MADAME BOVARY
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
“Madame Bovary” is a type of a novel very common in modern literature. It depicts the gradual steps that lead to degradation and ruin, and the fatal influence of a single vicious character upon everything around it.
M. Bovary, a young doctor of moderate attainments, but of earnest purposes, kindly disposition, and upright life, falls in love with the daughter of a wealthy peasant in the neighborhood, who has received at a convent an education above her station, whose mind is filled with romantic notions, and whose eyes are constantly dazzled by the glamour of the rank, wealth and splendor that are just beyond her reach. She becomes more and more dissatisfied with her surroundings and with her rather uninteresting husband, who on his part is entirely devoted to her and who sacrifices his most important interests merely to gratify her whims. She falls into one intrigue after another, becoming first the victim of a roué, and then the paramour of a young man much like herself. To gratify her fancies she involves her husband in financial ruin, and at last ends her worthless life by suicide. The death scene is powerfully narrated, and from a merely artistic point of view the novel is a highly finished production. It is said that such works teach an important lesson—the inevitable results of wrong doing; but in this case at least it may well be questioned whether the details presented in the author’s brilliant descriptions are not more likely to lead to the imitation rather than the avoidance of conduct whose present delights are most alluring, however disastrous may be their final consequences. In this tale we see the effect of sentimental and immoral novels upon the heroine herself, and it is hard to resist the conviction that it is largely by reading such works as “Madame Bovary” that Madame Bovarys are made.