num_pages: 362
description: Emma Bovary is beautiful and bored, trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. An ardent reader of sentimental novels, she longs for passion and seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment and the consequences are devastating. Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert 'Madame Bovary, c'est moi'.
language: English
title: Madame Bovary
titlecomplete: Madame Bovary
characters: Berthe Bovary, Charles Bovary, Rodolphe Boulanger, Emma Bovary, Monsieur Homais, Léon Dupuis
genres: Historical Fiction, French Literature, Novels, Literature, Classic Literature, Classics, Romance, Fiction, 19th Century, France
ratings_count: 322009
places: Yonville-l'Abbaye, France, Tostes, Rouen
publisher: Penguin Books