Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
"Madame Bovary," written by Gustave Flaubert, is a seminal work of French literature that explores themes of desire, disillusionment, and the constraints of social expectations. The novel centers around Emma Bovary, a young woman married to the well-meaning but dull Charles Bovary, a country doctor. Dissatisfied with her provincial life and yearning for the romance depicted in the novels she has read, Emma becomes increasingly disillusioned with her marriage. Her search for excitement leads her to engage in affairs with two men, Léon Dupuis and Rodolphe Boulanger, which ultimately spiral into tragedy.
As Emma's quest for passion and luxury drives her deeper into debt and despair, the consequences of her choices become starkly apparent. The story critiques the limitations imposed by society on women's lives and the dangers of romantic idealism. Flaubert's detailed narrative style and psychological depth provide a poignant exploration of Emma's character and the societal pressures of 19th-century France. The novel concludes with Emma's tragic demise, leaving her husband Charles to confront the fallout of her actions, illustrating the profound effects of individual desires on personal and familial stability. "Madame Bovary" remains a powerful examination of the human condition, resonating with readers across cultures and eras.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
First published: 1857 (English translation, 1886)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: France
Principal Characters
Charles Bovary , a provincial doctorEmma bovary , his wifeLéon Dupuis , a young lawyerRodolphe Boulanger , a wealthy landowner
The Story
Charles Bovary is a student of medicine who marries for his own advancement a woman much older than himself. She makes his life miserable with her nagging and groundless suspicions. One day, Charles is called to the bedside of Monsieur Rouault, who has a broken leg, and there he meets the farmer’s daughter, Emma, a beautiful but restless young woman whose early education in a French convent has given her an overwhelming thirst for broader experience. Charles finds his patient an excellent excuse to see Emma, whose charm and grace has captivated him.
Charles’s whining wife, Héloise, however, soon suspects the true reason for his visits to the Rouault farm. She hears rumors that in spite of Emma’s peasant background, the girl conducts herself like a gentlewoman. Angry and tearful, Héloise makes Charles swear that he will not visit the Rouault home again. Unexpectedly, Héloise’s fortune is found to be nonexistent. There is a violent quarrel over her deception, followed by a stormy scene between her and Charles’s parents, which brings on an attack of an old illness. Héloise dies quickly and quietly.
Charles feels guilty because he has so few regrets at his wife’s death. At old Rouault’s invitation, he returns once more to the farm and again falls under the spell of Emma’s charms. As old Rouault watches Charles fall more deeply in love with his daughter, he decides that the young doctor is dependable and perfectly respectable. He forces the young man’s hand, telling Charles he can have Emma in marriage and gives the couple his blessing.
During the first weeks of marriage, Emma occupies herself with changing their new home. She busies herself with every household task she can think of to keep herself from being utterly disillusioned. Emma realizes that even though she thought she was in love with Charles, she does not feel the rapture that should have come with marriage. All the romantic books she has read have led her to expect more from marriage, and the dead calm of her feelings is a bitter disappointment. Indeed, the intimacy of marriage disgusts her. Instead of having a perfumed, handsome lover in velvet and lace, she finds herself tied to a dull-witted husband who reeks of medicines and drugs.
As Emma is about to give up all hope of finding any joy in her new life, a noble patient whom Charles has treated invites them to a ball at his chateau. At the ball, Emma dances with a dozen partners, tastes champagne, and receives compliments on her beauty. The contrast between the life of the Bovarys and that of the nobleman is painfully evident. Emma becomes more and more discontented with Charles. His futile and clumsy efforts to please her only make her despair at his lack of understanding. She sits by her window, dreams of Paris, and then becomes ill.
Hoping a change would improve her condition, Charles takes Emma to Yonville, where he sets up a new practice and Emma prepares for the birth of their child. When their daughter is born, Emma’s chief interest in the child is confined to laces and ribbons for her clothes. The child is sent to a wet nurse, where Emma visits her, and where, accidentally, she meets Léon Dupuis, a law clerk bored with the town and seeking diversion. Charmed with the youthful mother, he walks home with her in the twilight, and Emma finds him sympathetic to her romantic ideas about life.
Later, Léon visits the Bovarys in company with Homais, the town chemist. Homais holds little soirees at the local inn, to which he invites the townsfolk. There, Emma’s acquaintance with Léon ripens. The townspeople gossip about the couple, but Charles is not acute enough to sense the nature of the interest Emma has in Léon.
