Madame Bovary

Set amid the stifling atmosphere of nineteenth-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovaryis at once an unsparing depiction of a woman's gradual corruption and a savagely ironic study of human shallowness and stupidity. Neither Emma, nor her lovers, nor Homais, the "man of science, "escapes the author's searing castigation; and it is the book's final profound irony that only Charles, Emma's oxlike, eternally deceived husband, emerges with a measure of human grace through his stubborn and selfless love. With its rare formal perfection, Madame Bovaryrepresents, as Frank O'Connor has declared, "possibly the most beautifully written book ever composed; undoubtedly the most beautifully written novel . . . a book that invites superlatives . . . the most important novel of the century. "

Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen in 1821, the son of a prominent physician. A solitary child, he was attracted to literature at an early age, and after his recovery from a nervous breakdown suffered while a law student, he turned his total energies to writing. Aside from journeys to the Near East, Greece, Italy, and North Africa, and a stormy liaison with the poet Louise Colet, his life was dedicated to the practice of his art. The form of his work was marked by intense aesthetic scrupulousness and passionate pursuit of le mot juste; its content alternately reflected scorn for French bourgeois society and a romantic taste for exotic historical subject matter. The success of Madame Bovary (1857) was ensured by government prosecution for "immorality." Salammbo (1862) and Sentimental Education (1869) received a cool public reception. Not until the publication of Three Tales (1877) was his talent popularly acknowledged. Among fellow writers, however, his reputation was supreme. His circle of friends included Turgenev and the Goncourt brothers, and the young Guy de Maupassant received an arduous literary apprenticeship under his direction. Increasing personal isolation and financial insecurity troubled his last years. His final bitterness and disillusion were vividly evidenced in the savagely satiric Bouvard and Pecuchet, left unfinished at his death in 1880. An award-winning writer, feminist leader, political theorist, journalist, and editor, Robin Morgan has published seventeen books, including six of poetry, two of fiction, and the now-classic anthologies Sisterhood Is Powerful and Sisterhood Is Global. A founder of contemporary US feminism, she has also been a leader in the international women's movement for twenty-five years. Her newest book of poetry is A Hot January: Poems 1996-1999 (Norton, 1999), and her acclaimed Saturday's Child: A Memoir was just published (Norton, December 2000). In 1990, as Editor-in-Chief of Ms., she relaunched the magazine as an international, award-winning bimonthly free of advertising, then resigned in 1993 to become Consulting Editor. A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Prize (Poetry), the Front Page Award for Distinguished Journalism, the Feminist Majority Foundation Award, and numerous other honors, she lives in New York City.