具体描述
内容简介
This exquisite novel tells the story of one of the most compelling heroines in modern literature--Emma Bovary. Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Who is Madame Bovary? Flaubert's answer to this question was superb: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, the work catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world's greatest novelists. This volume, with its fine translation by Lowell Bair, a perceptive introduction by Leo Bersani, and a complete supplement of essays and critical comments, is the indispensable Madame Bovary. 作者简介
The great French novelist was born in Rouen in 1821, son of a distinguished surgeon. He studied law briefly, but in 1844 he was struck with epilepsy–it was the first of a series of violent fits that filled Flaubert's life with apprehension and drove him to lead a hermit's life. Having been attracted to literature at an early age, he soon turned his entire attention to writing. His first novel, Madame Bovary, won instant fame upon his publication in 1857: Flaubert was sued for "immorality," but was later acquitted.
An avid traveler, his fundamentally romantic nature reveling in the exotic, Flaubert went to Tunisia to research his second novel, Salammbo (1862). Both Salammbo and The Sentimental Education (1869) were poorly received, and Flaubert's genius was not publicly recognized until his masterful Three Tales (1877). Among his literary peers, his reputation was extraordinary, and he formed lasting friendships with Turgenev, George Sand, and the Goncourt brothers.
Despite his reputation as a master of realists, he was not fundamentally a realistic novelist. Flaubert's aim was to achieve a rigidly objective form of art, presented in the most perfect form. His obsession with his craft is legendary: he could work seven hours a day, many days on end, on a single page, trying to attune his style to his ideal of balanced harmony, seeking always le mot juste.
In 1875 Flaubert sacrificed his modest fortune to help his niece, Caroline, and as a result his last years were marked by financial worry and bitter isolation. He died suddenly in May, 1880, leaving his last work, Bouvard and Pécuchet unfinished. 精彩书评
"Madame Bovary is like the railroad stations erected in its epoch: graceful, even floral, but cast of iron."
——John Updike 精彩书摘
Part One
We were in study hall when the headmaster walked in, followed by a new boy not wearing a school uniform, and by a janitor carrying a large desk. Those who were sleeping awoke, and we all stood up as though interrupting our work.
The headmaster motioned us to sit down, then turned to the teacher and said softly, "Monsieur Roger, I'm placing this pupil in your care. He'll begin in the eighth grade, but if his work and conduct are good enough, he'll be promoted to where he ought to be at his age."
The newcomer hung back in the corner behind the door, so that we could hardly see him. He was a country boy of about fifteen, taller than any of us. He wore his hair cut straight across the forehead, like a cantor in a village church, and he had a gentle, bewildered look. Although his shoulders were not broad, his green jacket with black buttons was apparently too tight under the arms, and the slits of its cuffs revealed red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, sheathed in blue stockings, protruded from his yellowish trousers, which were pulled up tight by a pair of suspenders. He wore heavy, unpolished, hobnailed shoes.
We began to recite our lessons. He concentrated all his attention on them, as though listening to a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow, and when the bell rang at two o'clock the teacher had to tell him to line up with the rest of us.
When we entered a classroom we always tossed our caps on the floor, to free our hands; as soon as we crossed the threshold we would throw them under the bench so hard that they struck the wall and raised a cloud of dust; this was "the way it should be done."
But the new boy either failed to notice this maneuver or was too shy to perform it himself, for he was still holding his cap on his lap at the end of the prayer. It was a head-gear of composite nature, combining elements of the busby, the lancer cap, the round hat, the otter-skin cap and the cotton nightcap--one of those wretched things whose mute ugliness has great depths of expression, like an idiot's face. Egg-shaped and stiffened by whalebone, it began with three rounded bands, followed by alternating diamond-shaped patches of velvet and rabbit fur separated by a red stripe, and finally there was a kind of bag terminating in a cardboard-lined polygon covered with complicated braid. A network of gold wire was attached to the top of this polygon by a long, extremely thin cord, forming a kind of tassel. The cap was new; its visor was shiny.
