A more risque, less forbidding Madame Bovary Final Edition
[Gustave Flaubert] was prosecuted, but not convicted. Weighing in his favour was the fact that his adulteress comes to a bad, and quite gruesomely recounted, end. Indeed, the chapter describing Madame Bovary's death is probably the most sensationalistic passage in the book. Flaubert told the co...
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| Published in | The Ottawa citizen (1986) |
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| Main Author | |
| Format | Newspaper Article |
| Language | English |
| Published |
Ottawa, Ont
Postmedia Network Inc
05.02.2000
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| Online Access | Get full text |
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| Summary: | [Gustave Flaubert] was prosecuted, but not convicted. Weighing in his favour was the fact that his adulteress comes to a bad, and quite gruesomely recounted, end. Indeed, the chapter describing Madame Bovary's death is probably the most sensationalistic passage in the book. Flaubert told the court that his intention was "the incitement to virtue through the horror of vice." In the latest film adaptation of Madame Bovary, airing tomorrow and next Sunday at 9 p.m. on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre, the account of Emma Bovary's death is more subdued, if only because her death agony, and its effect on her household, is less protracted. At the same time, Emma's flings of passion are far less discreetly handled than in the novel. In Flaubert's version, an assignation in an enclosed cabriolet is nothing more than an inventory of the scenery passed by the weary cab driver as he waits for instructions to stop. In Heidi Thomas's film adaptation, we are in the cab to watch a dishabille Emma in her latest attempt to find the romantic ecstasy that she read about as a schoolgirl. |
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| ISSN: | 0839-3222 |