Madame Bovary

gustave flaubert

Don't buy cheap paperbacks just to save a few dollars. Most of them use low-quality papers & binding. Their pages fall off easily. Some of them even use very small font size of 6 or less to increase their profit margin. It makes their books completely unreadable. Madame Bovary (1856) is the French writer Gustave Flaubert's debut novel. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life. Though the basic plot is rather simple, even archetypal, the novel's true art lies in its details and hidden patterns. Flaubert was a notorious perfectionist and claimed always to be searching for le mot juste ("the precise word"). When the novel was first serialized in La Revue de Paris between 1 October 1856 and 15 December 1856, public prosecutors attacked the novel for obscenity. The resulting trial in January 1857 made the story notorious. After Flaubert's acquittal on 7 February 1857, Madame Bovary became a bestseller in April 1857 when it was published as a single volume. The novel is now considered Flaubert's masterpiece, as well as a seminal work of literary realism and one of the most influential novels. British critic James Wood writes in How Fiction "Flaubert established for good or ill, what most readers think of as modern realist narration and his influence is almost too familiar to be visible".

Genres fictionclassicsfranceliteraturefrench literatureromance19th centurynovelshistorical fictionclassic literature

328 pages, Hardcover

First published December 15,1856

Places

rouen, yonville-labbaye, tostes, france, normandy,

This edition

Format: 328 pages, Hardcover
Published: July 14, 2006 by Ann Arbor Media
ISBN: 9781587263927
ASIN: 1587263920
Language: English

Characters More characters

Emma Bovary

The daughter of a French farmer, she is beautiful but socially ambitious. She is portrayed as an irresponsible, immature, and neurotic woman who is unable to adjust to the realities of her life....
Charles Bovary

A dull but sincere man, he is a doctor in rural France. A visit to a farmer with a broken leg lead to his marriage to Emma Rouault, whose social ambitions are far greater than his own....
Monsieur Homais

The town apothecary for Yonville-lAbbaye, he is a pompous man who practices medicine illegally.more...
Berthe Bovary

Emma and Charles Bovarys daughter.more...
Rodolphe Boulanger

A wealthy landowner with an estate near Yonville....
Léon Dupuis

...

About the author

gustave flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.