"Stand up," said the teacher.
He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh.
He bent down and picked it up. A boy beside him knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once again.
"Will you please put your helmet away?" said the teacher, a witty man.
A loud burst of laughter from the other pupils threw the poor boy into such a state of confusion that he did not know whether to hold his cap in his hand, leave it on the floor or put it on his head. He sat down again and put it back on his lap.
"Stand up," said the teacher, "and tell me your name."
The new boy mumbled something unintelligible.
"Say it again!"
The same mumbled syllables came from his lips again, drowned out by the jeers of the class.
"Louder!" cried the teacher. "Louder!"
With desperate determination the new boy opened his enormous mouth and, as though calling someone, shouted this word at the top of his lungs: "Charbovari!"
This instantly touched off an uproar which rose in a crescendo of shrill exclamations, shrieks, barks, stamping of feet and repeated shouts of "Charbovari! Charbovari!" Then it subsided into isolated notes, but it was a long time before it died down completely; it kept coming back to life in fits and starts along a row of desks where a stifled laugh would occasionally explode like a half-spent firecracker.
A shower of penalties gradually restored order in the classroom, however, and the teacher, having managed to understand Charles Bovary's name after making him repeat it, spell it out and read it to him, immediately ordered the poor devil to sit on the dunce's seat at the foot of the rostrum. He began to walk over to it, then stopped short.
"What are you looking for?" asked the teacher.
"My ca--" the new boy said timidly, glancing around uneasily."
The whole class will copy five hundred lines!" Like Neptune's "Quos ego" in the Aeneid, this furious exclamation checked the outbreak of a new storm. "Keep quiet!" continued the teacher indignantly, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief he had taken from his toque. "As for you," he said to the new boy, "you will write out 'Ridiculus sum' twenty times in all tenses." He added, in a gentler tone, "Don't worry, you'll find your cap: it hasn't been stolen."
Everything became calm again. Heads bent over notebooks, and for the next two hours the new boy's conduct was exemplary, despite the spitballs, shot from the nib of a pen, that occasionally splattered against his face. He merely wiped himself with his hand each time this happened, then continued to sit motionless, with his eyes lowered.
That evening, in study hall, he took sleeveguards from his desk, put his things in order and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up all the words in the dictionary and taking great pains with everything he did. It was no doubt because of this display of effort that he was not placed in a lower grade, for, while he had a passable knowledge of grammatical rules, his style was without elegance. He had begun to study Latin with his village priest, since his parents, to save money, had postponed sending him off to school as long as possible.
His father, Monsieur Charles-Denis-Bartholomé Bovary, had once been an assistant surgeon in the army. Forced to leave the service in 1812 for corrupt practices with regard to conscription, he had taken advantage of his masculine charms to pick up a dowry of sixty thousand francs being offered to him in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his appearance. He was a handsome, boastful man who liked to rattle his spurs; his side whiskers joined his mustache, his fingers were always adorned with rings and he wore bright-colored clothes. He had the look of a pimp and the affable exuberance of a traveling salesman. He lived on his wife's money for the first two or three years of their marriage, eating well, getting up late, smoking big porcelain pipes, staying out every night to see a show and spending a great deal of time in cafés. His father-in-law died and left very little; indignant at this, he "went into the textile business" and lost some money, then he moved to the country, where he intended to "build up a going concern." But since he knew little more about farming than he did about calico, since he rode his horses instead of sending them off to work in the fields, drank his bottled cider instead of selling it, ate the finest poultry in his barnyard and greased his hunting shoes with the fat of his pigs, he soon realized that he would do well to give up all thought of business endeavor.
So for two hundred francs a year he rented a residence that was half farm and half gentleman's estate, on the border between Picardy and the Caux region of Normandy. Melancholy, consumed with regrets, cursing heaven, envious of everyone, he withdrew into seclusion at the age of forty-five, disgusted with mankind, he said, and resolved to live in peace.
