Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is a novel by Gustave Flaubert that raised a scandal when it was first published in 1857 and is now seen as one of the first modern realistic novel. After publishing a few controversial excerpts in a periodical, Flaubert had to go to trial to be allowed to publish the rest of the novel.

Summary

Madame Bovary takes place in provincial northern France, near the town of Rouen. A doctor, Charles Bovary, marries a beautiful farm girl, Emma. She is filled with a desire for luxury and romance, which she gets from reading popular novels. Charles means well, but is boring and clumsy. When Emma gets pregnant and eventually gives birth to a daughter, she believes her life is virtually over.

Related Topics:
France - Rouen

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Charles decides that Emma needs a change of scenery, and moves from the village of Tostes into an equally stultifying village, Yonville. There, Emma flirts with a young law student, Léon, who seems to share her appreciation for "the finer things in life." When he leaves to study in Paris, Emma begins an affair with a rich landowner, Rodolphe. Swept away by romantic fantasy, she makes a plan to run away with him. Rodolphe, however, does not love her, and breaks off the plan the evening before it was to take place.

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Emma and Charles attend the opera in Rouen one night, and Emma reencounters Léon. They begin an affair--Emma travels to the city each week to meet him, while Charles believes that she is taking piano lessons. Meanwhile, Emma is spending exorbitant amounts of money at the local dressmaker's. When Emma's debts begin to pile up and people begin to suspect her adultery, she sees suicide as her only means of escape. She swallows arsenic and dies, painfully and slowly. The loyal Charles is distraught, even more so after finding the letters that Rodolphe wrote to her. Soon after, he dies, leaving their daughter an orphan.

Related Topics:
Opera - Suicide - Arsenic

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