Novel Tragedy

Madame Bovary
Author First Published Original Language
Gustave Flaubert 1856 French

MAIN CHARACTERS

The Tragic In 19th-century France, Emma Bovary is unhappily married to the dull
Charles Bovary. Frustrated and bored by her uninteresting country life,
Pursuit of she carries on a series of affairs in pursuit of passion and true love, but she

Passion meets a tragic end in a society that has little sympathy for her actions.

Married Lovers Acquaintances

Charles Bovary Emma Bovary Monsieur Lheureux

Plain, common, Romantic woman; craves Sly merchant and moneylender;
unskilled doctor love, beauty, and money leads Emma into financial ruin

Monsieur Homais Rodolphe Boulanger Léon Dupuis

Pompous town pharmacist; Wealthy man; Romantic town clerk;
helps ruin Charles’s reputation seduces Emma has an affair with Emma

Themes

Desire & Dissatisfaction

Emma craves romantic love but
quickly tires of it, leading to ongoing
unhappiness.

Freedom & Confinement

Societal rules and customs require
Emma stay locked in an unhappy
marriage.

Power & Helplessness

Emma follows a path toward
financial ruin in her quest for
independence.

Madame Bovary Author

by the Numbers

1857 15
Year Flaubert was Flaubert’s age when he won
acquitted on obscenity a literary prize for an essay
charges for writing on mushrooms
Madame Bovary
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
1821–80

Born into a wealthy family in

France, Flaubert was greatly
interested in writing about the

1951 3 bourgeoisie, or middle class.

He was known for his style of
literary realism—which
Year Emmanuel Printings of Madame
attempted to depict life as it
Bondeville’s opera Bovary made in 1857
really was, as in his most
Madame Bovary
popular work, Madame Bovary.
premiered

Motifs

Windows
Emma is often gazing out of
windows, showing her confinement
and desire to escape.

Death
Death touches nearly every
character and aspect of the novel,
standing in contrast to Emma’s
hopes and desires.

ow the cravings of the flesh, the yearning for

money and the melancholia of passion, all were
compounded in a simple sorrow.
Narrator, Part 2, Chapter 5

Sources: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, Encyclopaedia Britannica,

The Grove Book of Opera Singers by Laura Williams Macy, The Guardian,
Wordsworth Editions, Yale University

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