His wife had been mad about him in the beginning; she had loved him with a boundless servility that made him even more indifferent to her. She had been vivacious, expansive and brimming over with affection in her youth, but as she grew older she became peevish, nagging and nervous, like sour wine turning to vinegar. She had suffered so much at first without complaining, watching him run after every village strumpet in sight and having him come home to her every night, satiated and stinking of alcohol, after carousing in a score of ill-famed establishments! Then her pride rebelled; she withdrew into herself, swallowing her rage with a mute stoicism which she maintained until her death. She was always busy with domestic and financial matters. She was constantly going to see lawyers or the judge, remembering when notes were due and obtaining renewals; and at home she spent all her time ironing, sewing, washing, supervising the workmen and settling the itemized bills they presented to her, while Monsieur, totally unconcerned with everything and continually sinking into a sullen drowsiness from which he roused himself only to make disagreeable remarks to her, sat smoking beside the fire and spitting into the ashes.
When she had a child it had to be placed in the care of a wet-nurse. The boy was pampered like a prince when he came back to live with them. His mother fed him on jam and candied fruit; his father let him run barefoot and even carried his philosophical pretensions to the point of saying that he might as well go naked, like a young animal. In opposition to his wife's maternal tendencies, he had a certain virile ideal of childhood, and he tried to form his son in accordance with it. He wanted him to be raised harshly, Spartan-style, in order to give him a sturdy constitution. He sent him to bed without a fire, taught him to take hearty swigs of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, placid