Who is Madame Bovary? Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary

The main character of the novel is Emma Bovary, the doctor's wife, living beyond her means and having extramarital affairs in the hope of getting rid of the emptiness and routine of provincial life. Although the plot of the novel is quite simple and even banal, the true value of the novel lies in the details and forms of presentation of the plot. Flaubert as a writer was known for his desire to bring each work to the ideal, always trying to find the right words.

The novel was published in the Parisian literary magazine " La Revue de Paris» from October 1 to December 15, 1856. After the publication of the novel, the author (as well as two other publishers of the novel) was accused of insulting morality and, together with the editor of the magazine, was brought to trial in January 1857. The scandalous fame of the work made it popular, and the acquittal of February 7, 1857 made it possible to publish the novel as a separate book that followed in the same year. It is now considered not only one of the key works of realism, but also one of the works that had the greatest influence on literature in general.

According to a 2007 poll of contemporary popular authors, Madame Bovary is one of the two greatest novels of all time (immediately after Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina). Turgenev at one time spoke of this novel as the best work "in the entire literary world."

Plot

Wedding of Emma and Charles.

Charles Bovary, after graduating from college, by the decision of his mother, begins to study medicine. However, he turns out to be not very smart, and only the natural diligence and help of his mother allows him to pass the exam and get a doctor's job in Toast, a provincial French town in Normandy. Through the efforts of his mother, he marries a local widow, an unattractive but wealthy woman who is already over forty. One day, on a call to a local farmer, Charles meets the farmer's daughter, Emma Rouault, a pretty girl to whom he becomes attracted.

After the death of his wife, Charles begins to communicate with Emma and after some time decides to ask for her hand. Her long-widowed father agrees and arranges a magnificent wedding. But when the young people begin to live together, Emma very quickly realizes that she does not love Charles. However, he loves her and is truly happy with her. She is weary of family life in a remote province and, hoping to change something, insists on moving to another city. However, this does not help, and even the birth of a child, a girl, does not change anything in her attitude to life.

However, in a new place, she meets a fan, Leon Dupuis, with whom she has a relationship, while platonic. But Leon dreams of life in the capital and after a while leaves for Paris. After some time, Emma meets Rodolphe Boulanger, a very wealthy man and a famous womanizer. He starts courting her and they become lovers. During this relationship, she begins to get into debt and spend money without her husband's permission. The relationship ends when she begins to dream and prepare to run away from her husband abroad with her lover and daughter. Rodolphe is not satisfied with this development of events and he breaks the connection, which Emma endures very hard.

She finally manages to move away from a depressed state only when she again meets Leon Dupuis, who has returned from the capital, who resumes his courtship. She tries to refuse him, but she can't. Emma and Leon first bond in the carriage they hired to tour Rouen. In the future, relations with a new lover force her to deceive her husband, weaving more and more lies into family life. But she gets entangled not only in lies, but also in debts made with the help of the owner of the shop, Mr. Leray. This turns out to be the worst. When the usurer no longer wants to wait and goes to court to seize the property of the spouses on account of the debt, Emma, ​​trying to find a way out, turns to her lover, to other acquaintances, even to Rodolphe, her former lover, but to no avail.

Desperate, she secretly from the pharmacist, Mr. Ome, takes arsenic in the pharmacy, which she immediately takes. She soon becomes ill. Neither her husband nor the invited famous doctor can do anything to help her, and soon Emma dies. After her death, Charles discovers the truth about the number of debts she has incurred, and then about the presence of relationships with other men. Shocked, he is unable to survive it and soon dies.

History of creation

The idea for the novel was presented to Flaubert in 1851. He had just read to his friends the first version of another of his works, The Temptation of St. Anthony, and was criticized by them. In this regard, one of the writer's friends, Maxime du Can, editor of La Revue de Paris, suggested that he get rid of the poetic and stilted style. To do this, du Can advised to choose a realistic and even everyday story related to events in the lives of ordinary people, contemporary French bourgeois Flaubert. The plot itself was suggested to the writer by another friend, Louis Bouillet (the novel is dedicated to him), who reminded Flaubert of the events associated with the Delamare family.

Eugene Delamare studied surgery under Flaubert's father, Achille Clefoas. Possessing no talents, he was able to take the place of a doctor only in a remote French province, where he married a widow, a woman older than him. After the death of his wife, he met a young girl named Delphine Couturier, who later became his second wife. The romantic nature of Delphine could not bear, however, the boredom of the provincial philistine life. She began to spend her husband's money on expensive outfits, and then cheat on him with numerous lovers. The husband was warned about the possible infidelity of his wife, but he did not believe it. At the age of 27, entangled in debt and losing attention from men, she committed suicide. After the death of Delphine, the truth about her debts and the details of her betrayals was revealed to her husband. He could not bear it and a year later he also died.

Flaubert was familiar with this story - his mother was in contact with the Delamare family. He seized on the idea of ​​a novel, studied the life of the prototype, and in the same year set to work, which, however, turned out to be excruciatingly difficult. Flaubert wrote the novel for almost five years, sometimes spending whole weeks and even months on individual episodes. This was written evidence of the writer himself. Thus, in January 1853, he wrote to Louise Colet:

I spent five days on one page...

In another letter, he actually complains:

I struggle with every offer, but it just doesn't add up. What a heavy oar is my pen!

Already in the process of work, Flaubert continued to collect material. He himself read the novels that Emma Bovary liked to read, studied the symptoms and effects of arsenic poisoning. It is widely known that he himself felt bad, describing the scene of the poisoning of the heroine. This is how he recalled it:

When I described the scene of the poisoning of Emma Bovary, I tasted the arsenic so clearly and felt so truly poisoned that I suffered two attacks of nausea, quite real, one after the other, and vomited the whole dinner out of my stomach.

In the course of the work, Flaubert repeatedly redid his work. The manuscript of the novel, currently held in the municipal library of Rouen, is 1,788 corrected and transcribed pages. The final version, stored there, contains only 487 pages.

Illustration from the French edition of the novel

The almost complete identity of the story of Delphine Delamare and the story of Emma Bovary described by Flaubert gave reason to believe that the book describes a real story. However, Flaubert categorically denied this, even arguing that Madame Bovary had no prototype. He once declared: "Madame Bovary is me!" Nevertheless, now on the grave of Delphine Delamare, in addition to her name, there is an inscription "Madame Bovary".

