Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is a novel written by Gustave Flaubert and initially published in installments in 1856. It was published as a book in 1857.

This novel tells the story of Emma Bovary, a farmer's daughter with a convent education who marries a dull country health officer expecting married life to resemble the novels she has read. The marriage does not satisfy her, and provincial routine leaves her longing for something else.

Although she tries to find happiness in marriage she does not succeed, and begins to have a series of affairs. However, these extramarital affairs do not make her happy either and do not fill her heart. Spending money on clothes and other feel-good indulgences doesn't work either... so Emma can't find her way in her search for happiness.

Her affairs and her spending run in parallel until the debts fall due, and the ending follows from that arithmetic rather than from any punishment the author arranges. Flaubert and his publisher were prosecuted for offending public morals when the novel appeared, and acquitted; the trial made the book famous.