Madame Bovary

The latest read in my PhD comps prep: Madame Bovary.

Many experts place French novelist Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) among the supreme masters of the realistic novel. Flaubert took five slow years to pen his masterpiece, Madame Bovary, and when it ran in a Paris journal in 1856, the author was prosecuted on moral grounds. (He won.) In the book he portrays the love affairs of a beautiful woman married to a dull doctor.

The plot is like a long version of Chopin’s The Awakening or the French version of Anna Karenina. The book demonstrates Flaubert's insight into how humans deceive themselves, presenting the ultimate despair that results from trying to maintain a marriage while fooling around.