Notes

Links

• A.G. Dostoevskaya. A diary. 1867, p. 214.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010 .

See what "Madame Bovary" is in other dictionaries:

Madame bovary- Madame Bovary. On behalf of the heroine of the novel of the same name by Flaubert, who created the image of a restless and unable to find a way out woman from petty-bourgeois circles. Her ex, also a good Russian person, constantly hangs around the spouses! If only Lichutin could ... ... Historical Dictionary of Gallicisms of the Russian Language

Madame Bovary novel by Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (film, 1937) German film adaptation directed by Gerhard Lamprecht Madame Bovary (film, 1949) American film adaptation by Vincent Minnelli Madame Bovary (film, 1969) ... ... Wikipedia

Mrs. Bovary fr. Madame Bovary

- (named after the heroine of the novel by G. Flaubert "Madame Bovary") romantic dreams, mostly sentimental, love content, characteristic of some psychopathological conditions ... Medical Encyclopedia

Madame Bovary

- (fr. Bovary Emme) the heroine of the novel by G. Flaubert "Madame Bovary" (1856). The real prototype of Delphine Dela Mar, the wife of a doctor from the city of Ree near Rouen, who died at the age of 26, poisoned by arsenic. However, the writer himself assured that “all the actors ... ... literary heroes

The novel Madame Bovary is the most famous work of the French prose writer Gustave Flaubert, a classic example of realism in literature and, according to critics of the 21st century, one of the most significant novels of all times and peoples.

Madame Bovary (in some translations Madame Bovary) was published in 1856 on the pages of the thematic literary magazine Revue de Paris. For naturalism, the novel was criticized and recognized as "immoral", and its author was sent to court. Fortunately, Flaubert and Madame Bovary were acquitted. The modern reader is unlikely to find anything provocative, let alone immoral, in Flaubert's novel. The work is a textbook and is included in the mandatory list of literature for school and university courses.

Great love of Charles Bovary

France. Rouen. 1827. The young doctor Charles Bovary drags out a bleak married life next to an ugly, quarrelsome wife, whom he agreed to marry at the instigation of his mother. The mother of Charles was attracted by a solid dowry of the future passion, Madame Bovary, as usual, did not worry about the happiness of her son.

But once the gray everyday life of Charles Bovary sparkled with unknown colors. For the first time in his life, he fell in love! His heart was captured once and for all by the daughter of Papa Rouault, a patient of Charles, whose farm was next door. Emma (that was the name of the young daughter of Rouault) was smart and beautiful - dark smooth hair, a slender figure in the girth of sophisticated dresses, she was a pupil of the Ursuline monastery, a wonderful dancer, needlewoman and a skilled performer of touching motifs on the piano.

Charles's visits to Rouault are becoming more frequent, and the nit-picking of the legal wife is even more persistent and caustic. The love story of Charles Bovary risked turning into a tragedy, but the grumpy wife died suddenly, giving way to a young and beautiful one. Having barely endured the time allotted for marital mourning, Charles marries Emma.

Blissful times come in the life of Charles. He idolizes his wife and is ready to drown in the folds of her dress. What can you say about Emma. When the solemn excitement subsided and the wedding dress was tightly locked in the closet, the young Madame Bovary began to languish. Her husband now seemed to her boring, mediocre, weak-willed, married life gray and dull, and provincial existence gloomy and bleak. Madame Bovary was frankly bored.

Reading romance novels, young Mademoiselle Rouault imagined marriage quite differently. She imagined herself the mistress of an ancient castle, waiting for her husband in the chambers. Here he is returning from a dangerous military campaign, she rushes to meet him, cuddles up to his broad courageous chest and thrives in his strong arms ... The reality of the cruel disappointed Madame Bovary. Little by little she began to languish, to get sick. The frightened Charles blamed the unfavorable climate of the town of Toast for everything, where the young family moved after the wedding. It's decided - he and Emma move to Yonville and start life anew.

Emma was inspired by the move, but after a short acquaintance with Yonville, the girl realized that this town was the same hopeless hole as Rouen. The Bovarys get acquainted with a few neighbors - the narcissistic pharmacist Ome, a merchant and part-time usurer Mr. Leray, a local priest, an innkeeper, a policeman and others. In a word, with a provincial and close-minded audience. The only bright ray for Emma was the notary's assistant Leon Dupuis.

This fair-haired young man with long girlish curled eyelashes and a timid blush on his cheeks positively stood out among the whole of Yonville society. With him, Emma could talk for hours about literature, music, painting. Dupuis really liked Emma, ​​but he did not dare to show his feelings towards a married woman. Moreover, Bovary had just had a daughter. True, madam wanted a boy. When the girl was born, she named her Berta, gave her to the nurse and completely forgot about the child, always remaining cold to this alien little creature. All her thoughts were occupied by the forbidden Leon Dupuis. Leon's departure to Paris was a real tragedy for Madame Bovary. She almost went crazy with grief, but then Rodolphe Boulanger appeared.

Neighboring landowner Rodolphe Boulanger brought his servant for examination to the doctor Bovary. Rodolphe was a well-built thirty-four-year-old bachelor. Confident, assertive, courageous, he quickly fell in love with the inexperienced Emma. At every opportunity, the couple went on a horseback ride, indulging in love pleasures in a house on the edge of the forest.

Emma was beside herself with the new feeling. She painted romantic continuations of her love adventure and elevated the landowner Boulanger to the rank of a medieval knight. Over time, Rodolphe began to be alarmed by the pressure of his new mistress. Emma was too desperate and could compromise both of them. Moreover, Bovary demanded ridiculous oaths of eternal love and devotion from him.

Rodolphe did not want to leave pretty Emma, ​​but when she started talking about escaping, Boulanger gave in. Promising to take her away with him, at the last moment he sent Emma a letter in a basket of apricots. The note stated that he would travel on his own, no longer wishing to continue his relationship with the married Emma Bovary.

