Resumen
Resumen de Madame Bovary
Para quién es
For readers who love close portraits of character, tragedy and clear, exact prose, and for anyone curious about how romantic dreams, money and respectability shape a life.
De qué trata este libro
Madame Bovary is a novel by the French writer Gustave Flaubert. It appeared in installments in the Revue de Paris in 1856 and as a book in 1857. Flaubert spent about five years on it, working slowly and rewriting sentence after sentence until the rhythm pleased him. It is set in the French provinces in the years of the July Monarchy, among doctors, shopkeepers, farmers and small landowners.
The book follows Emma Rouault, a farmer's daughter who has read too many romances and expects life to be as bright as they promise. She marries a kind, dull country doctor named Charles Bovary and finds that marriage does not match her dreams. The novel traces what she does about that gap between longing and life. It also draws a sharp portrait of a small town that has no room for her hopes, and little pity for her failures.
The book was put on trial in 1857 for offending public morals, and Flaubert was acquitted. You will get the shape of the whole story here, the people who matter, the themes that run through it, and a sense of how Flaubert tells it with such cool precision. Let us begin with the girl on the farm and the doctor who comes to set her father's leg.
En este resumen
- 1A doctor's awkward start in lifeFree
- 2A farm girl with borrowed dreams
- 3Marriage proves smaller than the dream
- 4Yonville and its small world
- 5Desire finds a way out
- 6Debts, lies and a doomed hope
- 7What the novel is really about
- 8A style built on cold, exact looking
- 9Why the book caused a trial
Idea clave 1 de 9
A doctor's awkward start in life
The novel opens not with Emma but with Charles Bovary, as a shy new boy in a school classroom. He arrives wearing a ridiculous cap, and his classmates laugh at him. From the first pages, Flaubert shows a young man who is slow, eager to please and easily led.
Charles grows up under the pressure of an ambitious mother and a rough father. He is pushed into medical studies, struggles through them, and becomes only a health officer, a lesser kind of doctor. His mother arranges a first marriage for him with an older widow who is jealous and controlling. He settles into a modest practice in a village called Tostes.
The opening matters because it sets the measure of the man Emma will marry. Charles is not cruel, not greedy and not a fool by his own lights. He is simply ordinary, and he trusts that ordinary life is enough. The reader is made to feel both his goodness and his limits.
Flaubert also uses these early chapters to show how a life is shaped by others. Charles chooses almost nothing for himself. Keep that in mind, because the novel keeps asking how much any of its people truly choose, and how much is done to them by habit, family and the place they live.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
- Nothing to pay today · Renews every year
- We email you before you pay
- Cancel online in two clicks
Who’s who
- Emma Bovary
- Emma is Charles's convent-educated wife, whose romantic expectations clash with the ordinary comforts of their provincial marriage.
- Charles Bovary
- Charles is a modest country doctor who loves Emma sincerely and hopes for a quiet, comfortable home.
- Rodolphe Boulanger
- Rodolphe is a wealthy landowner and practiced seducer who regards Emma as a potential conquest.
- Léon Dupuis
- Léon is a young law clerk whose love of poetry and music draws him toward Emma.
- Monsieur Homais
- Monsieur Homais is Yonville's talkative pharmacist, a neighbor of the Bovarys who champions science and seeks recognition.
- Monsieur Lheureux
- Monsieur Lheureux is a persuasive draper and moneylender who encourages Emma to buy fine things on credit.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 118,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 7 h 50 min
- Listening time13 h 5 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback, hardcover and large print at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Madame Bovary
What is Madame Bovary about?
It follows Emma Bovary, a country doctor's wife who longs for the passion and luxury she has read about in romances. Her attempts to escape boredom lead to affairs, spending and debt in a small Norman town.
Why was Madame Bovary put on trial?
In 1857 the French government charged Flaubert with offending public and religious morals, claiming the novel made adultery look attractive. He was acquitted, and the trial made the book better known.
What is bovarysme?
It is a term taken from the heroine's name. It describes a habit of imagining oneself as someone grander or more romantic than one is, and being unhappy with real life as a result.
Is Madame Bovary based on a true story?
It is a work of fiction published in 1857, though Flaubert drew on provincial life he knew in Normandy. Some say he was inspired by a local doctor's case, but this is debated.
Is Madame Bovary hard to read?
The language is clear, and the plot is simple to follow.