Madame Bovary

gustave flaubert, madame bovary scandalous affairs, frivolous fashions, secrets, debts, lies.

the subject matter of gustave flaubert's madame bovary feels as fresh and sharp as the contents of any contemporary novel.

in fact, flaubert's most famous work was published in 1856 and is widely regarded as a pinnacle of the 19th century realist european novel.

set in provincial france, the novel follows emma bovary, a beautiful and imaginative young woman who marries charles, a well-meaning but dull country doctor.

emma, who has been raised on romantic novels, quickly becomes disillusioned with her marriage and the monotony of rural life in the small town of yonville.

dreaming of a more glamorous and passionate existence, she embarks on a series of reckless choices, plunging into adulterous affairs and accumulating crippling debt, all in a desperate attempt to escape her unremarkable reality.

flaubert's vivid portrayal of emma's struggles against the confines of her society and her unrelenting pursuit of happiness captures the universal human conflict between reality and desire, imagined romance and real-life relationships.

are you ready to find out more about the novel that scandalised readers on its publication and continues to compel literature lovers today?

then let's meet the bovaries.

expectation meets reality the titular heroine, or anti-heroine depending who you ask, of gustave flaubert's classic novel madame bovary is emma bovary herself.

and yet, the reader will not meet emma at the book's beginning.

so where does the novel start?

with charles bovary, emma's ill-suited husband.

the novel's action takes place in a compressed amount of time, most of it occurs in the few short years of emma and charles' decidedly unhappy marriage, but its opening chapters cover a far wider span of time.

we first meet charles bovary when he is a clumsy schoolboy, living in a small french village of no significance.

we follow along as he grows up, later fails his medical exams before finally qualifying as a doctor, and endures a loveless marriage with the older widow, héloïse dubuc.

héloïse scolds and nags charles incessantly but she has one redeeming feature.

she is, thanks to her first marriage, a wealthy woman.

one day charles is called to treat the injured leg of a local farmer, roual.

here we first meet emma, roual's daughter.

but we won't get to know too much about her yet.

charles sees her only in glimpses, though he sees enough to be struck by her beauty.

all that he learns about her comes to him second-hand through the local gossips, who say that emma has dropped out of convent school, or through héloïse, who has heard that emma puts on airs.

as charles finds himself increasingly entranced by emma, dramatic revelations occur in his marriage.

he and héloïse learn that her lawyer has defrauded her of most of her money.

shortly after, charles learns that héloïse deceived him about how much money her husband had left to her in the first place.

héloïse, shocked and humiliated, falls ill and dies.

this leaves charles free to pursue his fascination with emma.

the two spend time getting to know one another through leisurely walks and long conversations, though emma is by far the more talkative and interesting conversationalist.

soon, charles sets his mind on marriage.

roual, who has mismanaged his farm and sunk into debt, is more than happy to see his daughter married off to the local doctor, and grants charles emma's hand.

because we have spent so much time in these opening chapters with charles, by this point in the story, we know him well.

we know that he is meek, dull, stubborn, and provincial.

we are struck, just as charles himself is struck, by the sheer improbability of someone as beautiful and vivacious as emma marrying someone as ordinary as charles.

we sense, as charles does not sense, at least not initially, that this union cannot end happily.

the marriage goes ahead.

emma, ever romantic, has her heart set on a dramatic midnight wedding.

ultimately, the pair are married at a more respectable time, in the afternoon, on emma's father's farm.

charles is thrilled with his good luck.

emma remains more detached.

even when charles takes her virginity the morning after the wedding, she is cool and collected.

at this point in the novel, we begin to learn more about emma, or now that she has married madame bovary herself.

while charles is overcome with love, emma is less enthusiastic.

she is an avid reader of romance novels, and she is perturbed to find that her married life bears little resemblance to the dramatic scenes she has swooned over in books.

writes flaubert, before marriage she thought herself in love, but since the happiness that should have followed failed to come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken.

and emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words bliss, passion, ecstasy, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.

dissatisfied with her provincial life, emma wishes for romance and excitement.

one day, it comes in the form of an invitation to a ball, held by the marquis d'andervilliers.

emma is enchanted by the display of wealth and elegance, and equally embarrassed by her husband.

surrounded by the upper class, charles suddenly seems horribly gauche to her.

she dances with a dashing viscount.

later, when the bovaries depart, they see that same viscount throw his cigar box out of his carriage.

emma picks up the cigar box for a keepsake.

after the ball, emma's life feels ever more dull and tedious.

she yearns to be part of a more refined, glamorous world, the world that the ball and the cigar box represent.

but two things happen.

charles accepts a new job in the town of yonville, and emma falls pregnant.

her fate, it would seem, is set in stone.

a scandalous affair.

though the bovaries have moved location, their social status hasn't shifted.

