Madame Bovary, originally published as Madame Bovary Provincial Manners, is a
novel by French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856 The eponymous
character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness
of provincial life.
Madame Bovary takes place in provincial Northern France, near the town of Rouen
in Normandy. Charles Bovary is a shy, oddly dressed teenager arriving at a new
school where his new classmates ridicule him. He struggles his way to a second
-rate medical degree, and becomes an Officier de santé in the Public Health Service.
He marries the woman his mother has chosen for him, the unpleasant but
supposedly rich widow Hélose Dubuc. He sets out to build a practice in the village
of Ttes.
One day, Charles visits a local farm to set the owners broken leg and meets his
patients daughter, Emma Rouault. Emma is a beautiful, poetically dressed young
woman who has received a good education in a convent.