by nature, the child showed little response to his father's efforts. His mother kept him tied to her apron-strings; she cut out cardboard figures for him, told him stories and talked to him in endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and wheedling chatter. In the isolation of her life she transferred all her shattered, abandoned ambitions to her child. She dreamed of high positions, she saw him already grown...
《简·爱》 作者:夏洛蒂·勃朗特 (Charlotte Brontë) 译者: (根据不同版本,此处可填入具体译者姓名,例如:张友鹤、王际真等) 出版社: (根据不同版本,此处可填入具体出版社,例如:人民文学出版社、上海译文出版社等) 装帧: 精装/平装(根据实际情况填写) --- 卷首语:关于心灵的疆域与自由的渴望 在文学的广袤原野上,总有一些作品以其穿透人心的力量,超越时代的界限,成为我们审视自我、理解人性的永恒镜鉴。《简·爱》便是这样一部不朽的杰作。它不仅仅是一个维多利亚时代女性的成长故事,更是一曲对独立、尊严、以及对真挚情感不懈追求的激昂赞歌。夏洛蒂·勃朗特以其敏锐的洞察力和炽热的情感,塑造了一个看似平凡却蕴含着非凡精神力量的女性形象——简·爱。她的故事,是对所有渴望挣脱束缚、定义自身价值的灵魂的深刻呼唤。 第一部分:荆棘中的萌芽——童年的阴影与精神的觉醒 故事的开端,我们将跟随简·爱,走进英国十九世纪上半叶那个等级森严、伪善盛行的社会。简·爱,一个孤苦无依的孤儿,寄居在里德舅妈家。在那个充满冷眼、刻薄与压迫的环境中,她早早地品尝了寄人篱下的辛酸与不公。里德夫人对她的偏爱自己的亲生子女,以及表兄约翰·里德对她的霸凌,构成了她童年世界里的第一道阴影。 年幼的简·爱,虽然身形瘦弱,却拥有着一颗燃烧的、追求平等的灵魂。她不甘心被视为“没有灵魂的玩偶”,勇敢地反抗约翰的暴行,即便因此遭受严厉的惩罚,被禁闭在“红屋”——那个充满幽灵传说与死亡气息的房间里——她也从未屈服。在红屋的恐惧中,她迎来了人生的第一个转折点:对逝去舅父的怀念与对逝者灵魂的呼唤,使她第一次意识到,即使在最绝望的处境中,精神的力量也能超越物质的禁锢。 这一阶段的描写,细腻入微地展现了简·爱早慧、敏感且坚韧的性格底色。她对公平的渴望,对爱与归属感的渴求,如同荒原上的嫩芽,在逆境中顽强地向上生长。 第二部分:教育的熔炉——洛伍德学校的洗礼 为了摆脱里德家的桎梏,简·爱被送往了教会创办的洛伍德慈善学校。这所学校,对外宣称是培养虔诚的教士,实则是一个管理松散、物资匮乏、充满宗教狂热与体罚的悲惨之地。在那里,简·爱结识了第一位真正的朋友——海伦·彭斯。 海伦·彭斯是一个具有早期基督教美德的典范,她宽容、顺从、将一切苦难视为通往天堂的试炼。她与简·爱形成了鲜明的对比:简·爱是反抗者,是要求现实公平的斗士;海伦是忍耐者,是追求精神解脱的信徒。海伦的哲学,虽然在某种程度上安抚了简·爱躁动不安的心灵,但她最终因肺病早逝,则标志着简·爱开始意识到,仅仅依靠信仰的慰藉是远远不够的,人必须在现世中为自己争取尊严。 洛伍德的校长布洛赫赫斯特先生的虚伪,以及对学生们的苛刻,进一步激发了简·爱对虚伪和暴政的厌恶。在洛伍德度过了八年的时光——六年学生,两年助教——简·爱完成了基础的知识积累,更重要的是,她锤炼了独立思考的能力,为她未来的人生挑战做好了精神上的准备。 第三部分:心灵的碰撞——荆棘坡庄园的邂逅 十八岁时,渴望改变命运的简·爱,离开了洛伍德,来到了一座宏伟而又充满神秘色彩的庄园——荆棘坡(Thornfield Hall)。她受聘成为爱德华·费尔法克斯·罗切斯特先生(Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester)的家庭教师,负责教导他那活泼却缺乏管教的法裔养女阿黛尔·瓦朗斯。 荆棘坡,这个名字本身就预示着这座庄园中隐藏的痛苦与激情。