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The Doctor's Wife (Oxford World's Classics)
 
 
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The Doctor's Wife (Oxford World's Classics) [Facsimile] (Paperback)

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Author), Lyn Pykett (Editor) "There were two surgeons in the little town of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, in pretty pastoral Midlandshire,-Mr Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the..." (more)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks; Facsimile edition edition (5 Nov 1998)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0192833014
  • ISBN-13: 978-0192833013
  • Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 321,033 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #60 in  Books > Fiction > Short Stories > World > Welsh
    #65 in  Books > Fiction > Short Stories > World > Scottish

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Product Description

Product Description
`Isabel Gilbert was not a woman of the world. She had read novels while other people perused the Sunday papers...she believed in a phantasmal world created out of the pages of poets and romancers.' The Doctor's Wife is Mary Elizabeth Braddon's rewriting of Flaubert's Madame Bovary in which she explores her heroine's sense of entrapment and alienation in middle-class provincial life married to a good natured but bovine husband who seems incapable of understanding his wife's imaginative life and feelings. A woman with a secret, adultery, death and the spectacle of female recrimination and suffering are the elements which combine to make The Doctor's Wife a classic women's sensation novel. Yet, The Doctor's Wife is also a self-consciously literary novel, in which Braddon attempts to transcend the sensation genre. This is the only edition of a fascinating and engrossing work, and reproduces uncut the first three-volume edition of 1864.

About the Author
Lyn Pykett is Professor and Head of English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Inside This Book (Learn More)
First Sentence
There were two surgeons in the little town of Graybridge-on-the-Wayverne, in pretty pastoral Midlandshire,-Mr Pawlkatt, who lived in a big, new, brazen-faced house in the middle of the queer old High Street; and John Gilbert, the parish doctor, who lived in his own house on the outskirts of Graybridge, and worked very hard for a smaller income than that which the stylish Mr Pawlkatt derived from his aristocratic patients. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Bovary (in my opinion anyway)., 16 Feb 2004
By S. Hapgood "www.sjhstrangetales.com" - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
Ignore all the dry-as-dust academic blurb on the cover and in the introduction to this novel, if you take any notice of that you'll be put off reading it, and then you would be missing a treat. In "The Doctor's Wife" Mrs Braddon (never one to be put off "borrowing" a good idea) decided to do her own version of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary", and I must admit I had misgivings about this. For a good while it was hard to shake off Flaubert's novel as the stories, for the first half of the book, are so very similar. Isobel Gilbert, like Emma Bovary, is a young woman with a hopelessly romantic outlook on life, fuelled by her insatiable appetite for romantic fiction. She meets and marries George Gilbert, a promising young doctor in a small town in the fictional county of Midlandshire, and soon finds that married life isn't all romance.

About halfway through the book though Braddon's book breaks away completely from Flaubert's. Yes, like Emma, Isobel becomes infatuated with the handsome young local lord of the manor, and finds that he's not exactly immune to her charms either. But whereas Emma is quite hard-bitten and socially-ambitious, Isobel's love of romantic fiction has stymied her development, and she is stuck at the level of being a starry-eyed innocent schoolgirl, unable to cope when her admirer wants to move the relationship onto a more prosaic level.

This book is very Victorian in places and that might put off the modern reader. For instance, the dark sentimentality, the protracted death-bed scenes, the long speeches (where the characters don't seem to be having a conversation so much as "addressing a public meeting", as Queen Victoria once famously said about Gladstone), and Isobel's tendency to start fainting when it all gets too much, can take a bit of swallowing, but bear with it, as this is a really beautiful book. It seems unfair that Mrs Braddon has been dismissed since her lifetime as being nothing more than a Victorian sensation scribbler, a sort of sub-Wilkie Collins. It's unfair because she simply wrote so beautifully, and the scenes in this book brim with life and a deep, wide-eyed understanding of human nature. It's also very moving in parts, most particularly George's final remarks to his wife, which are very moving in their simplicity.

I personally think it's better than "Madame Bovary" simply because, although Flaubert's novel is undoubtedly good, I also found it relentlessly grim. He simply seems to offer no hope for ANYONE! I often admire French authors for their clear-headed lack of sentimentality (Zola for instance), but sometimes they can take it a tad too far! I was annoyed by the somewhat lofty and indifferent analysis of "The Doctor's Wife" given in the intro to my copy. Ignore all that, just enjoy a bloomin' good story!

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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Read this - it's marvellous!, 16 Jun 1999
By A Customer
Brilliant! This is a wonderful book which I couldn't put down. It's an English adaptation of Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" which has far more wit and humour than the original. It's funny, exciting and fascinating. Why on earth has it been out of print for so long?
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars better than bovary indeed....too good!! prepare for all night reading, 2 Aug 2008
i love love this book, it is totally gripping and the better each time i read it. It concerns a silly girl really, though you can't help but love and feel for her and her marriage...and subsequent story, i really don't want to give anything away. It is far superior to many books i have read by "popular" authors (austen particularly) and i would highly recommend it - esp to women, not sure men would "get" it....try it and you won't be disappointed
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 		 Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A Brilliant Read
I also enjoyed this a lot more than Madame Bovary. It is an enthralling read that pulls you along.

The characters are fleshed out and not typical Victorian... Read more

Published on 15 Jun 2004 by Saliero

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