Another love disappointment caused Emma a serious illness. She has been in bed for over a month. Her first public appearance after her illness took place in Rouen. Her husband bought Emma tickets to the opera Lucia de Lemermoor. Poor Bovary did not suspect that his wife would meet Leon Dupuis there.

This time, the lovers no longer held back their feelings. From that day on, under the guise of attending music courses, Emma went to Leon's Rouen apartment. However, Madame Bovary's happiness was not destined to last long. Over the years, Emma had one weakness - extravagance. Bovary threw crazy sums on jewelry, clothes, gifts for her lovers and hobbies, which she threw as quickly as she caught fire with them. To hide embezzlement from her husband, Emma borrowed money from the moneylender Leray. At the time of the Rouen romance, the amount of her debt was so great that it was possible to pay off the bills only by a complete inventory of property.

Desperate Emma turned to Leon for help, but he, showing cowardice, refused to help Bovary. He was already beginning to be weighed down by the too frequent visits of a married lady. Leon dreamed of making a brilliant career, successfully marrying, and therefore a discrediting relationship with a married lady was extremely inconvenient for him.

Betrayed, Bovary rushes to her former lover Rodolphe Boulanger, but here again she is refused. Then Emma decides on a desperate act. She sneaks into a drug store and takes a massive dose of arsenic.

The closest person

Emma died for several days in terrible agony. All this time, faithful Charles did not leave her bed. After the death of his wife, a terrible truth was revealed to the widower - he was ruined and betrayed.

However, this is no longer important. Charles would forgive Emma all her betrayals if she opened her eyes again. Heartbroken, he roams the garden like a ghost and dies of grief after his wife.

Little Bertha moves in with her grandmother (older Bovary). Soon the grandmother dies and the poor orphan goes to work in a factory. Leon, meanwhile, successfully marries. The pawnbroker Leray opens a new store. The Apothecary receives an Honorable Order. Life in Yonville and other small towns in France continues to flow as usual.

Flaubert's Madame Bovary had a very real prototype. The girl's name was Delphine Couturier. She was the daughter of a wealthy farmer. At the age of 17, the romantic pupil of the Ursulines monastery was married to the provincial doctor Eugene Delamare. Delamare had once studied medicine with Father Flaubert. He was very diligent, but, alas, a mediocre student. Having failed the decisive tests, Eugene lost the opportunity to make a successful career in the capital, so he ended up in one of the godforsaken provincial towns that abound in France.

In the future, the story of Couturier-Delamar developed in the same way as described in Flaubert's novel, and ended with the tragic death of the debt-ridden Delphine Delamare. There was even an article about it in the local newspaper. True, the reasons that provoked suicide were not made public.

Inspired by the tragic history of the family, Flaubert created his Delamares - Charles and Emma Bovary. Vladimir Nabokov, in a series of lectures on the work of Gustave Flaubert, focused on the originality of the plot and the problems of Madame Bovary: “Do not ask if the truth is written in a novel or a poem (read “fiction”) ... Emma Bovary never existed; Madame Bovary will live forever. Books live longer than girls.

In 1851, returning to Croisset from his two-year trip to the East, Flaubert brought with him, along with exotic oriental souvenirs, the intention to write about modern French life and the well-formed idea of ​​the novel Madame Bovary. Work on the novel lasted from September 1851 to April 1856. These were four and a half years of slow, hard, painstaking work. The plot, built on the ups and downs of middle-class adultery, seemed to Flaubert worthy of contempt, but it was life itself, and he set himself the goal of reproducing it as objectively as possible. In objectivity, or in "impersonality", Flaubert saw the most important sign of the ideal of prose, to which he aspired in his work.

On May 31, 1856, Flaubert sends the manuscript of the novel to the Revue de Paris, and from October 1 to December 15, Madame Bovary is published in installments in six issues of this magazine. In the text of the novel, cuts were made against the will of Flaubert, which caused his indignation and protest, published in the same journal on December 15, 1856. At the same time, the novel is being printed in Rouen, in the "Nouvelliste de Rouen" ("Nouvelliste de Rouen") from November 9 1856; but since December 14, this magazine ceases to publish the promised "continuation in the next issue", as the indignant responses of many readers make us fear trouble. This precaution of the Rouen magazine saved him from the lawsuit that lay ahead of Flaubert and the editors of the Revue de Paris. The liberal magazine Revue de Paris had long been a source of displeasure to the authorities, and the publication in it of such a work as Madame Bovary was an excellent pretext for reprisals.

The trial of Flaubert, the publishers and the printer lasted from January 31 to February 7, 1857. Flaubert was charged with immorality, "realism", that is, the absence of a positive ideal, and "frankness", threatening public morality. Nevertheless, the trial ended with the acquittal of Flaubert and his "accomplices", and two months later the novel was published as a separate edition in two volumes, with a dedication to Marie-Antoine-Jules Senard, the lawyer who acted as defense counsel in the "Madame Bovary" case.

The publisher Michel Levy received the right to publish the novel for five years under an agreement signed with Flaubert on December 24, 1856. (In 1863, these publisher rights were extended for another ten years.) M. Levy was a famous and prosperous Parisian publisher. He published many works of contemporaries - Balzac, Stendhal, J. Sand, Lamartine, Gauthier, E. Sue, J. de Nerval, Dickens, Heine and others, thanks to which he enriched himself a lot. His commercial sense told him that an agreement with Flaubert could also be beneficial for him, although Flaubert was actually unknown to the public until the appearance of Madame Bovary. Levi wasn't wrong. The very first circulation, which went on sale on April 15, 1857, sold out so quickly that in 1856-1857. the publisher issues several additional editions, and then in 1862, 1866 and 1868. he republishes Madame Bovary again. Flaubert, who participated in the contract as a novice author and, moreover, believed that worries about material success were unworthy of a real artist, received from the publisher an insignificant amount, which almost all researchers of his work are amazed at.

During Flaubert's lifetime, the novel Madame Bovary was published in France three more times: in 1873 (publisher Georges Charpentier) and in 1874 and 1878. (publisher Alphonse Lemaire). In the edition of 1873, as an appendix to the text of the novel, the materials of the trial in the case of “Madame Bovary” are published: the speeches of the prosecutor and defense counsel and the court decision. Since then, they have been reproduced many times along with new reprints of the novel.