罗切斯特先生,一个风度翩翩,却又带着几分粗犷、愤世嫉俗、饱经风霜的贵族,成为了简·爱生命中最重要的谜团与引力中心。 两人的相遇充满了戏剧性。简爱以其朴实无华却又充满智慧的对话,打破了罗切斯特先生惯常的傲慢与审视,使他第一次看到了一个真正平等的心灵。罗切斯特被简·爱的真诚、敏锐的观察力和她那颗“小小的、坚硬的灵魂”深深吸引。而简·爱,也无可救药地陷入了对这位复杂、富有魅力的男人的爱恋之中。她爱他那不羁的灵魂,爱他将她视为一个完整的人,而非仅仅是一个仆人或家庭教师。 在荆棘坡的日子里,简·爱体验到了真正的归属感和被珍视的感觉。然而,这座庄园里弥漫着一种挥之不去的阴影:夜晚的怪笑声、不明原因的火灾,以及罗切斯特先生刻意隐瞒的秘密,都像一根根刺,预示着这段关系背后潜藏的巨大危机。 第四部分:爱情的考验——真相的揭露与精神的流亡 在简爱与罗切斯特的感情日益深厚,甚至到了谈婚论嫁的地步时,那个一直被压抑的秘密终于如同火山爆发般喷涌而出。在婚礼之上,一位名叫布朗顿·梅森的律师揭露了一个惊人的事实:罗切斯特先生早已有一位合法的妻子——伯莎·梅森(Bertha Mason),一个被疯癫折磨的加勒比海富商的女儿,她被囚禁在荆棘坡顶楼的密室中。 这一刻,简·爱的世界彻底崩塌。她对爱情的信仰,对婚姻的承诺,以及她对罗切斯特全部的信任,在赤裸的现实面前化为乌有。她深爱的男人,竟是她人生的一个巨大的谎言。 面对痛苦的选择,简·爱展现了她性格中最光辉的一面。她深爱罗切斯特,愿意忍受屈辱,甚至愿意做他的情妇,只为留在他的身边。然而,她内心深处对道德、自尊和独立人格的坚守,让她选择了更艰难的道路:离开。她拒绝以牺牲尊严为代价来换取物质的保障和暂时的陪伴。她宁愿选择贫穷、孤独和饥饿,也不愿成为一个被道德谴责的“堕落女人”。 简·爱毅然决然地逃离了荆棘坡,带着几乎被榨干的体力与精神,流落到广袤的荒野。 第五部分:自我救赎与真正的平等——圣约翰的考验与归宿 逃亡中的简·爱经历了人生的最低谷:饥饿、寒冷、被世人拒绝。她差点被街边的乞丐和冷漠的世人吞噬。最终,她被善良的圣约翰·里弗斯(St. John Rivers)一家所救助。 圣约翰,一位年轻有为、外表英俊却内心冰冷、充满宗教狂热的传教士,是简·爱遇到的另一种极端人格。他欣赏简·爱的智慧和能力,但却试图将她塑造成实现自己“神圣使命”的工具。他向简·爱求婚,不是基于爱情,而是基于“实用性”和“使命感”。 面对圣约翰近乎无情的“安排”,简·爱再次陷入挣扎。圣约翰的提议,是对她精神自由的另一种形式的囚禁——是精神上的“红屋”。她意识到,嫁给圣约翰,意味着将自己的心与灵魂彻底冰封,终生为他人的理想而活。 就在简·爱几乎要屈服于圣约翰安排的命运时,她听到了罗切斯特发自灵魂深处的呼唤——“简!我的爱人!”。这超越了时空的召唤,坚定了她回归的决心。她发现,自己与罗切斯特在命运的巨变中,反而达到了真正的平等。 简·爱继承了她从未谋面的亲戚留下的丰厚遗产,获得了经济独立。她重返荆棘坡,却发现庄园已毁于大火,罗切斯特也因此双目失明,并失去了一只手。 尾声:残缺中的圆满 当简爱再次见到罗切斯特时,他已不再是那个傲慢、神秘的贵族,而是一个遭受重创、谦卑且依赖她的受难者。两人的地位终于在命运的安排下实现了真正的对等:简爱在经济上独立,在精神上成熟;罗切斯特在身体上残缺,在灵魂上忏悔。 他们最终结合,共同面对未来。他们的结合,建立在相互理解、无条件的爱与接受的基础之上。夏洛蒂·勃朗特通过简爱,宣告了一种全新的女性价值:独立自主的人格,才是获得真爱的先决条件。 简爱的故事,是关于一个“微不足道”的女性,如何用她的正直、她的勇气和她那颗不屈的灵魂,最终掌控了自己的命运,并找到了那份“灵魂的安宁”的史诗。 --- 核心主题与文学价值 《简·爱》以第一人称叙事手法,构建了一个极具心理深度的内心世界。小说大胆地探讨了以下主题: 1. 女性的独立与自尊: 小说对维多利亚时代女性的从属地位提出了尖锐的挑战,强调女性不仅需要爱情,更需要工作、教育和经济上的独立。 2. 阶级与偏见: 简爱作为“无产者”和“丑小鸭”,始终与当时的社会等级制度进行抗争。 3. 激情与理性的平衡: 简爱在罗切斯特的热烈与圣约翰的冷酷之间寻找平衡,最终找到了将激情与道德融为一体的“适中之道”。 4. 精神的自由: 无论身处红屋、洛伍德还是被幽禁的顶楼,简爱都将维护内心的自由和完整性置于首位。 这部作品,以其强烈的浪漫主义色彩和深刻的现实主义批判,成为英格兰文学史上不朽的丰碑。它给予一代又一代的读者,在面对生活的不公与苦难时,坚守自我、勇敢去爱的力量。