Tag Archives: French literature

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

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Madame Bovary cover

Our copy of this book has been sitting unread since my husband inherited it from his grandfather 30 or so years ago. So I thought it was about time that I got around to reading it, especially as it can be my second book for the Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge.

First published in 1857, Madame Bovary was quickly banned due to the subject matter, so when the charges were dropped it became an instant best seller, as is always the way with banned things.

The story begins with Charles Bovary entering the fifth class of school as a new boy, and very much the country yokel. With years of hard study he eventually becomes a doctor and his parents marry him off to a supposedly wealthy widow, Heloise, who fairly quickly dies.

Charles had already taken a fancy to Emma Rouault, the young, convent educated daughter of one of his patients and they are soon married.

When they are invited to stay at Vaubyessard which is where the Marquis d’Andervilliers lives Emma gets a taste for the high life and becomes very disatisfied with her own. As she sinks ino a six week long depression, Charles is advised to move away from the town where he has a thriving medical practice for the good of his wife’s health.

After moving to the village of Yonville and having a daughter (Bertha) who is put out to a wet nurse. Emma longs for some romance in her life and starts a flirtation with Leon a young law clerk who eventually leaves for the bright lights of Rouen.

Then a local, wealthy bachelor decides to seduce her and Emma is targeted by the local draper (very much like a modern credit card company) who extends masses of credit to her at the same time as encouraging her to get power of attorney from Charles. The debts pile up. Disaster beckons.

I can’t say that I really enjoyed this book. For one thing I didn’t like any of the characters, but I can see that is important because it was the first time anyone had ever written about a woman like Emma Bovary.

But that is probably just me. I’m not keen on modern novels where characters fall for ‘the grass is greener’ type of life. However, I’m glad that I read it as it is a classic.

Germinal by Emile Zola

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Germinal was first published in 1883 and at 536 pages I must admit that I thought I might have bitten off more than I could chew considering this was my first foray into French literature. However, the pages whizzed past and I must put in a good word for Roger Pearson who made such a smooth job of the translating. I especially liked the fact that he used the Scottish word ‘piece’ meaning sandwich.

I really enjoyed reading this book, although that does seem a strange thing to say because there certainly isn’t much joy around. Things just lurch from bad to horrendous.

The story begins with Etienne Lantier, an unemployed mechanic walking through the countryside on a freezing cold dark night, penniless and starving. When he reaches a mining complex he is interested in the lay-out of the place and hopes he might be able to find work there, which he does.

After his first shift he decides that the work is too hard and that he will move on, but when he realizes that the miners and their families are in dire straits, he decides to stay on, hoping that he will become a leader of the miners eventually.

Zola writes very realistically of the bitching and gossiping which goes on in a small close-knit community. You can’t help thinking that the French workers don’t seem to have benefited at all from the French Revolution. The contrast between the miners and the mine owners is vast. Zola seems to be a sort of French version of Charles Dickens, highlighting the appalling working conditions of the common man. However M. Hennebeau is lonely in a loveless marriage with an adulterous wife and can’t help envying the miners their ‘free-love’ lifestyle. The grass is always greener.

Things come to a head when the mine owners inflict what amounts to a pay cut on the workers, who already couldn’t make ends meet and the workers go on strike with Etienne as their leader.

I think Zola got the confrontational scenes with the army just right, showing how quickly desperate people lose control in a mob. The despised shop owner comes to a very nasty end at the hands of the women who are a rough bunch due to their circumstances. His depiction of the Chaval-Catherine relationship is so well observed and frankly depressing as the abused Catherine sticks to her abuser for fear of finding something worse without him and ending up a prostitute. Plus ca change – as they say.

At the end of the book Etienne is thinking of a future when the workers will organise themselves into unions and win the day.

I’m sure I would never have got around to reading Zola without the Classics Circuit, so a big thank-you again and I’ll definitely be reading more of his.

I’m going off at a complete tangent here.

Etienne couldn’t be expected to imagine having to contend with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, who in the 1980s decided to close down all the mines in Britain, and reader, she did it.

I had such a feeling of deja vu whilst reading Germinal because we live in what was a coal mining district and the conditions were terrible even in the 1980s. The mine which was about half a mile from us went under the North Sea and the workers had to crawl for about an hour before getting to the coal face. It was too cramped to stand up and of course they weren’t paid until they reached the coal face. Then they used pneumatic drills (jack hammers) so the noise was horrible. But still they fought for their jobs, they didn’t have to face the army as in Germinal. It was the police on horses. Soldiers wouldn’t have been as bad. We all contributed money to the strike fund but Maggie got her way in the end.