in yonville, emma is just as dissatisfied with her lot, and her yearning for a more passionate way of life remains as fervent as ever.

emma's discontent manifests in various ways.

she becomes distant and irritable, and her spending habits spiral out of control as she tries to fill the void in her life with material possessions, lavish home decor, and the latest styles in gowns, gloves and hats.

in yonville, charles forms a connection with the local pharmacist, a pompous man named monsieur aumé.

when emma is invited to dine with the pair, she dreads a dull evening.

she is pleasantly surprised to become acquainted with aumé's boarder, a young, handsome clerk named léon dupuis.

léon, like emma, harbors romantic fantasies and is equally disenchanted with provincial life.

their mutual feelings for each other become evident, yet they remain unspoken.

emma gives birth to a daughter, berthe.

but berthe cannot bring her the fulfilment she hopes for either.

in fact, emma begins to resent berthe, viewing the child as another symbol of the mundane life she despises.

eventually, léon, frustrated by the unspoken tension between them and unable to act on his feelings, leaves yonville to study law in paris.

emma is heartbroken by his departure.

in the midst of her distress, she meets monsieur l'heureux, a moneylender, who has learned of emma's reputation for spending beyond her means.

shortly after léon leaves, emma meets rodolphe boulanger, a wealthy and worldly landowner.

rodolphe quickly realises how unhappy and emotionally vulnerable emma is.

he decides to seduce her, seeing her as an easy conquest.

he begins courting her, playing on her romantic fantasies.

emma, overwhelmed by her desires and desperate for excitement, succumbs to rodolphe's advances, and they begin a passionate affair.

the affair becomes the centrepiece of emma's life.

she neglects her duties as a wife and mother, becoming entirely consumed by her illicit romance with rodolphe.

they meet in secret, and emma imagines running away with him to start a new life.

she takes out loans from the unscrupulous monsieur l'heureux and uses the money to buy rodolphe extravagant gifts.

charles remains oblivious to her infidelity, and his obliviousness only makes emma more contemptuous of him.

in fact, at points he even facilitates emma's liaisons with rodolphe.

when rodolphe invites her to go horse-riding with him, for her health, naturally, and emma demurs, charles presses her to accept rodolphe's gracious invitation.

it is on this horse-ride that emma and rodolphe consummate their affair in a scene which, at the time, was decidedly scandalous, though, apart from some heavy breathing and a suggestive swoon, flaubert doesn't delve into any explicit details.

this encounter is, for emma, transformative, writes flaubert.

at last she was to know the pleasures of love, that fever of happiness which she had despaired of.

she was entering something marvellous where everything would be passion, ecstasy, delirium.

unfortunately, her sentiments are one-sided.

rodolphe quickly tires of emma's sentimentality, but strings her along because he finds her so physically desirable.

the affair reaches a head when the pair plan to elope.

emma believes right to the last moment that she and rodolphe are passionately in love and is blindsided when, just before their planned escape, he sends her a letter filled with bland regrets.

the realisation that rodolphe was only ever toying with her affections sends emma into deep despair.

after her affair with rodolphe is brought to its cruel end, emma enters into a period of depression and illness until the well-meaning charles hits on an idea.

he will take his wife to the opera, in the nearby city of rouen, to lift her spirits.

it is a fitting choice as the bovary's outing to the opera sends the novel into its own operatically tragic climax.

mingling with the elegant opera-goers and, as ever, resenting her husband for his provincial awkwardness, emma spies a familiar face in the crowd.

léon dupuis, who now lives in paris, is visiting rouen.

the pair quickly rekindle their old romantic connection and this time around they are not so chased.

léon confesses his love for emma.

they kiss and arrange to meet outside the cathedral the next day.

but emma is stricken with guilt and brings to their reunion a letter stating the reasons why she cannot be léon's mistress.

they call for a carriage.

in another of flaubert's scandalous yet far from explicit scenes, they ask the carriage driver to close the blinds and drive around rouen in circles.

the reader never sees what happens inside the carriage, only a hand that reaches through the window to scatter the torn-up fragments of emma's letter onto the road.

soon emma is making regular visits to see léon in rouen on the pretext of taking piano lessons.

their initial romantic encounter becomes a full-blown affair.

as her affair with léon continues, emma grows increasingly disillusioned.

the reality of her affair doesn't match up with her romantic expectations of it.

just like rodolphe, léon becomes tired of emma's sentimentality and her increasing demands on his time.

meanwhile, the debts emma has accumulated with monsieur lerue begin to come due.

emma resorts to secretly selling off parts of charles's dead father's estate to keep the moneylender satisfied.

when charles's mother discovers this subterfuge, she has charles revoke his wife's power of attorney, but emma soon persuades charles to reinstate it.

even with full control of charles's estate, emma cannot come up with enough money to remedy her spiralling debt.