The stormy debate of French criticism around Flaubert's novel was initiated by an article by Sh.-O. Sainte-Beva, published in the Moniteur newspaper of May 4, 1857, containing a detailed and generally benevolent analysis of the novel. Sainte-Beuve was at this time the most authoritative critic, but in the controversy over Madame Bovary he had many opponents who took the novel with hostility and repeated all the charges against Flaubert, which seemed to have been removed from him by an official court order. Among the critical speeches that hailed "Madame Bovary" as an outstanding work of literature, Flaubert liked C. Baudelaire's article the most, because in it Flaubert felt a real and deep understanding of his novel. A few years later, E. Zola, in one of his articles on Flaubert, included in the collection "Novelists-Naturalists", will say, as if summing up this discussion: "The appearance of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary marked a new era in literature."

One of the questions that arose at the time of the publication of Madame Bovary and still fascinates French literary scholars is the question of the prototypes of the novel. Many books and articles have been written about this, various versions, conjectures and conjectures are being built. Maxime Ducan, a contemporary and friend of Flaubert, who claimed in his Memoirs that it was he who suggested the idea of ​​the novel to Flaubert, points to the Delamare family from the town of Ree as the "genuine" Charles and Emma Bovary. According to the new version, which belongs to J. Pommier and G. Lele, the story of a certain Mrs. Pradier, the wife of a sculptor, is reproduced in the novel G. Leleu et J. Pommier, Du nouveau sur "Madame Bovary", Revue d "histoire litteraire de la France, 1947.. Flaubert himself denied both the existence of specific prototypes of the novel and its narrowly autobiographical sources. Madame Bovary is pure fiction. All the characters in this book are entirely fictional, and even Yonville-l "Abbay is a non-existent place," we read in Flaubert's correspondence, "What is told in Madame Bovary never happened in reality. This story is entirely fictional. I did not portray it has neither my feelings nor my life.” The story of Emma Bovary, the characters and the role of other characters in the novel, the whole plot as a whole are invented by Flaubert on the basis of a generalization of everything he saw and experienced, all his observations on the surrounding customs in Paris and Rouen, on various people, friends and relatives.

Already during Flaubert's lifetime, he was approached with a request for a stage adaptation of the novel. Flaubert responded with an invariable refusal, he did not allow even the famous writer, cartoonist and actor Henri Monnier to remake, because he believed that the novel could not be remade into a play without distorting cuts, without damaging the work. After Flaubert's death, Madame Bovary was staged for the first time in 1908 in Rouen, but was not successful. In 1936, a new production was staged in Paris, at the Montparnasse Theatre, and in 1951 Madame Bovary appeared at the Opéra-Comique as a musical drama to music by E. Bondeville. In 1934, a film was created based on the plot of the novel by director J. Renoir.

The appearance of Madame Bovary was immediately noticed in Russia. In 1857, the Sovremennik magazine, in the Foreign News section, reports the publication of this novel in the Revue de Paris. True, the name of Flaubert is put among the writers who "have noble aspirations, but they are not distinguished by great talents." The Russian Messenger in July 1857 gives a detailed account of the content of the novel and comes to the conclusion that French society is in trouble and morally collapsed. In "Notes of the Fatherland" in the same year twice (Nos. 5 and 7) appear materials dedicated to "Madame Bovary". True, columnist K. Stachel claims that “Mr. Flaubert is an amateur" that his novel is "bad", and explains the success of the novel mainly as a consequence of the lawsuit against Flaubert and the Revue de Paris. In 1859, on the pages of Notes of the Fatherland (No. 3), Flaubert’s novel already met with a deeper understanding, a more serious and well-deserved assessment: “This novel is really beautiful: none of the French writers, except perhaps one Rabelais, has offered us such a natural the work as a whole and in detail, like Mr. Flaubert ... French criticism and French society have not yet sufficiently appreciated his work. The Bulletin of Europe (1870, No. 1), in confirmation of its high assessment of Flaubert's work, quotes Turgenev's words from the preface to M. Ducan's novel Lost Forces. Madame Bovary is undoubtedly the most remarkable work of the latest French school.

The first Russian translation of Madame Bovary appeared already in 1858 in the Library for Reading. In 1881, this journal published a new translation of the novel. In 1881, a separate edition of Madame Bovary was also published, with the materials of the Paris trial of 1857 attached. Since then, Madame Bovary has been reprinted many times - in the collected works of Flaubert and separately.

In 1928 and in 1937 dramatizations of the novel appeared, in 1940 Madame Bovary was staged on the stage of the Chamber Theater, and in 1964 the play Provincial Morals based on Flaubert's novel was created at the Maly Theater.

T. Sokolova

* * *

Page 26. Louis Buile (1828-1869) - poet and playwright, friend of Flaubert.

Page 29. Here I am! - In the 1st song of Virgil's Aeneid, Neptune, the god of the sea, addressed the raging winds with this threat.

Page 32. ... a disheveled volume of Anacharsis... - I mean, the novel by the French archaeologist Abbot Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (1716-1795) "The Journey of the Young Anacharsis to Greece", which gives pictures of the life of the Greeks of the 4th century BC. BC e., observed by the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis; The book served as school reading.

Page 37. ... the pride of the cat breeders. Co is a vast plateau in Northern Normandy.

Page 38. ... better than Dieppe ivory.... - The city of Dieppe in northwestern France was famous for the production of turning products from ivory, wood, and horn.

Page 40. Ursulines, - members of the female monastic order of St. Ursula, founded in the 16th century; engaged in the education of girls, mainly of noble origin.

Page 42. ... you will see a mole on a branch... – In Normandy it was a hunting custom to hang dead moles on trees.

Page 53. ... she read "Fields and Virginia"... - "Paul and Virginia" (1787) - a novel by the French writer Bernardin to Saint-Pierre (1737-1814), which depicts the idyllic love of young heroes against the backdrop of the exotic nature of a tropical island.

... scenes from the life of Mademoiselle de Lavaliere. - Lavalier Francoise-Louise (1644-1710), duchess, mistress of Louis XIV; when the king lost interest in her, in 1674 she retired to a monastery, where she died.

