In my quest for classics - I have just finished listening to a Globe Radio Production of Madame Bovary. If you care about these things, and you might one day read Madame Bovary - be aware that this blog post will contain ***SPOILERS***.
Frankly, I thought it was a waste of time and don't understand why it is a classic. True - the author's voice was very picturesque - but the character - Madame Bovary was not sympethetic in the least. She was revolting with no redeemable thing in her and then her husband - who was nice just pines away and dies for no reason at the end of the book even though he learns what a terrible woman and wife she was. In fact - he is still making excuses for her and even tells one of her lovers that he understands!
I don't mind if a character is abit dodgy - I love Flannery O'Conner's stories and her characters are often quite raw - but the differnce is that they are not beyond redemption -- or they at least realize how rotten they were. Emma - in typicall selfish fashion - realizes she doesn't want to die for no other apparent reason than that it is painful and gruesom and not at all romantic - the crowning dissapointment of all of her dissapointments- unrealistic expectations that were not met.
Simultaneously to Madame Bovary, I am reading Crime and Punishment. How I managed to pick two books about morally revolting people, I 'm not really sure - but so it goes. Even before he commited the murder, I was unsure if I really wanted to read about such a character - and Alister can't remember how it ends but says "his conscious tortures him - so how can he be a complete moral rebrobate" So I haven't gone too far past the murder - but in my opinion, someone who can kill someone simply because he fell into a brooding depression and made it worse by not talking to people or seeking work and all of those other things that get yu out of the world inside of your head - well, I'm just not sure if I want to read about such a character if nothing then comes of it - i.e redemption and sympathy are not achievable.
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