Flaubert is credited with changing the course of fiction forever and this book is the one cited as an example of his ability to summon up the mundane aspects of everyday life and render them entertaining and believable. He labored over every sentence, often writing only a page a day, but making it as close to perfect as possible. The consummate editor. This quote from him I cannot argue with (nor can I emulate): “A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable.”
Tolstoy created Anna Karenina in the image of Emma Bovary--they are both tragic heroines, to be sure, but where we root for Anna against all odds, we watch Emma with voyeuristic distaste. Emma is of humble beginnings, and she will never escape the tyranny of her desires, never avoid the anguish that her romantic exploits leave her with, never claim the life she sought. Emma is a covetous, small-minded woman who we do not care for, and would not voluntarily take up a conversation with at a party. It is her propensity to consistently make the wrong choice that keeps us reading, like watching a disaster unfold, slowly and surely. Her husband adores her, but she is not capable of loving him, and maybe not anyone. She is fatally self-absorbed, insensible to the suffering of others, and she can’t see beyond the romantic stereotypes she serves. She is eternally looking for what she expects will be happiness, and that is the cautionary tale here. She looks for love in all the wrong places.
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