Madame Bovary : Novel Review

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Goodreads Summary: When Emma Rouault marries Charles Bovary she imagines she will pass into the life of luxury and passion that she reads about in sentimental novels and women's magazines. But Charles is a dull country doctor, and provincial life is very different from the romantic excitement for which she yearns. In her quest to realize her dreams she takes a lover, and begins a devastating spiral into deceit and despair.
I remember trying to read this book a few years ago and being completely and utterly bored the entire first chapter; so much so that I didn't even have the courage to pick up the book to finish it. However, this time around, the picked it up to due another book The Censorship Effect: Baudelaire, Flaubert, and the Formation of French Modernism by William Olmsted because I obviously could not read that book until completing Madame Bovary.
So what are my opinions of this novel? Wonderful. Hilarious. Passionate. Captivating.
The main character, Emma Rouault is such a complex character that I was often between wanting to yell and scream at her for her decisions or wanting to sit and chat with her for discussion. She is a woman with high desires, both with relationships and material possessions. Although the novel holds a clear theme of being grateful for what one has, it emphasizes how jumping from obsession to obsession is not only unhealthy but detrimental in the end.
The characters in the novel all have a particular personality and uniqueness, it keeps the reader intrigued on what they will do next. While I found Emma to be a god awful woman with the way she used men and was utterly wrapped up in material wants, she was an interesting woman to read about to say the least.
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