《书评》夷则十六

8、Madame Bovary

　　The background and theme
　　Madame Bovary is a novel by Flaubert, a French writer. In the 1840s, when the capitalist system was established in Western Europe, the French bourgeoisie also gained a dominant position after the \"July Revolution\". In addition, accompanied by the gradual advancement of the Industrial Revolution, French capitalism has been greatly developed, and industry and agriculture have made great progress in this period. The novel depicts the social landscape of the Second French Empire after the overall victory of the bourgeoisie in 1848. The novel is based on a true story: the poisoning of a country doctor\'s wife.
　　Plot
　　Dr Charlie fell in love with Emma while treating her father, Mr Lou. When spring came, Charlie and Emma were married. Growing up under the influence of romantic literature, Emma yearned for romantic and legendary love. Clearly, Dr. Charlie wasn\'t meeting her love expectations. After marriage, Emma realized that Charlie was a very ordinary and vulgar man. Emma began to regret her marriage. Soon Charles healed the sore mouth of a marquis. In return, the Marquis invited the Bovary to his estate. Emma was fascinated by everything in the manor. Later they moved to another town and had a daughter. In the village, Emma began her extravagant and intemperate consumption. Mr. Bovary\'s income was not enough to support her consumption, so she turned to loan sharks. At the same time, in this village, Emma met two men playing with her feelings -- Leon and Rodolf. Abandoned twice and unable to pay off her huge debts, Emma committed suicide by taking poison in despair.
　　Characteristics
　　In this book, we can easily know Emma\'s vanity, stupidity and ignorance, Bovary\'s mediocrity, incompetence and cowardice, as well as the ungrateful and vulgar ugly faces of the people around them.
　　But the book is more than that. Madame Bovary\'s tragedy is not her personal tragedy, but the tragedy of The Times. Emma, who pursued romance all her life, married the vulgar Mr. Bovary, which seemed to be the beginning of the tragedy of her life. Flaubert once said that Madame Bovary, who lived at that time, had to die. She had two extramarital affairs and seemed to love each one deeply, but when I read this book, I couldn\'t help but wonder if she really loved these two men. I think the answer is no. She loved only what she thought was romantic. Or rather, she just loved the romantic and luxurious life she imagined, so she was destined to perish.
　　My reflection
　　After watching Madame Bovary, I also have a lot of reflection and sentiment. But there are two main things I want to talk about.
　　First of all, whether we should indulge ourselves in the fantasy world or face the imperfect reality when our ideal and reality conflict. In the face of this conflict, Madame Bovary chose to fall, and thus she went to the end of destruction. We also face this conflict in real life. For example, in real life, we often face the problem that when choosing a college major, should we choose the one we like or the one that is easy to find a job? When it comes to choosing a job, choose a job that we like and are interested in, or choose a job that is less interested but pays more. We can\'t abandon the ideal completely, indulge ourselves to become a vulgar person, but we also can\'t completely disregard the reality, live in our own fantasy world. How to find the balance between our own ideal and reality is what we need to reflect upon after reading this book, and what we need to explore for our whole life.
　　Besides, what should we do when our income does not satisfy our shopping desire? In the novel, after seeing the luxury and prosperity of the upper class in the manor, Madame Bovary began her intemperate consumption. As her family\'s income was unable to cover her expenses, she turned to loan sharks, which proved to be the final straw. In our life, how many people are also like this, in order to satisfy their material desires, constantly borrow, even to borrow some illegal usury, and finally borrow more and more money so that they can not repay and destroy their own life. In this era of rapid development of the Internet, we seem to be gradually domesticated by consumerism. As soon as we open social platforms and shopping software, various shopping recommendations stimulate our desire to shop everywhere. I once saw a documentary called The Culprits of Binge Spending, which detailed how, step by step, we\'ve been brainwashed by consumerism into buying things we don\'t really need. Madame Bovary\'s extravagant consumption in the novel is also a reflection of some people in today\'s society. We should control our consumption desire correctly and not be enslaved by consumerism.

作者有话说

　　看不下去，写的很水