num_pages: 498
description: As a provocative tale of passion and complacency, ideals and self-delusions, Madame Bovary (1857) remains a milestone in European fiction. In telling his story of Emma Bovary a farmer s daughter who, with girlhood dreams fuelled by sensational novels, marries a provincial doctor Flaubert inaugurated a literary mode that would be called Realism. But so exacting were Flaubert s standards of authenticity that his portrayal of the breakdown of Emma s marriage, and the frankness with which he treats her adulterous liaisons, scandalized many of his contemporaries. Yet to others, the mix of painful introspection, emotional blindness, and cynical self-seeking that distinguishes his characters made the novel instantly recognizable as a work of genius. It is a novel fixed upon the idea of romance of the need for Romance in the face of day-to-day banalities. It is a theme that is ironic insofar as the exquisite clarity of Flaubert s prose serves to hauntingly underline the futility of the heroine s ultimate tragedy.
language: English
title: Madame Bovary
titlecomplete: Madame Bovary
characters: Berthe Bovary, Monsieur Homais, Rodolphe Boulanger, Emma Bovary, Charles Bovary, Léon Dupuis
genres: Fiction, 19th Century, French Literature, Classics, France, Classic Literature, Historical Fiction, Romance, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 322009
places: France, Tostes, Rouen, Yonville-l'Abbaye
publisher: BookSurge Classics