Madame Bovary is a novel set in provincial Normandy. Emma, a farmer's daughter raised on romantic books, marries Charles Bovary, a kind but dull country doctor. Life in the small towns where they live soon falls far short of the passion and elegance she has imagined. Restless and bored, she looks for escape in dreams, in spending and in secret attachments, while the ordinary people around her carry on with their small ambitions. The book is a portrait of illusion meeting reality, told with a cool and exact style. Its publication brought a prosecution for immorality, and it is now regarded as a landmark of the realist novel.
Quotes
Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken.