Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners (Oxford World's Classics)

Enjoyed every single moment I've spent reading it. like the whole classic vibe and stuff...was really a pleasant experience.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. Granted, my expectations were very high since I read somewhere that this was supposed to be THE best work of literature (whatever that means). Style: Madamy Bovary is very well-written and easy to read, no overly long sentences or unnecessary stylistic devices when good old descriptive prose does the job just as well. What I didn't like about the style, though, is the constant change of perspective - we follow many people around in this book, basically every major character, and very often when the perspective changed I was left thinking that I had rather stayed with another character at the moment. Story: The book gave me two insights I keep thinking about. First: Reading and finishing it, I was, just like everyone else who read it (and, I guess, just like Flaubert intended), annoyed by Emma and her irrational, dreamy, escapist ways. Why couldn't she understand that her life wasn't so bad after all? Why couldn't she get herself to appreciate good people, first and foremost her loving husband, for what they were and the nice things they did for her instead of belittling them because the didn't (and couldn't possibly) resemble the people that inhabited her daydreams about wealth and love and passion and all that stuff she searched for so, so hard? As I kept reflecting on this, though, I had to face the facts: I, and probably many other readers like me, am very much like her. Often, I find myself comparing the people I know to the ideal but ultimately unrealistic persons I met in books, and end up preferring the latter ones. Who doesn't daydream about ideal lives, loves, marriages, jobs, etc.? Who doesn't use stories as an escape one in a while? Who doesn't dream about what could have been if....?And although I couldn't like Emma Bovary because she lives so much in her imagination and her daydreams, I also don't want to stop daydreaming myself, imagining perfect situations and lives. So who am I to judge her? The second point I want to make is that sometimes I wished Emma would just be content with the nice life and husband she had, that she would shut up and stop whining about the ridiculous "flaws" she saw in her husband (for example, wearing the wrong clothes) and care better for her daughter. In my opinion, the novel stirs the reader in the direction of blaming it all on Emma and just wanting her to accept her situation. But from today's point of view, another way to read it might be not to blame Emma, but the society she lives in. Emma can't get out of this marriage although she is so unhappy, because you married once and that was that and women in particular couldn't get out there. So, I guess what I want to say is that from a modern perspective, it might be possible to give poor Emma a break and for one turn to the real problem here: society at that time and the constraint it put on people. Constraints so tight and strong that people like Emma can't find a mode of living in it.