Madame Bovary summary

The titular heroine – or antiheroine, depending who you ask – of Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel Madame Bovary is Emma Bovary herself. And yet, the reader will not meet Emma at the book’s beginning. 

So, where does the novel start? With Charles Bovary, Emma’s ill-suited husband. 

The novel’s action takes place in a compressed amount of time – most of it occurs in the few short years of Emma and Charles’s decidedly unhappy marriage. But its opening chapters cover a far wider span of time. We first meet Charles Bovary when he is a clumsy schoolboy, living in a small french village of no significance. We follow along as he grows up, later fails his medical exams before finally qualifying as a doctor, and endures a loveless marriage with the older widow, Heloise Dubuc. Heloise scolds and nags Charles incessantly but she has one redeeming feature: she is, thanks to her first marriage, a wealthy woman. 

One day, Charles is called to treat the injured leg of a local farmer, Roualt. Here, we first meet Emma, Roualt’s daughter. But we won’t get to know too much about her yet. Charles sees her only in glimpses – though he sees enough to be struck by her beauty. All that he learns about her comes to him second-hand, through the local gossips, who say that Emma has dropped out of convent school, or through Heloise, who has heard that Emma puts on airs. As Charles finds himself increasingly entranced by Emma, dramatic revelations occur in his marriage: he and Heloise learn that her lawyer has defrauded her of most of her money. Shortly after, Charles learns that Heloise deceived him about how much money her husband had left to her in the first place. Heloise, shocked and humiliated, falls ill and dies.

This leaves Charles free to pursue his fascination with Emma. The two spend time getting to know one another through leisurely walks and long conversations – though Emma is by far the more talkative and interesting conversationalist. Soon, Charles sets his mind on marriage. Roualt, who has mismanaged his farm and sunk into debt, is more than happy to see his daughter married off to the local doctor, and grants Charles Emma’s hand.

Because we have spent so much time, in these opening chapters, with Charles, by this point in the story, we know him well. We know that he is meek, dull, stubborn, and provincial. We are struck – just as Charles himself is struck – by the sheer improbability of someone as beautiful and vivacious as Emma marrying someone as ordinary as Charles. We sense – as Charles does not sense, at least not initially – that this union cannot end happily.   

The marriage goes ahead. Emma, ever-romantic, has her heart set on a dramatic midnight wedding. Ultimately, the pair are married at a more respectable time, in the afternoon, on Emma’s father’s farm. Charles is thrilled with his good luck. Emma remains more detached – even when Charles takes her virginity the morning after the wedding, she is cool and collected.

At this point in the novel, we begin to learn more about Emma – or, now that she is married, Madame Bovary – herself. While Charles is overcome with love, Emma is less enthusiastic. She is an avid reader of romance novels and she is perturbed to find that her married life bears little resemblance to the dramatic scenes she has swooned over in books. Writes Flaubert: “Before marriage she thought herself in love; but since the happiness that should have followed failed to come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Emma tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words bliss, passion, ecstasy, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.”

Dissatisfied with her provincial life, Emma wishes for romance and excitement. One day, it comes in the form of an invitation to a ball, held by the Marquis d’Andervilliers. Emma is enchanted by the display of wealth and elegance and, equally, embarrassed by her husband. Surrounded by the upper class, Charles suddenly seems horribly gauche to her. She dances with a dashing viscount. Later, when the Bovarys depart, they see that same Viscount throw his cigar box out of his carriage. Emma picks up the cigar box for a keepsake. After the ball, Emma’s life feels ever more dull and tedious – she yearns to be part of a more refined, glamorous world, the world that the ball, and the cigar box, represent. 

But two things happen: Charles accepts a new job, in the town of Yonville. And Emma falls pregnant. Her fate, it would seem, is set in stone.