Madame BovaryRead about the other entries on the list.
One of the most sexually charged scenes in literature – the carriage ride in Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary – doesn’t allow even a glimpse of the copulating couple. Emma Bovary has met her lover, Léon, in church and they set off on a wild ride across the Normandy countryside, carriage blinds drawn. The horses sweat, the coachman curses, and passers-by wonder, like the reader, what is occurring behind those blinds: “the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel”.
Madame Bovary is on Rachel Holmes's top ten list of books on the struggle against gender-based inequality, Jill Boyd's list of six memorable marriage proposals in literature, Julia Sawalha's six best books list, Jennifer Gilmore's list of the ten worst mothers in books, Amy Sohn's list of six favorite books, Sue Townsend's 6 best books list, Helena Frith Powell's list of ten of the best sexy French books, the Christian Science Monitor's list of six novels about grand passions, John Mullan's lists of ten landmark coach rides in literature, ten of the best cathedrals in literature, ten of the best balls in literature, ten of the best bad lawyers in literature, ten of the best lotharios in literature, and ten of the best bad doctors in fiction, Valerie Martin's list of six novels about doomed marriages, and Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers. It tops Peter Carey's list of the top ten works of literature and was second on a top ten works of literature list selected by leading writers from Britain, America and Australia in 2007. It is one of John Bowe's six favorite books on love.
--Marshal Zeringue
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