Final thoughts on Madame Bovary, + first and last

I am glad to have read this book as it has such cultural weight and is such a reference point. I kind of got Emma Bovary references before (some unhappy 19th century French chick who had affairs and killed herself) but I'll really get them now. Yes, she was all of those things but she was also kind of a shitty person. She's vain, adulterous, materialistic, a shitty parent and possibly bipolar. Actually, that last part doesn't make her shitty, per se, and kind of explains the other behaviors. Anyways, as I said on Goodreads perish the thought this slutty, whiny cow is a feminist icon. And while the book was entertaining (the town of Yonville and its citizens were definitely more fleshed out than I expected them to be), I was glad to turn the last page on it for sure.

Her husband was a nice guy but was undeniably a dullard-and thanks to Dennis' clarification, he wasn't a doctor but a public health officer which clears up some scenes like Homais and Bovary having to call the doctor when something went wrong. I also could understand why the operation on Hippolyte was so outrageous-he should never have been doing it. Per the linked article above, a public health officer receives somewhat less training than an LPN.

The story takes place in and around Rouen, where Flaubert lived with his mother for much of his adult life. He never married but he did have a mistress for several years who apparently was pissed at him for some personal details he used in Bovary. Flaubert himself came to resent the book in later years as he felt it overshadowed his other writing. He's buried in Rouen. Fun fact: the 19 year old Joan of Arc was burned at the stake there in 1431 (the area was under English control at the time.) It's also the location of the Cathedral that inspired Monet's series of paintings. It's the church where Leon and Emma meet and Emma attempts to break up with him (instead, it's implied he bangs her like a Salvation Army drum as they take a carriage ride through town. Classy!)

Oh well. Before I mention first and last, here is what Dennis' literature professor friend (and Bridge partner had to say on the subject:

I think you restate what I said pretty accurately, though I also said something about the compelling characters, the depth and plausibility of Flaubert's psychological realism. The difficulty of adequately answering your question about why Madame B is considered a great novel, of course, is that it involves the larger question of what constitutes greatness in any novel, and that question immediately invites platitudes for answers. If we turn to novels for the pleasures of escaping our own cultural confines by entering into a radically different culture and reality, then Madame B is a great novel because it so plausibly represents its world, provincial France in the mid nineteenth century. If we turn to novels to gain access to another human mind in ways that exceed our own imaginative grasp of real human minds (even our own), then Flaubert's psychological realism is great because it so powerfully presents the illusion of full access to psychological depths. If we want more fully to understand the interweaving of mind and culture, Flaubert provides such a compelling paradigm that the word Bovarisme enters the French (and English) language to describe the achievement. If we want to experience the tragedy of balked yearning, of what Browning calls the "infinite passion and the pain of finite hearts that yearn," it can be argued that Flaubert's stark realism offers us access to these emotions in ways unsurpassed even by Sophocles or Shakespeare. 

First:

We were in Study Hall when the Headmaster entered, followed by a new boy dressed in regular clothes and a school servant carrying a large desk.

Last:

He has just been awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor.

(That refers to the apothecary Homais of course, not Charles Bovary who dropped dead basically because he married some skeeze.)