Page 54. "Conversations" of Abbé Freycin. - Freysin Denis (1765-1841) - church preacher, during the Restoration he was minister of cults. In 1825 he published five volumes of his sermons under the title "Conversations".

"Spirit of Christianity"- the work of the French writer Francois-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), praising Catholicism.

Page 55. ... adored all famous and unfortunate women. - The following are the names of characters known in France from school history textbooks: Eloise - a girl who was loved by the French theologian and philosopher Abelard (XII century), who told about her in the tragic "History of my disasters"; her name has become a household name for the unfortunate lover. Agnes Sorel (1422-1450) - beloved of the French king Charles VII. Ferroniera, nicknamed the Beautiful, was the mistress of King Francis I (1515-1547). Clemence Isor (born c. 1450) is a French lady from a noble family who resumed traditional literary competitions in Toulouse, which were the custom a century earlier; the poets who spoke at them, for the most part, sang the object of their love - a beautiful lady.

... Saint Louis under the oak... - The French King Louis IX (1226-1270), nicknamed the Saint for participating in the Crusades, according to medieval custom, ruled the court, sitting under an oak tree in his residence - the Vincennes Castle near Paris.

... dying Bayard... - Bayard (Pierre du Terail, 1473-1524) - the famous French commander, nicknamed "a knight without fear and reproach"; died from a wound on the battlefield.

... atrocities of Louis XI... - This refers to the merciless struggle of the French king Louis XI (1461-1483) against the big feudal lords, for the strengthening of the central royal power.

... Scenes from Bartholomew's Night... - that is, the scenes of the beating of Protestants (Huguenots) in Paris, on the night of August 24, 1572.

... sultan on the hat of Bearnz... - Bearnets - the nickname of the French king (1588-1610) Henry IV, who was from the province of Bearn, near the Pyrenees.

Keepsacks are luxuriously printed books (or albums) consisting mostly of illustrations.

Page 57. ... caught in the net to Lamartine... - Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869) - French poet, author of melancholy poems, where he sings about lost love, about an unattainable ideal, dull romantic landscapes are drawn.

Page 59. ... rolls... bread balls. - Bread balls in the 19th century. used to erase pencil.

Page 62. Jali. – The romantic name that Emma gave her little dog was inspired by V. Hugo's novel Notre Dame Cathedral (1831); this is the name of the trained goat of the gypsy Esmeralda.

Page 65. Count d "Artois (1757-1836) - brother of Louis XVI, who was executed during the revolution; led the monarchical emigration; in 1824 he sat on the French throne under the name of Charles X and was overthrown by the revolution of 1830.

Page 83. ... the Gallic rooster... leans on the charter... - This refers to the bastard "Constitutional Charter of France", "granted" to the country by Louis XVIII in 1814 and changed in a more liberal spirit after the July Revolution of 1830.

Page 87. The Savoyard Vicar's Creed- an episode from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's pedagogical novel "Emile" (1862), which proclaims a religion based only on an inner feeling and contemplation of nature.

Page 95. ... Act of 19 Ventos XI of the Republic... - that is, a law issued during the revolution of the late 18th century. (according to the republican calendar - ventoz, "month of winds" - the last winter month).

Page 97. ... tribute... to the masterpiece of the French scene. – The name Atalia is taken from the tragedy of the same name by Racine (1791).

Page 98. "God of Honest People"- Beranger's song.

... Quote from "War of the Gods". - This refers to the poem by Evariste Parni (1753-1814) under this title; parodied the Bible.

Page 100. ... lying around "Matvey Lansberg". - This refers to the Liege Almanac, compiled at the beginning of the 17th century. a canon from Liege, Matthew Lansberg, is a source of meaningless superstitions; enjoyed wide popularity among the French peasants.

Page 104-105. "Illustration" ("l "Illustration") is a Parisian illustrated weekly, founded in 1843 with the aim of covering all aspects of modern life.

Page 111. ... vretishnitsu from "Notre Dame Cathedral". - This refers to Esmeralda's mother from Hugo's novel; sackcloth - nuns of a mendicant order, as a sign of humility, put on sackcloth (a bag of sackcloth).

Page 133. Pomology is the science of varieties of fruit plants.

Page 145. ... about Cincinnatus at the plow, about Diocletian planting cabbage... - Cincinnatus Lucius Quinctius (V century BC) - an outstanding Roman commander and statesman; in private life, he was distinguished by extraordinary modesty and simplicity, he cultivated the land himself. Diocletian Gaius Aurelius Valery - one of the most powerful Roman emperors (284-305); Having renounced power, he spent the last eight years of his life on his estate.

Page 167. ... Dr. Duval's book... - This refers to the work of the French orthopedic surgeon Vincennes Duval (1796-1820), published in 1839 under the title "Discourse on the practice of treating a deviated foot."

Page 169. Ambroise Pare (1517-1590) - a medical scientist who served at the royal court. Mentioned below Dupuytren Guillaume (1777-1835), surgeon, founder of the Paris Museum of Pathological Anatomy, and Jeansul Joseph (1797-1858), a brilliant surgeon who worked at the Lyon Hospital for the Poor, are outstanding representatives of French medicine of the 19th century.

Page 182. ... like the Duke of Clarence in a barrel of malvasia... - The brother of the English King Edward IV, Duke George of Clarence (1448-1478) was sentenced to death for treason; chose death in a barrel of sweet wine - malvasia.

Page 191. ... as if under the shadow of a manzenilla... - The fruits of the manzenilla tree contain poisonous juice. There was a belief that a person who fell asleep in the shadow of a manzenilla dies.

Page 201. ... in the spirit of M. de Maistre... - Joseph do Mestre (1753-1821) - French writer, ardent defender of the monarchy and secular power of the pope.

Page 207. "Lucia de Lamermoor"(1835) - Donizetti's opera based on the plot of Walter Scott's novel The Bride of Lamermoor.

Page 208. ... there were three blows... - In the French theater, the beginning of the performance is announced not by a bell, but by blows to the floor of the stage.

Page 215. "Hut" - a place of entertainment in Paris, opened in 1787 - a place of public balls; especially flourished during the reign of Louis Philippe.

Page 219. "Nelskaya Tower"- a romantic drama by Alexandre Dumas-father and Gaillarde, staged in 1832 on the stage of the theater of Port-Saint-Martin.

