved at the expense of any spontaneity or humour. The novel’s subject matter – the dangers of turning wild fantasies into reality – points towards complex moral questions, yet the text remains mute on Madame Bovary’s destructive self-indulgences.

It must be over twenty years since I first read Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). I remember being totally bowled over by the novel’s technical perfection and its brilliant plotting. The book was a compulsive page-turner, taking the reader on a jaw-dropping journey of human depravity. Re-reading the novel again recently, all of the above still pretty much holds, yet Flaubert’s masterpiece reads as a little contrived and lacking in spontaneity.

Everyone knows the story of how Flaubert agonised over every single word he wrote. The result (admittedly, we are reading the work in translation, and not the original French) is a prose that simply takes no chances. The great writers, like Dickens and Shakespeare, give themselves over to moments of inspiration and playfulness. Flaubert’s Madame Bovary exists in a vacuum of its own perfection. The novel is ostensibly a tragedy, yet its determinedly prosaic approach rips any pathos out of the story. As far as I can see, Flaubert had moments where he could have given a few comic touches, yet he remains committed to being unfunny.

What’s the take-away from Madame Bovary? It seems to be about the self-destructive and self-deluding nature of desire. One sensation begets another, until Madame Bovary is drowning in a sea of fantasy. Adultery and profligacy go hand in hand, until Madame Bovary accumulates so many debts that the she chooses suicide as her final release from life’s dull reality. Unchecked desire, Flaubert seems to be saying, inevitably leads to utter self-destruction.

Yet the novel doesn’t really have a moralising tone, and leaves the reader with a bad taste. Perhaps it’s Flaubert’s condescending tone and contempt for the middle classes that leaves such a creepy feeling. There’s a lot of hate lurking beneath the surface of Flaubert’s writing.

It’s indisputable that Madame Bovary is a classic, but one that lacks a heart and soul. Madame Bovary herself lacks the psychological complexity and nuances that the reader needs in order to understand the disastrous choices she makes in her life. Ultimately, she’s no more than a bored housewife who gets in over her head.

After finishing Madame Bovary for the second time, I don’t think I could bear to read it again.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert. Published by Penguin Classics.