Except from Tom Perrotta's "Little Children"

"Did anybody like this book?" Mary Ann screwed her face up into the look of offended disapproval Sarah knew so well. "Because I really just hated it. I mean, isn't it kind of depressing? She cheats on her husband with two different guys, wastes all his money, the kills herself with rat poison. It's a waste of time and it's depressing."

"It's supposed to be depressing," Josephine pointed out. "It's a tragedy. Emma's undone by a tragic flaw."

"What's her flaw?" Bridget inquired.

"Blindness," Josephine replied. "She can't see that the men are just using her."

"I found it refreshing to read about a woman reclaiming her sexuality," Alice said.

"She's a slut," Mary Ann revealed.

Then Sarah spoke.

"I'm tempted to say that in her own strange way, Emma Bovary... is a feminist. She's trapped. She can either accept a life of misery or struggle against it. She chooses to struggle."

"some struggle," said Mary Ann. "Jump in bed with every guy that says hello."

"She fails in the end," Sarah conceded. "But there's something beautiful and heroic in her rebellion."

"How convenient," observed Mary Ann. "So now cheating on your husband makes you a feminist."

"It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness. Mada Bovary's problem wasn't that she committed adultery," Sarah declared, in a voice full of calm certainty. "It was that she committed adultery with losers. She never found a partner worthy of her heroic passion."

Ugh. Brilliant.