Madame Bovary. Questions for RL Book Club discussion please.

[Slubberdegullion]

I'm hosting my RL book club tomorrow night and I need a few questions to provoke interesting, high brow discussion (and to keep us away from chatting about Harry Potter).

Does anyone have any suggestions of questions, or a web site that might list some. I've just spent a rather unfruitful hour+ with Google. I do not want A-level questions of the 'compare and contrast Charles with Leon' type. More 'did you sympathise at all with Emma, or did you just want to reach into the book and give her a jolly good shake?', type thing.

All suggestions very gratefully recieved.

(I now have to go and sort dinner for SIL/BIL but will check back later.)

TIA.

Erm, how about:
Are you impressed at how well Flaubert, a man in the 19th century, can get inside a woman's mind?
or
Was Emma a bit of a twit? Or would having to live the life she had to live drive you to behave like that too?

Quick bump for evening high brow types. Ladies arriving in half an hour!

OK.

The was Emma a bit of a twit? Is probably the best one I reckon. Also Flaubert's feelings about Emma to be compared to Hardy's feelings about Tess.

Thank you.

Did read Tess of the whatsits ages ago.....am trying to remember what happens. Nothing to great I recall. May fling the question into the open if we meet some embarrasing silences

I mean nothing great happens to Tess....does she meet a sticky end also?

How amazed were you by the Sid James/Barbara Windsor raunchiness of the sex-in-a-carriage scene? Sweating horses and driver, carriage swaying with all the sexual activity. Why is sex so vividly depicted there and so absent from contemporary english novels?

Well I think he liked making her suffer - is a take on 'femaleness' really. Though she wasn't half as spoilt as Emma of course.

Here are some more:

Do you think the book could have been written by a woman?

Who would be a modern Madame Bovary?

Influence of Bovary on Ibsen and Tolstoy?

How influential a novel on the role/unhappiness of women?

Is this the first Chick Lit novel?

How's that? Wish I was coming to your book group. Have you made a cake for the event?

Oh yes, I loved that scene. Especially the hand chucking the ripped up note out of the carriage at the end.

Will def. include that one.

No 100x, am all caked out. Have done the french bit with nice french wine and those posh bonne maman biscuits. Ha how Flaubert would wince, how very bourgeoise of me.

What do you think to my questions?

the very idea of a book club is oh-so-bourgeois -- makes me think of the chemist in Madame Bovary. Are you sure he isn't going to turn up?
(I'm not knocking the club: I'd love to come, It's a very interesting novel.)

Excellent q's 100x and 6kinds. Am scribbling down madly.

lol at Homais turning up....I love that Flauberts last line is that he has just recieved the Legion of honour....the eternal nature of the character etc.

oh those questions they were nothing really.

Enjoy tonight. I hope they're good these people though. I hope they are worthy of the poncy biscuits.

Poncey biscuits, poncey wine....very clever thought provoking questions . The evening was a great hit. Had to chuck everyone out at 11pm...apparently the longest discussion our book club has ever had.

Good!! Wish I could have joined in. I re-read the book recently and thought it was really thought-provoking. So I got a biography of flaubert out of my library and then failed utterly to make time to read it. Pretty standard behaviour for me.

There was big discussion of Madame Bovary on r4 last week. Brain currently mush so can't remember for the life of me what programme it was.

Oh, have just realised the book group was last night.

Bugger.