Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert’s 1856 novel follows Emma Bovary, whose romantic ideals collide with provincial life, adultery, and debt. Its precise prose and unflinching account of desire made it a landmark of literary realism.

Emma Bovary: The central character of Flaubert’s novel, a dissatisfied doctor’s wife who pursues romance and luxury. Her fantasies and choices drive the novel’s crises.
Free indirect speech: A narrative mode that blends a character’s idiom and viewpoint with third-person narration. It lets Emma’s fantasies color the narration without making them the narrator’s judgments.
French literature: Literature written in French, including works from France and other French-speaking societies. The novel belongs to a tradition it reshaped through its style and subject.
Madame Bovary trial: The 1857 French obscenity prosecution of Flaubert, his publisher, and the novel’s printer. The case turned the novel’s sexual content and moral stance into public questions.
Madame Bovary's wedding scene: The episode describing Emma and Charles Bovary’s wedding celebration. Its ordinary details establish the distance between Emma’s expectations and provincial reality.
Charles Bovary: A provincial physician and Emma’s husband in Flaubert’s novel. His kind but limited nature sharpens Emma’s dissatisfaction with marriage.
Literary realism: A literary mode that depicts ordinary social life with attention to concrete conditions and behavior. Flaubert turns provincial routines, money, and desire into the novel’s central materials.
Nineteenth-century France: The political, social, and cultural history of France from 1800 to 1899. Its provincial class relations and consumer culture inform the novel’s setting.
Literary censorship: The restriction or suppression of literary works by authorities or institutions. The prosecution shows how the novel’s publication tested imperial censorship.
Madame Bovary's ball at La Vaubyessard: The episode in which Emma attends a ball at the château of La Vaubyessard. The ball gives Emma a glimpse of aristocratic luxury that intensifies her dissatisfaction.

Linked from 11 pages