Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert | Summary & Analysis

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Professor Bill Yarrow of Joliet Junior College provides an in-depth analysis of the plot, characters, symbols, themes, and motifs of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.

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A biting critique of bourgeoisie (or middle-class) values, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary relates the tragic life of striver Emma Bovary and her husband Charles.

Bored of her mundane existence as a doctor's wife in a small town, Emma turns to indulgent spending and romantic dalliances to find passion and true love, as well as to distract herself.

Emma’s love affairs in the short-term bring passion, but ultimately end in disappointment and Emma finds herself worse off than she was before. In her loneliness she also develops a desire for wealth and grandeur.

Aiming to join the upper classes, with little means of actually doing so, she ultimately succumbs to the consequences of her indulgence when her debts begin to catch up with her.

Her ultimate decision to take her life forces Charles to discover her debt and infidelities and leaves him and their daughter in poverty.

Through heightened descriptions of middle-class life and its discontents, Flaubert indicts the superficial new values system that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution.

French author Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary was first published in 1856. Flaubert was greatly interested in writing about the bourgeoisie, or middle class. He was known for his style of literary realism—which attempted to depict life as it really was, as in his most popular work, Madame Bovary.

The tragedy Madame Bovary contains many strong themes, including desire and dissatisfaction, as Emma craves romance but quickly tires of it; freedom and confinement, as society dictates that Emma stay in an unhappy marriage; and power and helplessness, as Emma follows a path toward ruin in her quest to find independence. Other important motifs include windows and death.

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