Page 222. ... under "Dancing Mariam"... – According to the Bible, Mariam is the elder sister of the prophet Moses; she led folk festivals and danced herself with a tympanum in her hand (“Exodus”, ch. 15, st. 20).

Page 224. Diana de Poitiers (1498-1566) - the famous beauty, beloved of the French king Henry II.

Page 257. Send your Kuyatsievs and Bartolovs to hell!– This refers to the famous French lawyer Jacques Cuzhas (Latin form Kuyatsiy, 1522-1590) and one of the greatest lawyers of the Middle Ages, Italian Bartolo da Sasso Ferrato (1314-1357).

Page 275. ... Esmeralda by Steiben and Potiphar's Wife by Chopin. – This refers to reproductions from paintings by German artists Carl Wilhelm Steiben (1788-1856) and Heinrich Friedrich Chopin (1801-1880). Potiphar's wife, according to the Bible, tried to seduce Joseph the Beautiful ("Genesis", ch. 39).

Page 279. ... fought for his homeland at Bautzen and Lutzen... - Bautzen and Lutzen are cities in Saxony, near which in 1813 two big battles took place between the army of Napoleon I and the allied Russian-Prussian troops.

Page 290. Bisha Xavier (1771-1802) - French physician, anatomist and physiologist; author of General Anatomy.

Page 292. Cadé de Gasicourt Louis-Claude (1731-1799) was a French pharmacist and chemist.

Page 298. Read the "Encyclopedia" ... "Letters of the Portuguese Jews" ... "The Essence of Christianity"... - "Encyclopedia" (thirty-five volumes, 1751-1780) - a publication carried out under the leadership of Denis Diderot and Jean-Louis d'Alembert, who attracted all the progressive minds of their time to cooperate; the largest monument of enlightenment thought of the 18th century. "Letters of Portuguese, German, Polish Jews to Mr. de Voltaire" (1769) - a work by Abbot Paul-Alexandre Genet, defending the truth of biblical traditions. The Essence of Christianity (probably Philosophical Studies on Christianity, 1842-1845) is the main work of the French judicial official and Catholic writer Jean-Jacques Auguste Nicolas (1807-1888).

Page 309. Aediles - in ancient Rome, elected officials who oversaw the order in the city.

Page 310. Ignorant Brothers- (that is, "ignorant") - members of the monastic order of St. John; the order preached humility, set as its goal philanthropic assistance to the poor.

M. Eichengolts

The psychological novel Madame Bovary brought fame to the author, which has remained with him to this day. Flaubert's innovation was fully manifested and amazed readers. It consisted in the fact that the writer saw material for art "in everything and everywhere", without avoiding some low and supposedly unworthy of poetry topics. He urged his colleagues to "get closer and closer to science." The scientific approach includes the impartiality and objectivity of the image and the depth of the study. Therefore, the writer, according to Flaubert, "must be in tune with everything and everyone, if he wants to understand and describe." Art, like science, should be distinguished not only by the completeness and scale of thought, but also by the impregnable perfection of form. These principles are called Flaubert's "objective method" or "objective writing".

The meaning and main principles of Flaubert's objective method on the example of the novel Madame Bovary

Flaubert wanted to achieve visibility in art, which reflected his innovative literary method. The objective method is a new principle of reflecting the world, which implies a dispassionate detailed presentation of events, the complete absence of the author in the text (i.e. his opinions, assessments), his interaction with the reader at the level of means of artistic expression, intonation, descriptions, but not a direct statement. If Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, for example, explained his point of view in numerous lyrical digressions, then Gustave Flaubert completely lacks them. An objective picture in Flaubert's work is more than a mimesis, it is a meaningful and creatively reworked reproduction by the author that stimulates the thought processes and creative possibilities of the reader himself. At the same time, the writer disdains dramatic effects and accidents. A real master, according to Flaubert, creates a book about nothing, a book without an external tether, which would be held by itself, by the internal force of its style, like the earth, supported by nothing, is kept in the air - a book that would have almost no plot or , at least in which the plot, if possible, would be mail invisible.

Example: the main idea of ​​the novel Madame Bovary, which describes everyday life as a story or an epic, is revealed with the help of virtuoso composition and all-conquering irony. An illustration can serve as an analysis of the scene at the fair, when Rodolphe confesses his love to Emma: passionate speeches are interrupted by farcical cries about the price of agricultural products, the achievements of peasants and auctions. In this scene, the author emphasizes that the same banal, vulgar deal is taking place between Emma and Rodolphe, only it is embellished appropriately. Flaubert does not impose morality: “Oh, how vulgarly he seduces her! How it looks like a marketplace! It's like they're buying chicken! There is no such tediousness at all, but the reader understands why love is talked about at the fair.

To extract poetry from primitive characters, Flaubert was sensitive to truthfulness in depicting the relationship of personality and circumstances. Loyalty to psychology, according to Flaubert, is one of the main functions of art. Flaubert's perfectionism of form is not formalism, but the desire to create "a work that will reflect the world and make you think about its essence, not only lying on the surface, but also hidden, wrong side."

The history of the creation of the novel Madame Bovary. Is Emma Bovary a real woman or a fictitious image?

The work "Madame Bovary" is based on non-fictional history of the Delamare family, which Flaubert was told by a friend, the poet and playwright Louis Bouillet. Eugene Delamare - a mediocre doctor from a remote French province, married to a widow (who died shortly after marriage), and then to a young girl - this is the prototype of Charles Bovary. His young wife Delphine Couturier- exhausted from idleness and provincial boredom, squandering all the money on frilly outfits and whims of lovers and committing suicide - this is the prototype of Emma Rouault / Bovary. But we must remember that Flaubert always emphasized that his novel is not a documentary retelling of real life. Tired of questioning, he replied that Madame Bovary did not have a prototype, and if she did, then it was the writer himself.

