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Mdame Bovary
I think the best defence of Madame Bovary comes in the words of Tom Perrotta from his novel 'Little Children'. His character Sarah, who is partly modelled on Madame Bovary explains that when she first read the book Madame Bovary seemed like a fool. When she read it again however she thought that Madame Bovary was a feminist: "It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness. ... Madame Bovary's problem wasn't that she committed adultery. ... It was that she committed adultery with losers. She never found a partner worthy of her heroic passion."
Sarah, Flaubert, Censorship
Of course artists and writers must have artistic freedom. But a more interesting question is how do they use that freedom? What is the impact of what they write? The programme answered that question well. Mischeviously, I'd say it isn't a religious question, more an environmental one. Do writers choose to add to our cultural waste, recycle it or create something wonderfully new and non-toxic? Perhaps some writers should be taxed more heavily than others for their emissions ... Being charitable, I'd say Flaubert shouldn't be.
madame bovary and the series
Dear Melvyn Bragg May one wish you a good summer's break and say a large thank you for another set of enthralling programmes. I look forward to the autumn ,Thursday mornings will not be the same over the next couple of months. Perhaps we could have the odd extended programme to include some Green room chat and even further expansion of the ideas? yours with thanks David Lawrence
Jenny Pugsley. The Trial of Madame Bovary
The interview was quite interesting but seemed to miss the point (just touched on at the end) that the book - which I love - is about a man's view (and a very particular man, whose life was relatively unconstrained by domestic ties or conventional mores) of a woman's feelings, and the "causes and effects" within her life. Brilliant as he was, it was invariably Flaubert's male characters that came to life and psychological reality, including those who appeared in the most "fantastic" of novels. The one exception to this was, I would suggest, Felicite in Un Coeur Simple, being beyond sexuality from a man's point of view other than in the transformation of her own sexual feelings into religious ones.
Nicholas Dobson - Madame Bovary
I must disagree with the implication from one of the contributors that an author is directly responsible for the behaviour of his or her characters. Anyone who has ever attempted to write fiction will appreciate that both characters and plot quickly take on a life of their own and tend rapidly to slip the author's leash often to create embarrassing havoc in other people's gardens!Best wishes,Nicholas Dobson
Martine Skopan
Melvyn said in his piece "Apparently Flaubert used to read his novels aloud to his friends, making them sit through 8 hour shifts at a time" Actually this is not as out of the way as it seems. It was common practice at the time to read aloud one's novels or plays, especially plays, to discerning friends. George Sand and Flaubert did this several times, as evidenced in the correspondence. What he did on a regular basis was to declaim his latest pages to check for rhythm and colour. He called it the "gueuloir", (from slang "gueuler", meaning shout) as in boudoir or fumoir. May I send my sincerest thanks for the sterling work, the high standards and the hours of entertainment this programme has provided week after week, to hosts of riveted listeners I'm sure, and to this middle-aged French lady. The Fall of Constantinople has recently enlivened a weary afternoon's weeding... We are all in your debt.
Neil Foxlee: 'The Trial of Madame Bovary'
Rape, sadism, Egyptian prostitutes... It should be evident to any reader of the novel that Flaubert identifies with Emma (allegedly declaring 'Mme Bovary, c'est moi!'), so if he does punish and rape her, he's also punishing and raping himself, so to speak. The key sentence of the novel (which was also prominent at the trial) is 'Elle [Emma] retrouvait dans l'adultere toutes les platitudes du mariage' ('She rediscovered in adultery all the platitudes of marriage'). This is what makes the novel simultaneously subversive (marriage is boring) and 'moral' (after a while, adultery is too). There is so much more to be said about Flaubert's masterpiece than was said in the programme.
susie Hamilton Flaubert
In the discussion of whether the novel was encouraging or discouraging immorality, there seemed to be no mention of the essential Flaubertian quality of ennui that afflicts adulterous romance as much as marriage: "She was as sated of him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage".
Peter Household – Madame Bovary
Perhaps someone out there would hazard a comparison with the Lady Chatterley trial?
Czarny Atrament Madame Bovary's Trial
Stimulating programme on the trial of "Madame Bovary" though marred for me by Professor Andy Martin's claim at the end - "Flaubert was a rapist", using the surely, by now, outdated Roland Barthes (doyen of the "'autonomous writerless text"), to justify his claim. He falls into the trap of an "ad hominem" attack on Gustave Flaubert, which in any case "supposes" an authorial presence, precisely what the subtle if confused Barthes was refuting. In any case, Emma Bovary shines out as the most human and alive of the various fools and bigots that Flaubert skewers in his book; Flaubert recognizes this, so he can hardly be - except by crude ideologically driven theorists - be accused of "raping" his heroine.
Simone Weil
How about a program about 20th Century philosopher Simone Weil; perhaps we can try to understand this brilliant soul who consecrated her life to principle and justice; someone who ultimately perished for conciously forgoing the consumption of her rightful food ration while dying of tuberculosis in a sanitorium because others had less to eat than she.Perhaps we can try to understand why she chose to labor in factories among the poor in order to understand what life was like for the least priviledged of interwar French society.At least two popes have read her works. Thank you for your superb program.
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