More than once on this blog I have compared "Madame Bovary" to "Anna Karenina" (who can help it?), stressing over and over again that Anna's tragedy is due to both herself and society whereas Emma Bovary has only herself to blame, and that Emma doesn't have the depth and complexity of Anna, apparently Flaubert doesn't like her very much.
This didn't do the novel much harm, for I have always recognised it as a masterpiece, 1 of the greatest novels ever written. But I must confess that now, having separated these 2 books from each other because of their differences, I have a different view and a better appreciation of "Madame Bovary". On the surface, both are set in the 19th century and concerned with adultery. Yet, unlike "Anna Karenina", "Madame Bovary" isn't really about adultery. Put it this way, Anna lives a sad life with a stiff, emotionless, duty-bound husband and may continue living that way, in boredom but without trouble, if not for the affair with Vronsky; in other words, whilst I understand the dullness of her life, sympathise with her and have a faint idea that if Vronsky doesn't appear, there might be another guy at some point, one may say that trouble begins when Anna meets and falls in love with Vronsky and gets tangled in the affair. For Emma, however, trouble begins long before Emma meets Rodolphe and Léon. Deceitful and self-deluded, she thinks herself romantic and passionate but is in fact sentimental. It doesn't matter whether or not she meets these 2 men, it doesn't matter whether or not she has extramarital affairs, Emma is self-destructive in 1 way or another. Her sexual liaisons aren't the focus, I don't think she truly loves Rodolphe and Léon. As pointed out by Nabokov, adultery is a conventional way to rise above the conventional, I reckon that to Flaubert, having a deep, insightful and wise character commit adultery is quite conventional, perhaps even banal. Instead, Flaubert chooses a woman who only appears so at 1st, who mistakenly believes herself to be different from, more cultured and artistic than, and superior to, other people around her. Then carefully and perfectly, he dissects and exposes her shallowness and philistinism.
To see this is to realise that "Anna Karenina" and "Madame Bovary" have very different protagonists and different subjects, and tackle different themes, and one should not let 1 book affect the reading of the other*.
*: Of course I read "Madame Bovary" over 1 year before "Anna Karenina", but at the time, had become highly acquainted with the story of "Anna Karenina" and watched at least 1 adaptation.
I would like to recommend my country’s own “Madame Bovary/Anna Karenina” from 19th century (it seems that every country has one, Cousin Basilio and Effie Briest are also examples). Here it is free on the internet:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.eadeverell.com/forreaders/forbidden-love/
I would say that the case in this novel is closer to Emma Bovary’s, in that the protagonist is lustful and could cheat on her husband with just anyone.
Here is my deeper comparisons of it with Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina:
https://faintingheroine.tumblr.com/post/654284597484568576/now-that-i-have-finished-madame-bovary-it-is-a
https://faintingheroine.tumblr.com/post/675802451928072192/i-was-reading-the-comparison-between-madame-bovary
Oh this was a very old blog post, I'm embarrassed looking at it now haha.
DeleteThanks for letting me know about the Turkish book. I'll look more into it. And yeah I've read Effi Briest.
Of course the translation of the Turkish book does leave a lot to be desired (pronoun mistakes being the foremost among its problems) and it probably doesn’t compare to European greats, but I do love it a lot.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you love it?
DeleteWikipedia calls it a romance novel, I think.
It really is not a romance novel. Its plot is centered on an affair but I wouldn’t say that it is any more of a romance novel than Madame Bovary is.
ReplyDeleteI love how the stories of the two heroines are interweaved (the adulteress and her teenaged stepdaughter). I especially love how the stepdaughter defies the expectations you would have of her character type, she is introduced as the delicate sickly ingenue but turns out to be a surprisingly multifaceted and complex portrayal of a teenage girl. It is also the rare canonical Turkish novel that does not care to say Big Things about the State of the Country etc., and is instead is concerned with the psychologies of individuals. Stylistically it might not compare to its European counterparts, especially in translation, but it has some of my favorite female characters in literature.
I see.
DeleteYou do get me intrigued.
This guy is in the process of making a professional translation of the book, which I am sure would be a better reading experience than this internet translation:
Deletehttps://bosphorusreview.com/interview-douglas-brookes
Thanks for that. I've just read the entire interview.
DeleteWhat do you think about his decision to keep some of the Turkish phrases and add a translation afterwards?
Interesting decision for the translation of a memoir, but I think would sound a bit too cluttered in a novel’s translation.
DeleteStill, I think the translator would make the best decision; Halit Ziya is not an easy author to translate, so some stylistic choices need to be made. I am pretty excited by the possibility that the novel might get a professional English translation.
DeleteOkay.
DeleteWell, thanks for letting me know about this.