one day, while charles is away, bailiffs come to the house and begin to inventory the bovary household, with a view to repossessing it.

desperate, she asks both léon and rodolphe for help.

both men refuse her.

finally, emma goes to homay's pharmacy, where she convinces homay's assistant, justin, to open the locked cabinet where the arsenic is kept.

emma takes the arsenic and goes to bed, with a letter that she instructs charles, who has now returned home to find his wife ill and half his household goods already taken by bailiffs, to read in the morning.

emma imagines that she will fall into a peaceful sleep and die.

yet again, her romantic expectations could not be further from reality.

she becomes violently ill and dies, some days later, in agony.

after emma's death, charles finally comprehends how much debt emma accrued during their marriage.

he finds she has already sold off much of his estate and collected all his outstanding patient's fees to pay it, leaving him unable to raise the funds to pay off her many creditors.

even so, he remains devoted to her memory, at least until he finds a bundle of letters in the attic that lay out the details of her affairs with rodolphe and léon.

he dies a broken man, disillusioned and impoverished.

the bovary's young daughter berthe, meanwhile, is sent to live with charles' mother.

when she, too, dies, berthe is sent to live with one of her grandmother's poor relations and ultimately put to work in a cotton mill.

emma's aristocratic aspirations have not only failed to materialise, they have sentenced her daughter to a life of poverty.

at its heart, madame bovary explores the tension between romantic expectation and reality.

emma's life is defined by her desire for a reality that matches the romantic ideals she has absorbed from novels, operas and plays.

equally, it is defined by her disappointment when reality inevitably fails to match these imagined ideals.

the novel's provincial setting highlights the contrast between emma's longing for passionate love, elegance and excitement, and the mundane realities of rural bourgeois life in 19th century france.

flaubert doesn't stop at depicting emma's disillusionment with reality.

her unrealistic expectations explicitly lead to her downfall, her destitution and her eventual death by suicide.

in the hands of a less sympathetic writer, the story of emma bovary might have been a simple moral tale, cautioning readers against aspiring to unrealistic romantic notions or, indeed, of having ideas of a life beyond their class and station.

but flaubert is sensitive, even sympathetic, to emma's foolishness.

he once famously declared, certainly, emma's own actions lead to her downfall, but the novel is also sympathetic to her broader plight.

as a woman trying to live a fulfilled and passionate life in the confines of 19th century french society, emma has few options.

the expectation is that she will find satisfaction solely through marriage and motherhood.

flaubert's unflinching portrait of the bovary's unhappy marriage shows just how false and empty this expectation can be.

trapped in a loveless marriage and stifled by societal expectations, emma seeks escape through love affairs and consumerism, only to find herself increasingly isolated and despairing.

her actions are not wise, but, portrayed as they are against the more sinister backdrop of a deeply patriarchal society, they are at least understandable.

another theme running through the novel is that of consumption and its connection to class.

emma is constantly drawn to objects and experiences that she believes will elevate her above the drabness of her existence.

her desire for luxury, whether in the form of lavish furnishings, fashionable clothes or romantic escapades, reflects the growing consumerism of the time.

by way of context, the novel was written during the second empire in france, a period which saw the rise of the bourgeoisie, the expansion of consumer culture and the decline of traditional values.

rather than allowing her to buy her way out of a dull middle-class existence, though, emma's unchecked consumption only entrenches her deeper in debt and misery.

emma's tragic ending also serves as flaubert's critique of the emergent consumer class she belonged to and the moral emptiness he saw in their pursuit of greater social standing through material consumption.

critical as the novel is of the social and cultural mores of its time, it is perhaps unsurprising that madame bovary met with significant controversy when it was first published.

in fact, flaubert was prosecuted for obscenity due to the novel's frank treatment of adultery, including several scenes that were, for the time, extremely sexually suggestive and for its perceived attack on the institution of marriage.

however, flaubert defended his work as a truthful portrayal of life and the charges were eventually dropped.

in the years since flaubert defended his book as realistic, it has, in fact, come to be regarded as one of the foundational works of modern european realism, thanks to its meticulous depictions of everyday life and its in-depth exploration of its characters, complex motivations and emotions.

above all, it remains a powerful and enduring critique of romantic idealism, social and class constraints and the human condition in modern society.

final summary in this chapter to madame bovary by gustave flaubert, you've learned that madame bovary follows the story of emma bovary, a doctor's wife who, dissatisfied with her mundane provincial life and marriage, seeks fulfilment through extramarital affairs and excessive spending, ultimately leading to her tragic demise.

the novel explores themes of romantic idealism the novel explores themes of romantic idealism versus reality and the emptiness of bourgeois society.

flaubert's incisive critique highlights the destructive consequences of pursuing unattainable desires and the constraints imposed by social expectations.

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