Madame Bovary is a
novel which delineates the standards and living of the bourgeoisie. Madame Bovary created such an upheaval in its
time that Flaubert and his publisher were put on trial on the charges of immorality. Madame Bovary is Flaubert’s most accomplished work, and it is a realist novel, which marked the starting of modern novel in France.
Emma Bovary, the main character of the novel is a woman imprisoned in her middle-class surroundings. She has waited throughout her life for her Prince Charming to come on a horse and take her away from the typical middle-class milieu, to her own idealistic
romantic world. But, what she gets is an unattractive and incompetent husband in Charles, who is good for nothing. She is disappointed and dissatisfied about her marriage with Charles. She tries to seek her happiness in several other extra-marital
affairs, but to her disappointment, she is cheated by all.
The freedom and openness with which she carries out her sexual affairs at that time with Rodolphe (a rich landowner) and Leon (a law student) leaves everybody astonished. Emma is devastated in her affairs as the men whom she loves are not faithful to her, they just use her to their benefits and trample upon her. In her attempt to maintain a lavish lifestyle and to impress her lovers with expensive gifts, she is dug in great debts. The thought of the embarrassment and humiliation she will have to face in front of Charles leads her to commit suicide.
Emma is a romantic heroine in the true sense, as she
lives only for her passionate affairs. In the novel, she is
happy only when she is passionately in love, all the other time she is on the verge of dying. She does not go into the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ of life, she sets her own values, which she lives upto. Her only value is to be happy, in whichever way plausible.
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