The image of the province: the manners of the petty-bourgeois province as typical circumstances for the formation of personality

Flaubert ridicules provincial mores and reveals the patterns of personality formation in the provincial petty-bourgeois society. Madame Bovary is an attempt at an artistic study of social reality, its typical manifestations and tendencies. The author describes in detail how Emma and Charles were formed under the influence of bourgeois prejudices. They are accustomed from childhood to be the "golden mean". The main thing in this moderate life is to provide for oneself and look decent in the eyes of society. A striking example of petty-bourgeois prudence: Charles's mother, a respectable and wise woman, chose a bride for him according to the size of her annual income. Family happiness is proportional to earnings. The measure of public recognition in this environment is solvency. The embodiment of the ideal provincial tradesman is the image of the pharmacist Gome. His vulgar maxims shine with everyday, practical wisdom, which justifies anyone who is wealthy and cunning enough to hide his vices under a greasy layer of piety. Petty calculations, gluttony, deliberate housekeeping, petty vanity, secret love affairs on the side, obsession with the physical side of love - these are the values ​​and joys of this society.

Emma Bovary is different from the philistine standard the fact that she notices his vices and rebels against the ordinary device of provincial life, but she herself is a part of this world, cannot rebel against herself. The nature of a person is very dependent on his environment, so Emma absorbed the provinciality with her mother's milk, she will not change without a radical change in the environment.

The main features of the bourgeois province of Flaubert:

• vulgarity
• lack of reflection
• base passions and ambitions
• crude, wretched materialism

The Cause of Emma Bovary's Tragedy: Flaubert's Appreciation

Emma was educated in a monastery, so she was cut off from the miserable reality. Her upbringing consisted of the majestic, but incomprehensible to her, Catholic rites and dogmas, along with romantic novels about love, from which she drew sublime, unrealistic ideas about this feeling. She wanted book love, but did not know life and true feelings. Returning to the farm with her rude, uncouth father, she faced everyday life and routine, but continued to be in illusions, which was facilitated by her religious upbringing. Her idealism took on a rather vulgar look, because she is not a saint, she is the same philistine at heart, like all those who are so disgusting to her. The tragedy of Madame Bovary is that she could not come to terms with herself, she is philistinism. An inappropriate upbringing in captivity, a rich imagination and the pernicious influence of low-grade literature on this imagination, already prone to ridiculous fantasies and heaps of shaky ambitions, gave rise to an internal conflict.

How does Flaubert feel about Emma Bovary? He is objective to her: he describes both ugly hands, and ordinary eyes, and clapping wooden shoes. However, the heroine is not without the charm of a healthy young peasant woman, who is adorned with love. The writer justifies the rebellion of Madame Bovary, derogatoryly describing the bourgeois environment. He denounced the illusions of a naive limited woman, yes, but even more of the author's sarcasm went to her environment, the life that fate had prepared for her. Everyone accepted this routine boredom, and she dared to rebel. Emma, ​​it must be said, has nowhere to know what to do, how to fight against the system, she is not the savage Aldous Huxley. But it is not the inhuman society of the future that kills her, but ordinary philistinism, which either grinds a person down or throws them overboard in cold blood. However Flaubert's creative discovery lies in the fact that he leaves the reader to deal with the problem and judge Emma. Logical accents, distortions of actions and intrusion of the author are unacceptable.

The relevance of Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary

It is interesting that excessive knowledge brought misfortune and anxiety to Madame Bovary. Knowledge does not bring happiness, a person, in order to be satisfied, must remain a limited consumer, as described by Huxley in his. Emma initially had a mediocre mind (she didn’t finish anything, she couldn’t read serious books) and didn’t make strong-willed efforts, so she would be happy to lead a cozy life of an inveterate provincial with primitive, limited interests. After all, she was drawn to earthly ideals (nobility, entertainment, money), but she went to them in mystical, romantic ways in her imagination. She had no reason for such ambitions, so she invented them, as many of our acquaintances and friends invent. This path has already been passed more than once and is almost paved, like a full-fledged life road. Inflamed fantasy often excites the minds of the provincial philistines. Everyone must have heard about imaginary connections, huge capitals of tomorrow and utterly ambitious plans "FROM MONDAY". Victims of the cult of success and self-realization speak competently about investments, projects, their business and independence “from their uncle”. However, years pass, the stories do not stop and only acquire new details, but nothing changes, people live from credit to credit, and even from binge to binge. Every loser has his own tragedy, and it's not unlike Emma Bovary's story. At school, they also said that excellent students would live happily ever after. And so a person remains alone with his diary, where he has fives, and the real world, where everything is evaluated by other criteria.

To be frank, then write an article about the novel French writer Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary" difficult. Of course, you can use a bunch of reviews from eminent critics. But I thought that it would be much more correct to write my own thoughts.

But first, a little history.

« Madame Bovary was published in 1856. This novel instantly brought Flaubert world fame and big trouble. He was sued for moral defamation. Fortunately, the trial ended in an acquittal. Immediately after the court decision, the novel was published as a separate publication.

In 2007, a survey was conducted among contemporary writers. In their opinion, two novels can be attributed to the masterpieces of the world: firstly, “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy and, secondly, novel « Madame Bovary» Gustave Flaubert.

Why is this work so amazing?

It is believed that the special advantage of the novel is style. There is not a single superfluous word in the novel. Flaubert sat on some lines for a whole week, trying to hone and select only the right phrases. However, I personally do not presume to judge the excess or insufficiency of words. I judge a book by my perception, by the origin of thoughts, by the mood that appears in my soul.

This is what I will write about.

I just want to say that the novel Madame Bovary ideal for those who wish to explore the life of the townspeople of the 19th century. Flaubert describes ordinary provincial life in great detail. Lovers of subtle psychology will also be completely satisfied. Flaubert was able to convey almost every emotion of the main character of the novel. Explain every step. Throughout the reading, I was amazed by such deep knowledge of the sensitive female soul. Also, this novel will be extremely useful for romantic people who see something beautiful in death and therefore make disgusting suicide plans. In the novel, the author described in great detail the scene of agony after taking a lethal dose of arsenic. This moment in the novel is so heavy, and described so plausibly, that I had no other feelings other than disgust. Who flies in the clouds, considering the poisoning romantic, read chapter 8 part 3 of this novel.