Bored with Yonville and tired of loving in vain, Léon goes to Paris to complete his studies. He leaves Emma brokenhearted and deploring her weakness in not having given herself to Léon. She frets in her boredom and once more makes herself ill, but she has no time to become melancholy, for a stranger, Rodolphe Boulanger, has come to town. One day, he brought his farm tenant to Charles for bloodletting. Rodolphe, an accomplished lover, sees in Emma a promise of future pleasure. Emma realizes that if she gives herself to him, her surrender will be immoral. Nevertheless, she rationalizes her doubts by convincing herself that nothing as romantic and beautiful as love can be sinful.
Emma begins to deceive Charles, meeting Rodolphe, riding over the countryside with him, and listening to his urgent avowals of love. Finally, she succumbs to his persuasive appeals. She feels guilty at first but later identifies herself with adulterous heroines of fiction and believes that, like them, she now knows true romance. Sure of her love, Rodolphe no longer finds it necessary to behave like a gentle lover; he stops being punctual for his meetings with Emma, and, though he continues to see her, she begins to suspect that his passion is dwindling.
Charles has become involved in Homais’s attempt to cure a boy of a clubfoot with a machine Charles designed. Both Homais and Charles are convinced that the success of their operation will raise their future standing in the community. After weeks of torment, however, the boy contracts gangrene, and his leg has to be amputated. Homais’s reputation is undamaged, however, for he is by profession a chemist, but Bovary, a doctor, is looked on with suspicion. His medical practice begins to suffer.
Disgusted with Charles’s failure, Emma, trying to hold Rodolphe, begins to spend money recklessly on jewelry and clothes, bringing her husband deeply into debt. She finally secures Rodolphe’s word that he will take her away, but on the very eve of what was to be her escape, she receives from him a letter in which he hypocritically repents of what he calls their sin. Distraught at the realization that she has lost him, she almost throws herself from the window but is saved when Charles calls to her. She becomes gravely ill with brain fever and lays near death for several months.
Emma’s convalescence is slow, but she is finally well enough to go to Rouen to the theater. The tender love scenes behind the footlights make Emma breathless with envy. Once more, she dreams of romance. In Rouen, she meets Léon Dupuis again. This time, Léon is determined to possess Emma. He listens to her complaints with sympathy, soothes her, and takes her driving. Emma, whose thirst for romance still consumes her, yields herself to Léon with regret that she had not done so before.
Charles Bovary grows concerned over his increasing debts. Adding to his own financial worries, the death of his father left his mother in ignorance about the family estate. Emma uses the excuse of procuring a lawyer for her mother-in-law to visit Léon in Rouen, where he has set up a practice. At his suggestion, she secures a power of attorney from Charles, a document that leaves her free to spend his money without his knowing of her purchases.
In despair over his debts, the extent of which Emma has only partly revealed, Charles takes his mother into his confidence and promises to destroy Emma’s power of attorney. Deprived of her hold over Charles’s finances and unable to repay her debts, Emma throws herself on Léon’s mercy with no regard for caution. Her corruption and her addiction to pleasure are now complete, but Emma begins to realize that she has brought her lover down with her. She no longer respects him, and she scorns his faithfulness when he is unable to give her money she needs to pay her bills. When her name is posted publicly for a debt of several thousand francs, the bailiff prepares to sell Charles’s property to settle her creditors’ claims. Charles is out of town when the debt is posted, and Emma, in one final act of self-abasement, appeals to Rodolphe for help. He, too, refuses to lend her money.
Knowing that the framework of lies with which she had deceived Charles is about to collapse, Emma Bovary resolves to die a heroine’s death. She swallows arsenic bought at Homais’s shop. Charles, returning from his trip, arrives too late to save her from a slow, painful death.
Pitiful in his grief, Charles can barely endure the sounds of the hammer as her coffin is nailed shut. Later, feeling that his pain over Emma’s death has grown less, he opens her desk, to find there the carefully collected love letters of Léon and Rodolphe. Broken with the knowledge of his wife’s infidelity, scourged with debt, and helpless in his disillusionment, Charles dies soon after his wife, leaving a legacy of only twelve francs for the support of his orphaned daughter.
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