Madame Bovary

Gustave Flaubert’s classic novel of a bored French housewife who goes to great lengths to escape the staleness of provincial life, freshly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Editions line. Beautiful and bored, housewife Emma Bovary is trapped in her marriage to a mediocre doctor and stifled by the banality of provincial life. A passionate reader of romance novels, she seeks to escape her existence through spending lavishly on clothing and embarking on multiple affairs. But even something as seemingly exciting as committing adultery only brings her disappointment and devastating consequences for her husband and daughter. Flaubert’s erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of Emma Bovary caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for his heroine; but Flaubert insisted: “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.”