I don't know how Flaubert felt about Emma Bovary; to Madame Bovary, the wife of Charles, a mediocre rural doctor, but my attitude changed throughout the whole novel. At the beginning, I felt sorry for the charming dreamer who was mistaken in her feelings and hopes. And who among us hasn't made mistakes in our youth? And what could Emma see while studying in a monastery, and then living in the countryside? How was she to know that the usual attraction to a man and love are somewhat different things? Having read novels about passionate love, like any woman of all times and peoples, she wanted the same adoration, romance and love! The marital status of a woman does not play absolutely no role! A woman just wants to be a woman, loved and desired.

Emma expected happiness from marriage. But, unfortunately, her husband was just an ordinary rural doctor who left in the morning to his patients and returned only in the evening. He did not support her attempts to somehow diversify their lives. He did not understand the romantic impulses of a young woman who tried to act out a date in the garden, read poetry, and so on. The young wife was unbearably bored. Emma was suffocated by the routine. I felt infinitely sorry for her. Apparently, the husband did not really understand what did not suit Emma, ​​since he truly loved his wife and was only happy that she was there. It seemed to him that it should be enough for her just to enjoy his presence. Emma's misfortune was precisely that she did not love her husband and her hopes for the best were not justified.

How often do we see disappointed people in life. Although from the outside, a person seems to have everything and he needs to rejoice and thank God. On the example of Madame Bovary, you can see how the process of withering happiness in the soul of a person takes place.

Charles felt that his wife needed at least some change. He took advantage of the invitation and took Emma to the ball, where everything breathed luxury. The difference between the real fairy tale at the ball and everyday life shocked Emma. Returning home, Madame Bovary threw a tantrum, which gradually rolled into a deep depression. Charles decided that the change of residence would benefit his wife. But he was wrong to think so. Since Emma was choked not by the air of the village where they lived, but by the lack of diversity of life.

Arriving in the provincial town of Yonville-l'Abbey, Emma realized with horror that everyday life had overtaken her. All the entertainment that could be in the opinion of the main character is adultery. And although I have a negative attitude towards entertainment of this kind, I still sympathized with the main character of the novel. I didn't blame her.

Condemnation came later, when Emma began to show whims and selfishness, some kind of reckless carelessness and readiness to betray her faithful husband at any moment. Yes, she did not love Charles, considered him mediocrity and a dummy. However, by that time they had a daughter, Bertha. And this circumstance alone, in my opinion, should have somehow forced Emma to reconsider her desires and whims. Even in our depraved 21st century, I believe that children should not pay the bills of immoral parents! If only in Russia there was a Moral Code, according to which it would be possible to protect the interests of the family and children, then perhaps a lot would change. In the novel, the events took place in the 19th century, where views on adultery were much tougher. And if only Emma were caught by the hand with her lover, then not only Madame Bovary herself would be an outcast in society, but also her little innocent Bertha. However, although Emma compromised herself, there was no evidence of her infidelity. Yes, but this circumstance did not change the tragic end.

The further I read the novel, the more seriously my indignation grew. The description of the endless dullness of provincial society, some kind of monotony of life, the hypocrisy and indifference of people, the growing hopelessness of the financial situation into which Madame Bovary fell due to her gullibility and addiction to expensive things - all this put pressure on me. Reading became difficult.

It is said that when Gustave Flaubert wrote novel « Madame Bovary“He was very ill more than once. And during the most detailed description of the scene of arsenic poisoning, Flaubert even threw up twice. Well, although I didn’t feel sick, I experienced a feeling of horror and disgust for death, for the indifference of society, for selfishness ... I experienced in full.

There is a scene in the novel where Charles, yielding to the persuasion mainly of his wife and the pharmacist, Mr. Ome, decides to have a groom's foot operation. Emma dreamed of how her Charles would become famous after such an experiment. But, as often happens in life, everything turned out to be a sad result - the groom developed gangrene and his leg had to be amputated. Instead of the confessions of the townspeople, Charles received shame, remorse and guilt. It seemed to me that Emma, ​​so sensitive and impulsive, like no one else would feel and understand what her faithful husband was experiencing. Moreover, she herself was no less guilty of what happened. After all, she so diligently incited him to this experience! But I was wrong about Emma. She not only did not sympathize with her husband, but very harshly pushed him away from her, accusing him of mediocrity. Here I felt sorry for Charles. He courageously endured the shame and did not blame anyone for anything.

What resented me the most about Emma? For some strange reason, she completely forgot about her daughter. Dreaming of escaping with her lover Rodolphe, she lost sight of her young daughter Bertha. She could stay the night with her lover Leon, without even thinking about her husband's anxiety and the fact that her little daughter could not fall asleep without her mother. Emma made expensive gifts at the beginning to her first lover Rodolphe, and after parting from him and starting Leon, the last one. At the same time, Bertha, in a deplorable financial situation, had to start saving money for education. For some reason, Emma rented an expensive hotel room for meetings with Leon and generally littered with money, while her own daughter was poorly dressed. But what is absolutely terrible is Emma's sudden decision to poison herself. Why did the question never arise in her charming head: “But what about Bertha?” It was far from decent for Emma to ask for a power of attorney from her husband and secretly mortgage the house with the land, which Charles inherited from his deceased father.

I guess I have a purely feminine view of Flaubert's novel. Emma really looks like a bird, as the author often calls her in the novel, and fascinates with her unusualness, spontaneity and impulsiveness. But all this delights at the beginning of the novel. In the end, when poor Berta remains an orphan and practically a beggar due to her mother's unbridled passions, when poor Berta is forced to go to work in a factory ... all the charm of Madame Bovary crumbles to dust and leaves a heavy residue in her soul.

Who knows if this story would have had a different ending if Emma had been married to another man?

Today, one thing is known - Madame Bovary has a prototype. Flaubert very carefully studied the biography of Delphine Couturier, who committed suicide in her blooming 27 years due to debts. Her husband was a rural doctor and endlessly trusted his wife, not believing the truthful rumors about her connections on the side.

In conclusion, I would like to say that novel « Madame Bovary' is in no way suitable for idle reading. Emotionally heavy and causes a sea of ​​tears. The novel seems to be taken as a whole separate piece from life itself, it is so real. People are described naturally. Therefore, in this work there are no positive or negative characters. There are many disputes between science and religion. At the same time, the opinion of the author himself cannot be understood.

Based on the novel, many films have been made in different languages ​​of the world.