Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert could have used many revisions.

Emma Bovary is whiny and depressed with the life that she chose. She is utterly selfish and cheats on her husband with two different men. This may sound exciting, but this was written in the Victorian era. It was scandalous, almost pornographic, for the time, but kind of tepid nowadays. Emma slowly but surely screws up her life, and we get to watch in slow motion.

In addition to wishing that Emma was not so selfish and stupid, I wish her husband had a backbone and was more intelligent. Maybe if he was then she would not have cheated, or at least not gotten away with it. He should not have been so in love with her, because she was horrible to him.

Flaubert was trying to make a statement about Victorian decadence in France. Fine. My main beef with the book was this: Emma should not have poisoned herself with arsenic at the end of the book.

The reason is not because I did not want her to die, but because she then took twenty pages of agony before she finally kicked the bucket.

I think she should have shot herself in the head, or maybe jumped off a building. Then it at least would have been quick.

Either that, or she should have realized that suicide is not the answer and could have even run away and started her life anew. The character was too weak to have attempted anything like that, but I wish she could have!